Originally filmed October 1, 1993. First broadcast January 30, 2009. See : Dave Letterman, Bill Hicks, Truth & Reconciliation, TPM, January 31, 2009. William Melvin Hicks (December 16, 1961–February 26, 1994).
The recent (and seemingly ongoing) wildcat strikes at British oil refineries (Lindsey, Teesside, Devon…), triggered by the awarding of a contract by the French company Total to the Italian company IREM (which has shipped in its own staff), has provoked a good deal of commentary, especially from British leftists, who are seemingly divided on whether or not to support the strikes, and whether or not they might be classified as ‘progressive’ or ‘reactionary’. The major sticking point for the left — and the reason the BNP and assorted other racists have been flocking to it like flies to shit — is the nationalist and xenophobic dimension of the strike, embodied in the slogan ‘British Jobs for British Workers’.
In [Tuesday]’s biggest wildcat actions 530 contractors decide to prolong walkouts at Longannet power station in Fife and Cockenzie in East Lothian. Staff will stay away until the weekend from both plants, which are run by Scottish Power. Eighty workers also walked out at Exxon Mobil’s petrochemicals plant in Mossmorran, Fife. In Hartlepool, 250 staff left Heerema’s gas and oil engineering plant for a 24-hour strike. Langage power station near Plymouth saw 500 workers down tools, including a group of Poles.
One of the ironies of the situation is that British oil workers can and do find employment elsewhere in Europe. In fact: ‘At Irem HQ in Sicily, executive Giovanni Musso claimed it had agreed with unions to pay wages equal to British counterparts and agreed with rules governing tea breaks. Scarano added: “No one has mentioned that on a rig where we’re doing a job off Ravenna there are 150 British workers”.’ (The view from the barge: ‘We want to work with the British as brothers’, Tom Kington in Rome, The Guardian, February 3, 2009.)
‘Workers taking action at Britain’s power stations are fighting for jobs, decent terms and conditions and trade unionism’, Carolyn Jones has declared today on behalf of the Communist Party of Britain.
2. International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI)
The stance of the unions and the pseudo-left groups to the oil refinery protests must serve as a warning. Faced with a major economic crisis that threatens the survival of the capitalist profit system itself, their response is to adopt the noxious policy of economic nationalism and anti-migrant propaganda, while embracing the government and the employers as the allies of “British workers”…
NB. The ICFI is bankrolled by a union-free printing company, Grand River Printing & Imaging (GRPI), a multi-million dollar business in Michigan [and “premiere provider of commercial web offset printing services”].
…This is not about race or prejudice and we are actively challenging any attempt by the BNP to spread their poison. It is about the exploitation of labour, playing one worker off against another. It is about the employers trying to break nationally agreed arrangements and in doing so it is an attack on the union. Gordon Brown, who at the last Labour party conference said ‘British jobs for British workers’, has created a huge problem all of his own making. He can no longer simply sit on his hands waiting on the sidelines…
4. Socialist Party (Committee for a Workers’ International: CWI)
The strike committee accepted the main demands of Keith Gibson and John Mckewan to put to the mass meeting today. Keith is a Socialist Party member and on the strike committee and John is a Socialist Party supporter and victimised worker from the refinery. The strike committee added an extra demand, calling for John to be reinstated into his job.
The demands were:
* No victimisation of workers taking solidarity action.
* All workers in UK to be covered by NAECI Agreement.
* Union controlled registering of unemployed and locally skilled union members, with nominating rights as work becomes available.
* Government and employer investment in proper training / apprenticeships for new generation of construction workers – fight for a future for young people.
* All Immigrant labour to be unionised.
* Trade Union assistance for immigrant workers – including interpreters – and access to Trade Union advice – to promote active integrated Trade Union Members.
* Build links with construction trade unions on the continent.
…fear and anger has exploded into unofficial strike action with thousands of workers in oil refineries and power plants walking out. They are right to want to fight this recession. But the central slogan of the current wave of strike action, “British jobs for British workers”, targets the wrong people and points in a dangerous direction. Any demand framed in terms of “putting British workers first” inevitably paints another set of workers – “foreign workers” – as the problem.
…far too many in the trade union leadership have gone meekly along with this treatment – or even, shamefully, encouraged the “British jobs for British workers” slogan. Anger over how working people have been treated has been mounting and is now threatening to explode. The current walkouts are a symptom of that. And they have shown that unofficial strike action is an effective way to fight…
6. Workers’ Power (League for the Fifth International)
Around 3,000 construction workers at oil refineries around the country are taking wildcat, unofficial strike action. Another 900 workers at Sellafield nuclear power plant may join them on Monday 2 February. Normally Workers Power would energetically support strike action by workers – including unofficial strikes taken without the formal support of the union leaders. But this strike is different. We unreservedly oppose it. Why? Because the strikers target is not their employers but 100 Italian and Portuguese workers at the Lindsey oil refinery in North Killingholme, Lincolnshire…
To the people of Mexico —- To the peoples of the world —- To the alternative news media
On Saturday, January 31, at 6:00 p.m. a heavily armed commando unit of the Oaxaca state police went into the San Pedro Pochutla prison and took our indigenous comrade and political prisoner Abraham Ramírez Vásquez away in a white van with no license plates to an unknown address.
Abraham and two other indigenous men, Juventino and Noel García Cruz, have been held prisoner since January 15, 2005, under the direct orders of the murderer Ulises Ruiz Ortiz (URO). Our comrades’ crime was defending their forests and their traditional practices and customs. For more than 4 years, the URO government has been unable to prove that they committed the crimes they are accused of, and accordingly, they have not been sentenced.
It’s important to note that Abraham Ramírez is a man of deep libertarian and human convictions, which have motivated him more than once, even from inside the prison, to struggle against the prison authorities for prisoners’ rights.
During all these years, Abraham has stayed in contact and written letters encouraging the people of Oaxaca to resist and not to allow their dignity to be trampled on by the killer who misgoverns this state. Prison bars have not been able to silence his rebellious voice, and he and the other two comrades held prisoner with him have sent letters and greetings to several different events initiated by the Other Campaign.
Abraham is also directly involved in the organization of a popular kitchen inside the Pochutla prison due to the fact that the prisoners have no dining room in this prison. This activity has lead to harassment, hostility, and acts of aggression against him by prison authorities.
In view of this situation, we ask for the sensibility and solidarity of the Mexican people and social organizations to demand that the killer Ulises Ruiz Ortiz and the right-wing Calderón government immediately present our comrade Abraham Ramírez Vásquez alive and that they release all the political prisoners of Santiago Xanica.
We hold the prison warden, the governments of Ulises Ruiz and Felipe Calderón responsible for any attempt against our comrade Abraham.
Alianza Magonista Zapatista.
FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS OF MEXICO AND THE WORLD!
In Melbourne, on the weekend of February 20, 21, and 22, the Latin American Solidarity Network / Red de Solidaridad con los Pueblos Latinoamericanos (LASNET) will be holding a Zapatista Film Festival. Details have yet to be confirmed, but the event will be held at the International Workers’ Club, 62 St Georges Road, Northcote, and expected price of admission will be $10 for all three days. Films to be screened include:
A Train Too Big
City of Juarez
Images of the Repression in Oaxaca
Indigenous Voices from the North
On the Border
The Other Campaign
The War in Guerrero
Voice of the Voiceless
Water and Autonomy
You Are Saying That We Cannot Pass and Zapatista Women
I’m beginning to believe that Kerry Bolton really does have !cinataS powers. Or rather, that the crackademic authorities at the University of Waikato in Aotearoa/New Zealand do.
Last October — that is, four months ago — Roel Van Leeuwen’s 2008 MA thesis — ‘Dreamers of the Dark: Kerry Bolton and the Order of the Left Hand Path, a Case-study of a Satanic/Neo-Nazi Synthesis’ — got pulled, following a complaint lodged by Kiwi nutzi Kerry Bolton.
And it’s still unavailable at the University library (see below).
Fortunately, his thesis is available online (via Scribd):
Lords of Chaos (LOC), a recent book-length examination of the “Satanic” black metal music scene, is less concerned with sound than fury. Authors Michael Moynihan and Didrik Sederlind zero in on Norway, where a tiny clique of black metal musicians torched some churches in 1992. The church burners’ own place of worship was a small Oslo record store called Helvete (Hell). Helvete was run by the godfather of Norwegian black metal, 0ystein Aarseth (“Euronymous”, or “Prince of Death”), who first brought black metal to Norway with his group Mayhem and his Deathlike Silence record label…
“Michael Moynihan is an interesting fellow”, writes Kevin, and so are the other odds and sods associated with various forms of ‘cultural fascism’. Unfortunately, but perhaps unsurprisingly, all seem to share a desire for notoriety which exists in inverse proportion to their talents. Speakiing of the Devil…
Kerry Bolton (1956–): A former NZ Nazi Party member, Bolton is a highly-entertaining fascist bozo, having been a member of numerous other political formations: the National Front (1978), Church of Odin (1980), New Force (1981), Nationalist Workers Party (1983), Fascist Union (1998), Workers’ Front (1999), and others. Bolton also helped form the New Zealand New Right (not to be confused with Welf Herfurth’s New Right Australia & New Zealand). Most recently, Unkle Kerry signed his name to ‘The ANZAC Declaration: Australia First Party And New Zealand Nationalist Alliance: Declaration Of Common Interests And Future Relations’ (April 25, 2008), joining fellow nutzis (‘For Australia’) Brendan Gidley, Jim Saleam, Neil Baird and (‘For New Zealand’) Kyle Chapman and Anton Foljambe.
Aside from the fearsomely powerful Kerry, a number of the other signatories to the Trans-Tasman fascist pact have been having some of their own awfully big adventures. Dr. Jim, for example, has declared that the “Australia First Party will demonstrate at the Coroner’s Court when an investigation is held into Tyler’s Cassidy’s death“; his shooting to death — like Herr Doktor’s jailing for organising a shotgun assault upon the home of Australasian ANC representative Eddie Funde in 1989 — was apparently the result of an elaborate conspiracy on the part of the state to silence the ‘White Nationalist’ movement. Kyle Chapman, on the other hand, has been in the news (and the racial wars) following his announcement that he had a cunning plan to construct a Whites Only (Nie-Blankes!) pie shop in North Canterbury.
Chapman’s vision of pies aplenty for Nice White Families is mirrored in fellow Stormfronter Paul Innes’ desire to construct a ‘Pioneer Little Europe’ in the Perth foothills. Presumably, as part of his attempt to whip up support for his nutty scheme, Paul will attend the upcoming gig being organised by fellow nutzis Blood & Honour Australia and the Southern Cross Hammerskins. The gig is scheduled for ANZAC Day, and the boneheads will be celebrating the deaths of Australian (and New Zealand) soldiers in WWII by way of getting paralytic drunk while listening to the soothing sounds of Ravenous, Quick & the Dead and Indigenous Hate.
The author of a thesis pulled by Waikato University last October is angry that it remains off library shelves.
The masters thesis, which explores Satanist and neo-Nazi themes, was removed from the university library without warning at the beginning of October following a complaint by the subject of the research, former National Front secretary Kerry Bolton.
By mid October, two top academics had been appointed to review the processes around the thesis and a defamation complaint amid accusations of university censorship.
Vice-Chancellor Professor Roy Crawford said yesterday he had received the report and would not make any further comment until he had read it.
The author of the thesis, philosophy and religious studies student Roel Van Leeuwen, told the Waikato Times this week he was not happy with the way the investigation was being handled.
“I was given a reassurance that it would take a couple of weeks. It’s now been months and months,” Mr Leeuwen said.
Mr Leeuwen, who has stood by his research from the start, was “profoundly unhappy” that his thesis remained off library shelves.
He said he had put a lot of work into the thesis, for which he received top marks.
While he understood that the university had to investigate the complaint, he said it had “gone on too long”.
Mr Bolton has repeatedly claimed that the thesis was riddled with errors and was no more than a personal smear.
“Its having passed with honours is a scandal,” he told The Times last year.
Speaking from his home in Wellington yesterday Mr Bolton said he told the university that he would not comment further to the media until after the investigation process was completed.
“The last I heard from them (the university) was before Christmas when they apologised for the delay,” he said.
Note that University of Waikato Vice-Chancellor Roy Crawford is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering, whose primary research interest has been in the mechanical properties and processing behaviour of plastics. Announcing Professor Crawford’s appointment in May 2004, Waikato’s Chancellor John Gallagher said: “His research and business skills and experience, coupled with his very high-level academic experience, make him the ideal person to lead the university, particularly at a time when research performance affects our funding and we are looking to start up more businesses based on university-developed intellectual property. His track record in establishing spin-out [!] companies and other outlets for technology transfer is impressive.”
A suspicious article in a suspicious-sounding newspaper by a suspicious-sounding journalist:
French couple cloaked in suspicion
Tu Thanh Ha Globe and Mail
February 3, 2009
While visiting Quebec, pair covertly entered New York. What ensued has led to nine arrests on sabotage charges.
On a clear, cold day a year ago, a French couple visiting Quebec went on a clandestine visit to New York then sneaked back into Canada. However, their knapsack, transported in a car driven by a Canadian friend, caught the attention of suspicious Canadian border agents.
What happened that day sparked a probe that gained momentum after a bombing in Manhattan and ended when French police arrested nine people this fall and accused them of being behind a series of sabotage acts that disrupted the country’s TGV high-speed train.
Update : First with Faux News! “NEW YORK — Investigators believe the bicyclist who bombed the Times Square military recruiting station is a local man with ties to chaos-crazed anarchy groups, a high-ranking law-enforcement source said yesterday…”
A fiery debate has raged in France since. Were they subversives targeting key infrastructure? Or harmless lefties in a commune who were framed by a government keen on whipping up fears to bolster its agenda?
Among the defendants are the couple who visited Quebec – Julien Coupat, 34, and Yldune Lévy, 25. Authorities say Mr. Coupat is the group’s leader and have denied him bail. The others have been released pending trial.
“They call it an act of terrorism even though not a gun or a stick of dynamite were ever found. At no time was any life endangered,” Ms. Lévy’s father, Michel, said in an interview.
Mr. Coupat and most of the accused lived in rural Tarnac, in central France, where they were well liked by the locals after they refurbished a farmhouse and reopened the grocery store.
A court summary of evidence alleges the group is “connected to the anarcho-autonomist movement who want to destabilize the state through violent actions.”
“It’s a new generation with totally different views from their elders. Their reasoning is one of pure and total rejection of Western society,” he said.
In Canada, this kind of militancy occupied police and intelligence services until Islamic radicals gained more attention, said Senator Colin Kenny, who served on committees dealing with national security.
A pre-occupation vividly expressed in ‘Anti-Globalization – A Spreading Phenomenon’ (Report No. 2000/08, August 22, 2000), prepared by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service “us[ing] open sources to examine any topic with the potential to cause threats to public or national security”. (In Australia, such open source intelligence gathering has, like most everything else, been partly privatised.) It would be mistaken, however, to assume that “this kind of militancy” has been ignored by the state apparatus. (One, rather comical, instance of state paranoia is revealed in the curious case of the punk rawk band ‘The Suicide Pilots’.) Equally, one can trace the development of a security apparatus to monitor, contain, and if necessary crush “this kind of militancy” back to the nineteenth century. In Australia, the first such agency was the Counter Espionage Bureau, effectively a foreign branch of M15, established by the Australian Federal Gub’mint in 1916. (A useful history is provided by Frank Cain, The Origins of Political Surveillance in Australia, Angus & Robertson, 1983.) At this time, major targets of repression were the revolutionary industrial unionist IWW and Irish/Australian Republicans. Following the Russian Revolution and Bolshevik coup d’état of 1917, communists, especially members of the CPA, became Public Enemy Number One. Then as now, monitoring the activities of fascists and the far right generally has been given very low priority (for obvious reasons).
Mr. Coupat and Ms. Lévy covertly entered New York State from Quebec in January of 2008.
According to relatives, they didn’t want their photos and fingerprints in the hands of U.S. authorities. “They’re people who didn’t have the right passport, who reject biometrics and who wanted to see New York. That’s all,” Mr. Lévy said.
On the way back, on Jan. 31, their bag – which was being transported separately by a friend with a car – was seized by Canadian agents. Inside, they found a copy of Mr. Coupat’s driver’s licence, photos of Times Square, minutes of meetings and “subversive texts,” the summary of evidence said.
In March, a man threw a firebomb at a military recruitment centre in Times Square.
New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said investigators checked whether it was connected with the border incident. “That stop did take place in Canada. Some pictures of Times Square, including the recruiting station, were found,” Commissioner Kelly said at the time.
A police source said there is no evidence the couple is linked to the New York bombing. “It could be a coincidence.” But it had started a chain of events. “It was just like dominos,” the source said.
Mr. Coupat and Ms. Lévy were brought to the attention of French security.
For months, undercover agents tailed the couple. The evening of Nov. 7, they were followed as they drove around the Paris region, making what the court document describes as evasive moves to foil surveillance.
Near 4 a.m., they parked for 20 minutes near a TGV route. After they left, a search of the tracks found nothing.
But at dawn, a sweeper train sent ahead of passenger traffic snagged into a U-shaped bar hooked on the overheard wires. That and three similar sabotages elsewhere disrupted traffic for hours.
A German newspaper received a letter claiming the acts were in protest against the transport of nuclear waste between France and Germany.
The prosecution says the culprit was Mr. Coupat and his group, alleging he was the author of an anonymous book, The Coming Insurrection, that advocates sabotage and violence.
Chaos-crazed anarchy groups in the United States report that “An improved English translation is currently being worked on and will be published shortly”.
The summary of evidence says that Canadian authorities are ready to provide the French police with the documents they seized.
Canadian officials are keeping mum so far. A spokeswoman said the Canada Border Services Agency had “no public information on this file.”
The investigation is the responsibility of the Integrated National Security Enforcement Team (INSET) led by the RCMP, she said. The RCMP will not confirm or comment on continuing investigations.
“They hear an awful lot of barking and only occasional bites,” Mr. Kenny said. “The theory is that it’s better to listen to all of the barking, even if some of it does not turn into reality.”
[site of the US support committee for the Tarnac 9]
Unmentioned in Ha’s article is the existence of a state agency known as ‘Alliance Base’:
…a joint antiterrorist cell of the CIA and the French secret service… put in place after the events of 9/11 by French President Jacques Chirac and the President of the United States, George Bush.
According to the Washington Post (Help From France Key In Covert Operations: Paris’s ‘Alliance Base’ Targets Terrorists, Dana Priest, July 3, 2005), the Alliance Base cell was installed in Paris in 2002 to fight Al Qaida (the name Alliance Base being a literal translation of an Al Qaida cell). Great Britain, Germany, Canada and Australia are participating nations as well… The goal: analyze transnational movements of presumed terrorists and launch operations to spy on them or capture them. Official documents from the Ministry of Defense prove that the project has been in operation since April 2002.
Despite their disagreements on the war in Iraq, France and the United States have not ceased, since 9/11, from collaborating in the fight against Islamist terrorism. The DGSE (Directorate-General for External Security) as well as the DST (counter-espionage) has “regular bilateral relationships” with their colleagues in the CIA and the FBI.
MOSCOW: The mourners who gathered in a Moscow square, hopping and shivering against the bitter cold, grew still as the angry voice of the human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov echoed over a public address system. “I am tired of meeting my acquaintances in crime reports,” Markelov said in a speech recorded last November but replayed on Sunday. “We need protection from fascists, from the mafia, from those security services that simply serve them,” he said. “We understand well that no one but ourselves will offer us protection. Not God, not the czar, no one. There is no one left but ourselves.”
…
Aleksandr Grigoriev, 23, a member of an anarchist organization, said he knew eight people who had been killed for their political activities.
“I blame the authorities for these killings, not because they failed to protect us, or because they carried out the killings,” said Anna Karetnikova, a leader of the Anti-War Club. “I blame the regime because it is impossible to establish civil society here. The death of each person creates a gap in the ranks of civil society. The authorities have made it so that it is profitable to kill.”
Just cause you don’t understand what’s going on
don’t mean it don’t make no sense
And just cause you don’t like it,
don’t mean it ain’t no good
And let me tell you something;
Before you go taking a walk in my world
You better take a look at the real world
Cause this ain’t no Mister HoWARd’s Neighbourhood
Can you say “feel like shit”?
Yeah maybe sometimes I do feel like shit
I ain’t happy ’bout it, but I’d rather feel like shit than be full of shit!
And if I offended you, oh I’m sorry…
But maybe you need to be offended
But here’s my apology and one more thing…fuck you!
While tens of thousands of young Australians do a Pauline and take to the streets with Australian flags wrapped around their heads, shoulders, waists and bottoms — and painted on their faces, chests, arms, legs and stomachs (they’re obviously a forgetful mob) — and while comrade Tracey maintains that “right wing groups such as Australia First, the League of Rights, One Nation, etc. have been very successful in mobilising working class people around a nationalist ideology” (while teh left remains mired in an unproductive ‘internationalism’), there has been some re-arranging of the deckchairs on the Good Ship White Australia. Thus:
The Australian Nationalism Information Database is now closed.
Go to www.ironbarkresources.com for essential information on Australian nationalism and the fight for our nation’s future.
Following in the footsteps of the Australian Nationalism Information Database, Ironbark Resources is an educational resource to promote Australia’s national identity and culture, and to offer criticism of mass immigration, multiculturalism, and Asianisation as major threats to our environment, our people, and our way of life. A wide range of on-line publications and articles are provided on these issues, as well as on other issues of interest to Australian Nationalists.
Files are being transferred to Ironbark Resources, with updates or additional work as appropriate.
What follows is a potted account of the groups Tracey mentions; much more information is available on this blog or at FightDemBack!
Australia First (AF)
While still linked to by that Lebanese bloke from Tempe, the ‘Australian Nationalism Information Database’ has switched its allegiances to AF’s chief rival, the Australian Protectionist Party, linking to it, its zine, and its disco forum. By the same token, AF has been reduced to 53-year-old Dr James Saleam and a coterie of similarly middle-aged White racists in Sydney, 58-year-old John Drew in Brisbane (who, it should be noted, enjoys “mixing and relating to young people especially fit and virile chaps”), a 40-something nutzi named Jim Perren in Crows Nest (Toowoomba, Queensland) and a relatively youthful Nathan Clarke in Newcastle.
Like the other groups referred to below, it would be mistaken, I think, to believe that AF has been “very successful in mobilising working class people around a nationalist ideology”. Rather, nationalism is a deeply-rooted phenomenon (hardly unique to Australian society), but in the development of which (White) racialist ideology has, historically speaking, been of critical importance. The Australian nation-state was, after all, based on the establishment of a British penal colony, the genocide of the indigenous peoples, and, for the bulk of its life, consolidated through the institution of a White Australia policy. This policy has been embraced by the vast bulk of the population, and only began to fracture following the mass migrations after WWII, the re-classification of indigenous peoples as citizens rather than fauna (as a result of the 1967 referendum), the gradual abandonment of this policy in the 1960s and 1970s, and the re-conceptualisation of Australia as a ‘multi-cultural’ (multi-ethnic and multi-racial) society.
NB. There is also a rump AF based in Shepparton in Victoria, led by Diane Teasdale.
At this point, an extract from an essay by Koori activist Gary Foley:
The first thing that Anglo-Australian supporters [of indigenous struggles] have to face up to is that the society from which they come has a long history of entrenched, institutionalised racism. As Ruth Frankenberg says,
For the greater part of…history…arguments for the biological inferiority of people of colour represented the dominant discourse…for thinking about race. Within this discourse, race was constructed as a biological category, and the assertion of white biological superiority was used to justify economic and political inequities ranging from settler colonisation to slavery.
Australians must come to terms with the fact that their perceptions have been shaped by their culture and its construct of time, space and history. Australian racism has manifested itself as fear and loathing of all who might be perceived as racially or culturally different (or the ‘other’). But the first and longest suffering victims of White Australian racism have been the Koori peoples. From the very first contact Aboriginal peoples have been regarded as ‘sub-human’ and ‘primitive’ and the imposition of British sovereignty under the guise of terra nullius formalised the non-acknowledgment of Kooris as human beings. The subsequent mass slaughter of Aborigines and the appropriation of their land without compensation a clear sign of the contempt that white settlers had for the indigenous occupants, and that contempt has been transmitted culturally from generation to generation to this day.
From the beginning of the British invasion of Australia indigenous people were slaughtered on a grand scale. In Tasmania between 1804 and 1834, the Aboriginal population was reduced from an estimated 5000 people to just 200, which represented a 90% reduction in just 30 years. In Victoria it has been estimated that the Koori population declined by about 60% in just 15 years between 1835 and 1850 as more than 68 individual ‘massacres’ were perpetrated in that period. According to representative of the North West Clans of Victoria, Mr Gary Murray, of the 38 clans that lived in Victoria B.C. (Before Cook) only 24 today have living descendants. By 1850 virtually all active resistance to the invasion had been quelled in Victoria. Census figures published in March 1857 showed only 1,768 Aborigines were left in all of that state. So comprehensive was the ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Australia that out of an estimated 500 language groups on mainland Australia when the British arrived, barely half that number of languages were to survive. By 1871, one correspondent, G. Carrington, felt compelled to write:
We shall never possess a detailed history of this singular and gradual work of extermination – such a tale would be too horrible to read – but we have an opportunity of seeing a similar process in full work in the colony of Queensland, and when we have seen that, we shall understand the mystery of Tasmania, New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia.
By the middle of the 19th Century the situation for Aborigines in most parts of Australia looked very grim. Barry Morris has described it thus: “‘The colonial process had reduced the Aborigines to a residual minority, but they had not been eliminated. The problem was expected to resolve itself.” In other words a new policy emerged dubbed ‘Smooth the Dying Pillow’, based on the assumption that what was left of the Aboriginal populace would now die out. So whilst indiscriminate killings of Aborigines were to continue well into the 1930s, the widespread genocidal activity of early ‘settlement’ gave way to a policy of containment. This was embodied in the Aborigines Protection Act 1909, which established the first Australian ‘concentration camps’ to provide a place for the doomed race to die off. It is also interesting to note that the first Act of the new Commonwealth of Australia in 1901 was to restrict non-white immigration so, as Pat Grimshaw put it, “Australia’s spaces would be filled instead by pure white babies”.
Social Darwinism was also a popular notion in Australia about that time, especially among the scientific community. Andrew Markus has said, “one doesn’t have to read extensively to discern that a central concern of anatomists was to establish whether Aborigines were closer to the animal than human”. The Elder Professor of Anatomy at the University of Adelaide in 1926 said that Aborigines were “too low in the scale of humanity” to benefit from “the civilising influence of Anglo Saxon rule”.
Many eminent Australian scientists of the day were to express similar attitudes. In Victoria, as Christie notes, ‘Throughout the frontier years (between 1835 and 1850) the intellectual argument that the Aborigines more closely resembled “the ourangoutangs than men” made it easier for the squatter to treat the Aborigines as subhuman, to lump them with the dingo and shoot them as a “rural pest”.’ Thus was Australian society’s justification for the terrible treatment meted out to the original inhabitants. In the face of such racism pervading society and resonating down the white generations, Koori activists and thinkers realised that the path forward was necessarily through self-reliance and Koori control of Koori affairs.
See also : Warwick Anderson, The Cultivation of Whiteness: Science, Health and Racial Destiny in Australia, University of Melbourne Press, 2002 (review) | Race… (interview with Anderson), ‘Lingua Franca’, ABC, July 27, 2002 | Anarchy 102 : Race (April 10, 2007) | Anarchism and Aboriginal sovereignty (July 16, 2008)
Australian League of Rights (ALOR)
The League of Rights is The League of Rights is The League of Rights. If it has experienced any upsurge in support recently, I’m unaware of it. Rather, following the death of “fascist fruitcake”/”Lion of Freedom” Eric Butler, the Empire Loyalists are under the command of fellow South Australian Betty Luks. According to the League, “We are now into the year 2009 and the demands on the League to keep up with providing news and information, educating and serving our people is as great as ever. Will you help us by supporting the League’s Basic Fund[?] We start the year with $14,038.45 already contributed. The target is $60,000. Please support us generously – and thank you to those who contributed over the Christmas/New Year break.”
Alexander Downer spoke at an ALOR event in 1987, but this fact was only publicly exposed in 1994. Typically, Downer relied upon his reputation as an idiot to escape criticism, claiming that — despite being filmed ‘looking on as SA ALOR director Frank Bawden urges the audience to read the literature “explaining the aims of the League” on their seats’ — he didn’t know who he was addressing, who organised the event and — for all I know — why he was even there (perhaps he tripped and fell?). In any case, no harm was done to the witless Adelaide private schoolboy’s career: twenty years later, he became Foreign Minister; after the Tories lost the 2007 Federal election, he was appointed vewy special envoy to Cyprus, and joined the spooky Hakluyt.
One Nation (ONP)
Minus Pauline, One Nation is up shit creek without a paddle, a fact reflected in the miserly electoral results the Party — which continues, in one form or another, to eke out an existence in NSW, QLD, SA, VIC and WA — has received since its foundation. In fact, Pauline’s election to the Australian Senate in 1996 (One Nation was formed in 1997 by Pauline Hanson, David Oldfield and David Ettridge) and the election of 11 members at the Queensland state election in 1998 proved to be the peak of its success.
Thus in November 1998, one member (Charles Rappolt) had resigned his seat, in February 1999 five members resigned from the Party to become Independents, and in December 1999, the five remaining members split from ONP to form the ‘City Country Alliance’ (CCA). Of the 11 ONP members elected in 1998, one had resigned his seat, while eight — including all six members of the CCA — lost their seats at the subsequent election in 2001, and just two (Dr John Kingston and Dorothy Pratt) were re-elected as Independents. Kingston subsequently resigned in 2003, while Pratt continues to hold her own in Nanango in Queensland.
In essence, ONP’s downfall — and leaving aside the dirty tricks campaign overseen by the Mad Monk Tony Abbott — was its inability to establish a real base outside of Queensland, and the absorption of its key policies by the HoWARd Government.
Neither Pauline nor her former Party experienced much success at the polls in the 2007 Federal election. Well, not in terms of votes anyway. In terms of money, she’s laughing ka-ching! all the way to the bank, with a cheque for over $162,000 (Loser Hanson cleans up, Herald Sun, Ellen Whinnett, November 25, 2007).
In what will probably be her final tilt at Parliament, Ms. Hanson came fourth in the Queensland Senate race, having gained 95,131 votes or 4.12% and 0.2883 of a quota. One Nation, on the other hand, gained a meagre 4,144 votes, or just 0.18%, placing them fifteenth of 24 Senate tickets. In other states, One Nation fared a little better: in NSW obtaining 16,611 votes or 0.41% (by contrast, Pauline’s United Australia got 38,165 votes or 0.95%); in Victoria, 12,414 votes or 0.41%; in WA, 10,354 votes or 0.93%; and in SA, 5,583 votes or 0.61%. In total then, across the nation ON received 49,106 votes: a far cry from 2004, when in Queensland alone ON received 71,032 votes. In 2001, the Hanson ticket in Queensland received 215,400 votes…
In the seat of Murray, Diane Teasdale, with 623 votes, placed sixth of nine candidates. In Werriwa, Dr James Saleam’s comrade Joe Bryant fared a little better, gaining 2,019 votes, and placing fourth among a field of six.
Other parties on the right include the Jesus Freaks in the Christian Democratic and the Family First Parties, and the Free Market Fanatics in the LDP (Liberty and Democracy Party). In the Lower House, 129 Family First candidates received 245,144 votes, or 2.0%; 63 Christian Democratic Party candidates Hallelujah! received 104,433 votes or Can I Get A Witness? 0.8%. In the free market of ideas, the Liberty and Democracy Party found much fewer buyers, their 47 candidates collecting just 17,003 votes or 0.1%.
Australian Protectionist Party (APP)
The APP emerged as a split from the AF in September 2007, in part as a result of wanting to de-Nazify Australian fascism, and based on the understanding that the British National Party’s strategy of mainstreaming was impossible under the leadership of Dr James Saleam, given his unabiding hatred of Jews, criminal past, and continued association with outright nutzis (of which Ross ‘The Skull’ May is the most prominent example). Thus far, the APP has contested just one election, with derisory results.
Established in 1988, the CEC is a front group for the followers of former Trot Lyndon La Rouche. It regularly contests elections, and can frequently be found in the CBD, suburban shopping malls, and outside University campuses flogging its crackpot ideology, the most awesome aspect of which is their belief that The Queen sits at the heart of an illegal international drugs cartel. The ALOR has noted some of the other, equally-appealing characteristics of the La Rouchites. ‘La Rouche Misleads’, OnTarget, Vol.33, No.13, April 11, 1997: “In spite of our warnings over the years concerning the activities of the American-based La Rouche movement, operating in Australia through the “Citizens’ Electoral Council” which publishes The New Citizen, we continue to come across sad cases of sincere people who have been pressured on the telephone to donate thousands of dollars to a movement which claims it is the only movement which can save Australia. Like all such movements, some of what they say or write is correct. But much is dangerous rubbish. The Royal Family is constantly alleged to be behind the international drug problem, while the Republican cause is constantly advocated. It is not without significance that the La Rouche movement constantly targets conservative movements. Whatever the motive, the effect is one of tending to neutralize the genuinely conservative cause.” Further, (OnTarget, Vol.28, No.48, December 18, 1992): “Initially the League provided tacit support for establishing the Citizens Electoral Councils, believing they offered a mechanism for advancing citizens initiated referenda. The C.E.C. movement has changed completely, and we are now no longer sure that initiative and referenda is still even a policy of this group. If the C.E.C. is using the high pressure fundraising techniques of some North American groups, we issue a strong warning of caution to our readers. We now hold the gravest reservations about both the methods and motivation of this group.”
Boneheads (Wankers)
There are a few organised groups of boneheads in Australia, all of which are foreign imports. The biggest (but still tiny) are Blood & Honour Australia and the Southern Cross Hammerskins. In addition, Volksfront has recently announced a new franchise. There are also a few boneheads belonging to the bizarro Creativity movement, while a number of older boneheads find a happy home in the local punk rawk milieu.
B&H and the SCHS have been in and out of the media spotlight over the last few years as a result of the difficulties they’ve experienced organising their annual knees-up in Melbourne. Briefly, in 2006, the boys held their noisefest at the Birmingham Hotel in Fitzroy. In 2007, it was held at the Melbourne Croatia Social Club (Sunshine). In 2008, at the Beaconsfield pub in Beaconsfield. Note that the location for these events is never publicised.
Over to the boneheads:
The crowning achievement of B&H Australia activities each year is the Ian Stuart Memorial concert. Every year we put this on in conjunction with the Southern Cross Hammerskins, the organization that we’ve worked with hand-in-glove, in brotherhood, for the past fifteen years or so. Together we brought out from Europe one of the most inspiring and active bands in the White Nationalist world, Kill, Baby Kill!, for last year’s concert. The year before that it was the infamous Final War from Orange County, California. Other bands and/or members to take the trip to Antipodean shores include the awesome Bully Boys, Ken McLellan from Brutal Attack, Billy and Lyndon from Celtic Warrior, Jim of Squadron fame, and guests from German band Noie Werte, one of the few bands still active that actually played with Skrewdriver.
The exposure of their first venue, the Birmingham Hotel, and the institution of a boycott, eventually resulted in the pub changing hands. Under new management, it’s no longer available to fascists to hold events. That said, two dozen or so local punk bands continued to support the venue and its manager, Gary K. Unfortunately for them, their support was insufficient to render the pub a going concern.
Of the over 20 bands that elected to support the pub, the most vocal were Bulldog Spirit / Marching Orders / Napalm Hearts (which have overlapping memberships) and The Worst. None of these bands appear to have suffered greatly as a result of their support for a fascist-sympathising pub, and Marching Orders are scheduled to play the Rebellion ‘punk’ Festival in August 2009, along with a number of ‘anti-fascist’ and ‘anti-racist’ bands.
This tells you more or less all you need to know about the current status of the there’s no business like punk business.
In 2007, the tricksy boneheads arranged with fascist-sympathising Croatians to hold the gig at their social club. Bonehead again:
[In 2007] there was an unprecedented amount of harassment from the Red scum. These dickheads seem incapable on focusing on their own crappy lives and instead dedicate themselves to trying to give us grief. As usual, however, they rose to the same pathetically ineffectual standard they’ve managed in previous years and had absolutely no bearing on how the gig went. And, again as usual, they’ve upheld a long tradition for Red filth by spreading disinformation and dragging innocent parties through the mud in their frustration that they have no chance of stopping any B&H Australia functions.
My advice? Have a Cornetto, and harden the fuck up.
In 2008, “Because of police interest, the gig was a low key event, without the usual banners, flags & such, but hey we all knew what we were there for & that’s what matters”. Which is as it should be, although bringing out a group of nutzis from Europe isn’t cheap… LOL.
As for the future, the boneheads are organising a gig in Perth on ANZAC Day to celebrate the deaths of Australians who fought Nazism. Playing for the White traffic will be Indigenous Hate, Quick & the Dead and Ravenous (the former drummer of which now plays for local band Bulldog Spirit).
New Right (NR)
The New Right Australia (and er, New Zealand) is the brainchild of Sydney-based fascist Welf Herfurth. A former member of the NPD, Democrats and ONP, the yuppie racist is a also a former friend of B&H and the SCHS, but has recently teamed up with Douglas Schott (Blood Red Eagle) to (re-)establish Volksfront Australia. One critic — Poodle38 on Stormfront — has attacked Welf and accused him of loving “slopes” and cheating on his wife. Which is not very nice, but one of the hazards of “trying to appear everything to everyone”; Welf has also, at different times, embraced both Dr. James Saleam (AF) and Darrin Hodges (APP). Currently, Welf acts as the brains for the handful of brainless teens who believe their destiny is best placed in his hands rather than Don Black’s or David Duke’s.
KKK (White Bedsheets)
The KKK come and go: currently, there at least two different factions of white bed-sheet wearers, the (possibly defunct) ‘White Legion Knights’ and the ‘Church of the National Knights of the Ku Klux Klan’ (CNKKKK). Some believe that the KKK is an elaborate conspiracy hatched by members of the haberdashery industry, but this rumour is unconfirmed. Readers interested in joining the handful of racist psychotics in the CNKKKK are encouraged to contact the GRAND DRAGONESS OF AUSTRALIA/ASSISTANT TO THE IMPERIAL WEBMASTER at [email protected].
Stormfront Down Under (White Bread & Circuses)
Stormfront is the brainchild of Don Black, a convicted terrorist (he and a small group of fellow racist cranks attempted to take over the island of Dominica in 1981) and David Duke, both former Grand Poobahs in the KKK. Black’s wife (and Duke’s ex-wife) Chloe is friends with some of Florida’s richest, while his son, Derek, has been embraced by the local (Florida) branch of the Republican party.
Currently, the Grand Poobah of Stormfront Down Under is Paul Innes of Perth. In addition to being granted the authority by his Fat Yanqui Controllers to perform this vital task, Paul is also planning a ‘Pioneer Little Europe’ in the Perth foothills. Fellow nutzi Kyle Chapman (a KKKiwi) recently got his ugly mug in the papers following the ‘disclosure’ that he and some of his White mates are planning the same for Canterbury. Otherwise Paul, a bonehead, is a supporter of B&H.
in the quest for the test to fulfill an achievement
everybody’s only loaded just to shoot themselves
when the fact of the matter is they just don’t care
to extend a helping hand to anyone else
so tell me why, did you have to lie
and try to make me all confused about PTBA
when the fact of the matter is you just don’t hear
to comprehend or understand a single word I say
why oh why oh why to go against I?
why oh why oh why to go against I?
well let me tell you now…
the same old story, no factual glory
I against I against I against I
and I say I don’t like it
and I know I don’t want it
I against I against I against I
almighty watching
almighty watching
I against I against I against I
and I say I don’t like it
and I know I don’t want it
I against I against I against I
I said who’s gonna tell the youth about the drugs
about the drugs, mugs, bugs, and the police thugs
about the rotten stinkin’ rackets and the fantasies
around the nation
around the nation
oh what you gonna do?
I tell you the truth is looking straight at you
oh baby baby what you gonna do?
I tell you the truth is looking straight at you
I got a brass continental with a 300 Z
I got a plasma TV with DVD too
I got a rest home in Victoria with my fantasy for my family
around the nation
what you gonna do?
what you gonna do?
what you gonna do?
what you gonna do?
Gordon Ramsay is in hot water for his swearing. One of his television shows is called The F-Word, but celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay’s famous use of the expletive – and others – has landed him in hot water with British audiences. Viewers flooded Channel 4 with complaints after Ramsay swore 243 times in a two-hour screening of Gordon’s Great British Nightmare on Friday, The Sunday Mirror reported. His language included “187 F-words”, the newspaper said…
Angry ticketholders have hit out at organisers of yesterday’s St Jerome’s Laneway Festival in Melbourne’s CBD, saying poor organisation and overcrowding left hundreds of frustrated fans locked out of the venue, unable to watch the bands they had paid for…
Girl Talk‘s latest smash hit, summer’s most anticipated urban experience:
“Two young men decide to escape their problems and head to [New South] Wales for a weekend in a small village. They arrive to find a coach-load of Swedish females and a cursed hamlet under the spell of vampires of a specific sexual persuasion. Welcome to Lesbian Vampire Killers, a comedy horror film project from British firm AV Pictures…”
See also : Dead Snow [Død Snø] | Top 10 lesbian vampire movies, Holger Haase, Den of Geek: “Taste the deadly passion of the blood-nymphs as we explore the Sapphic side of vampire movies… With the March release of Lesbian Vampire Killers, European horror returns – if not very seriously – to the Sapphic vampire subgenre that has spawned an awful lot of duds, but a few well-appreciated gems…”
10. Dracula’s Daughter (1936)
9. Blood and Roses (1960)
8. Any Jean Rollin film
7. Vampyros Lesbos (1971)
6. Lust for a Vampire (1971)
5. Vampyres (1974)
4. The Blood Spattered Bride (1972)
3. The Hunger (1983)
2. Daughters of Darkness (1971)
1. The Vampire Lovers (1970)
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?"