On Wednesday, March 24:
May Day housing action planning meeting @ 6pm @ Trades Hall, Carlton. The action is being planned by the RAAF (Renegade Activists Action Force).
On Saturday, March 27:
the Second Melbourne Vegan Bake Off is taking place @ 2pm @ Kindness House, 288 Brunswick Street, Fitzroy;
a Daggy Disco is being held @ 8pm @ Tetris Studio, 36 Phoenix Street, Brunswick. The beneficiaries are some thing called The Cambodian Prison Project.
On Friday, April 2–Sunday, April 4: Such is Life punk rawk festival @ Palmers Rd, Truganina (Fri/Sat) / City (Sun).
On Saturday April 24– Monday April 26:
RAAF discussion, networking and planning @ Camp Eureka, Yarra Junction.
On May Day (Saturday, May 1), there’ll be the annual funeral procession for the labour movement from Trades Hall to the Treasury Gardens. If you’d like to know what the Melbourne May Day Committee has planned for 2008, check out their website. The Committee will be facing extremely stiff competition this year from zombie yoof, who will also be stumbling and moaning as they make their way from the Carlton Gardens to the CBD. Otherwise, a housing action is being planned, as is another action in opposition to the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC).
In other news, a 43-year-old self-described white nationalist has made himself the talk of Daisy Hill by flying a Nazi flag at his home (Swastika spurs war of words, Mark Flack, Albert & Logan News, March 17, 2010). Neo-Nazis are usually loathe to go public, so big ups to the anonymous Logan resident for agreeing to be photographed. For those interested, further copies of the Nazi battle flag are obtainable locally from neo-Nazi distro 9percent productions, where you can also purchase the book that inspired Timothy McVeigh to blow up the FBI building in Oklahoma City and the album Freezer Full of Nigger Heads by Grinded Nig. If you’d rather buy direct, you can do so at the gig to celebrate Adolf Hitler’s being organised for the Gold Coast on April 17. Oh, anybody wanting a tattoo from a bona fideneo-Nazi business should visit Hold Fast Body Art in Burwood.
LOL. Haven’t heard this in a long while… G’day Scott…! Also… ATR are back. “Having previously worked with Saul Williams, Kanye West and Nine Inch Nails, CX KIDTRONIK is an unstoppable and explosive MC as politically minded as the rest of ATR that bring his own element to the band.” (Note to self: Do more posts like you’re doing liner notes for an ’80s grindcore band… like Doom… who’ve finally hit the mainstream c/o filthy icon Lady Gaga and her ‘Telephone’. Also G.I.S.M.… Useless Blockades For the Corporate Sector!)
Writing in The Guinea Pigs (Penguin, 1974, Minuteman Press, 1981), John McGuffin (1942–2002) defines sensory deprivation as follows:
Sensory deprivation (SD) refers literally to the artificial deprivation of the senses – auditory, visual, tactile and kinesthetic. In connection with the Northern Ireland ‘guineapigs’ it meant (1) hooding prisoners prior to their interrogation; (2) constant use of a sound machine which produces ‘white noise’, a high pitched hissing, mushy sound; (3) long periods of immobilization, being forced to lean against a wall, legs wide apart with only the fingertips touching the wall; (4) little or no food or drink; and (5) being forced to wear loose overalls, several sizes too big. In addition, (6) prisoners were deprived of sleep for days on end; while not technically SD this accentuates the process. There is a purpose behind all these actions. Measures (1), (2), (3) and (5) cause visual, auditory, kinesthetic and tactile deprivation while measures (4) and (6) deprive the brain of oxygen and sugar necessary for normal functioning. In addition, measures (1), (4) and (6) may disturb the normal body metabolism.
The murky politics of the Right
John McCrone The Press (Christchurch)
[December 2009]
The country’s hardcore Right-wing factions look like they mean business. It’s just that their business never gets off the ground. JOHN McCRONE reports.
With a slightly self-conscious smile, the tattooed skinhead, New Zealand flag draped over his shoulder, places a flyer in my hand. Then he and his small rag- tag group continue their quiet parade around the sunny, tourist-filled streets of central Christchurch.
So this is white power, neo-Nazi politics, skinhead malevolence in 2009? Up in Wellington, the National Front’s annual rally drew larger numbers, but was a similarly subdued affair.
The anarchists and anti-fascists, the loyal leftie opposition, did not even bother to show up. With no confrontation, no aggro, the skinheads were reduced to wandering the streets, shyly interacting with the public, passing out their leaflets railing against immigration, multiculturalism, and threatened changes to the national flag. The TV cameras, finding no action, fast got bored and melted away.
White power was looking very much yesterday’s news in New Zealand. But then came the other events of the day. A first surprise was the sight of former National Front leader, Christchurch mayoral candidate and marae fire-bomber, Kyle Chapman, back in the thick of things at the Wellington Cenotaph gathering.
It was only last May that 38-year-old Mr Chapman renounced his white power activities following his marriage to a devout Mormon. Mr Chapman moved from Christchurch to live with his wife on her lifestyle block outside Hamilton.
Yet Mr Chapman says the pull of the movement – the importance of its ideas, the camaraderie of his mates – proved just too strong. “I never really gave it up,” he admits. So there he was with the troops again, split from his wife and full of plans as leader of the new “skinhead survivalist” faction within white power.
Mr Chapman says he wants to spread his Right Wing Resistance, a skinhead “community security” group he claims already patrols Christchurch, across the country. He also wants to build up his Survive Club, a military skills training squad which has been carrying out combat exercises with paint ball guns and ex-army Landrovers in preparation, he says, for the predicted collapse of society.
In a time of desperation and panic there will be no room for pussies, says Mr Chapman: “We want people who will not only stand up for themselves and their families, they have to stand up for the other club members and their families.”
Going even further, Mr Chapman has been fundraising to found a Nationalist Land Base, a protected skinhead commune with long houses and vegetable plots, somewhere in North Canterbury. A “unified mini state for like-minded Europeans”, as he describes it.
While Mr Chapman is organising for the apocalypse, there was also evidence that the National Front, under its new leader, 63-year-old Colin Ansell, is intent on relaunching itself after a chaotic few years under interim chief, Sid Wilson.
Mr Ansell, a Hawera print shop proprietor and former driving force of the New Zealand Nazi Party – in 1967, as a youth in Auckland, he was jailed for 18 months for his part in the fire-bombing of a synagogue – says he agreed to come out of retirement to prevent the movement folding entirely.
Mr Ansell plans to incorporate the National Front for the first time. He is busy redrafting its political manifesto. And crucially, he says, he wants a membership drive to get the party’s paid-up numbers to the point where it will qualify for state funding and free airtime at the next general election in 2011.
This would be following the similar achievements of Australia First, the far Right party emerging to fill the gap left by Pauline Hanson’s One Nation across the ditch. Australia First New South Wales director Jim Saleam was invited as a key speaker at the National Front’s annual meeting which followed the Labour Day rally, and Mr Saleam was able to tell how he has recruited the 500 members needed to take a tilt at Australia’s own next elections.
So this year is about showing the National Front is serious again, says Mr Ansell: “Members who came to the AGM were able to see a proper financial report this time and everything. We’ve set up a bank account to stop the people getting in who’re just going to milk it, as has happened in the past.”
Huh. I only just found this one. Funnily enough, the “I Hate Victoria Police” Facebook page which is mentioned later in the article and is (apparently) the subject of possible legal action by the police union was identified as being objectionable by 3AW’s Neil Mitchell last month. In October 2007, on the eve of the last Federal election, the “millionaire blabbermouth, professional boofhead and Liberal Party poodle” expressed support for then-Minister for Immigration & Citizenship Kevin Andrews when Andrews announced an end to immigration of black refugees from Africa. This Thursday, March 18, local Community Legal Centres will release a “damning” report into ‘Discriminatory Police Treatment of African Young People’. The launch of the report will be held at 5.30pm, on Thursday the 18th of March at the Multicultural Hub, 506 Elizabeth Street, Melbourne. Read the press release here and here.
A ROGUE Facebook page claiming to be an official Victoria Police website is being used by gay men trawling for sex and by cop haters accusing police of corruption.
The website features Victoria Police’s logo and contains a message from former police chief Christine Nixon taken from elsewhere.
It also has photos linking police to a religious group and hyperlinks to a racist thug’s website.
The website carries comments from people accusing police of everything from lying under oath to using torture as a means of investigation.
Police Association secretary Sen-Sgt Greg Davies labelled the website a disgrace. “It’s ridiculous that every halfwit who feels like it can defame police officers on what appears to be an official police webpage,” he said.
Unlike other obvious Facebook hate pages aimed at police, the rogue Victoria Police page appears to be fooling some users into believing it’s the real thing, with some posting messages of support for police.
A police spokesman said police would investigate the website.
“Like all user-generated websites, we have no editorial rights over its content,” he said. “However, abusive or illegal material will not be tolerated. We will have a look and any serious abuses will be reported to Facebook administrators for removal.”
The site’s administrator could not be contacted by the Herald Sun.
The discovery of the site comes just weeks after the Police Association threatened legal action against the creators of a Facebook site promoting violence against police.
More than 5000 people have joined the “I Hate Victoria Police” site since it was set up last August.
Police Minister Bob Cameron condemned the online attacks.
“The men and women of Victoria Police do a fantastic job putting the interests of the Victorian community first in order to help protect them,” he said.
The genuine Facebook page is called Victoria Police Forcebook.
Launched in March/April 2009, Victoria Police Forcebook has just over 1,500 members. At present (that is, prior to its removal), “I Hate Victoria Police” has over 5,400.
…may be found @ Benjamin Myers’ blog Faith and Theology; @ PodBlack Cat (which includes a setlist of the songs that accompanied speakers to the stage); and of course @ Your ABC, whose commitment to Atheistic Communism & Homosexuality is being cleverly disguised, thank G*d, by a plethora of religious programming.
Anyway, one additional thing I learned by way of attending the Convention on Sunday was the fact that His Eminence Cardinal George Pell debated former Christian preacher turned atheist Dan Barker in Sydney last week on the proposition ‘Without God we are nothing’. Naturally, this brought to mind nineteenth-century anarchist Mikhail Bakunin: “I reverse the phrase of Voltaire, and say that if God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him”. Pell originally debated Drink-Soaked Ex-Trotskyite For War Christopher Hitchens on the subject in October last year, but given that Pell appears not to have quit his post in the interim, I can only assume Hitchens wasn’t very convincing.
I also forgot to mention that Peter Singer’s rejection of the moral injunction, generally associated with Christianity, to turn your cheek was interesting, as it opens up a whole series of other questions regarding moral reciprocity. (Of course, a quick glance over the history of Christianity reveals some few problems putting all the cheek-turning and cloak-giving-awaying into practice.)
And oh yeah. The summaries I made of the speeches made on Sunday don’t do them justice. Better summaries are provided by Chris Mulherin and Margaret Coffey: Being good without God? (Singer); Sunday – being good, and spiritual (Bechman and Robinson); and Giving thanks in a vacuum – Richard Dawkins. Regarding Dawkins, I seem to remember the title of his speech as being ‘Gratitude for evolution and the evolution of gratitude’ which, given that this was the title of his speech in Aotearoa/New Zealand last week, now appears to be correct.
In any case, Dawkins “concluded that indeed we should be grateful to be alive, and indeed that [we] have probably evolved to “lust” to be grateful (which in part explains the human desire for religion)”. Which case I found fairly unconvincing as, indeed, I find his earlier writings on The Selfish Gene (1976), at least or perhaps especially insofar as the same arguments have been applied to social evolution.
What are the evolutionary roots of gratitude and of religion? The fact that such characteristics of humans seem to be universal demands an explanation. Dawkins suggested that religion might be a by-product of another predisposition. For example, the child mind is predisposed to obey authority, a characteristic which has strong survival value. But a by-product of this predisposition might be vulnerability to “mental viruses such as religion,” just as a computer is vulnerable to viruses because it has no way of knowing whether a program is good or bad.
As for gratitude, Dawkins suggested it might be the by-product of the need, prior to the use of money, to keep mental accounts of what is owed and owing. Children early on develop a sense of fairness and in some cases it operates without a real target, for example, “it’s not fair that it is raining on my birthday.” Sexual lust too still operates although its original reproductive benefit is no longer ‘the target.’
Dawkins suggests “we have a similar lust to calculate debt, gratitude, fairness and it’s so powerful that it goes off in a vacuum.” Such psychological dispositions might also lead us to postulate God, he said. In a pastoral moment Dawkins assured us that “this sort of vacuum activity is nothing to be ashamed of” and that the first part of his talk gave sufficient reason for gratitude to be alive even though it is “gratitude in a vacuum.”
Or something like that anyway. That said — or written, by an Anglican minister named Chris — I’m not aware that “the child mind is predisposed to obey authority”, or that this is “a characteristic which has strong survival value”. I mean, it’s an interesting speculation, but I would expect anyone, especially a scientist, to be able to provide some evidence to support it. In fact, given the claim is a strong one, and concerns ‘human nature’, I’d expect quite a lot. Along with a demonstrated understanding of infant and child psychology, cultural history, anthropology and sociology — a working knowledge of the history of political economy and the emergence of marketised social relations probably wouldn’t hurt — and the various debates within and across these disciplines concerning what is at the centre of Étienne de La Boétie sixteenth century tract the Discours de la servitude volontaire (Discourse on Voluntary Servitude).
Which, in a political context in which atheism has been decoupled from anarchism, is another story (as Fred put it: “The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress”).
Blah blah blah.
This Be The Verse
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
For four years, Officer A lived a secret life among anti-racist activists as they fought brutal battles with the police and the BNP. Here he tells of the terrifying life he led, the psychological burden it placed on him and his growing fears that the work of his unit could threaten legitimate protest.
The “violent activists” Officer A infiltrated were the ‘Youth Against Racism in Europe’, a front group for the Trotskyist political party now known as the Socialist Party of England & Wales (a member of the Committee for a Workers’ international). They’ve responded to the story with a press release: Youth Against Racism in Europe answers disgraceful Observer ‘expose’, March 14, 2010. They don’t identify Officer A.
Tony Thompson writes that “During his tour of duty, the man – known only as Officer A – also had sexual relations with at least two of his female targets as a way of obtaining intelligence” — which is very naughty, but also naturally brings to mind Rob Gilchrist, the police informant exposed as such in Kiwi in late 2008. Gilchrist had a decade-long career as a paid informant, but was only exposed when his then-girlfriend (a political activist) happened to stumbleupon some information on his computer. In Australia, Setha Sann deserves a guernsey, as does Mehmet Ersoy/Osman. Funnily enough, despite claiming that in Europe, anarchist ranks “have been riddled by police agents and fascists”, Mick Armstrong failed to detect Setha Sann’s tricksy ways while a member of Socialist Alternative, although the possibility that this stick will be used by the International Students for Socialist Equality to beat SAlt over the head with is unlikely. To find out, attend ‘The revolutionary perspective of Trotskyism: A political exposure of Socialist Alternative’ [Clenched fist salute: Fatal Paradox].
Use of police infiltrators and informants is of course routine practice, and has been employed by police forces, in one form or another, since their origins (See : The International Campaign Against Anarchist Terrorism, 1880-1930s (Richard Bach Jensen) | Frank Cain’s The Origins of Political Surveillance in Australia (Angus & Robertson, 1983)). Indeed, some of the greatest works of late nineteenth century fiction were written by former police detectives. For example, Captain Michael Schaack‘s Anarchy and Anarchists (1889) is a priceless document, and has formed the basis for tabloid accounts of anarchist activity ever since:
In many of the smaller [anarchist] meetings held on Milwaukee Avenue or in that vicinity, a lot of crazy women were usually present, and whenever a proposition arose to kill some one or to blow up the city with dynamite. these “squaws” proved the most bloodthirsty. In fact, if any man laid out a plan to perpetrate mischief, they would show themselves much more eager to carry it out than the men, and it always seemed a pleasure to the Anarchists to have them present. They were always invited to the “war dances.”
Judge Gary, Mr. Grinnell, Mr. Bonfield and myself were usually remembered at these gatherings, and they fairly went wild whenever bloodthirsty sentiments were uttered against us. The reporters and the so-called capitalistic press also shared in the general denunciations.
At one meeting, held on North Halsted Street, there were thirteen of these creatures in petticoats present, the most hideous-looking females that could possibly be found. If a reward of money had been offered for an uglier set, no one could have profited upon the collection. Some of them were pockmarked, others freckle-faced and red-haired, and others again held their snuff-boxes in their hands while the congress was in session. One female appeared at one of these meetings with her husband’s boots on, and there was another one about six feet tall. She was a beauty. She was raw-boned, had a turn-up nose, and looked as though she might have carried the red flag in Paris during the reign of the Commune…
[Describing another anarchist:] He was a large man with a black beard and large eyes, and very shabbily dressed. He looked as though he had been driving a coal cart for a year without washing or combing. He also had the appearance of being on the verge of hydrophobia…
Bonus! Leader of 40 Kiwi Anarchists Revealed!
In a sensational and completely unexpected twist, the leader of The-40-Kiwi-Anarchists What-Have-Been-Criss-Crossing-The-Globe Causing-Heap-‘Em-Big-Trouble-Wherever-They-Go has been inadvertently exposed by social networking site Facebook and the journalistic efforts of Fairfax’s Europe correspondent Paola Totaro. According to sources at Fairfax, Totaro’s exposé on the eerie yoof cult that has developed around the mysterious dog — whose followers have formed inside the Global Justice Movement an anarchist faction with himself as leader — will be published later in the week.
The Left in Melbourne today is shit. Why are we always marching towards parliament, petitioning their government? Why are we always trying to speak to a mainstream that exists only on television? When did we lose faith in ourselves to propose real alternatives to our rape-the-world social system? The social movements, the parties, the discussions we keep having again and again never seem to be able to see beyond the world as it is towards the world as it could be… should be… will be.
The first issue of Melbourne Black, a new, free, monthly anarchist zine, has just been released. The first issue contains an ‘Editorial’, ‘A Few Facts And A Lot of Stories About Black People’, ‘Interview With LASNET’, ‘Anarchy Is A Fag’, ‘Education Matters’ and ‘Anarchy V. Marxism’. Printed copies will be available in Melbourne from Barricade/Loophole, MARC, New International, Sticky and elsewhere within the next 2-3 days. Otherwise, you can download a PDF copy from the Melbourne Black site here. For contributions and letters: [email protected].
Only a group of atheists would start a convention at this un-Godly hour on a (Death Metal) Sunday.
More blah later, but in the meantime…
Stuart Bechman ***
Peter Singer *** 1/2
Ian Robinson **** 1/2
Kylie Sturgess ***
Robyn Williams ****
Jamie Kilstein ****
Dan Barker *** 1/2
Richard Dawkins ***
Stuart Bechman / Kyle Sturgess ** 1/2
Stuart Bechman. Lolcats. Atheist charity. Stuff.
Peter Singer made an occasionally amusing but otherwise fairly straightforward case for the possibility of an ‘Ethics without Religion’ (cf. Plato’s Euthyphro). Of note: Singer made reference to the idea that morality may be in some way ‘hardwired’ into human beings, and that this may also help to explain the persistence of xenophobic attitudes (or at least help to explain their origin). He also noted that proximity (in this case geographical) to suffering is an important factor in determining the likelihood of a ‘moral’ response. Otherwise, he failed to properly address the distinction between moral and political consciousness or to answer the question ‘Why act ethically?’ (a question also addressed in his MA thesis (1969)). Oh yeah: Singer referred to evolution which, for some reason — I think maybe ’cause he referenced Gould — prompted me to think of Kropotkin (see : Stephen Jay Gould, Kropotkin Was No Crackpot, Natural History, No.106, 1997).
Ian Robinson was — to my surprise — probably the best speaker and, despite noting that, as students, Singer was one year ahead of him in Philosophy @ unimelb, and joking that Singer was now, philosophically speaking, many years ahead of him, Robinson actually gave a more nuanced address on ‘Atheism as the Logical Conclusion to a Spiritual Quest’. He was much funnier, too. Oh, and I’m not sure, but I think it was Robinson what recommended The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power (1993) by Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad and Feet of Clay: Saints, Sinners, and Madmen (1997) by Anthony Storr.
Kylie Sturgess presented the findings of an academic survey as ‘Sex and Skepticism: A Study of Belief in Australian Women’. An interesting subject, but a somewhat disjointed presentation.
Robyn Williams’ speech was titled ‘In-depth Musings on Existence and Atheism’, which was basically an entertaining journey through some anecdotes drawn from his many years working @ the ABC. As he spoke, I wished I was drinking port and smoking a cigar (after having consumed a rather large dinner).
Dan Barker was amusing and profane… but in a nice way. (Of course, both he Kilstein are going to Hell.) He also suggested, rather aptly, that fundamentalist Christians, to which category he once belonged, could best be approached by atheists by way of reference to Biblical teaching — to be precise, by way of its internal contradictions — within an overall context of sensitivity to their emotional and psychological sensibilities. Fun and useful in this context: Ken’s Guide to the Bible.
Richard Dawkins was Richard Dawkins. A Cartoon Character Buggering A Bald Transvestite. The Evolutionary Biologist. In the program, the title of his speech is given as being ‘How Do I Misunderstand Thee? Let Me Count the Ways’ (whatever that means) but I dunno if that is the speech he gave. My recollection is that he presented a paper giving his views on what might explain the emergence or (better) the persistence in religious belief — which is to say, the irrational belief in a divingDivine being — in terms of its function as an evolutionary mechanism — one which, in turn, was theorised as having something to do with the capacity of human beings to… um… bugger. Having had bugger-all sleep the night before, I was falling asleep at this point in the afternoon, and I’m still very tired, so maybe I’ll return to this subject… later. In any event, it had all the hallmarks of an address most suited to an academic conference on evolutionary biology, not a public conference on atheism. (He was, of course, given a standing ovation nonetheless.)
Oh and finally: all the speeches were filmed, and will be released as a DVD at some point. They may also be released more widely, perhaps under a Creative Commons license. (But then again, maybe not.)
As noted, the Socialist Alliance (SA) held its seventh annual conference in January. Immediately prior to the conference, the Democratic Socialist Perspective (formerly known as the Democratic Socialist Party nee Socialist Workers Party nee Socialist Workers League nee Socialist Youth Alliance nee Resistance) dissolved itself into SA.
At the time of its formation in 2001, SA was indeed an alliance, an electoral alliance, of several socialist parties — principally the Democratic Socialist Party and the International Socialist Organisation (ISO), but also the Freedom Socialist Party, Socialist Alternative, Socialist Democracy, Workers Power, and a handful of other, even more obscure political formations (and the DSP’s yoof wing, Resistance). Currently, the ‘Alliance’ is what used to be called the DSP (and the DSP’s yoof wing, Resistance) — the other members having either abandoned it at some stage over the last nine years and/or having themselves dissolved.
The Revolutionary Socialist Party — which split from the DSP in May 2008 to form first the Leninist Party Faction and then the RSP — is not convinced by the reported success of SA’s seventh national conference. Splitter Doug Lorimer writes (‘New period of left unity launched’?, Direct Action, No.20, March 2010):
Several weeks after the GLW article [New period of left unity and struggle launched, Kerryn Williams, January 16, 2010] appeared, the minutes of the SA conference were posted onto the SA website. These reported that 11 people were elected by the conference to the SA’s national executive, all but one of whom had only three days earlier been members of the DSP — making it clear that claims that the SA has become “a true alliance of a very broad cross-section of views that are of the historic left” are either the product of self-delusion or deliberate and shameless puffery.
SA held its Victorian state conference in February and, inter alia, Margarita Windisch was preselected to be a Senate candidate. Windisch battled Labor in the Altona State by-election last month and achieved 1.6% and a minor miracle. Elsewhere, Ben Courtice will be contesting the seat of Gellibrand at the next Federal election, while Alex Bainbridge will be contesting the seat of Perth.
In South Australia, the Communist Alliance is standing Bob Briton in the seat of Lee in the State election on March 20; in the Tasmanian State election, also on March 20, SA is fielding two candidates, Melanie Barnes in Denison and Jenny Forward in Franklin. In 2006, SA also stood two candidates: Linda Seaborn in Denison and Matthew Holloway in Franklin. The results were not good: Seaborn got 257 votes (0.4%) while Holloway received 237 (0.4%). In 2002, SA stood six candidates, who collectively won 722 votes (0.2%).
The Socialist Equality Party, meanwhile, has denounced SA, Socialist Alternative and Solidarity as ‘petit-bourgeois’. In Leninist terminology, this is almost as bad as being called anarchist (something which the DSP denounced the International Socialist Organisation — the precursor organisation to Socialist Alternative and Solidarity — as being in the 1980s).
Under these conditions the role being played by the various petty-bourgeois tendencies (Socialist Alliance, Socialist Alternative and Solidarity) is critical. They are working to boost the credentials of the AEU. According to Socialist Alternative’s Tess Lee Ack, the AEU is preparing to lead a national boycott against the next round of NAPLAN tests that are due in May. The AEU is preparing nothing of the sort. Its bogus resolution, adopted at the AEU’s national conference in January, was aimed solely at heading-off growing anger among teachers toward Labor’s plans.
Lee Ack claims: “So the scene is set for a confrontation.” And the site of this “confrontation”? “The AEU executive will meet on 12 April to decide whether the boycott will go ahead”. In the meantime, advises Socialist Alternative, teachers should “familiarise themselves with the arguments against league tables” by… visiting the AEU web site, to which it provides a link. This is a recipe for preventing independent action by teachers and subordinating them to the very union organisations that are enforcing Rudd’s agenda.
In 2007 Socialist Alternative and the entire middle class ex-left called for a Labor vote, claiming that a Rudd government would represent a “lesser evil” to the Liberals. According to the AEU, Labor’s election presented “an opportunity for a change in policy direction following more than a decade of systematic attack on public education and training”. Far from inaugurating a change in “policy direction,” Labor is enforcing a new wave of free-market reform, following on from those of the Hawke-Keating governments between 1983 and 1996. The chief role of groups like Socialist Alternative is to bolster the trade union bureaucracy and prevent a conscious political break by working people from Labor.
Across the Tasman, similar ideological failings on the part of the so-called ‘International Bolshevik Tendency’ have been detected by the ever-vigilant International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist). Hate Trotskyism, Hate the Spatactist League, Hate Vajazzling. See : The BT on Haiti: Postscript to IGiocy: More Gas from the Swamp, Workers Vanguard, No.953, February 26, 2010.
Eleswhere, the Communist Workers’ Group of New Zealand/Aotearoa is committed to building a new communist international to lead workers to the revolutionary overthrow of global capitalism, and until recently was a member of the Internationalist Leninist/Trotskyist Fraction (IFLT). In an exciting new development with important implications for the construction of a new communist international to lead workers to the revolutionary overthrow of global capitalism, this month the CWG announced that it was in a Liaison Committee with the Humanist Workers for Socialist Revolution (US) (formerly known as Humanists for Revolutionary Socialism).
Humanist Workers for Revolutionary Socialism (HWRS) is an organization composed primarily of former members of the now-defunct Workers’ Voice organization… From July 2009 until early March 2010, HWRS was affiliated with the International Leninist Trotskyist Fraction (IFLT or FLTI). In March 2010, HWRS, together with the Communist Workers Group of New Zealand (CWG-NZ) split with the IFLT and formed a liaison committee…
I’m unsure what’s become of the Communist Party of Aotearoa, and I’m also unsure if the World Socialist Party of New Zealand is still meeting monthly or holding an annual conference, but fortunately “Comrades and supporters who miss [our radio] broadcasts or are outside our transmission area are welcome to send a blank C-60 cassette to the Party with a request for broadcasts to be dubbed on to it.” Socialist Aotearoa, on the other hand, after having split from Socialist Worker New Zealand, is still busy revolutionising social relations (as of course is Socialist Worker New Zealand); the Workers Party of New Zealand is also busy working, and the International Socialist Organisation organising.
With all this activity, I must say that the future is looking very red.
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?"
