Dion, December 12, 2007: “As I stated on the Bombshellforum Andy, you are a liar, a hypocrite and no better than the trash that you fight against.”
Russian Thugs’ Killing Spree
Will Stewart Glasgow Daily Record
October 3, 2008
TWO neo-Nazi skinhead leaders have admitted murdering 20 people and wounding a dozen more in a series of random racist attacks.
Detectives think the gang led by Artur Ryno [below] and Pavel Skachevsky killed up to 30 dark-skinned victims in a 14-month orgy of violence.
The swastika-wearing mob, which included female Hitler worshipper Svetlana Avvakumova, would follow their victims and kill them while filming the attacks on their phones.
Pictures they took show the Russians posing and giving Nazi salutes next to the dead bodies.
Artur said that there were witnesses in many of his crimes, although nobody tried to stop them.
The gang was killing the mainly Asian-looking victims from the former Soviet republics in a twisted belief they were cleansing the Russian nation of impure foreigners, said police.
Ex-choir boy Ryno, 17, from Yekaterinburg, was arrested in April for a murder of a prosperous Armenian Muscovite, Karen Abramyan.
One detective said: “The gang used to gather spontaneously, when they had free time from their studies.
“They would get boozed up, then go into the suburbs roaming around looking for a victim.
“They would attack their victims silently and then watch their agony. Once they attacked a Ukranian man, mistaking him for an Asian looking Tajik man in the darkness.”
Ryno was arrested trying to flee in a tram after their last victim, Abramyan, was stabbed 20 times. Marta Abramyan, the victim’s wife, witnessed the attack. She said: “I saw everything.
I heard him cry, ‘Take the money, take anything, but stop stabbing me!’ But they didn’t care, they were finishing him off”.
Ryno later told police: “I hate people from the Caucasus and Asians, who have come to Moscow to oppress the Russians.”
He admitted he committed his first crime on August, 2006, near Cherkizovsky Market when a fight broke out and he randomly joined in.
He told police proudly: “We were walking when I noticed a clash and hurried to help. I took out my knife and stabbed a non-Russian several times.”
According to the Russian Government analytical centre, 440 people have been victims of racist assaults this year, including 48 deaths.
Experts believe there are neo-Nazi gangs in 85 cities across Russia.
A month ago in my relatively sleepy bedroom community, a young Tadzhik citizen was stabbed thirty-six times. He died in the courtyard that my bedroom window looks out onto. I read about his attack a week later.
Now, as the second month of 2008 closes, the victims of such private acts of ethnic violence in Russia sickeningly pile up. Even the New York Times has finally picked up the story, taking a short respite from its usual Putin-baiting and glamorous lifestyle reporting to publish an online post on the matter of Russian racism in The Lede. To get some sense of the severity of the problem, here’s a sampling of what the past ten days in Moscow looked like, based on information collected by the SOVA Center.
20 February: A 43-year-old Uzbek man was severely beaten by two teenage skinheads in the North of Moscow.
19 February: In Severnoe Izmailovo, a Tadzhik citizen was stabbed multiple times but survived.
19 February: A 27-year-old Tadzhik citizen was found murdered with multiple stab wounds in Moscow’s South.
19 February: A 38-year-old Azeri man was fatally stabbed twenty-five times near Metro Station Shchelkovskaia.
18 February: A 25-year-old Uzbek was murdered on Ulitsa Miklukho-Maklaia in Moscow’s South. He died on the scene from multiple knife injuries.
18 February: The body of a 30-year-old Tadzhik native was found with multiple stab wounds on Dmitrovskoe Shosse in Moscow’s North.
17 February: In the northwestern neighborhood of Tushino, the body of a 34-year-old migrant was found. He had been stabbed in the back and head.
15-16 February: Late in the night, two Kyrgyz citizens were attacked near Metro Station Tekstil’shchiki in Moscow’s Southeast. One died from multiple stab wounds and the other has been hospitalized.
15 February: A group of drunk teenagers set upon a 22-year-old Tadzhik citizen in Moscow’s Southwest, beating him and stabbing him more than ten times. He managed to make it back to his apartment and as of 18 February was alive in intensive care.
14 February: On Ulitsa Pokrovka in Moscow’s Center, five teenagers attacked two Tadzhik natives, killing one.
12 February: The body of a 20-year-old native of Kabardino-Balkariia was found in the eastern neighborhood of Novogireevo.
12 February: A series of attacks occurred in Moscow’s South. In the neighborhood of Severnoe Chertanovo, a 21-year-old migrant was attacked, suffering knife wounds to his back and neck. An hour later, a Chechen migrant was beaten and stabbed near Metro Station Tsaritsyno. Some time later, again in Severnoe Chertanovo, another migrant was attacked…
The remainder of Buster’s post provides an excellent analysis of the potential reasons for this spate of racist murders.
I’ve just had an adventure in televisual democracy.
As part of “a cracking line up”, last night’s (final) episode of the ABC’s Q&A featured panelist Tom Switzer. Ostensibly an expert — of some kind — I’d never heard of him. I also only caught the last 10 minutes or so, during which the panel discussed some of the issues arising out of the HoWARd Gub’mint’s refugee policy. Nonetheless, Tom’s responses to some questions posed by a former terrorist prison inmate were, I think, quite superb. According to Tom, critics of HoWARd’s policies could be safely dismissed as “metropolitan sophisticates”; living in a city and being sophisticated are obviously Very Bad Things in Tom’s Bumper Book of Political Wisdom. Sadly, were anyone to take Tom seriously, they couldn’t take him seriously. At least, not by Tom’s rather strange logic.
But who is Tom?
Born in 1971, Tom is an Old Boy from St. Aloysius’ College, a Catholic school in Sydney. Other Old Boys include Tory politicians Tony Abbott, Nick Greiner and Joe Hockey, and a range of Generals, Judges, Magistrates, Academics, Businessmen, Senior Clergy, Actors, Artists, Journalists, Scientists, Doctors and Dentists. Originally established by the Jesuits in 1879, and offerings its 1,200 or so students Harbour views, the College is the oldest of the six schools which make up the Combined Associated Schools (CAS) of New South Wales.
In other words, Tom attended an elite private school in the heart of Australia’s largest city.
Nevertheless, St Aloysius’ does occasionally require — and no doubt deserves — a little Christian charity. In a paper published by the Australia Institute (Deb Wilkinson, Richard Denniss and Andrew Macintosh, ‘The Accountability of Private Schools to Public Values’, August 2004 [PDF]), school authorities are quoted as follows: “While tuition fees cover a major portion of a boy’s education at St Aloysius’ College, fees do not and cannot provide all the funds we need to undertake building projects and new major capital works. The Foundation Building Fund is vital for the provision of new buildings and resources”. In fact, management complains, “There is a mistaken perception in the community that St Aloysius’ College has adequate funds on which to draw. The reality is that without strong and active support of the College Family, the College would not have the financial capacity to complete many major projects that enhance the education of our boys.” The Australia Institute comments: “In order to prompt parents to give generously relative to their ‘capacity to do so’ [a] table is provided. It is interesting to note the explicit assumption that all parents are in the top marginal tax bracket which, prior to 1 July 2004, meant that they had incomes in excess of $62, 501.73…”
Huh.
On the social ambiance of the North Shore, Mike Carlton (What a truly ghastly gaffe, The Sydney Morning Herald, August 28, 2004) writes:
Sydney’s North Shore is another country. Unless you have grown up in its leafy purlieus of eucalypts and liquidambars towering over manicured lawns and stockbroker Tudor executive residences, you cannot begin to comprehend its arcane tribal hierarchies and social mores.
Outsiders, for example, think the North Shore begins at Kirribilli and runs all the way to Hornsby. It does not. The starting line is the north side of Boundary Street, Roseville. (The south side, unfortunately, is in plebian Chatswood). The finishing line is at Pearce’s Corner, Wahroonga, where the Pacific Highway meets Pennant Hills Road, and not a metre beyond, however much local real estate agents pretend otherwise to unsuspecting arrivistes.
North Shore blue bloods know instinctively that the better address lies to the east of the railway line, not the west. Ku-ring-gai Avenue is considered the best street in Turramurra – its Federation mansions would be the envy of the rest of Sydney – but, my dears, it is not quite Water Street, Wahroonga, nor Hastings Road, Warrawee.
And if you have to ask whether it is better to send your son to Knox Grammar or Barker College, your daughter to Pymble Ladies’ College or Abbotsleigh, then you have no business applying to any of them. Catholic schools have been acceptable since about 1960, but only the Jesuits of St Ignatius, Riverview, or St Aloysius…
So much for the primary and secondary schooling experience of this poor simple boy from the country. Naturally enough, upon completing his studies at St Aloysius’, Tom proceeded with most of his peers to the University of Sydney. A well-trained boy, Tom obtained First Class Honours in 1994, and was able keep the wolf from his door with a cadetship at the corporate-funded thinktank the American Enterprise Institute. His three years working for The Man (1995–1998) was remarked upon when, in 2008, John HoWARd received the ‘Irving Kristol Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence’, and Tom’s gushing praise was quoted by the AEI: “[Howard] presided over the longest economic boom since the gold rushes of the nineteenth century”.
Gosh!
Upon leaving the AEI, the battler from Struggle Street got a gig back in Australia at the Australian Financial Review; one of his few memorable works while there was a charming piece called ‘With friends like the Palestinians, who needs enemies?’ (December 23, 1998). The Palestinians, Tom is clear — and despite the abundant opportunities provided them by the generous Israeli state — “remain vicious thugs”. (See‘Kazak v John Fairfax Publications Limited [2000] NSWADT 77’ for further details.)
Leaving the AFR in 2001, Tom became the opinion pages editor at Murdoch’s The Australian. At which point, I’ll allow someone else to pick up the story:
Switzer joined Murdoch’s flagship paper just a month after 9/11. As he tells it, Rupert’s hacks were all calling each other “comrade” when he arrived, but he soon put a stop to that nonsense. Janet Albrechtsen became his most ardent devotee:
IT is only a slight exaggeration to say opinion writing in the Australian press has two eras: BT and AT. Before Tom. And after Tom…
The period AT sees this page, and the public conversation, transformed. I would say that, of course. Switzer brought me on board soon after his arrival.
John HoWARd praised Switzer for giving “an authentic voice to the Right in the culture debates”. But don’t get the idea that he was another unbalanced neocon! Howard insists Switzer’s promotion of voices like Mark Steyn and Christopher Hitchens was “not to the detriment of others”. As Janet explains it:
Switzer strove for balance. As he wrote in The Australian back in 2005, between July 2002 and March 2003, while debate about Iraq raged, this page reflected the controversy by publishing 45 dovish pieces and 47 hawkish pieces. After Saddam Hussein’s downfall, 107 columns were critical of the US-led occupation while 114 were supportive. You don’t get more balanced than that.
In other words, there were more hawkish pieces than dovish ones, and more pro-occupation articles than critical ones. And that’s despite the fact that the Iraq quagmire has been, as Switzer himself once conceded, a “misbegotten venture” championed by “misguided idealists”.
If Tom had a sense of humour, that would be funny. He doesn’t, and it’s not. As Chomsky has commented (in reference to the earlier imperial adventure in Vietnam): “There’s a spectrum of opinion. The spectrum is between what I call doves and hawks. Hawks are ones who say it was a noble cause and we should have won and if we hadn’t been stabbed in the back, and so on, we would have won. Doves are the ones who say it was a noble cause and we should have won but it was costing us too much and it probably wasn’t worth it. So, let’s do better next time. That’s the doves. And that’s not an exaggeration. I’ll spare you quotes.” Which is, of course, Chomsky’s prerogative. I, on the other hand, refer to Andrew West (‘A Right-Wing Conspiracy’, newmatilda.com, July 19, 2006), who writes: “The Australian‘s op-ed page, run by former American Enterprise Institute (AEI) staffer Tom Switzer, offers a frequent pulpit to former HoWARd Government staffer Kevin Donnelly to promote free market policies in education. Switzer himself wrote glowingly in the AEI journal last year about HoWARd, calling him the ‘antipodal offspring of his hero Ronald Reagan’.”
And so on and so forth.
Apart from winning the admiration of Janet Albrechtsen, as opinion pages editor Tom no doubt bravely battled penury and obscurity — assisted, one assumes, by both a fat salary and the approval of The Boss. Alas, it wasn’t to last, and after a mere seven years Tom left, and Joe Six-Pack became Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson’s political adviser. Unfortunately for Tom, and despite being cautioned by his then-colleagues, Nelson soon got the arse, and the horny-handed son of toil is now being forced to look for other ideological masters to serve. Or as D.D. McNicoll puts it:
[Switzer] brushed aside the concerns voiced by some of his newspaper colleagues, assuring them that if Nelson were replaced by Malcolm Turnbull, he would still have a job. After all, he got on well with Turnbull. And Switzer’s wife, Sarah Stock, was once Turnbull’s press secretary. But with Nelson on the backbench and Turnbull in the box seat, Switzer has found himself without a job in the Opposition Leader’s office. Scuttlebutt in the corridors of Parliament House suggests he may be joining one of the high-profile, privately funded think tanks such as the Lowy or Sydney institutes.
Which would make perfect sense. Insofar as his performance on Q&A is concerned, however, both the Lowy and Sydney Institutes may be looking for a bit more bang for their buck. On refugees [46:30 — 48:00], Tom opined:
[The ‘border protection policy’] showed once and for all that Australia would not be a soft touch [for] people smugglers. The policy works, and it was so popular in fact that it has been embraced by a lot of countries throughout Western Europe. That’s not to say there are problems with the system, but there comes a time when you do have to stand up against people-smuggling… The broad cross-section of the Australian people — maybe not the metropolitan sophisticates who live in inner-Sydney city — supported it… In terms of the government policy in the first place, it’s certainly defensible.
On the matter of the sinking of the SIEVX, after expressing his obviously heartfelt anguish over the loss of 350 lives, Tom was of the opinion that the malcontents on board sabotaged their own vessel [54:30…]:
Q. How did that boat sink David? [David Marr: We don’t know.] I understand that it was originally sabotaged by the people on the boat!
Hmmm. Why did SIEVX sink?
This is a key question at the heart of the SIEVX issue.
A number of theories have been put forward by commentators. Some believe that the sinking was the inevitable result of a greedy people smuggler grossly overloading a leaking hulk by more than twice its load limit in order to ruthlessly maximise profits. Others theorize that the boat was deliberately sabotaged as a deterrent to halt the people smuggling trade from Indonesia to Australia.
It can be difficult to imagine any Australian complicity in such a tragedy. But it is important to note that at the time of the sinking Australia, with the assistance of special units of Indonesian police, was involved in a covert disruption program targetting people smugglers operating inside Indonesia. Disruption tactics included establishing ‘sting’ shipping companies in strategic locations and selling passage to asylum seekers on phoney voyages to Ashmore Reef & Christmas Island and keeping their money so they could not buy places on other boats.
One informant connected with the disruption program boasted to Channel 9 reporter, Ross Coulthart that he had arranged for Indonesian locals on four or five occasions to scuttle boats packed with asylum seekers. He claimed that as the boats were sunk close to land so everyone got off safely, there was no cause for concern!
To date no direct link has been established between the disruption program and the sinking of SIEVX. However, this possibility cannot be ruled out, given that SIEVX sunk at the height of this program and only a week after the People Smuggling Taskforce discussed ‘beefing up’ disruption.
The Senate is so concerned about this possibility that it has passed three resolutions calling for the government to set up an independent judicial inquiry into the people smuggling disruption program in Indonesia and the sinking of SIEVX.
To find out more about the disruption program see the sources listed in our SIEVX Reading Guide.
146 children, 142 women and 65 men died in the sinking of the SIEVX.
Some nice man called John Eden has a great blog called uncarved (which has a terrific post on Ian Stuart‘s equally dead sidekick Nicky Crane). His latest post, UK reggae and the National Front, is the second of two posts on the Nutty Front (the first is Smash the National Front – part one). In the first of these posts, John reviews a number of publications on the NF, and remarks that the 1980s “…saw the Front moving increasingly towards elitism and terrorism when it became clear how marginal they were. A salutary lesson in how fascism operates in different ways at different points in history – and that this requires different tactics.” This theme is taken up by Robert O. Paxton in The Anatomy of Fascism, in which he identifies five stages or cycles in the progression of fascist movements:
1) the creation of movements;
2) their rooting in the political system;
3) their seizure of power;
4) the exercise of power and;
5) the long duration, during which the fascist regime chooses either radicalization or entropy.
More on that later maybe. In his second post, John also notes that “It is easy to forget… that fighting the NF wasn’t always big demonstrations like Lewisham 77, or concerts, or marches. It was a two way street with Enoch’s “rivers of blood” in the gutters. NF supporters were suspected of firebomb attacks on music venues like the Four Aces in Dalston, and Acklam Hall in Ladbroke Grove. Not to mention the petty intimidation and outright racist violence that was part of the everyday landscape in the 1970s. The “cultural war” of Rock Against Racism has to be seen alongside the groundwork of community organisations, politicos, “squadists”, and even everyday people who just had a chat with their mates when they were spouting bollocks.” Incidentally, uncarved has heaps more equally fascinating posts on music (principally punk/dub/reggae/ska) and politricks (including many on the subject of anti-fascism).
Nick Griffin became involved with the far right at the age of 15 when his father, Edgar Griffin, took him to meetings of the National Front (NF). By 1978, he was a local secretary for the NF.
In 1980, he became a member of the NF governing body, the National Directorate, when he also set up the NF Student Organisation. In 1980, Griffin launched Nationalism Today with the aid of Joe Pearce, editor of the NF youth paper Bulldog and twice imprisoned for incitement to racial hatred…
Griffin left the NF in 1989 in a split with Patrick Harrington. Harrington went on to form the Third Way. Meanwhile, Griffin joined with Derek Holland to form the International Third Position (ITP), which developed from the Political Soldier movement that had formed within the NF. Given the secretive nature of the ITP, it is hard to establish exactly when Griffin left, although he was still part of its leadership in mid-1993.
British National Party
While still a leader of the ITP, Griffin became involved with another far-right nationalist group, the British National Party (BNP). By 1993 he was speaking at BNP meetings and writing pseudonymously for BNP publications. In 1995, he officially joined the party.
For a time Griffin edited Spearhead, a publication owned by then party leader John Tyndall. Between 1995 and 1997, he was editor of The Rune, an anti-semitic weekly. In 1998, he was prosecuted in connection with the magazine.
In September 1999, Griffin was elected as head of the BNP. He embarked on a campaign to make the party “electable” by taking it away from Tyndall’s agenda. These changes included an emphasis on the need to dismantle multiculturalism, which the BNP claim has a destructive influence on both immigrant and British culture. This realignment was designed to position the BNP alongside successful European far-right groups, such as the French Front National. The campaign would also involve moves against Tyndall, who was expelled from the party for a time in 2002 along with his closest allies, Richard Edmonds and John Morse.
Under the BNP’s constitution, Griffin is solely responsible for the party’s legal and financial liabilities, and has the final say in all decisions affecting the party. While he routinely consults with various colleagues on matters which affect them directly, he is not bound to do so. Some areas of policy have been delegated to other BNP leaders, but Griffin has retained the right to make the most important decisions…
If `Blood & Honour’ are so bloody honourable, how come they don’t advertise their gigs openly in the way that Antifa do? Instead the cowardly Nazis hide behind false names, mobile numbers, and re-direction points. The gigs are usually held in the worst shitholes imaginable, with the Fash hiding in dingy back rooms to listen to the dire wailings of untalented morons unable to get a normal gig. What a sad and pathetic spectacle. Still, one Leeds antifascist managed to get some sport outside Leeds Railwayman’s Club on Wellington Road when `Blub & Dishonour’ were in town for the night. Tracking the filth to their temporary lair, and spotting a couple of Nazis stupid enough to have strayed from it, our bold comrade set about the pair of them!
Spotted at the same gig was the lead singer of West Yorkshire Oi! band `Scum’. Many years ago, Ross was given a slap by Huddersfield AFA and made to burn all his Nazi gear. Since then, along with his cowardly mates, he’s gutlessly claimed to be “apolitical”. Unfortunately for Ross, the mugs at B&H have given the game away by posting up his pic on their own site. Ross has been in hiding since the news broke. Watch this space for what happens next!
Not that Ross is the only closet Nazi in `Scum’, nor the only one to come unstuck. We hope the rumours that you’ve thrown in the towel are true lads, and we really do advise you to `stay down’.
NB. Scum are available for purchase locally through Deadset Music. Unapologetic neo-Nazis Les Villains are also available, as are a range of titles from Belgian label Pure Impact. Like Ross, Fiona the owner of Deadset has attended B&H gigs in Melbourne.
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[Img via Lumpen]
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DENVER — The Denver police union is selling T-shirts that poke fun at protesters at last month’s Democratic National Convention… The back of the shirts reads “WE GET UP EARLY, to BEAT the crowds” and “2008 DNC” and has a caricature of a police officer holding a baton… Police arrested 154 people before and during the Democratic convention. There were few reports of violence. In once incident, an officer was videotaped pushing a protester to the ground with his baton and telling her, “Back up, [bitch].” The district attorney declined to prosecute the officer, saying the woman had disobeyed warnings to back away and had grabbed the officer’s baton… ~ Police Union Shirt Pokes Fun At DNC Protesters, thedenverchannel.com, September 29, 2008
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Video of a “bitch” (likely a terrorist) at the DNC, disobeying warnings to “move away from the vehicle” (which she is clearly and illegally blocking the progress of), and then grabbing a brave and clearly at-risk police officer’s baton (look closely… See?). Oh, and then being arrested while addressing the media about other arrests (aka attempting to incite a riot in furtherance of terrorism):
Update (October 4) : Unkle Fred’s extradition hearing has been adjourned, and he’s been remanded in custody. Word on the street is that the remand centre has a swimming pool, hospital, brothel, dentist, daycare and theatre. His next hearing is scheduled to take place October 10, followed by a full hearing October 17. According to The Guardian: A small group of supporters, including the controversial British historian, David Irving, attended today’s hearing. Outside the courtroom Irving, who was jailed in Austria for denying the Holocaust, said: “Either you have freedom of speech or you don’t. Freedom of speech means the right to be wrong.” Asked if he agreed with Toben, he said: “I disapprove of some of his views but he has the right to express them. This case is about the right to say what you think and the right to be wrong.” SMH: Also present at the hearing was ‘Lady Michele Renouf’, aka Countess Michèle Susan Mainwaring Griaznoff Peacock Sangster Renouf … a LADY of the New Right.
Update : According to a report in Deutsche-Welle, “In 1999, Toben spent seven months in jail in Germany and has served an 11-month sentence in Austria for Holocaust denial. In 2006, [as] a speaker at a controversial two-day conference in Tehran organized by the Iranian government and attended by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad… he described as “mere puffery” the assertion that Jews were killed by the Nazis.” The Australian Jewish News (Toben could face jail in Germany and Australia, Peter Kohn) reflects on the ramifications Mr. T’s trial may have for current proceedings against him Down Under.
Poor old Unkle Fred. Or should I say ‘Gerald’? According to Aunty:
Man accused of Holocaust denial
BBC
October 1, 2008
An alleged Holocaust denier has been arrested by police after flying into Heathrow Airport in London. The Metropolitan Police’s extradition unit detained Australian Gerald Töben, 64, under an EU arrest warrant issued by the German authorities. He is accused of publishing material on the internet that “denies, approves of or plays down the mass murder of Jews by the Nazis”. He is due to appear at London’s City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court. The arrest warrant alleges that Mr Toben committed the offence in Australia, Germany and other countries, and that the material is also “of an anti-Semitic and/or revisionist nature”.
Interesting stuff. An Australian citizen, Unkle Fredrik is apparently being arrested, in England, on the basis that his Internet publications may be read in Germany — where Holocaust denial is a crime.
Töben is of course a close comrade of Welf Herfurth, the ‘national anarchist’ and fuehrer of the New Reich Right, a fascist political formation most recently championed — albeit sneakily — by Darrin Hodges of the Australian Protectionist Party. In 2007, Herfurth addressed the Inverell Forum on the topic of how ace the NPD is; at the same conference, Richard Krege, another denialist, also spoke. Like Krege, Töben attended the Holocaust conference in Tehran (‘the International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust’ to give its full title) in 2006. The APP, for its part, is arranging for the leader of the BNP, Nick Griffin, to tour the colonies in December. He too, is on record as denying the Holocaust.
Above : Fredrick Töben (Adelaide Institute) and Welf Herfurth (ex-One Nation, Australia First Party) annexe Sydney using the MaGiCaL pOwErS invested in Horst Mahler‘s flag and on behalf of the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands, January 27, 2005.
This is not the first time the madcap amateur anti-Semite Unkle Fred has been in trouble:
Now to the case of the Australian revisionist historian whose arrest in Germany has become an international test case for freedom of speech on the Internet. Dr Fredrick Töben, who is the director of a group called the Adelaide Institute has been charged under a German law which prohibits defaming the memory of the dead. German authorities allege Dr Töben has questioned the scale of the Holocaust and dismissed accounts detailing the use of gas chambers in Nazi concentration camps. If found guilty he faces five years in jail…
As a result, Unkle Fred was imprisoned for nine months (or possibly seven, or ten — depending on the source) at Mannheim Prison for breaching Germany’s Holocaust Law, Section 130, that prohibits anyone from “defaming the dead”. Well, sorta… the relevant section of Section 130 of the Criminal Code (Strafgesetzbuch, StGB) reads:
3) Whoever publicly or in a meeting approves of, denies or renders harmless an act committed under the rule of National Socialism of the type indicated in Section 220a subsection (1), in a manner capable of disturbing the public [peace] shall be punished with imprisonment for not more than five years or a fine.
(4) Subsection (2) shall also apply to writings (Section 11 subsection (3)) with content such as is indicated in subsection (3).
(5) In cases under subsection (2), also in conjunction with subsection (4), and in cases of subsection (3), Section 86 [Use of Symbols of Unconstitutional Organizations] subsection (3), shall apply correspondingly.
(1) Whoever, with the intent of destroying as such, in whole or in part, a national, racial or religious group or one characterized by its folk customs by:
1. killing members of the group;
2. inflicting serious physical or emotional harm, especially of the type indicated in Section 226 on members of the group;
3. placing the group in living conditions capable of leading, in whole or in part, to their physical destruction;
4. imposing measures which are intended to prevent births within the group;
5. forcibly transferring children of the group into another group,
shall be punished with imprisonment for life.
(2) In less serious cases under subsection (1), numbers 2 to 5, the punishment shall be imprisonment for not less than five years.
Most recently (August 2008), Unkle Fred was awaiting a verdict on charges of contempt of court for defying the Federal Court’s 2002 order to remove Holocaust-denial material from his website, in a case brought by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ).
Incidentally, Martin Fletcher of Downunder Newslinks launched an appeal on behalf of Unkle Fred in April last year following news of Jeremy Jones’ court action: “Help Dr. Fredrick Toben; Help Free Speech”, Martin appealed, writing that “Dr. Frederick Toben, fearless Revisionist, is being persecuted by Australian Jewry for not telling their version of the Holocaust on his web site”. Earlier, in January 2007, Martin opined: “It is disgraceful to see [a] great mind being silenced for searching for the truth behind the Holocaust. The “facts” need to be brought out into the public for all to see instead of being covered up and buried. Many people throughout the world have been jailed for questioning the events of the Holocaust. Why would researching the Holocaust be made against the law in so many countries? Something to hide?” In March 2008, Martin commented: “Good to see Dr Toben is still fighting hard against Australian Jews”.
Martin is, of course, a close ally of Darrin Hodges, and co-moderates the APP’s ‘Australian Identity’ forum. His own website, at least for the moment, is down.
During the first week of September 2008, Republican Party delegates gathered in St. Paul, Minnesota for the Republican National Convention (RNC) – the media spectacle and corporate sleaze-fest that completes their nominating process. An army of armor-clad riot police, National Guard, and private security with their humvees, rubber bullets, and tear gas protected them. FBI-assisted sheriff’s raids at more than a half-dozen activist homes and organizing centers in Minneapolis-St. Paul sought to hinder opposition. But thousands of protestors still took to the streets to emphatically reject the Republicans’ vicious policies of war, discrimination, and attacks on the working-class and poor.
Among the more important mobilizing efforts against the RNC was the Anti-Capitalist Bloc, an initiative of the Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.) union – Twin Cities General Membership Branch. The Anti-Capitalist Bloc was conceived as an organizing front for the week of the RNC that would unite those anti-capitalist activists with an orientation toward organizing. The Anti-Capitalist Bloc issued a “Call” and adopted a set of “Solidarity Principles” that made clear our opposition to not only the Republican party but the whole system of capitalism. Ten other groups signed on including three other I.W.W. branches. Approximately 1800 full-color posters with the Anti-Capitalist Bloc message were distributed over the course of the week.
The article is accompanied by a heap of links too. Of course, aside from the Anti-Capitalist Bloc, there was the RNC Welcoming Committee, eight members of which are currently facing terrorism charges. Last week, the RNC 8 released a letter, explaining their situation, and appealing for solidarity. While it’s easily available elsewhere, I figure the more publicity it receives, the better. So here it is:
Dear Friends, Family, and Comrades:
We are the RNC 8: individuals targeted because of our political beliefs and work organizing for protests at the 2008 Republican National Convention, in what appears to be the first use of Minnesota’s version of the US Patriot Act. The 8 of us are currently charged with Conspiracy to Commit Riot in Furtherance of Terrorism, a 2nd degree felony that carries the possibility of several years in prison. We are writing to let you know about our situation, to ask for support, and to offer words of hope.
A little background: the RNC Welcoming Committee was a group formed in late 2006 upon hearing that the 2008 Republican National Convention would be descending on Minneapolis-St. Paul where we live, work, and build community. The Welcoming Committee’s purpose was to serve as an anarchist/anti-authoritarian organizing body, creating an informational and logistical framework for radical resistance to the RNC. We spent more than a year and a half doing outreach, facilitating meetings throughout the country, and networking folks of all political persuasions who shared a common interest in voicing dissent in the streets of St. Paul while the GOP’s machine chugged away inside the convention.
In mid-August the Welcoming Committee opened a “Convergence Center,” a space for protesters to gather, eat, share resources, and build networks of solidarity. On Friday, August 29th, 2008, as folks were finishing dinner and sitting down to a movie the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Department stormed in, guns drawn, ordering everyone to the ground. This evening raid resulted in seized property (mostly literature), and after being cuffed, searched, and IDed, the 60+ individual inside were released.
The next morning, on Saturday, August 30th, the Sheriff’s department executed search warrants on three houses, seizing personal and common household items and arresting the first 5 of us- Monica Bicking, Garrett Fitzgerald, Erik Oseland, Nathanael Secor, and Eryn Trimmer. Later that day Luce Guillen-Givins was arrested leaving a public meeting at a park. Rob Czernik and Max Specktor were arrested on Monday, September 1, bringing the number to its present 8. All were held on probable cause and released on $10,000 bail on Thursday, September 4, the last day of the RNC.
These arrests were preemptive, targeting known organizers in an attempt to derail anti-RNC protests before the convention had even begun. Conspiracy charges expand upon the traditional notion of crime. Instead of condemning action, the very concept of conspiracy criminalizes thought and camaraderie, the development of relationships, the willingness to hope that our world might change and the realization that we can be agents of that change.
Conspiracy charges serve a very particular purpose- to criminalize dissent. They create a convenient method for incapacitating activists, with the potential for diverting limited resources towards protracted legal battles and terrorizing entire communities into silence and inaction. Though not the first conspiracy case against organizers- not even the first in recent memory- our case may be precedent-setting. Minnesota’s terrorism statutes have never been enacted in this way before, and if they win their case against us, they will only be strengthened as they continue their crusade on ever more widespread fronts. We view our case as an opportunity to demonstrate community solidarity in the face of repression, to establish a precedent of successful resistance to the government’s attempts to destroy our movements.
Right now we are in the very early stages of a legal battle that will require large sums of money and enormous personal resources. We have already been overwhelmed by the outpouring of support locally and throughout the country, and are grateful for everything that people have done for us. We now have a Twin Cities-based support committee and are developing a national support network that we feel confident will help us through the coming months. For more information on the case and how to support us, or to donate, go to [Friends of the RNC 8].
We have been humbled by such an immense initial show of solidarity and are inspired to turn our attention back to the very issues that motivated us to organize against the RNC in the first place. What’s happening to us is part of a much broader and very serious problem. The fact is that we live in a police state- some people first realized this in the streets of St. Paul during the convention, but many others live with that reality their whole lives. People of color, poor and working class people, immigrants, are targeted and criminalized on a daily basis, and we understand what that context suggests about the repression the 8 of us face now. Because we are political organizers who have built solid relationships through our work, because we have various forms of privilege- some of us through our skin, some through our class, some through our education- and because we have the resources to invoke a national network of support, we are lucky, even as we are being targeted.
And so, while we ask for support in whatever form you are able to offer it, and while we need that support to stay free, we also ask that you think of our case as a late indicator of the oppressive climate in which we live. The best solidarity is to keep the struggle going, and we hope that supporting us can be a small part of broader movements for social change.
For better times and with love,
the RNC 8: Luce Guillen-Givins, Max Spector, Nathanael Secor, Eryn Timmer, Monica Bicking, Erik Oseland, Robert Czernik, Garrett Fitzgerald
Stop the 7-Eleven rip-off : Protest this Thursday!
Protest 4.30pm – 6.00pm Thursday October 2nd outside the 7-Eleven store at 37 Swanston Street City (Corner of Swanston & Flinders Lane in the CBD).
As our last report explained UNITE had decided to put a halt on all actions against 7-Eleven while they considered signing a ‘Charter of Workplace Rights’ for their staff.
Unfortunately 7-Eleven Head Office have still not signed the Charter and do not seem serious about fixing the massive problems that exist in their franchises.
The facts are that to this day hundreds of 7-Eleven workers across Australia are being severely underpaid. Some are still being paid as little as $8 per hour! From UNITE’s point of view this is totally unacceptable.
Given 7-Eleven’s lack of co-operation we have now been forced to recommence our actions starting this Thursday. This week’s action will take place in the busy Melbourne CBD during peak period.
Our aim will be to let 7-Eleven customers, and the general public, know about the dodgy employment practices that 7-Eleven is engaged in. We expect to get our message out to thousands of people and encourage all of our supporters to attend.
UNITE Secretary Anthony Main said “It’s disappointing that 7-Eleven Head Office have refused to make a commitment to start sticking to the law.
“The ‘Charter of Workplace Rights’ that UNITE has asked 7-Eleven to sign only outlines what staff should be paid according to the law, nothing more, nothing less.
“I think it says a lot when you have a company that has sales in excess of $1 billion and won’t agree to pay minimum wages and conditions.
“We know that there is no support in society for such low wages and poor conditions. The actions are now back in full swing. They will happen regularly until 7-Eleven sign the Charter and fix the issues” Anthony said.
7-Eleven Stores Pty Ltd is wholly owned in Australia by the Withers and Barlow families. Its first store opened in Oakleigh in August 1977; its first CBD store in August 1996. It will soon open its 400th. Its current Chairman is Russ Withers. Its current CEO is Warren Wilmot, who assumed this role in 2002. Both obviously believe that $8 per hour is a fair and decent wage — 7-Eleven is Australia’s 20th-largest private company (in terms of turnover) with 370 franchised stores turning over $1.3 billion. The company has 230 direct corporate employees and 4500 franchise employees.
In a recent interview (‘How happy is your company?’, Human Resources Magazine, May 2008), Wilmot opined that ‘you shouldn’t just talk to providers about their surveys, but get to their other customers to find out how they use it. “You have to get a product you can trust. Make sure that what it is measuring and how you use it are linked to the strategy of your own company,” he says, adding that he likes to keep his survey questions as ‘vanilla’ as possible so the results can be benchmarked with external organisations.’ “Both my grandfather and father were fair and honest men,” reckons Chairman Russ Withers. “They taught me to play everything with a straight bat and to never be duplicitous. This is very important in the franchise relationship which is based on mutual trust. Our books are open to all franchisees.”
Both Russ and Warren are believed to be on salaries slightly in excess of $8 per hour.
Sad news from Oaxaca, Mexico. On September 24, the body of Marcella Sali Grace, 20, a US citizen engaged in solidarity work in Mexico, and someone with a long history of activism, was found in a deserted cabin twenty minutes from the village of San Jose del Pacifico. Sali’s alleged killer, Omar Yoguez Singu, 32, has been identified and arrested in Mexico City, and transferred to Oaxaca. Apparently, “Singu was turned over to police on Wednesday in Mexico City by friends who first beat him up after he confessed to the crime”. Among other things, Sali “had lived for about a month with the family of a witness in the killing of Bradley Roland Will, a volunteer for Indymedia.org, Cruz said. Will was fatally shot in October 2006 in Oaxaca City while filming protests by activists demanding the ouster of the state’s governor”.
Activists were quick to place Sally’s murder in the context of rampant unchecked violence against women in Oaxaca. They note that aggressors are hardly ever punished for their crimes. “There is no justice in Oaxaca,” said a spokesperson for the Popular Indigenous Council of Oaxaca – Ricardo Flores Magon (CIPO-RFM).
Milan, Italy – For the past two weeks, groups of teenagers have mourned in front of “Shining,” a snack bar not far from Milan’s Central Station. Many leave flowers and cards. But some leave cookies and two euros, a provocative gesture referencing the killing of Abdul Guibre: the 19-year-old African-Italian youth who was allegedly beaten to death Sept. 14 by two shop owners for having stolen some cookies, worth a few euros.
This death comes on the heels of a recent wave of racially motivated attacks in Italy that are raising concerns about violence against minorities, and a potential backlash from those who feel they are unfairly treated as second-class citizens.
“This is the poisoned fruit of a process that began in the early 1990s, when the first boats of migrants came from Albania,” says Jean Leonard Touadi, a lawmaker in Parliament and an African-Italian born in Congo. “Since then, a syndrome of invasion, fueled by extremists, has been spreading in the broader public, even though until recently Italy [had] a lower migration rate than the rest of Europe.”
Tensions between Italians and immigrants have run high this year. On Aug. 18, the son of an Angolan diplomat was beaten in Rome by a neo-Nazi group. Earlier in the summer, Roma (Gypsy) camps were set on fire near Naples. Six African immigrants were killed in September in a small town in central Italy, though some reports say it was a Mafia killing.
“Unfortunately the life of someone who is perceived as different is not worth much these days” says Mr. Touadi, who adds he is deeply troubled by what he calls “a climate of growing xenophobia.”
…
Unmentioned in the CSM report — and seemingly unmentioned anywhere else on the CSM site — was the murder of Nicola Tommasoli on May 1, 2008. See:
I’m a fascist, says AC Milan star Christian Abbiati
John Hooper in Rome The Guardian
September 27 2008
One of Silvio Berlusconi‘s players at AC Milan has declared he is a fascist. Christian Abbiati, 31, an Italian international, said: “I am not ashamed to proclaim my political beliefs. I share [the] ideals of fascism, such as the fatherland and the values of the Catholic religion.”
The goalkeeper’s remarks, published today in Sportweek magazine, come amid debate over Italy’s fascist past and rightwing present under the leadership of AC Milan’s billionaire chairman.
The minority partner in Berlusconi’s parliamentary alliance, the Freedom People, is a party spun out of the country’s neo-fascist movement. Some members remain unabashed apologists for the dictatorship of Benito Mussolini.
The defence minister, Ignazio La Russa, sparked a row this month after he paid tribute to Italian soldiers who fought alongside German troops in the second world war. His comments came after the mayor of Rome, Gianno Alemanno, told a magazine he did not consider fascism an “absolute evil”. Berlusconi dodged a question on his own views, replying: “I think only of working to resolve the problems of the Italian people.”
Presumably, Abbiati will be playing for Lazio next season.
On anti-/racism in Italy, seeEveryOne: “EveryOne Group is an organization of people who operate outside any political wing or faction and who are committed to fighting discrimination and in particular the persecution of minority groups and in favour of human rights. It is important to emphasize this aspect of our group, because it allows the group to protect minorities even when party ideologies are transformed and phenomena like racism, xenophobia and homophobia take root – like diseases – where we would least expect it…”
He has been filmed in forests, carrying arms and wearing paramilitary fatigues in the company of banned German neo-Nazis. Islam, he says, is “the fascism of the 21st century”. He was photographed apparently giving a three-fingered neo-Nazi salute – though he says he was ordering three beers.
He mocks gay people; wants a ministry for the deportation of immigrants; says “Vienna must not become Istanbul”; hopes to repeal laws banning Nazi revivalism, and is pushing for a constitutional ban on the building of minarets. Heinz-Christian Strache, a former dental technician, is the new star of Austrian politics and the new poster boy of Europe’s extreme right…
evil : anarchy (in the uk)
On the opposite side of the political spectrum, and 100 years ago, The First War on Terror (BBC Radio 3, September 28, 2008 — for a limited time only); a fascinating account of fin de siècle London, moral and social panics, anarchism, and terrorism. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose:
Novelist Hari Kunzru explores how pulp fiction writers and great novelists got to grips with the UK’s first major ‘war on terror’ – against the Anarchists of Victorian and Edwardian times. These ‘scare novels’ responded to the Anarchists’ wish to abolish the State by depicting outlandish scenarios such as political assassinations and large-scale bombings.
He also explores the world of the real anarchists in London’s immigrant communities – most of whom were peaceful and cultured East End Jewish activists, trying to improve conditions in the garment trade – in contrast to these terrorists the novelists imagined and the popular press feared.
Bringing the programme up to date, Hari and literary scholars Laurence Davies and Deaglan O’Donghaile also briefly consider the modern response to 9/11, asking whether novels on terrorism ever get it right.
Two of the major novels discussed are Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent (1907) and G.K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare (1908).
Conrad’s novel was inspired by the (spectacularly failed) Greenwich Observatory bomb plot of 1894, in which the French anarchist Martial Bourdin (1868–1894) managed to blow himself up — but not the Observatory. The police later raided the Club Autonomie in London — a popular club for foreign anarchists, including Bourdin.
88 years later, on November 18, 1982, 22 year-old anarchist punk Neil Roberts attempted to blow up the Wanganui Computer Centre in Aotearoa / New Zealand, and lost his life in doing so. Neil’s final words, graffitied on a concrete wall opposite the Computer Centre, were also to be his epitaph: “We have maintained a silence closely resembling stupidity”. The Centre was eventually closed, in mid-2005.
For further disco see‘In Search of Terror’s Degree Zero’, Tom McCarthy, Strange Attractor, No.1, 2004; David Mulry, ‘Popular Accounts of the Greenwich Bombing and Conrad’s The Secret Agent‘, Rocky Mountain Review, Fall 2000 (PDF); Paul Avrich, ‘Conrad’s Anarchist Professor: An Undiscovered Source’, Drunken Boat, No.2, Autonomedia/Left Bank Books, 1994, pp.227–232.
The BBC doco also makes reference to the Wasall Anarchists, and their alleged bomb plot of 1892. In reality, the Anarchists were the subject of a gub’mint plot, orchestrated by Special Branch. Although the British Home Office and the Metropolitan Police attempted to conceal the evidence for over 80 years, recent research into police files has revealed that the plot was instigated by Auguste Coulon, an agent provocateur of Special Branch Inspector William Melville, who would go on to found what became MI5. John Quail:
The arrest, trial and sentencing of the Walsall Anarchists in 1892 deserve more attention than they have received from the historians of the left in Britain. From the point of view of the more liberal, there was a disconcertingly straightforward use of agents provocateur by the police. From the point of view of historians of the growth of institutions connected with the working-class movement, the existence of options for propaganda by deed and the reasons for the rejection of these options should have given more cause for thought. In any case, the circumstances were unusual enough for notice. As ex-Detective Sergeant McIntyre was to say, ‘Quite a sensation was caused at the time by the appearance of this new class of revolutionist. It is safe to say that no conspiracy of quite the same nature had been known in England during this century’…
The offence with which the prisoners were charged is one of the most dastardly and wicked which it is possible to conceive. Like treason it is aimed at the very heart of the State, but it is not designed to destroy the existing Government alone. It strikes at all Governments, and behind all Governments it strikes at those elementary social rights for the defence of which all forms and methods of civil rules exist. The crime of which the Walsall prisoners have been found guilty was no isolated act ( … ) Hate, envy, the lust of plunder, and the lust of bloodshed are stamped on every line of the Anarchist literature read at Walsall and on every word of the confessions made by RAVACHOL. ~ April 5, 1892
John Quail’s The Slow Burning Fuse: The lost history of the British Anarchists (Paladin Books, 1978) is the best (and one of the only) study of this period. Also of interest is Isabel Meredith’s A Girl Among the Anarchists: “Originally published in 1903, this is a cracking novel, on the turn of the century British anarchist movement, and the role of women therein. The narrator, Isabel Meredith is the pseudonym of Helen and Olivia Rossetti, daughters of William Michael Rossetti and nieces of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Their fin-de-siecle tenure as editors of the renowned British anarchist journal The Torch provided the experience that went into this entertaining and knowing novel. Includes an introduction by Jennifer Shaddock.” George Cores’ ‘Personal Recollections of the Anarchist Past’ (Kate Sharpley Library, 2000) — “Written in 1947 and then laid aside, these are recollections from the inside of the anarchist movement 1883-1939 by a forgotten veteran” — also provides an invaluable glimpse into this period of anarchist history.
On The Man Who Was Thursday, the Penguin edition (which features a Bonus! Introduction by Sir Kingsley Amis) describes it thus: “This hilarious extravaganza presumes the existence of a secret society of revolutionaries sworn to destroy the world. There are seven members of the Central Anarchist Council, who, for reasons of security, call themselves by the names of the days of the week – Sunday, Monday and so on. But events soon cast a doubt upon their real identities, for Thursday is not the passionate young poet he appears to be but a Scotland Yard detective. Who and what are the others? Chesterton unravels the fantasy in his own inventive and exuberant way and then uses this nightmare of paradox and surprise to probe the mysteries of human behaviour and belief.”
Police fury over decision to honour east London flats after cop-killer Daily Mirror
September 26, 2008
A housing association has named two tower blocks after the leader of a gang of police killers. Painter House and Peter House in Whitechapel, East London, have been dedicated to Peter Piaktow – known as Peter the Painter. His gang of Russian anarchists shot dead three officers in Whitechapel in 1911 as they investigated a break-in at a jewellers. The Metropolitan Police Federation said the decision by Tower Hamlets Community Housing was “disappointing.”
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?"
