The G20 is meeting in Pittsburgh again next week (September 22-25), and anarchists, as well as numerous other trouble-makers, are again organising in opposition to it. The G20 traveling circus will be meeting @ the David L. Lawrence Convention Center — the same location as the annual convention of the AFL-CIO, which ended on September 15 with some speechifying by President O’Bama.
As AFL-CIO blogger James Parks has noted, “Pittsburgh is a city rich with labor history. Pittsburgh is the birthplace of both the AFL and the CIO, as well as the United Steelworkers (USW), the Ironworkers and the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM). It also is the site of two legendary strikes—the Homestead steel mill strike in 1892 and the U.S. Steel strike in the 1930s.”
Which is right — and wrong. The Homestead strike did take place in 1892, but the ‘Great Steel Strike’ began on September 22, 1919. Well, one of ’em, anyway: the ‘Great’ Strike was not a ‘Great’ success — thanks in no small measure to the role played by the AFL — and subsequent strikes fared little better. Which is ‘Great’ for the US ruling class — the most rapacious in history — but not-so-great for US workers, who still struggle for basic health care. Funnily enough, while another AFL-CIO blogger, Seth Michaels, opines that “President Barack Obama had a strong, inspiring message for delegates to the 2009 AFL-CIO Convention: We’re going to make this country work again”, at the time of the 1919 strike, businessmen in Pennsylvania were promoting their own ‘Back-to-Work’ movement.
As for Homestead, the defeat of that strike caused the anarchist Alexander Berkman (1870–1936) to attempt to murder Henry Clay Frick, the Carnegie Steel Company’s (temporary) boss. He failed, was sentenced to 22 years jail, served 15, and upon his release wrote a classic of prison literature: Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist.
Among a number of sites dedicated to getting the masses off their asses is Pittsburgh G-20 Resistance Project — a project to which the (anarchist) Pittsburgh Organizing Group is one of many lending support. Johnny-On-The-Spot is Mike Boda, the Pittsburgh Grassroots Examiner. Also providing independent coverage is G-Infinity, a project of Pittsburgh Indymedia; G20 Media Support is an “Information clearinghouse & [provides] media support for dissent at the Pittsburgh G20 Summit”.
Prior to London, the G20 met in Cape Town (South Africa) in 2007, and in São Paulo (Brazil) and Washington, D.C. (United States) in 2008. In 2006, the G20 met in my home town, Melbourne. The meeting met with protest which — for Australia, at any rate — assumed some rather spectacular forms. As a result, several dozen people were arrested, and it is only now, almost three years later, that the final trials of those arrested are coming to an end (see : G20 : Sunil & Tim (& Co.), July 30, 2009; Crazy G20 Solidarity Speech, June 15, 2009 — and elsewhere).
Between November 19, 2006 — the date at which the G20 meeting in Melbourne ended — and September 22, 2009 — the date upon which the Pittsburgh summit is scheduled to commence — an estimated 31,170,000 children under the age of 5 will have died of preventable causes (hunger, malnutrition, disease), aka ‘poverty’. On an even sadder note: “The richest people in the world have gotten poorer, just like the rest of us. This year the world’s billionaires have an average net worth of $3 billion, down 23% in 12 months. The world now has 793 billionaires, down from 1,125 a year ago” (Special Report: The World’s Billionaires, Edited by Luisa Kroll, Matthew Miller and Tatiana Serafin, Forbes, March 11, 2009).
The Bull
Edition 21, Week 8, Semester 2
14 – 20 September 2009
[PDF]
Diana Tjoeng investigates the new political party rising from the far-right.
Recently, the neo-Nazi symbol ‘88’ (representative of ‘HH’ – ‘Heil Hitler’) was painted on the home of the NSW Treasurer, Eric Roozendaal. The graffiti attack occurred one month after Mr. Roozendaal blocked any preference flow from the Labor Party to the far-right, anti-immigration Australia First Party, prompting the group to come under scrutiny.
“This was clearly a premeditated attack,” said Mr. Roozendaal, whose parents are Holocaust survivors. “If they were sending me a message, I am sending a message right back to them – I will not be intimidated and will continue to speak out against racists and those who promote hate in our community,” he asserted.
Formed in 1996, the Australia First Party gained notoriety around the time of the Cronulla riots through the pamphleteering activities of its now defunct youth arm, the Patriotic Youth League. Australia First is currently in the process of registering as a federal political party, having crossed the required membership threshold earlier this year.[1] They plan to launch a new youth organisation in 2010.
The party’s founder, Graeme Campbell, was the Federal Member for Kalgoorlie from 1980 until he was expelled from the Labor Party in 1995. He became the endorsed One Nation candidate in 2001 but was not elected.[2] Evidently, there is membership crossover between the two parties, but Jim Saleam, the NSW Chairperson of Australia First, claims that the groups differ immensely in policy.
“One Nation are essentially assimilationists; we are not assimilationists. There are, in our view, people who Australia cannot assimilate at all,” says Dr. Saleam. “That is a fundamentally different position … although it is true that many former members of One Nation have found their way to Australia First,” he says.[3]
“One Nation was fundamentally a conservative force with a pseudo-popular base that came out of the sections of the Liberal and the National Party. Our movement, as it develops, may be more of a working people’s movement and it may also be one that is more ‘radical’ in terms of its economic and political demands.”
Dr. Saleam has had a long-standing dispute with Mr. Roozendaal, stemming from their days together at Macquarie University. After Saleam founded the white nationalist group, National Action, in 1982, the pair had a number of public clashes. In 1984, as president of the student union, Mr. Roozendaal had National Action banned from campus.
“I was disgusted by their attempts to intimidate international students and other minorities on the campus,” Mr. Roozendaal says.
Recalling the incident that led to the group’s final dismissal from Macquarie University, Dr. Saleam says, “Some of my associates temporarily occupied his [Mr Roozendaal’s] office one day. A file of papers was tipped over, and when it was on the television news that night, the office had been systematically ransacked and maliciously damaged. I’m not saying that Mr. Roozendaal did that, but I’m saying that someone in Mr. Roozendaal’s office did that … we deny doing that.”
Dr. Saleam also denies any involvement in the recent graffiti attack on Mr. Roozendaal’s home, though believes the attack was linked to the treasurer’s comments about Australia First. According to Saleam, the suspects include groups identifying themselves as neo-Nazis or clansmen and pivot around figures such as David Palmer, the ‘dirty tricks’ sections of major political parties, and anti-racism groups such as FightDemBack.[4]
FightDemBack is a volunteer-based, activist organisation that disseminates information about far-right groups and reacts against racist activities. It started in 2004 with the effort to remove the Patriotic Youth League’s anti-immigration stickers in the suburbs of Sydney. FightDemBack has also provided support to people who have sought to leave extreme right-wing groups.[5]
“These people specialise in organised defamation, spreading false material … stalking of young people who describe themselves as nationalists and so on,” says Dr. Saleam. “For a very long time, these people have been involved in a campaign to suggest that, in fact, I am a neo-Nazi.”[6]
Cam Smith, from FightDemBack, rejects Dr Saleam’s accusations, saying, “FightDemBack didn’t have any involvement in the incident, and we don’t know who did. We think the most likely suspects are people involved in Australia First, taking action without Saleam’s knowledge in response to Roozendal’s statements regarding Australia First … At any rate, we don’t need to graffiti outside somebody’s house to suggest that Saleam is a neo-Nazi – the fact that he is a neo-Nazi is easily demonstrated in far simpler ways.”
Dr. Saleam’s lengthy career in right-wing politics has indeed been contentious. In the early 1970s, he was a member of the National Socialist Party of Australia and was photographed wearing a swastika armband at a demonstration in 1975. He has served two gaol terms – in 1984 he was convicted of property offences and insurance fraud, and in 1989 he was convicted for his role in a shotgun attack on the home of anti-Apartheid activist Eddie Funde. In 2001, Dr. Saleam gained a PhD from The University of Sydney for his thesis on the history of Australian right-wing politics.
On the day of the infamous Cronulla race riots of December [2005], Saleam wrote in the Nationalist News, “It was heartening and a sign of things to come … If there was any proof needed that ultimately there were Australians ready to stand up and be counted it was duly provided.”
As Australia First gears up to contest the next federal election, Saleam confirms that the party will become more of an activist organisation that is not concerned with appearing mainstream. He believes that “there are sections of the Australian community right now who are prepared to step outside of normal rules and normal methods and stand up for their industries”.
Mr. Roozendaal has reiterated his calls to the NSW Liberal Party leader, Barry O’Farrell, to match Labor’s commitment to refuse to give preferences to far-right parties like Australia First and One Nation.
“Who can forget the stench of One Nation?” says Mr. Roozendaal. “And make no mistake, there was only one way that One Nation got elected and it was on the back of Liberal and National Party preferences.”
[1] Australia First formally announced that it had gained 525 members, and was therefore in a position to register with the AEC as a political party, on July 9, 2009. As of this date (September 16, 2009), it has yet to formally notify the AEC of its intention to register.
[2] Following his expulsion from the ALP, Campbell contested the seat of Kalgoorlie at the October 1998 Federal election as a member of Australia First: he came third, gaining 15,585 votes (22.79%). The seat was won by Liberal Party member Barry Haase (who remains the sitting member). In November 2001, Campbell stood for a seat in the Senate, on this occasion as a member of One Nation and as No.1 on their ticket. ONP gained a total of 77,757 votes (7.03%), but no seats. ‘One Nation Western Australia’ was deregistered on June 17, 2009.
[3] Among these are Terry Cooksley and Tony Pettitt; other ‘prominent’ members of AF have backgrounds in ‘Australians Against Further Immigration’, the ‘Confederate Action Party’, ‘National Action’, and allied groups.
[4] David Palmer — nicknamed ‘The Space Wizard’ — is a long-time rival of Saleam’s on the far right. He was profiled by Zoo magazine in August 2007, along with John Drew, the then-leader of the Patriotic Youth League, and David Innes, then a prominent member of Stormfront Down Under. Drew was expelled from AF — and hence the PYL — in March 2009, while Innes retired from public life in July 2007; Palmer’s pointyhead cropped up again in July 2009, just as Saleam announced that AF was to register.
[5] While forming earlier, FDB! formally announced its existence on April 25, 2005, as a Trans-Tasman alliance of anti-racist and anti-fascist activists from Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand.
[6] By the same token, Saleam has claimed that the police shooting of 16-year-old Tyler Cassidy in Northcote (Melbourne) in December 2008 was the result of a conspiracy between FDB! and the secret police; in October 2008, Saleam had himself photographed reading from a childhood book belonging to FDB! member Asher Goldman (a book obtained from a garage sale at Asher’s father’s house in Wellington); he is a member of the world’s premiere White supremacist — and virulently anti-Semitic — website ‘Stormfront’ (and has been since October 2005); he still maintains that the secret police framed him for his involvement in the shotgun assault upon the home of ANC representative Eddie Funde.
So, a few more Indian students have been beaten in Melbourne, in what appears to have been a racially-motivated attack (Indians gang-bashed in latest racist attack, Sarah-Jane Collins and Mex Cooper, The Age, September 16, 2009).
Obviously, this latest incident is bad — not least for the four victims — but worse, as far as Victorian Government and business is concerned, is the effect such incidents are having on the local education industry. Or, to be precise, the attention being given to such incidents by Indian media.
Protecting the Brand
In essence, bad PR is bad for business and, as a rule, whenever profit-making (‘business’) is endangered, Government acts. (The overseas student industry — Australia’s third largest ‘export’ — is worth $15.5 billion per annum.) Thus John Brumby, the Victorian Premier, is off to India next week in order to salvage the Victorian — and Melbourne — ‘brand’: ‘”Some of the events of the past few months have damaged our brand and the Australian brand in India and I can only repeat that overall we remain one of the safest places in the world,” he said.’ Which, in fairness to Brumby, is probably correct, especially if, like him, you’re a VIP (and a former Melbourne Grammar boy).
Others, of course, are less fortunate. Unlike Brumby, they use public transport, work low-paid jobs, live in over-priced and sub-standard accommodation, and pay through the nose for the privilege. Thus the negative PR associated with racial assaults is further compounded by the provision of sub-standard education, housing and employment, in a market subject to very little effective government regulation — deliberately so, and in accordance with the neo-liberal ideology which has dominated Australian policy-making for the last few decades.
Neo-liberalism
The corrosive effects of ‘neo-liberalism’ upon the Australian body politic are felt not just by foreign students, of course, but by the Australian people as a whole. The ‘crisis’ which this system inevitably and, as predicted, produced has triggered alarm bells for ruling elites, one recent expression of which was Australian Prime Minister KRudd’s essay in The Monthly (The Global Financial Crisis, February 2009):
Social-democratic governments across the world must rise to the further challenge of developing a practical policy response to the crisis that rebuilds shattered economic growth, while also devising a new regulatory regime for the financial markets of the future. This is our immediate challenge. But if we fail, there is a grave danger that new political voices of the extreme Left and the nationalist Right will begin to achieve a legitimacy hitherto denied them. Again, history is replete with the most disturbing of precedents.
Arf arf.
“Maybe a gun to their head might help them get the hint that they are not wanted here!”
Or so wrote Terrie-Anne Verney, a former DJ at a community radio station, on Facebook (she also speculated, in reference to Indian students, that the “shit around their head must do something to their brain”). For those who are interested, Terrie-Anne will be speaking at the Sydney Forum — an annual fascist gathering in Sydney, sponsored by the Australia First Party — on the weekend of September 26/27. In previous years (the Forum was launched in 2001), the Returned Services League of NSW has provided the fascists with a venue; the Master of Race Ceremonies is, as always, and perhaps for the next 1,000 years, the German-born neo-Nazi and ex-NPD member Welf Herfurth (a Holocaust denialist). (See : 2009 Sydney Forum (Again), September 11, 2009.)
September 12 : ‘Neo-Nazi skinheads party in Melbourne’
Oddly enough, these latest attacks took place on the same day neo-Nazi skinheads from around Australia gathered in Melbourne to goose-step and jack-boot around to the racist toons sung by several neo-Nazi bands. In attendance was Stormfront Down Under moderator Paul Innes (a plasterer from Perth, WA), while the principal organisers are Jesse !@#$%^ and Justin ^%$#@! (locals from Melbourne). The gig was apparently a roaring success, if they don’t say so themselves:
AustralianMade
Join Date: Dec 2005
Yeah, awesome gig. The whole thing went off without a single hitch.
Great venue, the bands were tight as f*** and the numbers were up from last year. That was due to all the new faces and the renewed support from a lot of the older folk. It was great to see people who’d traveled all the way over from Germany for this one.
The next ISD is promising to be even better but in the meantime we’ll be seeing a lot of you again at the Hammered gig on the Goldie in April, I can’t wait!
It’s a triumph of the will baby!
We are the vanguard, the blood and the honour, the troopers of freedom and light
Government pressure, the scum on the streets, the communist media we fight
Remember places, traitors’ faces, they’ll all pay for their crimes
All of their lies, will some day die, well I told you six million times
Bonus!
Another treat from Jesse & JewTube YouTube:
Indians gang-bashed in latest racist attack
Sarah-Jane Collins and Mex Cooper The Age
September 16, 2009
Victorian Premier John Brumby says a spate of racist attacks has damaged Victoria and Australia’s image in India.
Four men were beaten outside a bar in Melbourne’s north-east on Saturday in the latest racist attack in the city, which has sparked outrage in India.
The victims were playing pool in a bar in Epping about 11pm when a woman celebrating with a large group of people began to make racial slurs.
The men then left the High Street bar and were followed to the car park by up to four men, who beat them in front of a large group of people.
Mr Brumby, who heads to India next week, said the recent spate of racist attacks had damaged Victoria and Australia’s image.
“Some of the events of the past few months have damaged our brand and the Australian brand in India and I can only repeat that overall we remain one of the safest places in the world,” he said.
The Times of India has reported that up to 70 people were involved in Saturday’s serious assault on Sukhdip Singh, his brother Gurdeep Singh and uncle Mukhtair Singh.
A relative told the newspaper that the group had yelled at the victims to “go back to their country”.
“They were quietly playing (pool) and were trying to avoid trouble even after these locals were trying to provoke them by passing comments,” the relative said.
“When they reached the car park to leave the place, a huge crowd attacked them and started bashing. The attackers were in their teens and around 20s.”
Four men were arrested and interviewed but have been released pending further investigations.
Acting Senior Sergeant Glenn Parker told ABC Radio that four men had been involved in the actual assault and a group of up to 20 had been bystanders.
He denied the Indian media reports that 70 people had been involved.
But one of the alleged victims told the ABC that more than 70 people could have been involved.
“It could be 70, it could be more than 70,” he said.
“They were coming from all sides. The carpark was crowded.”
He said the attackers didn’t use weapons, but racism was behind the incident.
“Definitely racism,” he said.
“We went outside, the crowd was there. They said: ‘You Indians, just go back to your country’. Even the ladies, the whole crowd came outside.”
The victim said he had lived in Australia for 22 years and hadn’t experienced any problems on earlier visits to the bar.
Police issued a statement about the assault this morning following widespread coverage of the attack by Indian media.
A Victoria Police spokeswoman said police had witnessed about 15 men and women making racist comments and one woman throwing water over a bystander during the heated incident.
She said the group continued to sling racist abuse and threats at the victims as police took them away from the scene.
The incident has made headlines in India and is fuelling Melbourne’s reputation as a hotspot for racist crime ahead of Premier John Brumby’s visit to the country next week.
Mr Brumby said today he would not comment on the case but that any violence, racially motivated or not, was unacceptable.
“If you look at Victoria as a whole we remain the safest state in Australia in terms of our crime rate,” he said.
“Any violence which does occur and any violence which is racially motivated is completely unacceptable … and I’ll keep repeating this message as long as I have to to get the message out there.”
The premier said he would meet with key Indian officials to discuss the issue and also with students to encourage them to continue to come to Victoria and study.
“No offence but honestly who gives a shit about some skinhead in Russia.” Nowave, Melbourne Punx Forum, October 2008
“If Russians are so interesting to you, move to Russia.” ~ Fruitsalad, Melbourne Punx Forum, October 2008
“As I stated on the Bombshell forum Andy, you are a liar, a hypocrite and no better than the trash that you fight against.” ~ Dion, December, 2007
“Anarchy is a fag. Thanx to the people who have supported us… and to the random people letting us know about this anarchist knobjockey Mr Moran.” ~ Chunga (The Worst), September 2007
The country’s Africans know that the capital is no place to let your guard down.
“I knew folks who lost their lives,” said Nigerian-born JK Samson. “Attacks, fights, even in the lecture room and with lecturers, just name it.”
A survey last month by the Moscow Protestant Chaplaincy (MPC) found that 58.5 per cent of the African community had been physically attacked in the capital, while human rights group Sova reported no fewer than 23 victims, including three fatalities, of racist and neo-Nazi attacks in August in the Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kirov and Ufa regions.
The majority of incidents “took place on the day of the VDV (Airborne Troops) celebration, which is traditionally marked by mass disorders and fights of drunken VDV veterans, including racially motivated incidents,” Sova said in their August monthly bulletin published on their web site.
People of non-Slavic appearance are advised by the MPC to lay low on these days and avoid travelling on the metro four hours before and after football or hockey matches, particularly on the red or green lines.
All people of non-Slavic appearance are also advised to remain extra vigilant on April 21, when [bone]heads mark Hitler’s birthday.
A Moscow-based Western DJ, who asked not to be named, said he “made the mistake of taking the same train they [(bone)heads] were taking to a soccer match and that was a nightmare. The escalator was full of [bone]heads in black jackets.” Now, he says, he doesn’t have a particular problem with racism.
Meanwhile Buster, an African-American who worked on his dissertation in the capital until June 2008, created “Moscow Through Brown Eyes”, a [great!] blog which dispenses advice to people of colour planning to visit Russia. Despite not being attacked, Buster warned that visitors should take the recommendations of other residents “very seriously”.
Back in the 1990s, the DJ was rescued from his encounter with [bone]heads by a policeman who put him in a secure room till the crowd dispersed. Others, however, have found the opposite to be the case and been persecuted by the police themselves.
Less than 15 per cent of the respondents on the MPC survey said they had a good or very good relationship with the police while some 25 per cent said items had been stolen by the police. Communication is often the key and Robert K. Bronkema from the MPC said in a telephone interview that “if you speak Russian there is a very high possibility of being helped [by the police].”
The MPC’s task force can also assist those that don’t speak good Russian file a police report and help them get medical attention as well as contact the relevant embassy.
One consular officer from an African embassy was reluctant to speak, feeling the problems weren’t unique to Moscow, but did offer some advice.
“When people come to Moscow they should conduct themselves well, not go to dangerous zones where they are likely to be attacked, such as train stations,” he said.
Much of the advice is common sense: avoid underground passages late at night; don’t travel alone; and avoid groups of teenage boys with shaved heads. Attitude and appearance are another important factor, according to both the DJ and Buster.
“I tried to maintain a serious appearance – I wore a collared shirt and always carried a briefcase (even when there was nothing inside of it) to look professional,” Buster wrote.
Despite the problems, racism has fallen since its boom in the 1990s and early 2000s, according to the survey.
“Race relations between the African and Russian communities have generally improved [but] the situation remains bad” the report said…
The first and last time gay activists staged a Pride parade in Belgrade, [bone]heads and Serbian nationalists attacked the demonstrators. The thugs shouted, “We do not want gays in Serbia,” and “Long live the Serbian kingdom.” The authorities failed to protect the protesters from injury.
Eight years on, gay activists are determined to hold a second Pride parade in the Serbian capital, scheduled for this Saturday. Pride organiser Majda Puaca, 29, believes there have been considerable developments since 2001…
Human rights defenders are under attack in Serbia and the authorities are failing to protect them, Amnesty International said on Monday.
Over the past year women human rights activists have faced repeated attacks in the Serbian media including being threatened with lynching.
Such attacks are made by parliamentarians, members of ultra-right organizations and members of the security services indicted for war crimes. Other defenders have had their property destroyed, their offices attacked or been beaten by members of neo-Nazi groups.
“Physical attacks and threats to the lives and property of human rights activists are seldom promptly and impartially investigated by the authorities and few perpetrators are brought to justice,” said Sian Jones, Amnesty International’s Balkans expert…
Prague, Sept 14 (CTK) – The Czech police have in the past two decades learnt ways to dissolve neo-Nazi concerts and demonstrations, but they are still incapable of protecting victims of neo-Nazi threats, the weekly Respekt writes Monday.
A door doused with petrol, an SMS threatening with slitting the addressee’s throat, a few kicks in his abdomen and similar messages that Czech right-wing extremists send to local Romanies and to their critics from among the majority population are alarming, but no one is capable of protecting the threats’ victims though the perpetrators’ identity is often known or close to evident, Katerina Copjakova and Bara Prochazkova write in the magazine…
It’s been a while since tabloid TV done a hatchet job on teh unemployed. (Well, probably not, but not that I’ve noticed, anyway.) Last night, FrontlineToday Tonight aired a segment devoted to Justin Sheridan, a 36-year-old bloke from beautiful Byron Bay, who seems to spend more of his time surfing than seeking opportunities to allow others to exploit his labour for profit looking for a job.
Walkley Award-winning journalist former sports presenter Matthew White is TT Presenter in New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria.
In his introduction, Tim states that “one in six Australians are now living off the dole”. Which is correct. Or would be, if the Australian population were reduced from just under 22,000,000 to approximately 2,000,000. According to the ABS: “In 2007, there were nearly half a million (478,300) unemployed people compared with 321,800 job seekers receiving labour market payments”. In other words, not ‘one in six’ but (approximately) 1.6% of the Australian population are now leading lives of luxury on the dole (in Justin’s case, $487 a fortnight, or the princely sum of $12,662 per annum).
But let’s not let the facts get in the way of a good story eh?
Speaking of which, the sterling piece very much in question was produced by (the bloody hard working) Tim Noonan.
Tim Noonan
Tim looks fetching in his yellow t-shirt; he’s also got form. In August 2005, Tim produced a ‘documentary’ for Today Tonight on the delicate subject of why Muslim yoof hate our freedoms, and, as Walkley Award-winning journalist TV personality Naomi Robson stated on the evening following the broadcast “no one could predict the public outcry over a young Australian Muslim’s comment on this program last night — that Muslims will never adopt the Australian way of life”.
Of course, in that other place called by some ‘reality’, the story is a little more complicated (see : ‘Unkind cuts’, Mediawatch, ABC, August 22, 2005).
Tim claims that “Centrelink abuse costs Australian taxpayers billions of dollars every year”. This is a standard trope of tabloid reporting, but again, that pesky thing called ‘reality’ intrudes. Thus:
Last June the Government announced a major crackdown on people who it said were wrongly claiming unemployment benefits.
A national review of 700,000 dole recipients would save taxpayers “hundreds of millions [of dollars]” and force “tens of thousands” off benefits, Employment Services Minister Mal Brough said.
“This will shake the tree like it has never been shaken before,” he warned.
A year later, and one solitary person has been found to be fraudulently claiming benefits.
The Government provided the figure to the Opposition following a written question.
Asked how many individuals since April 2003 had been found to be fraudulently claiming “the New Start Allowance, Youth Allowance or other allowance by claiming benefits when they were, for example, in paid employment”, the answer came back: one…
And so on.
In addition to surfer d00d, Tim’s segment featured two other talking heads: a private investigator (Ken(neth) Gamble) and a politician (John Williams).
Kenneth Gamble
When he’s not ‘working’ by sitting in his car and taking photographs of fair dinkum Aussies enjoying the natural wonders of this, The Lucky Country, Kenneth is doing other stuff. Like, what Den Hinch writes (September 18, 2002):
…the REAL story, the story that intrigues me, is what happened AFTER the rape charge was laid and before Millichamp went to trial.
A few people don’t emerge from this with much class or with reputations intact.
It ended with one of the players — NOT Millichamp — being sentenced to more than six years in jail this week.
You see Steve Millichamp’s lawyers, Kalus Kenny, instructed a Millichamp friend, private investigator Kenneth Gamble, to try (to put it crudely) to dig up some dirt on the alleged rape victim.
Like find out if she took drugs.
Flash forward to Sydney where one Simon Lowe, sometime lover of Lantana star Barbara Hershey, contrives to be in the same Bondi café as Ms Davies and some friends.
I’ll keep it brief. He sends her wine. He joins her table. He spins her a line that he is a wealthy songwriter. He borrows a friend’s sport car.
They go nightclubbing. She declines a weekend at a ritzy hotel. But more flowers, more wooing and eventually days later sex at her apartment.
Which Simon Lowe secretly videotaped. And then he threatened to put the porn tape on the Internet if she did not withdraw the rape charge.
You are entitled to ask why the defence team for an innocent man would go to these lengths? Lowe’s defence team argued that Lowe’s actions were overzealous and opportunistic. Not part of any widespread and pervasive conspiracy.
But the facts remain: One member at the lower end of this grubby food chain has been jailed for more than six years for serious crimes including attempting to intimidate a witness.
Private eye Kenneth Gamble plea-bargained his way to a good behaviour bond. Kalus Kenny solicitors appear to have gone scot free and last seen Stephen Millichamp was lunching with an attractive young woman at a trendy South Yarra bistro last weekend.
Presumably he also picked up the tab for Slimy Simon’s seductive lunches in Sydney. And his fee.
And hats off to a brave, humiliated, young woman who stared down a blackmail attempt and still went to court — even though she lost. Again.
According to Tim, Ken has “spent years undercover as a Centrelink surveillance agent”; PR agent Lauren Lewis reckons: “Gamble has emerged a leader in foreign intelligence and surveillance. Working with a team of strategic alliances that form a global network that spans across 15 countries, Gamble is one of the few of a new breed of international private investigators able to meet the increased challenges of a world that is in the midst of history-making change.” Further: “RENOWNED INTERNATIONAL PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR AND CYBERCRIME EXPERT KEN GAMBLE OFFERS AMERICAN MEDIA A FRESH, IMMENSELY QUALIFIED AND GLOBALLY INFORMED VOICE THAT SPEAKS FROM A WORLD OF EXPERIENCE.”
To which all I can say is: WOW.
In November 1999, the HoWARd Government announced that it had awarded contracts to 21 private companies to spy on individuals suspected of the horrible crimes of “working for cash in hand payments” who had “not declare[d] their payments to Centrelink”; receiving “disability pensions [while also] claiming they are unfit for work”; and “fraudulently claiming more than one benefit at a time”. In February 2007, ‘Centrelink videos 800 people in fraud probe’ (ABC): “A Senate estimates committee has heard that Centrelink employed private investigators to secretly video more than 800 people suspected of welfare fraud in the first six months of this financial year…” In July 2009, the CPSU announced that it was undertaking a survey on Workplace Bullying.
Further disco on Centrelink surveillance is provided in ‘Mutual Obligation? Regulating by Supervision and Surveillance in Australian Income Support Policy’, Stephen Parker and Rodney Fopp, Surveillance & Society, Vol.3. No.1, 2005 [PDF].
Abstract
Through an analysis of speeches by government ministers, documents and regulations, this article examines the Australian national government’s surveillance of unemployed people through what is known as Activity Testing, and more specifically as Mutual Obligation. It seeks to merge the social policy analysis of Mutual Obligation with a surveillance perspective in order to delve deeper into the underlying nature of the policy and its implications for people who are unemployed. It does this by:
1. Outlining the neo-liberal political theory underlying these policies;
2. Illustrating the nature and extent of surveillance of people in receipt of income support, and
3. Employing Foucault’s concepts of the technologies of domination and the self to highlight the controlling and coercive aspects of Mutual Obligation in achieving certain of the Government’s political and policy objectives.
In doing so, the analysis will make visible something of the power exerted over the disadvantaged while subject to such surveillance.
John Williams
John Williams is a National Party politician, The Nationals Whip in the Senate and Senator for New South Wales. He made his maiden speech in the Federal Parliament on September 15, 2008, from which the following facts are drawn.
A failed student (John confesses that, despite being granted the privilege of attending University, the lure of the surf farm was too great, and so after three months he became a drop-out) and pig farmer (John couldn’t compete with the more ‘efficient’ Canadians on the labour pork market), John is from South Australia, and considers himself to be the ‘salt of the earth’. In addition to failing as a pig farmer, John also failed as an investor. Thus, like countless other ordinary Australians (presumably), in 1985 he and his family “decided to take a foreign currency loan in Swiss francs”. Unfortunately, “I soon found out that I was in more trouble than the early settlers”. Happily, John was eventually able to secure a financial victory in the courts.
In terms of his political philosophy, John states “I have always had the opinion that you should run the nation the same way as a farmer runs the family farm… The family farm must be protected from foreign invasion and takeover. We have an obligation to protect Australia and to see that it remains a free and democratic nation. I congratulate the former coalition government for a real increase in excess of 40 per cent on defence spending during their time in government.”
Further:
The family farm cannot afford to pay wages when the person never shows up for work. So too with our nation. I believe that if you are in good health and are capable of working then you should work. I have seen many who are determined not to work. They are simply getting a free ride from the taxpayers of Australia. It is about time that they received a touch on the backside from a cattle prod to get them off their butts and doing some work.
I see workers at Inverell abattoirs who come from the Philippines, Korea and Brazil. All the employees in an abattoir work really hard. Yet just a few hours drive away I see areas on the coast where unemployment is up to eight per cent and nine per cent. In my opinion, if you are in good health and youth is on your side, you should not receive a dole cheque unless you contribute something to our nation. However, I believe that the genuine unemployed should have a safety net and should be helped through their tough times until they find employment.
Of course, it should be noted that (as of February 2008) just 3% of the Australian workforce is employed on farms. Further, that agricultural labour is very dangerous.
Detailed studies show a high rate of fatalities in the industry and a corresponding high rate of serious injury. Between 300 and 350 traumatic deaths of male farm workers and farm workers from all causes (non-intentional and intentional) occur each year across Australia. In 2003-4, amongst other industries, the agricultural industry recorded the highest number of work-related deaths. There are approximately 5500 – 6000 workers compensation claims in the agriculture and services to Agriculture sectors per annum… Australian Bureau of Statistics data for work-related injuries in Australia 2005-6 indicated that agriculture had the highest work-related injury or illness rate (109 per 1,000 employees) ahead of manufacturing (87 per 1,000 employees) and construction and mining (86 per 1,000 employees).
~ ‘Workers Compensation and Occupational Health and Safety in the Australian Agricultural Industry’, Robert Guthrie, Lisa Goldacre and Jennifer Westaway, The Agricultural Industry, Vol.9, 2007 [PDF].
In addition:
The agricultural workforce has a number of distinctive features. Compared with other sectors of the economy agriculture has:
• a high proportion of self-employed, family and casual workers;
• long job tenure;
• a relatively old workforce;
• a low incidence of post-school qualifications; and
• low employee wages…
Agriculture has a high proportion of relatively low paid employees compared with other sectors of the economy. In 2003, 68 per cent of all full-time agriculture employees earned less than $700 per week. This compares with 40 per cent of full-time workers across all sectors of the economy. Fourteen per cent of agriculture workers earned in excess of $1000 per week, compared with almost 30 per cent of workers in all sectors of the economy (figure 5.14). The median weekly earnings for full-time paid employees in agriculture in 2003 was $575. This was around one third lower than the median weekly income for all full-time employees ($769), making agriculture workers the lowest paid workers in the economy. The next lowest paid, on average, were employees in the retail trades ($600) and accommodation, cafes and restaurants ($610).
~ Trends in Australian Agriculture, Productivity Commission Research Paper, 2005 [PDF].
All of which tends to suggest that surfing is more funs than working for a farmer. That said, Justin has probably committed Centrelink suicide, so I hope he got paid for the privilege.
Media Release : February 5, 2002 : Gutter Journalism Hoax Exposed
Last night the big guns of Tabloid TV fell victim to their own sleazy set-up tactics.
Both Channel 9’s A Current Affair and 7’s Today Tonight ran competing stories on the fictional group the “Dole Army”. They claimed to expose gangs of jobless militants inhabiting Melbourne’s drains, surfacing only to scavenge food from bins — and organising through the internet.
Today Tonight reporter Norm Beaman’s introductory voiceover began: “if it wasn’t true, it would almost be comical”. It wasn’t true and the joke’s on you, Norm.
These ridiculous stories of sewer-dwellers would have more accurately described the journalists themselves.
“We approached them with exactly the kind of story they love and they lapped it up like dogs,” said the Dole Army’s Emma Goldman. “They enjoy nothing more than victimising the poor and unemployed. We did it to avenge the Paxtons.”
“We also wanted to publicise our website, www.dolearmy.org” added Kool Keith. “And it’s worked — the website has received literally thousands of hits since the stories went to air last night. That’s thousands of unemployed people now better equipped to deal with the inhuman Centrelink bureaucracy — and we’d like to thank these TV shows for helping us get the message out. Not to mention the $1000 Today Tonight paid us which will help keep the Dole Army website alive.”
The shamelessly ratings-driven bully tactics of these two programs are well known — A Current Affair were publicly embarrassed by their hatchet job on the Paxton kids, the Robert Bogucki ‘banana chunder blunder’ and, most tragically, by Benny Mendoza, a repairman who committed suicide after ACA accused him of poor workmanship.
Mike Munro is not known for his honesty but the following closing comment surprised even us: “let me assure you that we did not pay anyone from that charming and courageous pack back in the Dole Army.” We’ll give Mike the benefit of the doubt and assume the producers neglected to mention the 30 blank digital videotapes (worth $360) they gave us in exchange for a video of masked figures pretending to play Cluedo in a tunnel, and the $2000 they offered us to deny Today Tonight a chance at a follow-up story.
Today Tonight is also no stranger to the invented story paraded as fact — the infamous ‘Majorca Skase Chase’ report was mocked up in the theatrical district of Barcelona. True to form while shooting the Dole Army expose, the TT crew happily colluded in setting up a fake drain dwelling in an above-ground brick factory.
“There are bludgers who are in work and there are bludgers who make millions of dollars. There are people who don’t want to work. The reality is we can’t put everyone in work. There wouldn’t be a percentage point difference in the unemployment figures if every person desperately wanted to work, unless you’re going to get down to sub-third-world wages. Why do journalists dish out this crap? It’s pathetic.” (Former MP Phil Cleary, in reference to the ACA/Paxton saga).
Young Australians don’t watch TV current affairs. It’s easy to see why.
…Following the Macquarie Fields riots, A Current Affair asked viewers to believe generational jihad was imminent with a report on attempts by the international terror group Class War to recruit the area’s young people.
That some of Australia’s most influential media regularly portray young people as threats to the nation impacts significantly on youth culture, youth policy and law-making. It also has real consequences for democracy…
Added Bonus!
NB. The September 2009 edition of Film Ink includes a ‘retrospective’ on the film Idiot Box (1996), from which the footage to the above video (a cover by The Mark of Cain of the song ‘Degenerate Boy’, originally performed by X) is taken. The film *ed Ben Mendelsohn (among others), who you may remember from such films as Beautiful Kate (2009).
Out of Place asks daring and timely questions about the silence at the heart of queer studies. Discussing ‘race’ alongside ‘queer’ often submerges raciality within queerness, leaving racialised groups silent and silenced–‘out of place’. Out of Place creates a space where queerness/raciality are brought together in creative tension to disturb these silences: to hear the invisible, to see the inaudible.
Out of Place takes the reader through an inspiring, illuminating and at times painful journey. The book explores queerness/raciality in the context of the ‘war on terror’; corporeal and social practices in and of space; relations between visibility and politics; and cultural, literary, linguistic and theoretical mechanisms of translation. The papers in Out of Place cut across academic theory, arts, activism, the media and everyday life. All the contributors to Out of Place address queerness/ raciality as a theoretical and political tool to analyse and challenge their own fields, epistemologies and ontologies. This groundbreaking and fascinating book is not just about what happens at the intersection of ‘queer’ and ‘race’, but also about how this intersection relates to and animates other aspects of life.
Uh-huh.
Unfortunately, one chapter in the book — Gay Imperialism: Gender and Sexuality Discourse in the ‘war on terror’, Jin Haritaworn, with Tamsila Tauqir and Esra Erdem — has caused the publisher, Raw Nerve (Centre for Women’s Studies, University of York), to issue an apology.
The apology can be read here, while the following is an extract from Haritaworn, Tauqir and Erdem’s essay:
Our article focuses on the situation in Britain, where ‘Muslim’ and ‘homophobic’ are increasingly treated as interchangeable signifiers. The central figure in this process is Peter Tatchell who has successfully claimed the role of the liberator of and expert about Muslim gays and lesbians. This highlights the problems of a single-issue politics of representation, which equates ‘gay’ with white and ‘ethnic minority’ with heterosexual. At the same time, the fact that Tatchell’s group Outrage passes as the emblem of queer and hence post-identity politics in Britain shows that the problem of Islamophobia is not reducible to the critique of identity. The active participation of right- as well as left-wing, feminist as well as gay, official as well as civil powers in the Islamophobia industry proves racism more clearly than ever to be a white problem, which crosses other social and political differences…
Tatchell’s high status in the queer scene, the wider left and the mainstream press render criticism of him dangerous. We have already mentioned the two most important critiques by Puar and Feinberg from the US [Puar, Jasbir (2006) ‘On Terror: Queerness, Secularism, and Affect’, Keynote Lecture at the Out of Place conference in Lancaster, 24/25 March, 2006; Puar, Jasbir (2007) Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism In Queer Times, Duke University Press, Durham; Feinberg, Leslie (2006) ‘Anti-Iran protest misdirects LGBT struggle’, Workers World (17 July 2006), (accessed 17 October, 2006)]. Unfortunately, white allies in Europe who are prepared to make similar critiques in their own name are rare. This may partly be why queer Muslim activists in Britain have so far been alone in bearing Tatchell’s caustic defence. He has especially targeted individuals who refused to assume their role as exceptional tokens. In this, he has employed tactics of intimidation and aggressive divide and rule among queer Muslims, progressive Muslims and the Inter Faith Community. In a typical reversal of actual power relations, Tatchell has attempted to discredit those who resist his patronage, by interpreting their resistance as an attack, and himself as their victim…
Last night’s week’s episode of the new Australian shockumentary TV series Beyond the Darklands concerned Katherine Knight:
…who committed a murder that’s almost incomprehensible. In February 2000, the former abattoir worker stabbed her de facto husband to death, skinned him and then cooked his body parts in a pot on the stove. She then proceeded to set the table for his children’s arrival, complete with vindictive letters. This appalling murder shows the darkest reaches of the human mind. Katherine Knight is Australia’s first and only women to be jailed for the remainder of her life without parole. Tonight clinical psychologist Dr Leah Giarratano takes us inside the mind of Australia’s most vicious female killer and explains why she comes from Beyond the Darklands.
What turns normal people into monsters? Are they born evil or merely products of destructive environments? asks the show’s producers. Alternatively: “THE title and premise of this nausea-inducing series were all that was needed to accurately predict the substance of it: a prurient, luxurious rehash of a murder dressed up as some sort of project serving the public interest” (Larissa Dubecki, The Age, September 7, 2009). Which actually isn’t too bad a description of the social role of television: a prurient, luxurious rehash of reality dressed up as some sort of project serving the public interest.
Funnily enough — and let’s face it, the story is a barrel of laughs — Knight was a slaughterhouse worker, who took great delight in her work.
Which brings me, of course, to Mia Freedman.
Mia is a “journalist, blogger, author” and “mama”; she’s also the former ‘creative services director’ at Channel Nine. Former CEO Eddie Maguire “had brought Freedman across from Nine owner PBL’s magazine stablemate ACP to add a strong feminine voice to the channel’s traditionally male-dominated management culture” according to The Daily Terror (It’s goodbye from Mia Freedman, Marcus Casey, June 14, 2007). During her brief tenure at the network, Mia creatively serviced the network in the direction of a daytime chat-show called ‘The Catch-Up‘, an Australian version of US chat-show The View.
It was fail. It did, however, * Lisa Oldfield, who is ace, and for many reasons. For example:
The TV personality and wife of former One Nation politician David Oldfield reveals explosive details about her past drug abuse and depression. “Six months into taking a couple of ecstasy tablets on a weekend, I was introduced to cocaine.” Soon, she couldn’t “imagine life without it” and was combining the two drugs in a potentially lethal cocktail. After three months of heavy drug abuse, she lost control. “I was having violent episodes where I would throw things and scream at people — not bash anybody, but I had to be physically restrained. I abused my partner, he bore the brunt of much of it.” Lisa, who credits husband David with turning her life around, now wants to warn others about the dangers of drugs. For the full story, see this week’s issue of Woman’s Day (on sale March 12).
Further, she should sue herself, possibly with the help of a law-talking guy, for the following comments: “I’m just the most irritating individual you’ll ever meet. I’m a pompous snot and I brought them all down. But they went down fighting”. She should also be sued by Libbi Gorr: “I learned so much from Libbi (Gorr) — like how to be a complete bitch” (The Catch-Up rubbish, says Lisa, Herald Sun, June 15, 2007). Marieke Hardy is also mean and cruel and should be sued (Catch up with sisters and dolls, The Age, April 5, 2007).
Where was I?
Oh yeah.
In addition to being responsible for The Delight that was The Catch Up, Mia is The Occasional Vegetarian (The Age, September 7, 2009).
In her article, Freedman reveals that, for some years, she was an off-again, on-again vegetarian — ‘vegetarian’, in this context, not meaning ‘no meat’ but ‘no red meat’. Further, that, like a relatively large number of other grrls, her initial aversion to eating meat developed when she was quite young (12), and was the outcome of an emotional attachment to the (baby) animal in question, and an intellectual understanding of the process by which the cute fluffy became the yummy thing on her plate.
My own decision to pursue a vegetarian diet occurred in my last few years of high skool, and was triggered by my participation in a bout of vivisection in a Science class. Or rather, the nature of the participation of my classmates, whose fun and games with the tiny bodies of the mice we were meant to be cutting up — so as to learn more about digestive systems, I think — triggered in me a kind of moral revulsion: at the contempt being displayed for Animals, for Science, and for Education. I think this decision also functioned, on a psychological level, to distance myself from a particular form of aggressive masculinity, and the behaviours and values associated with it.
At which point, another diversion.
The concept of hegemonic masculinity was first proposed in reports from a field study of social inequality in Australian high schools (Kessler et al. 1982); in a related conceptual discussion of the making of masculinities and the experience of men’s bodies (Connell 1983); and in a debate over the role of men in Australian labor politics (Connell 1982). The high school project provided empirical evidence of multiple hierarchies—in gender as well as in class terms—interwoven with active projects of gender construction (Connell et al. 1982).
These beginnings were systematized in an article, “Towards a New Sociology of Masculinity” (Carrigan, Connell, and Lee 1985), which extensively critiqued the “male sex role” literature and proposed a model of multiple masculinities and power relations. In turn, this model was integrated into a systematic sociological theory of gender. The resulting six pages in Gender and Power (Connell 1987) on “hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity” became the most cited source for the concept of hegemonic masculinity.
The concept articulated by the research groups in Australia represented a synthesis of ideas and evidence from apparently disparate sources. But the convergence of ideas was not accidental. Closely related issues were being addressed by researchers and activists in other countries too; the time was, in a sense, ripe for a synthesis of this kind.
The most basic sources were feminist theories of patriarchy and the related debates over the role of men in transforming patriarchy (Goode 1982; Snodgrass 1977). Some men in the New Left had tried to organize in support of feminism, and the attempt had drawn attention to class differences in the expression of masculinity (Tolson 1977). Moreover, women of color—such as Maxine Baca Zinn (1982), Angela Davis (1983), and bell hooks (1984)—criticized the race bias that occurs when power is solely conceptualized in terms of sex difference, thus laying the groundwork for questioning any universalizing claims about the category of men.
The Gramscian term “hegemony” was current at the time in attempts to understand the stabilization of class relations (Connell 1977). In the context of dual systems theory (Eisenstein 1979), the idea was easily transferred to the parallel problem about gender relations. This risked a significant misunderstanding. Gramsci’s writing focuses on the dynamics of structural change involving the mobilization and demobilization of whole classes. Without a very clear focus on this issue of historical change, the idea of hegemony would be reduced to a simple model of cultural control. And in a great deal of the debate about gender, large-scale historical change is not in focus. Here is one of the sources of later difficulties with the concept of hegemonic masculinity.
Even before the women’s liberation movement, a literature in social psychology and sociology about the “male sex role” had recognized the social nature of masculinity and the possibilities of change in men’s conduct (Hacker 1957). During the 1970s, there was an explosion of writing about “the male role,” sharply criticizing role norms as the source of oppressive behavior by men (Brannon 1976). Critical role theory provided the main conceptual basis for the early antisexist men’s movement. The weaknesses of sex role theory were, however, increasingly recognized (Kimmel 1987; Pleck 1981). They included the blurring of behavior and norm, the homogenizing effect of the role concept, and its difficulties in accounting for power.
Power and difference were, on the other hand, core concepts in the gay liberation movement, which developed a sophisticated analysis of the oppression of men as well as oppression by men (Altman 1972). Some theorists saw gay liberation as bound up with an assault on gender stereotypes (Mieli 1980). The idea of a hierarchy of masculinities grew directly out of homosexual men’s experience with violence and prejudice from straight men. The concept of homophobia originated in the 1970s and was already being attributed to the conventional male role (Morin and Garfinkle 1978). Theorists developed increasingly sophisticated accounts of gay men’s ambivalent relationships to patriarchy and conventional masculinity (Broker 1976; Plummer 1981).
An equally important source was empirical social research. A growing body of field studies was documenting local gender hierarchies and local cultures of masculinity in schools (Willis 1977), in male-dominated workplaces (Cockburn 1983), and in village communities (Herdt 1981; Hunt 1980). These studies added the ethnographic realism that the sex-role literature lacked, confirmed the plurality of masculinities and the complexities of gender construction for men, and gave evidence of the active struggle for dominance that is implicit in the Gramscian concept of hegemony.
Finally, the concept was influenced by psychoanalysis. Freud himself produced the first analytic biographies of men and, in the “Wolf Man” case history, showed how adult personality was a system under tension, with countercurrents repressed but not obliterated (Freud [1917] 1955). The psychoanalyst Stoller (1968) popularized the concept of “gender identity” and mapped its variations in boys’ development, most famously those leading to transsexualism. Others influenced by psychoanalysis picked up the themes of men’s power, the range of possibilities in gender development, and the tension and contradiction within conventional masculinities (Friedman and Lerner 1986; Zaretsky 1975).
~ R.W. Connell & James Messerschmidt, ‘Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept’, Gender & Society, Vol.19, No.6, December 2005 (PDF).
But if I could eat all the animals, just imagine it, chompin’ on a chimp (or chimpanzee), imagine tearing into a tiger, chewing on a cheetah, what a neat achievement it would be!
The vast majority of people in Britain eat meat but have little knowledge of how that meat ends up on their table. In a powerful observational documentary, Slaughterhouse: The Task of Blood reveals the day-to-day workings of a small, family-run abattoir and attempts to get inside the minds of the people who work there. It’s a hidden part of British life, but the reality is that thousands of animals are slaughtered every day in abattoirs. This film shows the process of meat production as animals are killed, butchered and stored in fridges before being transported to retail outlets. It reveals the attitudes of the workers to their task, their colleagues and life. Slaughterhouse: The Task Of Blood is produced by BAFTA award winning film-maker, Brian Hill.
There’s Good News and there’s Bad News. First the Bad News:
‘White Power’ shirt man to face court
Eric Tlozek
ABC
September 14, 2009
Northern Territory Police have charged a 48-year-old Alice Springs man [Denis Donohue] who tried to sell “White Power” merchandise with offensive behaviour in a public place. The man has also been charged with making a false report to police regarding the alleged theft of his car numberplates. The Southern Region’s Acting Commander, Kym Davies, says the matter only became criminal after people told police they had been offended by the merchandise. “As a result of our investigations the 48-year-old man was arrested in Alice Springs in relation to those matters,” he said. “So he was arrested for making a false report to police and offensive behaviour in a public place and he’s been bailed to appear in the Alice Springs court.”
Now, the Good News:
On Saturday, boneheads from around Australia goose-stepped and jack-booted to their heart’s content at a gig in Melbourne organised by racist psychotics belonging to ‘Blood & Honour Australia’ and the ‘Southern Cross Hammerskins’ (principally Jesse !@#$%^ and Justin ^%$#@!. I would’ve gone, but sadly my invitation was lost in the post.
I think?
As for the muzak, at least three bands played: Open Season, Ravenous and The Commieknockers.
Jim from Open Season:
These days, finding suitable venues for a gig can be a real pain in the arse. Did you find it difficult to secure venues back in those days?
Back then we actually advertised when and where we were playing, we never had trouble in Sydney but a show we did in Melbourne was changed at the last minute when reds called in a bomb threat. Haha it is probably the same cowardly scumbag who does the same shit today, but now he hides behind his keyboard instead of calling from his closet. The only real trouble that we had at our gigs was guys and girls getting pissed up and fighting. One band that we played with The Bride Wore Boots came down from Queensland to do a show with us. They got lost going back to where they were staying and got beaten up fairly badly when they stopped in some [M]iddle [E]astern slum area.
Left wing losers. These days, their opposition toward us exists in the form [of] tough talk on internet forums, prank phones calls and the like… more of annoyance than anything else. Were they ever able to amount to being a real problem for you back then (don’t laugh I have to ask)?
Like I mentioned before, we never really had any trouble, only the one time with the bomb threat and we still ended up playing that night though in a different venue to say the least. As today everybody back then was scared of boneheads unless they outnumbered us by about 10 to one. They all talked the talk behind our backs but were nowhere to be seen when we were actually about.
Why are people so unkind?
Anyway, here’s a taste of what I (and you, probably) missed out on, courtesy of some d00d on YouTube, a track by ‘Open Season’, the 20-year-old band of boneheads who (like Quick & The Dead) have recently re-formed.
You can find Open Season and other nutzi merch for sale on Jesse’s website http://9percentproductions.com. Among the books on offer is The Turner Diaries by ‘Andrew Mcdonald’ (sic), the 1978 novel by good fascist William Pierce (1933–2002), former fuehrer of the US-based ‘National Alliance’. The novel has provided masturbatory funs for neo-Nazis the world over, but also allegedly inspired the good fascist Timothy McVeigh (1968–2001) to go blow up the FBI building in Oklahoma in 1995, and in 1998, before three white men in Texas beat and dragged James Byrd Jr. to death behind a pickup truck, one of the men, John King, reportedly announced, “We’re starting The Turner Diaries early.”
Sadly, there are currently no Ravenous vids on YouTube — but moaron these and the other fascist bozos involved in the gig later (maybe). In the meantime, and on the plus side, the song ‘Ravenous’ by the band Arch Enemy has been uploaded. And here it is:
Note that the vocalist for Arch Enemy is German-born Angela Gossow, and Angela is no friend of fascism:
What is your political orientation? Are you a conservative, a liberal, a socialist maybe? Or do you think politics is just a piece of shit and you don’t care for it at all?
I am liberal, coming from the word LIBERTY. I do not accept racism, intolerance, hatred and discrimination in any shape or form. Everything we do is politics. Using textile bags instead of plastic is a political statement. I believe people are afraid of change, that’s why there will never be the much-needed reformations in our [W]estern society. Most people like to complain but do not like changing anything either. I believe each one of us can make a difference and I do stand up for my beliefs. I believe in respect and protection/preservation of this world and its creatures. I think most politicians have to make many compromises to step up the ladder. Many sell their integrity for power and money. Let[‘]s put it this way: There isn’t one politician out there I would trust.
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?"
