Boundless plains to share…

Posted on May 8, 2008 by @ndy
    Update : Asylum seekers fall through the cracks. Margaret Simons writes:

    Five minutes after yesterday’s Crikey story about the Rudd Government’s rejection of asylum seekers was published, a client of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre in Melbourne was told that his application for ministerial intervention had been refused. He had come into the Centre to see his lawyer. He went downstairs and attempted suicide. An ambulance took him to hospital…

    After deadline yesterday the Minister’s office got back to us with a response. Read the whole media release here.

In Crikey!, Margaret Simons has reported that the KRudd Government “is being tougher and more ruthless with asylum seekers than the HoWARd Government”, based on an analysis “of decisions made by the new Minister for Immigration, Senator Chris Evans” by the rabble at the Asylum Seekers’ Resource Centre:

The analysis of the exercise of ministerial discretion shows that Evans has rejected 97.6 per cent of applications since coming to power – the highest rate of rejection since 2001.

The handling of applications for ministerial discretion has been sped up, with 41 rejections being issued in five weeks and other applicants told their cases have been “escalated” which on the current pattern is not good news for them.

Most of those rejected feared for their safety if returned to their countries of origin. Many have mental health problems and spouses and children in Australia from whom they will be separated if deported.

The analysis of the rejections is contained in a document distributed to volunteers by the Asylum Seekers’ Resource Centre, which is the leading aid and advocacy organisation for refugees in Australia. Read the whole document here.

In a way, this represents a return to form for the ALP (see also the apparently defunct group Labor4Refugees). The policy of mandatory detention of asylum seekers, for example, was introduced by the previous ALP Government in 1992, under then Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, Gerry Hand:

I believe it is crucial that all persons who come to Australia without prior authorisation not be released into the community. Their release would undermine the Government’s strategy for determining their refugee claims or entry claims. Indeed, I believe it is vital to Australia that this be prevented as far as possible. The Government is determined that a clear signal be sent that migration to Australia may not be achieved by simply arriving in this country and expecting to be allowed into the community.

Yeah: kill ’em first.

Like quite a number of his former colleagues, since retiring from Parliament in 1993, Gerry has managed to avoid joining the dole queue and carried on protecting Australia’s vital interests by going into business. Currently, Gerry is Chairman of Great Earth Limited, “an Australian Public Company based in Australia with a prime objective to advance projects into income generating investment entities”. In December 2007, Great Earth secured its “prime objective to advance projects into income generating investment entities” by purchasing two coal tenements in Monto and Proserpine, Queensland, for the measly sum of $100 million. In fact, Great Earth has made a terrific video about its activities, which has a very pleasant soundtrack:

In all likelihood, when he kicks his gold-and-diamond encrusted (working man’s) bucket, Gerry will be remembered not only for his profiteering from coal exports — and crying crocodile tears when he voted in support of Gulf War I — but also for his sterling efforts in protecting the Australian community from undesirable elements, especially those fleeing from the tyrannical regimes in the Middle East which his party — via its support for Gulf Wars I and II — did so much to reshape into the New World Order of Iraqi Freedom. For example, at the Woomera Detention Centre:

Since being bumped first into (1983) and then out of Parliament, Gerry has also managed to pursue his business interests outside of Australia, especially in East Timor and Indonesia. According to George Aditjondro, in 1996 “the Australian media publicised the close business partnership of Victorian Labour Left politician Gerry Hand, with the Indonesian Christmas Island casino baron, Robby Sumampouw. This Indonesian businessman has profited tremendously from his more than long association with General Benny Murdani and President Suharto’s youngest son, Tommy Suharto (Tony Wright, “How Labor’s Gerry Hand hit the jackpot in Jakarta,” Sydney Morning Herald, Dec 30, 1995; George Aditjondro, “Man with the right mates,” West Australian, Jan 3, 1996; David Jenkins, “Mr. Robby’s biggest bet,” Sydney Morning Herald, March 30, 1996; Lindsay Murdoch, “Mr Robby’s world,” The Melbourne Age, Feb 22, 1996). (On George Aditjondro, see GEORGE JUNUS ADITJONDRO: STANDING BY THE COUNTRY’S MARGINALIZED, Alpha Amirrachman, The Jakarta Post, January 9, 2007.) According to one record, Gerry still has his finger in the East Timorese pie, via Carrickmacross Holdings Pty. Ltd, a company of which he is also Chairman.

Speaking of money money money money money money money, ‘No productivity, no pay rises’ says Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan (Samantha Maiden, The Australian, May 6, 2008). Swan himself is entitled to a fairly reasonable salary: an annual allowance of $127,060, plus a bonus of 87.5% on the basis of his senior role as Treasurer, or a total of $238,237.50. Swan is also entitled to an ‘electorate allowance’ of $27,300, a ‘travel allowance’ and a very healthy superannuation scheme. Certainly, Peter Costello and John HoWARd are entitled to a rather good deal of money upon retirement. The maximum payment for the Age Pension, on the other hand, is $546.80 a fortnight, or the princely sum of $14,216.80 per annum.

In future, even this sum may be reduced, both via cost-cutting, but more importantly via inflation, even as the ALP undertakes a ‘third wave’ of neoliberal economic reform:

Australian Labor leaders plan “third wave” of free-market measures
Mike Head
wsws.org
April 3, 2008

At a Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting on March 26, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and the eight state and territory leaders, all from the Labor Party, formally adopted a sweeping agenda to implement a new “wave” of free-market measures. These measures will inevitably mean an intensification of attacks on jobs, wages, workplace conditions, safety rules and social services…

The Labor leaders also committed themselves to renew the National Competition Policy, which was adopted by the Keating government in 1992 to drive a so-called “second wave” of “reform”—featuring privatisations, outsourcing, “user pays” measures and public sector job-shedding. Labor’s “first wave”, in the 1980s, focussed on de-regulating finance, trade and working conditions to meet the demands of business, laying the basis for the greatest redistribution of social wealth in Australian history from the working people to the corporate elite.

I think they mean ‘working families’.

See also : Mark Aarons, ‘Labor’s ties that grind’, Sydney Morning Herald, March 1, 2008 | Tom Bramble and Rick Kuhn, ‘The transformation of the Australian Labor Party’, Joint Social Sciences Public Lecture, June 8, 2007, Australian National University [PDF]:

Membership

Voting is one thing. What of the party membership? Labor’s membership has been declining over a long period. In 1954, just before the DLP split, Labor had 75,000 individual members. By 2006, membership had fallen to 40,000 despite the doubling of the population. Recent efforts to stem the decline have not had any notable success. In 2000, the NSW branch, which claimed 21,500 members, launched a membership drive with a target of 50,000 by 2005. Instead, NSW Assistant Secretary Luke Foley wrote, the membership fell to 16,300.

The composition of the Party’s membership has also been undergoing long-term change. The most dramatic shift has been the decline in blue-collar membership who made up 46 per cent of the NSW ALP’s membership in 1961. By 1981 the figure had fallen to 21 per cent. For a period in the 1960s through to the 1980s, the decline in blue-collar workers was offset by an influx of higher level white-collar professionals, managers and administrators, whose share of membership of the NSW branch doubled in the two decades to 1981, from 14 to 30 per cent. The pattern in the Victorian Party was similar. Although these shifts were associated with parallel changes in the overall workforce, the changes in Labor membership were disproportionate. Despite a dramatic rise in the ratio of clerks, salespersons and personal service workers to the overall population, they were essentially static as a proportion of Party members in the NSW branch. The result was that by the late 1980s, ‘a professional [was] more than three times as likely as a manual worker, and five times more likely than a salesperson, personal service employee or clerk, to participate in the ALP’s most basic structures’.

Many of the upper white collar working class or new middle class members who joined the ALP during the 1960s and 1970s were won over less on the basis of identification with the working class than the Party’s support for a series of progressive causes: opposition to war in Vietnam, anti-racism, feminism, environmental protection etc. However, the Hawke and Keating Governments’ record in these areas in the 1980s and 1990s demoralised many of this cohort, leading to a significant loss of members.

In contrast, there have been two groups whose weight in the Party has grown. The first is the layer of Party and union functionaries, their personal supporters and aspirants to such posts. The second layer is retirees. Between the early 1960s and the 1980s, the proportion of retirees in the Party rose significantly and in 2006, the average age of members in the NSW branch was 60, according to NSW secretary, Mark Arbib. Although political parties always suffer from turnover, the rate of turnover in the ALP is now quite acute: one half of all new members fail to renew their membership after their first year, which suggests extensive branch stacking.

The decline in the ALP’s membership has affected its organisation on the ground. Where once Labor had a base of supporters in the bigger workplaces who could be relied upon to champion Labor’s cause, this layer has now vanished. Former NSW minister Rodney Cavalier estimated in 2005 that the NSW branch had only 1,000 active members outside the apparatus and ‘[t]he Labor Party has ceased to exist below. The nurturing of new members, once so vital in our growth, even more vital in passing on traditions of honour and service, is less likely than at any time in our history’. In 2005, Mark Latham estimated that the active membership was 7,500 nationally. John Button, previously a minister in the Hawke Government, reported in 2002 that whereas branch meetings in the big cities once attracted 40 or 50 members, they now drew fewer than a dozen, mainly politicians and employees (or aspiring employees) of the Party machine. Right-wing faction chief Senator Robert Ray confirmed this picture in 2006. ‘Once thriving branches in provincial towns all across Australia’, he said ‘are now reduced to a mere handful of members. Branch meetings are desultory, the Party is accused of being too hierarchical… ’ Many ALP branches are barely functioning or are torn apart by branch stacking.

Due to changing patterns of work and residence, many branches have been affected by the break-up of inner-city working class communities. Furthermore, with the arrival of television, market research and telephone polling, Labor leaders, so long as they have the funds, no longer need an active membership to get the word out—television commercials and polling take the place of town hall meetings and door to door canvassing by Party members. The ALP has, in the view of Mark Latham, become ‘a virtual party controlled by a handful of machine men’.

THE CANDIDATES FIND COMMON GROUND

“Full employment!
Slave labour and schemes!”
“An unemployed workforce
The capitalist’s dream!”
“But let’s keep Britain working
Either way we must keep Britain working”

“Conventional weapons
To kill people nicely!”
“Nuclear weapons
To keep the peace!”
“But weapons definitely
Either way we must defend ourselves”

“Nationalisation
With one big boss!”
“No, privatisation
With lots of little bosses!”
“But someone in control of course
Either way there must be someone giving orders”

A toast to democracy
The prison guard of this society
Sides in the voting game
Disappear into the same machine…

A toast!
To US bases and nuclear weapons
To stopping pickets pulling down fences
To British troops in Northern Ireland
To the wonderful victory in the Falklands
To the plastic bullet and the riot police
To the UDM and the TUC
To isolating gays and to law and order
To richer bosses and poorer workers
To longer hours and to less pay
To the courts (for those who get in our way)
To the beating of people who step out of line
To the use of troops to break a strike
To the expulsion of extremists
To political witch hunts
To repatriation and to benefit cuts
To peaceful settlements
And no strike agreements
To authority, to power, to governments

To the annual rise in the MP’s wage
To vested interests, to privilege
To the party who wins the next election
By definition a victory to capitalism!

Posted in !nataS, State / Politics | 1 Comment

More media on the murder of Nicola Tommasoli

Posted on May 7, 2008 by @ndy
    Update : VERONA: MAGISTRATE CONFIRMS ARREST OF 5 TOMMASOLI ATTACKERS

    (AGI) – Verona, 8 May – There has been confirmation of the arrest of the five youths accused of [having] punched and kicked Nicola Tommasoli to death on the evening of May Day in Verona.

    The investigatory interrogation took place, as expected, in Montorio prison following the hearing after Verona’s Investigating Magistrate, Sandro Sperandio, decided against granting house arrest to the youths, all aged between 19 and 20, because of the danger of a repetition of the offence or flight. The foursome: Raffaele Dalle Donne, Guglielmo Corsi, Federico Perini and Nicolo’ Veneri, exercised the right of no reply. Andrea Vesentini, on the other hand, spoke with the magistrate, giving his version of the events. Vesentini’s arrest was confirmed on the sole ground of avoiding a repetition of the offence. Vesentini, according to a statement by his legal representative, spoke of the fatal evening of May Day, maintaining that the beating arose from an insult directed at Guglielmo Corsi, one of the group of five. ‘Ti spacco la faccia’ (I’ll split your face open), was the phrase that precipitated the blows and it was apparently uttered by one of Tommasoli’s friend, the famed ‘codino’ (pigtail) mentioned in the witness statement (he had his hair gathered in a pony tail), addressed by Corsi who asked him for a cigarette. The brawl followed immediately, with an attempt by Vesentini to separate those involved. Then came Tommasoli’s fall to the ground and the flight of the group of five. A different version from the one given by Tommasoli’s friends, who spoke of an out and out act of unprovoked aggression. Another element which will weigh in any judgement on the five is represented by the results of the autopsy carried out yesterday morning on Tommasoli. First reports speak of a huge haemorrhage at the back of the head, and of some broken fingers, of bruising all over, especially on the back. Other examinations should follow with results in a matter of weeks. On the basis of the witness statements and the results of the autopsy, the judges will have to decide whether to make an accusation of voluntary homicide or manslaughter, or of intentional murder.

(Post-)Fascist Gianfranco Fini, leader of the National Alliance and the Lower House in the Italian Parliament, has got himself into a spot of bother by claiming that the recent burning of an Israeli flag at a protest in Turin is “much more serious” an offence than the beating to death of Nicola Tommasoli by a gang of boneheads in Verona. “Appearing on a television talk show, Mr Fini said the rise of neo nazi gangs was less disturbing than the activities of left-wing activists. “The anti-Israeli protests at Turin and the nazi attacks in Verona are not comparable. This neo-nazi group should be punished, but what happened in Turin is more serious.” A group of activists burned the Israeli flag during the 60th anniversary of the Jewish state last week.” Which, if you value pieces of cloth over and above the life of a human being, makes sense… I guess.

Bill Hicks:

I personally do not believe in burning the flag. It’s a personal belief, but I’ll tell you something, I think people are overreacting, oh, just a little bit. “Hey buddy, my daddy died for that flag.” Well, I bought mine. Sorry. You know they sell them at K-Mart for three bucks, you’re in, you’re out, brand new flag, no violence was necessary. “Hey buddy, my daddy died in the Korean war for that flag.” What a coincidence – my flag was made in Korea!

Obviously, there’s been a very large amount of coverage of Nicola’s murder in the Italian press, as well as the blogosphere, but my knowledge of Italian is even worse than my knowledge of Spanish, so unfortunately, it remains obscure to my eyes. Two articles from the English-language press:

Italian Rightist Sparks Outrage
Jeff Israely
Time
May 6, 2008

Ultimately, the issue that Europe’s extreme right is focused on now is not Israel or Jews, but immigrants. During Berlusconi’s last government, Fini was coauthor with rightist Northern League ally Umberto Bossi of a series of severe anti-immigration measures, including instant deportations and requirements that foreigners must have a fixed job to remain in the country. The next time fascist nostalgics or neo-Nazis attack a defenseless man on the street, there is a high probability it will be an immigrant. Such assaults in the past have indeed been aimed at immigrants. And that too is part of Mussolini’s legacy.

Note that Mussolini’s black-shirted Fascists originally welcomed Jews as members, and it was (arguably) only under pressure from Il Duce‘s Coalition partner Hitler that the tide turned for Jews in Italy, both within the Party, obviously, but also without (and especially upon the introduction of anti-Jewish laws in 1938). See : Gary Foley, ‘Italian Fascism and Race’, 2001; Ethan J. Hollander, ‘Italian Fascism and the Jews: Brown? or Shades of Gray?’ 2003 [PDF].

‘Climate of hate’ fears after neo-Nazi killing
Malcolm Moore
Daily Telegraph
May 6, 2008

The mayor of Verona, Flavio Tosi, is a member of the Northern League, a far-right anti-immigration party that swept almost a quarter of the seats in the region. The Northern League has repeatedly called for violence against immigrants and socialists. According to the Italian Intelligence and Internal Security office, there are 63 neo-Nazi or neo-fascist groups in the Veneto region. “This is the area with the most Nazis in the country, inspired by the British [boneheads] of the 1980s,” an agent told La Repubblica newspaper.

You pick on the weak
You’re only strong in groups
Can’t do shit on your own
You pick on those who are few
Right winged scum
You have no place in our scene
Right winged scum
We’ll teach you what skinhead really means

You’re the sickness of our generation
You’ve infested almost every nation
You’re the plague of our society
You’re our most hated enemy

Listen what we have to say: Good night white pride
Only what we have to say: Good night white pride

Good night, good night, good night, good night white pride
Good night, good night, good night, good night white pride

Posted in Anti-fascism, State / Politics, War on Terror | Leave a comment

banksy hearts ken

Posted on May 7, 2008 by @ndy

two reviews of a cans festival in piss street. london.

looking for radical art? try the south bank, not Banksy (shirley dent, guardian, may 6, 2008): “Banksy’s cans festival, bringing together 40 of the world’s best stencil artists, can’t compete with the 40-year-old posters in the hayward gallery” opines shirley, unfavourably comparing the pieces on display in piss street to an exhibition of posters produced in paris in may ’68. the paris thing is “supported by converse with additional support from the new york herald tribune and time out“.

    Apart from a lot of the dialectical jargon, which is just rubbish, there is much that is a bad case of “excuse me but didn’t Hegel say that?” The grandeur of the rhetoric shows up the bathos of the suggested “practice” (e.g. creating situations, whatever that may mean), while the “revolutionary project” itself seems to lack any clear goals.

    Time Out (April 4, 1975)

meanwhile, the question is asked: (telegraph, may 6, 2008) Banksy: the michelangelo of graffiti?. “richard dorment was disillusioned with street art’s biggest star, but a new show reveals Banksy as an artist with real talent”; bankable talent. “at a sotheby’s charity auction in new york in january, a Banksy image sprayed on top of a damien hirst spot painting fetched £950,000, a record for the artist.” locally, in recognition of the exchange rate, “a piece of melbourne street artwork by reclusive british artist Banksy has now gone under cover” (melbourne city council moves to protect graffiti artist Banksy’s work, herald sun, april 18, 2008).

    Situationism is a product of the student rebellion, a glorification of the spontaneous happenings which it is felt will spring out of the favoured role of the student within society. It picks up phrases, here from Marxism and there from anarchism. It has an affinity with Blanquism and, when it does, often parades as Maoism or a revised form of Marxism-Leninism — to the indignation of orthodox Maoists or other Marxist-Leninists. But the situationists were virtually non-existent between situations, and unlikely ever to get around to doing anything so positive as attacking a Cabinet Minister.

    Stuart Christie, The Christie File (1980)

dent again: “whether looking for icons to smash or to praise, it was the past that informed. in the brochure the political icon held aloft is stuart christie, the scottish anarchist who was a member of the angry brigade in the 1970s.”

maybe.

unlike christie, Banksy (#84 with a bullet) is less an anarchist than a labor party supporter, having apparently donated “sketch for essex road” to “red” ken livingstone to auction; it raised £195,000 for his mayoral campaign. (jamie reid and a range of other fabulous nobodies also donated their works.) Banksy’s financial support for ken’s failed campaign prompted some others to get out teh vote: “Banksy-esque images purportedly supporting ken livingstone’s mayoral campaign have sparked a whodunnit mystery after appearing on london walls overnight… one group of west country art students are claiming the spray-canned efforts as their work, created as a protest against Banksy’s donation.”

seven years ago, ken had a few things to say about may day, the same day last week he lost his throne to a tory.

Message to all protesters: don’t support the May Day action

“The problem with next month’s May Day Monopoly protests is that violence is not incidental”
Ken Livingstone, April 18, 2001

On 1 May this year, a demonstration will take place in London calling for: the cancellation of Third World debt and the eradication of poverty; a stop to the privatisation of the Tube; and an end to environmental pollution. I support all those objectives and so do many others. But I want to urge everyone who has the slightest sympathy with any of the stated objectives of the May Day Monopoly protesters not to attend this action on 1 May.

Quite apart from the actual illegality of what is proposed, the disruption that is intended and the intimidation that many innocent people will experience, the reason you should not go on these actions is because the organisers do not wish to convince the public of their objectives. Instead they want to carry out individual acts of defiance whose main impact will be to alienate the vast majority. In other words, they will set back the widely supported movements against environmental degradation, deregulation, debt and racism.

This kind of activity should be contrasted with the years of genuinely effective demonstrations which have sought to mobilise the majority of those who support a cause rather than alienate the public. London has a proud record of ensuring the rights of those who wish to protest to do so without interference or obstruction from the police. As the new authority responsible for Trafalgar Square, I will work to ensure that the square retains its landmark status as a home to such movements.

But the entire political approach of the organisers of May Day Monopoly has nothing to do with the mass demonstrations organised by the Anti-Apartheid Movement, CND or the Committee to Stop War in the Gulf. The problem with next month’s protests is that violence is not incidental. In contrast with the mass movements I have mentioned, no attempt has been made to organise the protests to minimise conflict with the police or to maximise peaceful participation. There is no central point of contact for the police to negotiate with and the protesters’ chosen image of masks and uniforms of boiler suits padded to protect them from the police is both provocative and deliberately designed to minimise participation from ordinary people.

The stickers produced to be used in Piccadilly Circus with the slogan “revolutionise your consumer rights & take the lot” are clearly aimed at smashing in shop fronts, as are the parts of the May Day Monopoly website which lists specific commercial targets in the West End. The hostility of the Monopoly organisers to the organised labour movement implies that they are unlikely to be worried by the concerns of shop workers about the targeting of their workplaces.

I know from my own experience last year that these protests are a tool against those who support peaceful protest or oppose Third World debt. Regardless of my frequently stated opposition to the protests, The Sun announced that “A vote for Ken is a vote for them”, next to a picture of a defaced Winston Churchill statue.

    Mr Matthews, who served with the Royal Marines in Bosnia and Croatia, justified his actions by telling court: “I thought that on a day when people all over the world were gathering to express their human rights and the right to freedom of speech, I would express a challenge to an icon of the British establishment.”

The secretive organisation of the May Day Monopoly protesters is a perfect example of élitism. The extent to which sympathetic members of the public are asked to participate is very much on the terms of the organisers. It means that those who turn up wanting to protest peacefully against globalisation or debt end up as protecting fodder for those who have already planned their actions. It therefore tends to be the innocent who are thrown ­ unprepared ­ into unnecessary confrontations with the police. If the protesters’ objectives are so benign, why do they hide behind masks?

As mayor of London, it is my duty to look after the interests of London as a whole. London’s economy has already been badly hit by the impact of foot-and-mouth on the tourist trade: turning major tourism and shopping areas into economic targets is simply not acceptable.

I have met the Commissioner of the Police for a full briefing on the planned May Day Monopoly events along with the chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority, Toby Harris. Both Toby and I will continue to be briefed in the run up to 1 May. I have asked the Metropolitan Police Commissioner to ensure London is safe on May Day. Anyone whose intention it is to engage in criminal activities should be arrested and charged without prevarication or unnecessary delay.

London should not have to tolerate any violence or abuse towards its citizens. That is why last week I called for the fascist National Front to be banned from marching through Bermondsey. On my inauguration last year, I said that my administration will be as intolerant of the racist police officer as it will of the anarchist who chooses to desecrate the Cenotaph. Under my mayoralty, there will never be a green light for a return to the bad old days of unaccountable policing. But on 1 May there will be zero tolerance of people who want to disrupt and vandalise London.

My message is clear:­ don’t attend the May Day Monopoly actions.

Posted in Anarchism, Art | Leave a comment

They break our legs / And we say “Thank you” when they offer us crutches

Posted on May 6, 2008 by @ndy

Yeah so NSW Labour Premier Morris Iemma is very keen to privatise the remains of the NSW state electricity system (a process begun some years ago). Anyway, Iemma’s plan is deeply unpopular among members of the NSW ALP, delegates of which at the NSW State conference last weekend voted overwhelmingly against it (by 702 votes to 107). Given that state conference has bugger-all control over state caucus, however, it looks like Iemma’s plan will be put into action sooner rather than later. Crazed anti-Communist scribbler Imre Salusinsky writes:

Iemma survives as opponents hold fire
Imre Salusinszky
The Australian
May 6, 2008

NSW Premier Morris Iemma has emerged unscathed from a crunch caucus meeting that discussed Saturday’s rejection of his electricity privatisation proposal by Labor’s state conference. Opponents of the plan within caucus have stayed their hand in advance of further negotiations scheduled for tomorrow between the Government and representatives of the party and the unions. Emerging from the caucus meeting, Mr Iemma declared he was “very happy” with the outcome of the meeting. “There were plenty of questions about the electricity package,” he said. “No one disputes the need for reform. Caucus is happy we’re moving ahead with consultation.” Mr Iemma’s proposal to sell the three state-owned electricity retailers and lease out the three state-owned generators was defeated by 702 votes to 107 at the conference, but he has declared he is pushing ahead to secure the state’s future electricity needs.

Meanwhile, former PM, amateur pig farmer and antique clock collector Paul Keating has come out of the closet to declare his support for Iemma’s privatisation push (Iemma deserved better than naked obstructionism, Sydney Morning Herald, May 6, 2008). Keating frames the debate in terms of the potential return on the sale — “$15 billion… [money] that could [be] spent on education, health and vital new infrastructure” — and the claim that state ownership of such utilities has been rendered obsolete by the magic of the marketplace; that is, “from the day the National Electricity Market, established by the Keating government, went into operation in 1995, there [has been] no economic or commercial reason why any state would retain state ownership of power generating capacity”.

The Iemma Government’s proposals represent a dramatic and important microeconomic reform to the infrastructure base of the largest state and hence to the nation. The NSW economy represents just on 40 per cent of national gross domestic product. This is why the federal Treasurer, Wayne Swan, said over the weekend he supported the reforms, because “they go to the heart of the COAG agenda”. Dead right. More than that, they go to the very kernel of the Rudd Government’s federal-state reform program.

Which is a very apt observation, and one also reflected in those of a (pro-)Communist scribbler at the wsws.org:

Australia: NSW Labor Premier prepares to privatise electricity despite party conference defeat
Mike Head
May 5, 2008

Rudd backs Iemma

Iemma made his declaration knowing he had the full backing of the federal Rudd government. On Saturday, as the conference opened, federal Treasurer Wayne Swan was featured in a front-page interview with the Australian’s editor at large, Paul Kelly, describing Iemma’s privatisation agenda as central to the federal government’s economic program. “I think they are important reforms,” Swan told Kelly. “They go to the heart of the (Council of Australian Governments) agenda. I support the reforms put by Premier Iemma.”

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd addressed the state conference on Sunday morning, just hours after the motion’s resounding defeat, but chose not to restate his own public support for Iemma’s plans. His position, however, was made crystal clear. After referring to the “disagreement” of the previous day, he said his message to the conference was: “The time has come to get on with the business of building a modern Australian nation capable of meeting the challenges of the twenty-first century.”

Rudd’s speech reiterated his pro-business agenda. It was littered with references to “removing the unnecessary regulatory burdens on business”, “microeconomic reform” and “reducing government spending”. “Australian business wants us to lead the nation towards a long term goal of a seamless national economy,” he declared.

There was not a murmur of dissent from any of the 800 delegates. As he made his entrance into the hall, Rudd was greeted with an ecstatic standing ovation, a chorus of cheers and prolonged hand-clapping, all to the sound of rock music. No one had any intention of mentioning Rudd’s previously stated “complete support” for Iemma’s sell-off plan. Not a single delegate wore one of the yellow anti-privatisation tee-shirts that had been on display all over the conference floor the day before.

Ludicrous efforts were made throughout the conference to depict the privatisation plan as the brainchild of one man—state Treasurer Michael Costa, and his overriding arrogance. While Costa has certainly played a key role, he has not been alone. Rudd, Iemma and the entire federal and state party leadership are preoccupied with carrying through the NSW power sell-off as a signal to the media and corporate establishment that the Rudd government’s wider privatisation, “public-private partnerships” and “economic reform” agenda will be implemented in full.

…

The Rudd government’s new Infrastructure Australia agency is expected to lay the basis for highly-lucrative private investment and “partnerships” in public infrastructure and government services nationally, including electricity and gas, water, hospitals, schools and toll roads. In his conference speech, Rudd listed Infrastructure Australia as one of his government’s highest priorities.

The record internationally has been that the insistence on short-term profits leads to job destruction, price hikes, service breakdowns and environmental problems. In the neighbouring state of Victoria, where the electricity industry was sold off a decade ago, average annual power bills have increased from $945 to $1,106, while the number of jobs fell from 27,000 to 12,000 before privatisation, and to 7,000 afterwards. In another neighbouring state, Queensland, power bills are expected to have risen by nearly 20 percent by July, following the introduction of full retail competition last year.

The most notorious experience is that of California, where large corporations such as Enron literally sabotaged the power grid to drive up prices and reap massive profits, stripping an estimated $10 billion from the state’s coffers.

NB. Keating is International Chairman of Lazard Carnegie Wylie, the financial company which has recommended to the NSW Government the privatisation of the state’s electricity system. According to one report (Millions in power sale for advisers, Jacob Saulwick and Andrew West, The Sydney Morning Herald, January 12, 2008), “AN A-LIST of international investment banks, commercial law firms and accounting practices could reap up to $300 million from the privatisation of the state’s electricity industry.”

As for Enron:

Kenneth Lee “Ken” Lay (April 15, 1942 – July 5, 2006) was an American businessman, best known for his role in the widely-reported corruption scandal that led to the downfall of Enron Corporation. Lay and Enron became synonymous with corporate abuse and accounting fraud when the scandal broke in 2001. Lay was the CEO and chairman of Enron from 1986 until his resignation on January 23, 2002, except for a few months in 2001 when he was chairman and Jeffrey Skilling was CEO.

Jeffrey Keith “Jeff” Skilling (born November 25, 1953) was the CEO of Enron Corporation in 2001. He was convicted in 2006 of multiple federal felony charges relating to Enron’s financial collapse, and is currently serving a 24-year, 4-month prison sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution, Waseca in Waseca, Minnesota.

Andrew Stuart Fastow (born December 22, 1961) was the chief financial officer of Enron Corporation until the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission opened an investigation into his conduct in 2001. Fastow was one of the key figures behind the complex web of off-balance-sheet special purpose entities (limited partnerships which Enron controlled) used to conceal their massive losses. He is currently serving a 6 year prison sentence for charges related to this conduct.

And the winner is… Lu Pi!

    Lu Pi’s Rule

    Lu Pi’s rule is named after Lu Pi, who worked at the infamously corrupt Enron but cashed out before everything went to hell. At the time the film The Smartest Guys in The Room was made, he was not dead like Cliff Baxter (or, now, Ken Lay) or in jail like Jeff Skilling. He was the second-largest landowner in Colorado. Lu Pi has not cured cancer or come up with a Grand Unified Theory for Physics, or even figured out a way to make software suck less, but it’s safe to say he’s smarter than the titular Smartest Guys In The Room.

    So Lu Pi’s rule is: If you’re the smartest guy in the room, in all likelihood it’s because the smarter people have already left.

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005):

    See also : The Trillion Dollar War blog | Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, Barbara Ehrenreich, 2001 | Myths of the market, John Quiggin, November 11, 2002: review of Thomas Frank, One Market Under God, Vintage, 2001; William Baumol, The Free-Market Innovation Machine: Analyzing the Growth Miracle of Capitalism, Princeton University Press, 2002

    Why settle for what we’re shown
    When there is so much more?
    Sometimes the Book of Law
    Is only half the story

    Means and ends:
    Deciding where to draw the line
    Loss of work in Sellafield homes
    Or the threat of cancers yet to come?

    The choice is obvious:
    There is no choice
    Only the option of looking outside
    This narrow definition of
    “What you see is all there will ever be”

    There comes a time – that time is now –
    When every second, every day
    When every action, every thought
    Will tell the world how you cast your vote
    They break our legs
    And we say “Thank you” when they offer us crutches

    Tired of mild reform
    Sick of hand-me-downs
    We topple all the theories to the ground:
    All real change
    Must come from below
    Our bosses must live in fear
    Of the factory floor
    And when they smile
    And they ask for my support,
    I’ll give them these words
    And a bloody nose:
    You don’t help your enemy
    When you’re at war

    There are moments in all our lives
    Tiny sparks still deep inside
    When a new-born baby cries
    When you’re watching clouds in a summer sky
    The first time you walked out on strike
    Love and sex and holding tight
    Things that can’t be bought
    By promises and votes

    Each angry word
    Every cynical put-down
    Every song is carefully born
    From a hope of something better to come

    All jumbled-up
    Love and hate and love
    Each prompted by the other:
    For the cause of peace we have to go to war

    Refusing to sleep
    Whilst there’s world to win
    Yet happy to dream
    Dreams make the plans to change this world

    Organise!
    Here’s the rest of our lives!

    …A tiny sparks still deep inside

    We can and will run the factories and mills
    We can and will educate ourselves
    We can and will work the fields
    We can and will police ourselves
    We can and will create and build

    Organise!
    Here’s the rest of our lives!

    ~ “Here’s the Rest of Your Life”, Never Mind The Ballots, Chumbawamba (Agitprop Records, PROP 2, 1987)

    Posted in State / Politics | Leave a comment

    Nicola Tommasoli: A Death in Verona

    Posted on May 6, 2008 by @ndy

    Five held for Italy gang killing
    BBC
    May 6, 2008

    Italian police have arrested the last of five suspects accused of beating a man to death in the city of Verona because he refused them a cigarette. Police say the suspects have links to a far-right [bonehead] group. The victim, 29-year-old Nicola Tommasoli, has been declared clinically dead. He had been in a coma since the attack in the northern city on 1 May. Two of the gang had fled to London, but were arrested when they returned on Monday, a day after the other arrests. The attack happened in the centre of Verona, whose mayor Flavio Tosi belongs to the right-wing, anti-immigration Northern League. Mayor Tosi dismissed any far-right motive for the crime. “Verona is not a city of neo-Fascists and it does not deserve this shameful label because of the actions of a few hooligans,” he said. The five are believed to be neo-Nazi hard core fans of the local football team, Hellas Verona.

    See also : The Forgotten Scandal of Serie A, Satish Sekar, empower-sport-magazine.

    In Italy, following closely on the heels of the Corrupt Knight’s glorious victory and Gianni Alemanno’s triumphant march on Rome, comes the murder of 29-year-old designer, Nicola Tommasoli, in Verona, beaten to death by a gang of boneheads. The assault on Tommasoli follows previous assaults on the Circolo di cultura omosessuale Mario Mieli in the San Paolo neighbourhood of Rome by a fascist squad — shouting “fucking poofs!” and praising Mussolini — who damaged the club’s entrance while activists were meeting in an upstairs room, and another on an anti-fascist near the “Cannizzaro” school, while he was posting bills for the anti-fascist demonstration of April 25. (To his eternal credit, upon his victory Alemanno urged supporters to avoid “excesses” after a small group gave him the right-armed Roman salute associated with fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and chanted Duce! (leader), as Mussolini’s followers called him. Bit embarrassing, really.)

    The life, times, and possible crimes of the billionaire Berlusconi are relatively well-known; Alemanno is a leader of the National Alliance, an Italian ‘post-fascist’ party (the NA formed in 1993). Formerly, he was a member of the fascist Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI), which included elements of Mussolini’s Fascist Party, and was established in 1946 by the remnants of the Salò Republic, immortalised by Pier Paolo Pasolini in Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma (‘Salò or the 120 Days of Sodom’). The film, incidentally, is banned (that is, refused classification) in Australia, and has been since 1998. Alemanno is also married to Isabella Rauti, the daughter of far-right activist Pino Rauti (a former member of the MSI and also the fascist terrorist groupuscule Ordine Nuovo (New Order)), and wears a Celtic cross, which in Australia, Italy and elsewhere is recognised as a symbol of the far right — though he of course insists it is a ‘religious symbol’, bless his little (white) cotton socks.

    Peter Popham, Italian fascism is once again on the rise, The Independent, May 6, 2008:

    Guido Papalia, the public prosecutor of Verona who is investigating the attack on Tommasoli, explained it like this. “There is a way of thinking which is very widespread these days, which rejects what is different, those who don’t dress like us, don’t eat like us, don’t speak with our accent, in defence of a system that they simply maintain is better than that of others and that therefore must be defended with violence.”

    Rejecting what is different: that primitive reflex was at the source of the anti-Semitism of the Nazis, and also explains the electoral success of the Northern League in northern Italy over the past year. The League’s first fight was against the corruption of central government in Rome: it demanded secession. But when that demand began to look like a fantasy, it cast around for new causes, alighting finally and profitably on local chauvinism.

    The Northern League mayors of the Veneto, smooth, professional men in comfortable offices, toss out their simple, excluding ideas: foreigners can live here only if they have a legitimate job, a home and an adequate income. Illegal immigrants should be excluded from schools and universities, their children from day-care centres. Veils should be banned by law. No mosques permitted within the city boundaries. Only those with excellent Italian and close familiarity with the constitution should be eligible for citizenship. Immigrants, including those from within the EU, should be repatriated en masse if they commit offences. Gypsy camps to be torn down.

    Walter Veltroni, the former mayor of Rome and now head of the Democratic Party which took a whipping from Silvio Berlusconi at the general election, spelled out the link between the men in suits and the men in boots: “There are lots of gangs like this and they are much more dangerous in a cultural and political climate in which principles of intolerance and hatred towards the weakest are affirmed…”

    Yet Mr Veltroni has much to answer for. It was his centre-left regime in Rome which ran the capital for the past 15 years and whose skewed priorities made the right’s triumph possible. Mr Veltroni and his predecessor Francesco Rutelli – the centre-left’s mayoral candidate beaten last week by Mr Alemanno – ran the city for the benefit of the post-communist intelligentsia, who lapped up the endless film and art and music events and believed it when Mr Veltroni told them that “Rome is the locomotive of Italy”, and that culture and tourism were the locomotive’s fuel.

    But meanwhile the majority of the city’s population were shut out of the loop. They lived outside the city’s exquisite centre, in benighted and desperately ugly dormitory suburbs with pathetic transport links, scarce policing, negligent local authorities and every indication of official contempt. And those nightmare suburbs continue to multiply. So now the Romans have risen up and thrown the champagne communists out. And the cry is out with the gypsies, in with the police; out with the 20,000 foreigners who have committed crimes; restore the city to those who rightly possess it. The crude and simple appeal of fascism has always been to blood and soil, and so it remains today…

    Hmmm, maybe. Certainly, the ‘left’ has done a great deal to pave the way for the ‘right’, and similar political evolutions appear not just in Italy but England and also Australia. And the ability of yuppie scum — the “smooth, professional men in comfortable offices” — to successfully pose as saviours of the working class depends in part on the destruction of radical working class cultures and institutions, something which social democracy has always aimed at achieving… but I think I’ll blog about that in a separate entry.

    Posted in Anti-fascism | 2 Comments

    Solidarity with Dave Kerin

    Posted on May 6, 2008 by @ndy

    This message brought to you by the letters S – O – L – I – D – A – R – I – T and Y.

    Dear Supporters

    1. Union Solidarity: Extraordinary Meeting.
    2. Union Solidarity Coordinator faces 6 months jail.

    1. Union Solidarity will hold an extraordinary meeting to discuss the situation facing Dave Kerin.

    6pm Wednesday
    May 7
    Trades Hall (follow the signs to meeting room)
    Lygon St
    Carlton
    (All welcome)

    2. Union Solidarity Coordinator faces 6 months jail.

    Union Solidarity Coordinator Dave Kerin is now facing up to 6 months jail for supporting striking workers at Boeing.

    The Australian Workplace Ombudsman has issued Dave with a “Notice to produce documents” in relation to the recent strike at Boeing. Dave is being asked to supply a government agency with all information and documents concerning Union Solidarity, the AMWU and rank & file members by May 8. Basically Dave is being asked to “rat”: he won’t.

    Union Solidarity will not comply with laws and government agencies whose sole purpose is to prevent workers having the ability to strike and organise. In the last election the Australian people voted overwhelmingly to get rid of anti-union laws. Union Solidarity operates within the spirit of that intention!

    We are asking you to indicate your public support for Dave Kerin and Union Solidarity.

    Please go this link.

    Indicate your public support for Dave Kerin and Union Solidarity. At a later date we will publish the names (but not phone numbers) to show the Workplace Ombudsman how much support Dave Kerin has within the movement.

    Messages of support for Dave Kerin can be sent to:

    defenddave[at]unionsolidarity[dot]org

    Yours in Solidarity,

    Union Solidarity.

    Posted in State / Politics | 4 Comments

    G20 : Appeal / riot grrl

    Posted on May 6, 2008 by @ndy

    Appeal over G20 jail time
    Herald Sun
    May 3, 2008

    A PROTESTER jailed over his role in Melbourne’s violent G20 riots in 2006 has won the right to appeal against his sentence. Akin Sari, 29, of no fixed address, was jailed in the Victorian County Court in March for his role at the Group of 20 nations summit. He was among a group of demonstrators who stormed a city office, attacked a police brawler van and hurled rocks, bins and milk crates at police. Yesterday, Court of Appeal judge Justice Frank Vincent granted Sari leave to appeal against his 28-month jail term, which carried a minimum 14 months. Sari’s legal team argued his jail term was manifestly excessive and his punishment was greater than that of other G20 protesters.

    Riot girl still on payroll
    Sunday Herald Sun
    Liam Houlihan
    May 4, 2008

    A LEGAL Aid-employed G20 hooligan is allowed to continue her taxpayer-funded job because she has promised to behave. Julia Dehm was convicted of rioting, recklessly causing injury and intentionally damaging property for her actions during the violent anti-G20 protests that left several police hurt. In a move that has angered police, Ms Dehm has been cleared to continue her $35,500 publicly funded traineeship to become a lawyer. Victoria Legal Aid head Tony Parsons said there were several reasons Ms Dehm was allowed to continue. “Firstly, while she has been found guilty and been punished for a serious offence, her criminal behaviour was not the kind of conduct that would automatically exclude her from the legal profession (such as) an offence involving dishonesty,” Mr Parsons said. “Secondly, she has given me a solemn undertaking that while employed at VLA she will scrupulously avoid any situation which might bring her into conflict with the law. Thirdly, she has been punished for her offence by the courts. It is not VLA’s role to impose an additional punishment on her.” Police are angry at what they see as blatant hypocrisy where criminal activists are seemingly treated with leniency while wounded officers are hung out to dry. Police Association secretary Paul Mullett said it appeared to be double standards for a convicted criminal to be on the public payroll while injured police struggled for compensation. “If it’s good enough for a convicted G20 protester to remain on the public payroll then it is certainly good enough for our member, Sen-Constable Kim Dixon, who was badly injured at the hands of these protesters, to receive fair and reasonable compensation for the serious harm they caused her,” Sen-Sgt Mullett said.

    (Q. When did Dixon’s case of tennis elbow first emerge, I wonder? And was it, in fact, prior to the protest?)

    Posted in State / Politics | 3 Comments

    “But I’m NOT a Nazi!” // Nicola Tommasoli

    Posted on May 6, 2008 by @ndy

    Welf Herfurth writes a letter to Crikey!, April 22, 2008: Re. “Torch protest: who’ll be there, from Amway up”.

    As a Member of the National Anarchists, and a subscriber to Crikey for many years, I am disappointed that Crikey has not spent more time evaluating their articles by reactionaries like Cam Smith, who was quick to slander the Nationalist Anarchists, whilst at the same time over-looking the Nationalist implications of the Tibetan struggle. One is left with no other conclusion that a double standard exists for those fighting for freedom and self-determination is a struggle that those of European heritage have no right to exercise. The only thing Smith managed to correctly assess in his article about the ‘National Anarchists’ is that we are indeed planning on making an appearance at the Torch Relay in Canberra, in support of the Tibetan struggle for independence.

    “[The] charter of human rights (guaranteed by international law), says that indigenous populations have the right to resist colonisation and immigration. So the Tibetans are justified – legally – in doing what they do. So are we in the West: after all, we are being colonised: the massive flood of immigration in Europe, North America, Australia, is neo-colonialism.” From the New Right Website – Tibet and the Lessons for the West

    Every other comment is slanderous deceitful rubbish, used for intellectual repression of ideas that do not support Smith’s cultural Marxism. The New Right / National Anarchists are about freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, and the right of national, ethnic self-determination for all peoples. I find it paradoxical that someone who preaches tolerance, diversity and racial harmony would use a racial epithet to criticise those he considers Nazis. The Australian people are intelligent enough to recognise Mr Smith’s hypocrisy. The National Anarchists are not Nazis, nor do we support Nazism, or supremacy of any race towards another, including Zionism. I cannot stress highly enough; violent racist action is as far from National Anarchist ideology as you could possibly be. For further information regarding the National Anarchists and the New Right, please have a look at our website. I would recommend Smith do so before writing any other articles about the New Right/National Anarchists.

    Honorary Member of the Cultural Marxist Association, Advertising Dude, Anti-Racist Activist and THE BEST JOURNALIST IN THE WORLD!, Cam Smith writes a letter to @ndy!, May 6, 2008: Re. Welf’s letter.

    Oh my stars and whiskers! I apologise profusely for upsetting Herr Herfurth and his kameraden with my accurate description of their political leanings. In future, I’ll try and employ some of the pure Aryan disingenuity that he has displayed so well here – it just looks so damn tasty. The fact is, the vast majority of the membership of the ‘National Anarchists’ in Australia have been members of, or currently are members of, neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups. Herfurth himself, even while he today attempts to disassociates himself publicly from the neo-Nazi movement, remains a senior figure within the local branch of Blood & Honour, an openly neo-Nazi group which is banned as a terrorist organisation in his native Germany. In his youth he was a member of the German NPD (neo-Nazis too, if you’d believe it!), and since coming to Australia he has addressed the Australian League Of Rights (holocaust deniers, if you’d believe it!) on a number of occasions.

    As regards to the peaceable nature of the Australian ‘National Anarchists,’ I have had a number of conversations with members of his group in which they have bragged about acts of racial violence. Before they are punished too harshly for their loose lips, I should note that they may well have been under the impression that I was somebody else. I apologise for misleading them so. I have also been informed, by very reliable sources, that some members of NA have participated in acts of violence against members of the LGBT community. As they say in the classics, you are a liar liar whose pants are on fire, Herr Herfurth!

    For more information on the links between ‘National Anarchism’ and neo-fascism, this analysis of the speakers at ‘National Anarchist’ events in the U.K. is particularly illuminating. (Quite a few neo-Nazis and holocaust deniers in there, if you’d believe it!) An essay by British historian Graham Macklin, ‘Co-opting the counter culture: Troy Southgate and the National Revolutionary Faction’ (PDF) provides a detailed account of the evolution of ‘National Anarchism’ and its principal architect, Troy Southgate, a former member of the British National Front (would you believe they were a neo-Nazi group? Amazing!)

    On a more serious note:

    Neo-Nazi attack puts spotlight on Italian militants
    May 5, 2008

    ROME, May 5 (Reuters) – A neo-Nazi attack in Verona that put a young man in a coma has thrown the spotlight on political militancy in Italy, prompting the opposition to question whether a right-wing sweep in April elections is feeding a climate of intolerance.

    The victim, 29-year-old Nicola Tommasoli, appeared to be near death after being savagely beaten on May 1 by a group of youths identified by police as neo-Nazi soccer hooligans.

    The beating was condemned across the political spectrum; police have so far ruled out any political motive for what appears to be an isolated act of violence.

    Still, Italy’s centre-left portrayed it as a sign a growing intolerance in a country where fears about crime — particularly by immigrants — contributed to their resounding defeat by the right in last month’s national and municipal elections.

    The incident has put right-wingers on the defensive over the suggestion that support by militants helped them to win the April elections, including the mayorship of Rome.

    “The responsibility lies with right-wing populists,” said Paolo Ferrero, a leftist minister in the caretaker government expected to step down later this week.

    He accused the far right of creating “scapegoats” for Italy’s social problems that “brings in votes in a climate of insecurity, but also sows a long trail of hate”.

    The defeated centre-left candidate for prime minister, Walter Veltroni, said: “We are faced with a neo-fascist-style aggression that cannot and should not be underestimated”.

    In an informal poll by one television station, 51 percent of respondents said they feared the Verona attack could herald the start of a new wave of violent intolerance.

    CITY OF LOVE?

    The mayor of Verona, from the anti-immigrant Northern League which backed Silvio Berlusconi as premier, rejected any link between his party and Tommasoli’s assailants. “There are millions of people that voted for us. It could be that one of them is a criminal,” Tosi, who is cracking down on illegal immigrants in Verona, a northern Italian city made famous by Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”.

    But Tosi is not the only right-wing politician who had to distance himself from far-right elements.

    Rome’s new Mayor Gianni Alemanno urged supporters to avoid “excesses” after a small group gave him the right-armed Roman salute associated with fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and chanted “Duce!” (leader), as Mussolini’s followers called him.

    Alemanno, whose National Alliance is the successor to the post-war neo-fascists but is trying to become a mainstream conservative party, complained that the left tried to depict him as a fascist and anti-Semite during the campaign.

    “We must condemn any form of ideological extremism regardless of where it comes from,” said Alemanno as he visited monuments in Rome to Jewish victims of Nazi occupation, Italian wartime resistance heroes and Rome’s synagogue.

    “There are extremist fringes on the far right as well as the far left, but they are more an expression of urban marginalisation than actual politics.”

    During the mayoral race, Alemanno came under attack for wearing a Celtic cross round his neck — a symbol of the far right in Italy comparable to the Nazi swastika. (Editing by Ralph Boulton)

    According to another source, Tommasoli has died:

    VERONA: ORGANS OF ASSAULTED YOUTH WILL BE DONATED
    (AGI) – Rome, May 5 – The parents of Nicola Tommasoli expressed the wish to donate the young man’s tissues and organs.

    Tommasoli died as a result of a savage assault in Verona on April 30. The announcement was made by the management of Verona’s hospital. His remains are being examined to ensure compatibility with donation. In such event clinical procedures to extract his tissues and organs will commence tonight. The youth was declared dead today at 6 pm following the mandatory 6 hour period set that follows death. Upon arrival in the intensive care unit of the ‘Ospedale Borgo Trento’ the conditions of Tommasoli were already critical. He had suffered blows to the head and had a brain haemorrhage.

    Neo-Nazi killing puts spotlight on Italian militants, Phil Stewart / Reuters, May 5, 2008

    Posted in !nataS, Anti-fascism, Media | Leave a comment

    No issue is single just because they say you’re paranoid

    Posted on May 5, 2008 by @ndy

    As is the nature of teh Interwebs, one thing has lead to another. In this case, police spying on anti-Olympics campaigners in Canada to Australia’s own Maxwell Smarts. Below : Protestors face off with RCMP in order to protect Eagleridge Bluffs. Note that in January 2007, “People across the province were shocked by the 14 day jail sentence handed down to 71 year old native Elder Harriet Nahanee for peacefully protesting while inside an injunction zone at Eagleridge Bluffs. Harriet served 9 days in prison at a maximum security pre-trial facility. She had filed an appeal, but became gravely ill and died shortly after being released from prison.”

    Change in activists’ tactics poses serious threat to 2010 Games: analyst
    The Canadian Press

    VANCOUVER — Changing tactics by Canadian activists pose a serious threat to security at the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver, security analysts say.

    The usually fragmented, single-issue groups are converging and organizing in ways never [sic] seen before in Canada, said Tom Quiggan, a former security consultant with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

    Where there’s usually a lull in protest activity in the years leading up to mega-events like the Olympics, the last year has seen at least 20 violent acts directly connected to the 2010 Games.

    “I’m not aware of, nor have I seen in the past, this kind of organization that’s that far advanced this far ahead of the actual event,” Quiggan said.

    “There is some commonality of thinking here between anarchist groups, social activists groups that happen to have a violent [sic] agenda and then I see native groups. When you see that kind of convergence coming up, it makes you a little nervous.”

    As does any prospect of any real challenge, however limited, to entrenched power and privilege. Such challenges also provide a market for private security firms, subject to even less, albeit largely theoretical, legal constraint than state agencies. One of the major advantages stemming from the use of private agencies, in other words, is their not being subject to the token forms of accountability provided by government oversight.

    (In Australia, one of the more notorious examples of such government action occurred on March 15, 1973, when then Attorney-General Lionel Murphy authorised a raid on the Melbourne headquarters of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation. Part of the impetus for the raid was ASIO’s refusal to disclose the extent of its support for local Croatian terrorists/freedom fighters, the Ustasha. See also : Jenny Hocking, ‘The State and Terror in the New Era’, Arena magazine, No.56, December 2001–January 2002.)

    The article continues:

    “One private security company who has worked with [Royal Bank of Canada, a major sponsor] said company officials are well aware of the ongoing threats and are taking extra precautions as a result. “Anti-Olympic activists are taking a page from the protest efforts of animal rights groups, said Michel Juneau Katsuya, a former Canadian Security Intelligence Service agent who now runs a private intelligence firm” (Katsuya is President and CEO of The Northgate Group).

    Security officials need to be a step ahead of all of them, said Quiggan.

    Direct monitoring of these groups is essential to avert potential disaster, he said, and it appears right now that the security infrastructure in Canada is taking its time putting in place preventative measures to protect the Games.

    Quiggan said the appointment in October of Ward Elcock, the former director of CSIS, to the post of head of Olympic Security, was a sign that things weren’t going well and someone was needed to start moving plans along.

    “Two years before, a year-and-a-half before, you shouldn’t be planning, you should be doing,” he said.

    “You should have sources in the field, you should have agents in the field.”

    But Juneau Katsuya said its likely surveillance is already being carried out on activist groups and though the planning might not be obvious, it’s definitely underway.

    The challenge, he said, comes from finding a balance.

    “More security increases the budget, rather than better security,” he said.

    “Better security doesn’t equal automatically more money spent.”

    [David Cunningham, spokesperson for the Anti-Poverty Committee] said the change in tactics are a direct response to heavier policing and people are drawn to subversive action out of a feeling that disruption is the only thing that works to effect change.

    Note that in August last year, Québec police employed a number of its members to act as agent provocateurs at a protest rally in Montreal. Police also infiltrated previous protests, including an anti-G20 rally in 2003, and an anti-APEC protest in 1997.

    ASIO

    In Australia, ASIO has been subject to two major reviews: the first from 1974–1977, overseen by Justice Robert Hope. Not unexpectedly, it confirmed the need for a domestic spy agency, while making a series of recommendations intended to render its activities more efficient. The following year, 1978, ASIO was implicated in the Hilton bombing, prompting another review (The Protective Security Review, 1978-79), again overseen by Hope. A third review by Hope was commissioned in 1983, the Royal Commission on Australian Security and Intelligence Agencies, 1983-1984. A subsequent review in 1992, following the end of the Cold War — and therefore the extinguishment of much of the rationale for the Organisation’s existence — recommended a cut of 60 staff and a $3.81 million budget decrease. Following the 9/11 attacks, and subsequent declaration of a War on Terror by George II’s regime, the HoWARd Government oversaw a massive expansion in ASIO’s powers and budget. “We are now fighting a war against terrorism. And in this new war, our safety and security depend almost exclusively on the quality, timeliness and accuracy of our intelligence. Intelligence is no longer a contributing factor – it is the defining and central factor that contributes to military success.” ~ Attorney-General, The Hon Philip Ruddock Opening Address to the Annual Conference, Australian Institute of Professional Intelligence Officers, 2002.

    It is not possible to find an exact figure for the increased expenditure on intelligence and security by the Government since 11 September 2001, as intelligence and security responsibilities and activities fall under many categories and agencies. There is, however, no doubt that the Australian intelligence community is experiencing its most significant period of expansion since the Second World War…

    ASIO’s appropriation for 2002-2003 was $85.675m. For 2003-04, this appropriation increased to $95.236m…

    Since the first review in 2002, the Parliament has passed a large volume of new legislation that affects the functions and powers of Australia’s intelligence and security agencies. These laws include:

    * new terrorism offences incorporated in the Commonwealth Criminal Code Act 1995, including provisions for the listing of terrorist organisations;
    * the Suppression for the Financing of Terrorism Act 2002;
    * new questioning and detention powers in the ASIO Act 1979;
    * amendments to the Intelligence Services Act 2001 to authorise ASIS officers to carry and use firearms; and
    * new assumed identities provisions in the Crimes Act 1914…

    In its submission ASIO states that “(r)ecruitment remains one of the agency’s highest priorities”. At one of its lowest staffing levels in 1998, the average staffing level fell to 488. As of February 2004, ASIO’s staff level was around 763. Information supplied by ASIO states that these levels are set to grow to around 900 by June 2005…

    Source : Review of administration and expenditure for ASIO, ASIS and DSD No. 3 [PDF], Parliamentary Joint Committee on ASIO, ASIS and DSD, March 7, 2005. In a seemingly inexorable fashion, this expansion has continued. Alan Ramsey, Rich pie in the sky for spies, The Australian, June 10, 2006:

    ASIO’s budget, for the year beginning July 1, is $340.6 million, including $113 million for a new ASIO headquarters to be built alongside the AFP’s Anzac Park West building – fairly adjacent, ironically, to the avenue of various memorials to Australia’s 100,000 war dead. Compare the $340.6 million the Howard Government is allocating this coming year to the $55.9 million the Keating Labor government gave ASIO in 1995-96, its last year of office.

    Over the Howard Government’s 11 budgets since 1996-97, ASIO’s funding by taxpayers has been: $52.6 million in 1996-97; $52 million in 1997-98; $63.3 million in 1998-99; $64.1 million in 1999-2000; $62.9 million in 2000-01; $73.8 million in 2001-02; $85.7 million in 2002-03; $95.2 million in 2003-04; $152.7 million in 2004-05; $174.8 million in 2005-06; and $340.6 million in 2006-07. Note that ASIO’s funding actually fell in the Government’s first two years of office. Note, too, how it soared once Australia joined the US and Britain in the invasion of Iraq.

    According to ASIO itself, “ASIO’s budget increased to $234.8m in 2006-07, up from $181.1m in 2005-06, and is expected to grow to $423.9m by 2010-11”. Note that “In 2006-07, ASIO completed 53,387 visa security assessments and issued adverse assessments in relation to seven individuals seeking entry to Australia. This advice was based on rigorous assessments of the potential threat to Australia’s security of allowing these individuals entry.”

    How rigorous?

    “Fortress Australia”

    Doyle Canning

    One person to have been denied a visa was Doyle Canning. Having previously visited Australia in 2000, and participated in preparations for the S11 protests later that year, in July 2002 Canning was denied a subsequent holiday visa, on the basis of her ‘bad character’. Evidence of her essential Bad-ness was contained in a dossier complied by the Department of Immigration, Multicultural, and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA), and referred to as “Attachments A, B, and C”. In order to gain access to these documents, Canning lodged a complaint with the Commonwealth Ombudsman, but apparently DIMIA was advised that these documents could “not be divulged to any person, including the Ombudsman”.

    Antonio Negri

    In April 2005, Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Negri was scheduled to speak at a conference ‘Physiognomy of Origins: Multiplicities, Bodies and Radical Politics’, hosted by the Research Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences (RIHSS) in Sydney. Unfortunately for him, his impending visit came to the attention of revisionist historian Keith Windschuttle, who penned an article for The Australian denouncing Negri as a terrorist. Negri was forced to withdraw from the conference due to ill-health, but University authorities cancelled funding for the conference anyway — just to be safe. (See also : ‘The Physiognomy of Civilisation’, Angela Mitropoulos, Arena magazine, No.76, April–May 2005.)

    Scott Parkin

    In 2005, ASIO, in close collaboration with US intelligence agencies, arranged for the deportation of peace activist Scott Parkin. Unfortunately for him, Parkin “participated in a protest in Sydney during the Forbes Global CEO conference, organising a piece of street theatre outside the Australian headquarters of Kellog Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton. Halliburton is the giant oil services company with the bulk of the contracts to rebuild Iraq, and was the focus of Scott’s anti-war activism in Houston”:

    On Wednesday 7 September, shortly after arriving in Melbourne, Scott received a call, from an anonymous number, on his mobile phone. He found himself speaking to an officer from the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation (ASIO). She told him that ASIO wanted to speak with him about his “activities” in Australia, and asked him to attend an interview…

    On the morning of Saturday 10 September, after finishing breakfast at a cafe in Sydney Road, Brunswick, Scott was apprehended by six men – a combination of immigration officials and Australian Federal Police – and told that he was being taken into “questioning detention”.

    To cut a long story short, Parkin was deported on September 15, 2005. Since then, Scott and his Friends have been engaged in a legal battle with ASIO and other state authorities in order to determine the reasons for his deportation. Most recently (May 2007), ASIO has admitted that the basis for its adverse findings regarding Scott’s Good-ness was in part the product of US intelligence sources, a fact which authorities had previously denied; in November, the Federal Court ruled that ASIO must disclose documents it used to determine Parkin was Bad. Interestingly, ‘Among the documents ASIO has been ordered to release is a secret 1990 “determination” which sets out the criteria that ASIO applies when assessing security threats related to “politically motivated violence”.’

    Bonus!

    An ad to spook the recruits, Lara Sinclair, The Australian, April 25, 2008: “ADVERTISING for spies can be a tricky business. Even so, the faceless spooks at ASIO have denied any embarrassment after their online recruitment drive for the next generation of Maxwell Smarts was linked to a photo gallery of Tibetan supporters being manhandled by police during yesterday’s Olympic torch relay. The ad was published on The Sydney Morning Herald‘s website next to photographic coverage of the torch relay. This meant its slogan – “If you want to protect Australia, we’ll pay attention to you” – appeared next to a photo gallery and stories describing how pro-Tibet supporters were hit by “thugs”. ASIO spokesman Geoff – “we don’t give out last names” – said the ad was aimed at people with an interest in national affairs and violent persons need not apply.

    See also : Terror trial reality: it’s all just for show, Warwick McFadyen, The Age, May 3, 2008

    Conspiracy, a 1994 documentary film about the 1978 Sydney Hilton Hotel Bombing:

    Posted in !nataS, Anarchism, State / Politics, War on Terror | Leave a comment

    Keeping FIT (Watch)

    Posted on May 5, 2008 by @ndy

    Interesting article in the New Statesman, by way of Unity blog.

    Hours before Boris Johnson took the platform outside City Hall to proclaim his victory as the next mayor of London, anarchists and anti-fascist activists assembled along the Queen’s Walk to protest the elections and in a bid to blockade Richard Barnbrook and other members of the British National Party from approaching City Hall.

    Protestors trickled in down the path from Tower Bridge, dispersing among the crowds of camera-toting tourists and their toddlers, high school volleyball teams on school trips, students and local workers. But what was planned as a protest against the elections and a blockade of the BNP became little more than a demonstration of power by the London Metropolitan Police and the now-notorious Forward Intelligence Team (FIT)…

    As a response to police surveillance, activists in Merry Ol’ England have established a blog, FIT Watch:

    Who are FIT Watch?

    Fit Watch are a fluid group of people who have come together to resist and oppose the tactics of the Forward Intelligence Teams (cops who harass protesters).

    We aim to act in solidarity with each other, supporting campaigns by being at meetings and protests, making it harder for the police to film and gather intelligence.

    We hope to encourage a culture where their presence is not acceptable and to act when we see people being followed and harassed.

    We aim to make it harder for them to photograph and intimidate us by getting in the way of their cameras, taking photos and publishing as much information as we can about them on our blog.

    Of course, the state isn’t the only institution worried about dissent. The corporate sector is too. Recently, the campaign group Plane Stupid was targeted by C2i International: “C2i’s Technical Team was hand-picked from Special Operations at New Scotland Yard and were responsible for writing the accepted guidelines now used for all counter-measure examinations by governments worldwide. C2i’s team is discrete, highly experienced, and can be deployed at very short notice.” Well, not that discrete in this case. In a press release, the group stated that:

    Oxford-educated Toby Kendall, 24, an employee of aerospace security consultants C2i International, infiltrated and spied on Heathrow campaign groups across London for a year. He was immediately suspected and following a Plane Stupid investigation he was last week confronted and exposed in a Japanese restaurant by the Plane Stupid activist Tamsin Omond – one of those who recently scaled Parliament. Heathrow owner BAA admitted to this morning’s Times newspaper that it has been in contact with C2i, having previously claimed it had no involvement in the spying operation.

    Toby’s exposure follows on from a profile of another spy in Elle magazine; “Anna”, employed by the FBI in the United States to infiltrate anti-capitalist, radical environmental and animal rights groups. Like Toby, “Anna” was recruited as a young college student. In Australia, NSW police intelligence (?) made a similar approach to a student in Sydney, Daniel Jones, offering to drop charges against him stemming from the 2006 protests against the G20 in exchange for spying for the organisation. (See also : Tricksy ASIO wants the nasssty anarchisssts, June 26, 2007). More recently, New Zealand-based state coal company Solid Energy, by way of Thomspon & Clark Investigations, attempted to recruit another activist, Rob Gilchrist: Gavin Clark “asked Gilchrist to work undercover for his private investigation company, Thompson and Clark Investigations (TCIL). The target: spying on environment groups and other community groups for his company’s corporate clients.”

    Gilchrist was shocked and insulted. He was a long-term supporter of many of the groups he was being asked to betray. But what made it most weird is that this was an exact rerun of earlier spying on environment, peace and animal rights groups uncovered by the Sunday Star-Times in May last year.

    The Star-Times story revolved around an informer, Ryan Paterson-Rouse, who was planted by the same Gavin Clark inside the small environment group Save Happy Valley. The spying was being paid for by the state-owned coal company Solid Energy, whose plans for a massive new open-cast coal mine are opposed by Save Happy Valley.

    Why the interest in this small environmental protest group? The answer is that Solid Energy is planning a dramatic increase in coal mining and coal exports to countries such as China, right at a time of growing world concern about climate change. Solid Energy’s response has been a vigorous public relations campaign to justify continued coal use, which last year included going as far as hiring private investigators to infiltrate and help it out-manoeuvre its environmental critics…

    ~ Nicky Hager, Private investigators still digging on West Coast, Sunday Star Times, April 20, 2008

    See also : Spies exposed in local activist groups (May 27, 2007); Secretive Industries Must Be Exposed After Spying (June 17, 2007), Anarchia | Revealed: spying on Anarchists (October 3, 2006), slackbastard | Revealed: spying on Greens, Michael Bachelard, The Age, October 2, 2006 (“MULTINATIONAL packaging company Amcor stacked the Labor Party, infiltrated environment groups, sent people pretending to be greenies to forest protests and paid bribes overseas to secure its supply of native hardwood in the 1990s…”) | Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera…

    Funny video!

    Posted in Media, State / Politics, War on Terror | Leave a comment