Racist Australia and Japanese whaling 白豪主義オーストラリアと反捕鯨

Posted on January 9, 2008 by @ndy

“…and that’s why we should keep the bloody flag the same!”

Tricksy Japanese whale haters have released a YouTube video declaring Aussies are racist. Therefore whaling is good. Among other pearls of wisdom contained in the video is the claim that “it’s impossible to practice [vegetarianism] because of our instinct. Human is the most cruel”; again, the latter may be correct, but the former claim is demonstrably wrong. See Pro whalers launch YouTube attack, SBS, January 7, 2008; Truths hit home, Herald Sun, January 9, 2008 (“LATE last month, Japan dropped humpback whales from its so-called “scientific” whaling program for this year and next, writes Junichi Sato”).

Bruce Ruxton would be rolling in his grave…

See also : Sea Shepherd Conservation Society // whalelove.org // Animal Liberation Victoria // And for no other reason than the fact that I can here’s Venom P. Stinger. Great song. RIP Dugald McKenzie. (Long live dirty three.)

Posted in !nataS, Media, Music | 4 Comments

KiLliNg FoR pEaCe In ChIlE

Posted on January 9, 2008 by @ndy

Source : infoshop.org / Bombs and Shields (UNPO: Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization)
Saturday, January 05, 2008

Chile – Police shot and killed Matias Catrileo Quezada, a 22-year-old university student, and Mapuche supporter during a land re-occupation near the southern city of Vilcun. The indigenous Mapuche peoples of of southern Chile regularly clash with authorities over control of their ancestral lands but this is the first fatality that has resulted from the conflict since 2003.

The incident took place at dawn on Thursday when a group of about 25 Mapuche Indians and their supporters raided a farm and burned the livestock feed. Police who had been charged with protecting the farm after a number of similar incursions, gave chase and fired on the group who retreated to a nearby school. Catrileo was shot in the stomach and died at the scene.

Catrileo’s comrades took his body and refused to hand it over to police but after negotiations organized by Villarica Bishop Sixto Parzinger worked out a deal in which they were willing to turn over the body. The human rights group Amnesty International has demanded a full investigation into the incident.

Activists rallied outside the La Moneda Presidential Palace in Santiago and dyed at least one of the Palace’s fountains blood red to protest the murder. Riot police clashed with demonstrators and made a number of arrests.

Dozens of Mapuche activists languish in prisons as a result of their resistance to the state in defence of their rights to land and acts of sabotage against corporations and businesses that pollute and poison the land. Mapuche prisoners have used hunger strikes to call attention to their struggle and incarceration.

Anarchists support and have been participating in the Mapuche’s fight for autonomy. In 2004 another student and anarchist Gustavo Fuentes was shot by police while participating in a Mapuche solidarity action in Santiago. A funeral procession was held earlier today for Catrileo in the regional capitol of Temuco. Masked participants carried black flags and long sticks.

See also : Our War

Posted in Anarchism, State / Politics | Leave a comment

“Australia for the Australians, China for the Chows”

Posted on January 7, 2008 by @ndy
    Oh yeah, see also Anti-German Translation, “A blog about the anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, anti-fascist and anti-globalization movements, analysing the convergences between right-wing thought and false forms of anti-capitalism, drawing on the German “anti-German” communist current”. Typical Kraut nonsense.

“In an anthropological spirit, then, I propose the following definition of the nation: it is an imagined political community — and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign. It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion… The nation is imagined as limited because even the largest of them encompassing perhaps a billion living human beings, has finite, if elastic boundaries, beyond which lie other nations. No nation imagines itself coterminous with mankind… It is imagined as sovereign because the concept was born in an age in which Enlightenment and Revolution were destroying the legitimacy of the divinely-ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm… nations dream of being free, and, if under God, directly so. The gage and emblem of this freedom is the sovereign state. Finally, it is imagined as a community, because, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship. Ultimately it is this fraternity that makes it possible, over the past two centuries, for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willingly to die for such limited imaginings. These deaths bring us abruptly face to face with the central problem posed by nationalism: what makes the shrunken imaginings of recent history (scarcely more than two centuries) generate such colossal sacrifices? I believe that the beginnings of an answer lie in the cultural roots of nationalism.” ~ Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (1991)

“But it’s not just violent and brutal nazi-skins; the regular German throws bloody shadows back to the early 1930s. Their attitude “what’s not regular, has to be erased” makes political and inter-cultural coalitions against nazi violence impossible. Nazis seem to express exactly what the regular German wants: a Germany just for Germans. [Böhse Onkelz (Bad Uncles)] a fascist band which could hardly manage to play a year ago and whose records are illegal, has sold-out concerts all over Germany and sold more than 50,000 records under the table this fall. Left hardcore is out and “nazi”-punk is the future (nobody wants to be a “wimpy, degenerate, red scumbag”). ~ ‘Nazis Raus Aus Deutschland!’, Love & Rage, Sep/Oct/Nov 1992, p.9.

“The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.” ~ George Orwell, ‘Notes on Nationalism’ (1945)

“Nationalism is the opposite of imperialism only in the realm of definitions. In practice, nationalism was a methodology for conducting the empire of capital.” ~ ‘The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism’, Fredy Perlman (1984)

    …and solidarity to the comrades. October 15th Solidarity is “a new online project organised by a small group of people spread around the world. We hope to provide a platform to help support those affected by the raids and their wider communities. We also hope to strengthen the networks of existing and future support groups”. See also afterg20.org for information on the situation of the dozens of individuals facing charges as a result of excessive uppityness in the face of the G20.
Posted in Anarchism, History, State / Politics | 8 Comments

Palfreeman not scared, did duty (says Mister Miranda)

Posted on January 7, 2008 by @ndy

Bulgaria murder: ‘I’m not scared: I did my duty’
The Daily Telegraph
Charles Miranda
January 7, 2008

JOCK Palfreeman is sitting in a small cell in a police station in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia calmly reading magazines brought to him by a friend. The 21-year-old Sydney man allegedly stabbed a university student to death with a knife and critically wounded a second teenager in what police say was an unprovoked frenzied attack on a public street. But as his lawyer Stanko Barbavski and a translator tell him he could face the rest of his life in jail, Palfreeman sits back, smiles and shrugs his shoulders. “I am not scared, I did my duty as a Good Samaritan and as a soldier,” he says.

He knows he is probably going to be in prison for a long time – it will be six months at least before his trial begins – and he asks his friend Graham for novels as well as more magazines to read. He then concedes: “I just want to be free and live a normal life. I want to go home.”

About a week earlier the former St Ignatius’ Riverview college student came to Bulgaria to help expat Briton Graham renovate a cheap house he bought in Madjarovo, about 60km outside the capital. Palfreeman had visited the country five or six times before but on December 22 stayed with Graham whom he met through his travels, to celebrate Christmas and help fix up his home and ride motorcycles through the snow-laden mountainside.

One night last weekend, the pair met up with a British girlfriend of Graham’s – Susan – and the trio went bar hopping in Sofia. The mood was high and Palfreeman was happy to be on leave from the British Army 1st Battalion Infantry Training Centre at Catterick in northern England. He joined the armed forces a month earlier and was a trainee private, eking out an existence on just $90 a day – a considerably small sum in British terms, less than half the average daily wage.

The group was drinking at Happy Bar and Grill, a western-themed restaurant chain. “Happy is a really happy place,” its logo declares but it was anything but for one group of patrons last weekend.

There are two versions of events of what happened sometime after 1pm and they could not be further apart.

Palfreeman, who had had about six beers and a tequila shot, said as he and Susan were leaving they noticed an old gypsy being beaten and kicked on the ground on the usually busy Stambolijski Boulevard intersection by between eight and 10 men. He said he called out, “Leave him alone, stop kicking him” in English and rushed to the man but was set upon as calls of “stop the fascist” were being screamed. At some point Andrei Monov, the 20-year-old university student son of a well-known local doctor, was stabbed once in the heart and died almost instantly, while his friend Antoan Zahariev, 19, was stabbed a number of times and was hospitalised. Two security guards rushed to break up the group and saw the two men bleeding on the ground and immediately handcuffed Palfreeman. He allegedly claimed he was acting in self defence.

Police claim he repeated the defence alibi twice back at a nearby police station. “I am a (Good) Samaritan and I was defending an attacked man and myself,” he allegedly told them before admitting he carried a knife because he had been attacked four times before while visiting the country.

The group of Bulgarian but English-speaking university students, however, said there was no gypsy and they were walking across the road when a random aggressive man began verbally abusing them in English before producing a butterfly knife. Graham had left Palfreeman before the incident and has since told police he did not know the Aussie that well. [Graham contradicts this assertion.] Despite the claim, he went to the police station to get the Sydney man some clothes as, despite sub-zero temperatures outside, he was sitting in the cell in just a T-shirt.

Susan flew out of the country back to England the day after Palfreeman was arrested and has yet to be tracked by police.

Staff at Happy had noticed Palfreeman earlier in the night allegedly being abusive to patrons and provoking a fight. When they were interviewed by police and asked why they did not throw him out, they said they believed it was just another drunk Englishman making the most of the cheap alcohol.

There are numerous western themed-bars across the capital which are notorious hangouts for English tourists in Bulgaria after cheap booze and cheaper sex.

Palfreeman faces charges of murder with “hooligan intent” and attempted murder.

He will apply for bail tomorrow.

Posted in !nataS, Anti-fascism | 10 Comments

Aaarrrggghhh! Dylan Lewis! Tania Lacy! So Much Hate!

Posted on January 4, 2008 by @ndy

Bloody hell. I thought they’d fucked off for good but noooooo…

Number Ones

[NB. Following receipt of the communication below, I have chosen to remove the paragraph which formerly constituted this part of my post:

Subject: FW:Dylan
From: Mark Klemens
Date: 8/6/2009 2:40PM
To: Andy
Cc: Melissa Le Gear

Dear Sir,

We represent Dylan Lewis. It has come to our notice that a website titled “slackbastards” which appears to be controlled or owned by you has made reference to Dylan. Under the subheading “Number One’s” references to Dylan of a defamatory nature have been made. We have obtained legal advice confirming the status of the material as being offensive and defamatory. We seek to have the article/paragraph removed immediately from the website.

Should you not remove the offending material we are instructed to brief solicitors on behalf of our client to seek an injunction and damages.

Mark Klemens
Managing Director
Profile Talent Management
323 Montague St,
Albert Park, Victoria
Australia 3206
T: +613 8598 7810
M: 0412 386 765

On receipt of the above, I replied to Mark as follows:

Subject: Re:FW:Dylan
From: Andy
Date: 8/7/2009 6:32PM
To: Mark Klemens
Cc: Melissa Le Gear

Dear Mark,

Thank you for your email.

First, two very minor corrections.

The title of the blog is ‘slackbastard’, not ‘slackbastards’; the subheading is ‘Number Ones’ not ‘Number One’s’.

Secondly, a few questions.

1. Could you please identify precisely which passages, and which terms, in the paragraph below, that you allege to be defamatory?

======

Number Ones

[SNIP]

======

2. Could you please explain to me why you seek the removal of the article as a whole?

3. Further, given that the post was made on January 4, 2008, why was your email sent 19 months later, on August 6, 2009?

4. I have received four comments in response to my post of January 4, 2008. I am unaware of anyone else paying it any attention other than yourself. Given that this is the case, could you please explain to me what ‘damages’ have been inflicted upon Dylan Lewis?

I received the following reply from Mark:

Subject: RE:FW:Dylan
From: Mark Klemens
Date: 8/8/2009 7:14PM
To: Andy
Cc: Melissa Le Gear

I refer to my previous email. Should the paragraph as requested not be removed within 48 hours then I will seek our clients instructions to brief solicitors forthwith to commence proceedings against you. Our client will seek an injunction and damages. The result will mean, inter alia, substantial costs orders against you. Please confirm by return when the paragraph has been removed.

Mark Klemens
Managing Director
Profile Talent Management
323 Montague St,
Albert Park, Victoria
Australia 3206
T: +613 8598 7810
M: 0412 386 765]

Number Twos

A) Tania Fucking Lacy.

B) Flogging furniture.

C) Fuck off.

Actor and comedian Tania Lacy has come together with producers Robyn Kershaw and Romy Moshinsky and director Daina Reid to develop Blogger Girl, the story of a woman who decides to fake her overseas trip using a false internet blog and soon discovers her ‘virtual’ life is no match for the realities of day-to-day living.

Hurr hurr.

Two things Bad, one thing Good… (So Much Hate):

PROGRESS
I remember
We used to be so idealistic
“Do It Yourself”
We used to care a lot
“Punk belongs to the punx”
It was us – only us
It was never us and them

Now there’s a H.C. corner in every shop
Together with loads of commercial crap
Don’t tell me there’s a difference at all
The price is even the same

Sure I know it’s important
To spread the words and music around
But this is going too fucking far
We’re losing control

There’s agencies and expensive promotion
Just like a mainstream rock’n’roll circus
I know I’m bitching and moaning
I might even sound a bit conservative

But this has been my life
For so many years
And it’s sad to see
We’re only feeding the lions
So sad to see

Posted in Music, Television | Tagged , | 11 Comments

[…] // Justice 4 Jock

Posted on January 1, 2008 by @ndy

UPDATE OCTOBER 2019 : Over 11 1/2 years later, Jock remains in prison, despite having won parole in September 2019.

Update #6 ( July 8 ) : Charles Miranda, Dad’s bid to free murder charge son Jock Palfreeman, The Daily Telegraph, July 8, 2008

Update #5 ( March 24 ) : Charles Miranda, New evidence in Australian’s murder case, The Daily Telegraph, March 24, 2008

Update #4 ( January 29 ) : Just stumbled upon an article from The Frontier Times (Bulgaria’s English language newspaper) by Stefan Stefanov, ‘Aussie Go Hero or Thug?’, January 10–February 10, 2008 edition. Stefanov writes: “Experts investigating the murder and attempted murder said that the knife penetrated the victim’s back straight through to the heart – a professional stab”; the only source (outside of commentary: see Vesselin Petrunov, January 8) that I’m aware of for this claim. Stefanov also writes “Meanwhile, it was leaked to the press that Mr Palfreeman had previously been charged for attempted murder back home in Australia”, which is false. Palfreeman has never been charged with attempted murder; what happened was that a man by the name of James Atack and another man simply called ‘Matt’ went to a local paper (January 3) with allegations that Palfreeman had stabbed them at a party. Jock was never charged for the alleged crime, apparently for lack of evidence.

Update #3 ( January 20 ) : Jock Palfreeman “enjoying cult-like status on the Internet”, bearing “striking resemblance to actor Matt Damon” and “now the subject of at least four websites and … receiving movie-star attention” says Marnie O’Neill of The Daily Telegraph.

Update #2 ( January 8 ) : Accused Aussie refused bail in Bulgaria, says AAP. news.com.au, on the other hand, appears to have put Charles Miranda on the case, who claims that Palfreeman may plead insanity…

Update #1 ( January 4 ) : Two more articles in the press, one in The Daily Terror by Gemma Jones, the other in the Sydney Morning Herald by Malcolm Brown. Jones reports a Facebook page has been set up by friends of Jock’s called ‘Jock Palfreeman is Not Guilty’ [http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=16826320034], attracting 60 (now almost 90) friends; some gossip regarding Jock’s love life; and reiterates the claims made yesterday in an earlier article by herself and another hack; viz, that James Atack and someone called Matt had “almost died” in a similar attack by Jock at a party in 2004, and that the pair “later named Palfreeman as the person who stabbed them. But police did not lay charges because of a lack of evidence” (Bulgaria accused’s pals rally, January 4). Brown (Father arrives to visit jailed son, January 4) writes that Jock’s father has arrived in Sofia, and that DFAT is keeping a close eye on the case. Interestingly, Brown also writes:

In Sydney, James Atack, of Lane Cove North, who was quoted in The Daily Telegraph yesterday saying that Palfreeman had stabbed him and another youth at a party in Chatswood in 2004, confirmed to the Herald yesterday he had been quoted correctly and it was true. In his quoted statement, he said he had complained to the police but the police had not laid charges through lack of evidence. Questioned by the Herald, Mr Atack said: “I am not quite comfortable talking about this. Me and my friend agreed we would talk to each other before talking to the press again.”

One (presumably) pseudonymous commenter, on the other hand — Karlos — claims that “Jock was involved in that party, but in regards to the comment about him carrying a knife with him, he actually took the knife off one of the people mentioned in the paper as a victim as that person was threatening his brother”. And in news just to hand, another commenter called grayham writes:

this case so far is complete bullshit. i’m in sofia. jock was with me for christmas and he’s 1 of my best friends. i’ve known him for 18 months. in bulgaria first and then in england. it was self defence. there was a gang beating a gypsy. jock chased them off. they then beat him and my girlfriend. unfortunately i wasn’t there to help as i had left an hour or so before. i wasn’t allowed into court even though jock had asked me to be there. even the judge asked where i was and then told the court that i had said i hardly knew jock anyway, which is the complete opposite of my statement. i’ve given the police names of other people who were there and as yet they have not been contacted.

you would not believe the things the judge has said to jock. she has already made up her mind. as for the one thing that will help, for sure the cctv – which the police have – we have been told so far that it probably won’t be allowed to be shown as evidence.

jock and me have also had problems with racists in the past. if you look slightly alternative over here it’s enough to get you beaten up. carrying a knife here is quite normal. you’re allowed to carry guns if you want. wouldn’t you carry something if everywhere you went you see swastikas and “punks die” grafittied on the walls?

from what i’ve heard jock is lucky to still be alive and didn’t really have any choice.

for all his friends out there i’ve seen him today and yesterday and he’s ok.

can’t believe this chatswood bullshit. if he’s been found innocent that’s the end of it.

he needs his friends’ help and support – glad to see there are so many of you out there.

Speaking of support, somebody called Phil suggests a letter along these lines would be useful if sent to the relevant authorities:

Dear Sir / Madam,

I write concerning Jock Palfreeman, the British serviceman recently arrested over a fatal stabbing in Sofia.

I am most concerned that Jock will not receive a fair trial because the victim’s father is a prominent Bulgarian and all the witnesses are friends of the deceased.

The information we have received from friends in Bulgaria is that Jock was acting in self-defence after trying to help another man who was being attacked by a gang of Nazi/fascist skinheads.

I understand that legal proceedings must have their own process but would appreciate it if you could do anything to address my concerns or direct them to the relevant authorities in Bulgaria.

Yours faithfully…

The address for the Embassy of Bulgaria in Canberra, Australia is below. Details of the address in London, England are available here.

Update : As an apparent result of defending himself and another man from fascist assault, it appears that Jock Palfreeman is in trouble with the Bulgarian police, judiciary and state. As is traditional, the British Army has abandoned Jock (“a phase two recruit with the British Army’s 1st Battalion Infantry Training Centre” according to a report in The Daily Terror) and he has also been denied bail by magistrate Maria Petrova — on the basis of his allegedly violent disposition. According to one report by the ABC, “In a written statement tendered to the court, Mr Freeman [sic] said he had gone to the aid of a gypsy [that is, Rom] who was being attacked”. A plausible scenario, given that Romani are frequently subject to racist attacks, both in Bulgaria and throughout Europe (as is also traditional).

See also : Malcolm Brown, Friends stunned as trip ends in fatal brawl, Sydney Morning Herald, January 2, 2008.

In Australia, the Bulgarian Government has an Embassy in the ACT, and it may be useful to politely inform the Embassy that Jock’s friends in Australia wish to see him receive a fair trial:

    Australian Capital Territory : Embassy of Bulgaria

    Street address: 33 Culgoa Circuit, O’Malley, Canberra ACT 2600
    Postal address: Phillip DC, PO Box 6096, Canberra ACT 2606

    Chancery:
    Monday – Friday; 9.00 am – 12.30 pm; 2.00 pm – 5.30 pm
    tel: 02/ 6286 9711; fax: 02/ 6286 9600
    e-mail: [email protected]

    Consular section:
    Monday – Friday; 9.30 am – 12.00 pm
    tel: 02/ 6286 9700; fax: 02/ 6286 9600
    e-mail: [email protected]

Somebody called Joe Paul Freeman or (more likely, perhaps) Jock Palfreeman has been arrested in Sofia, Bulgaria over a stabbing incident (Aussie charged with murder after Bulgaria brawl, AAP, SMH, January 1, 2008):

An Australian man has been charged with murder and refused bail after a knife attack in Bulgaria which left one man dead and another badly injured.

Jock Palfreeman, 21, from NSW, made a brief appearance before Sofia City Court on Monday and pleaded not guilty to one count of murder and another of attempted murder.

He was arrested last Friday in the Bulgarian capital after allegedly fatally stabbing 20-year-old Andrei Monov, the son of prominent local psychotherapist Hristo Manov, in a street brawl.

Palfreeman is also accused of attempting to murder Antoan Zahariev, 19.

According to a police statement tendered to the court, Palfreeman admitted stabbing the two Bulgarian men but insisted it was in self-defence.

Palfreeman said that while he had been carrying a knife at the time, he only pulled it out to defend himself and two other friends from a group of football hooligans who were attacking another man…

The stabbing appears to have a ‘political’ dimension, as ‘The court heard that Palfreeman was in Bulgaria to visit a friend and had been out drinking with a group of people when they saw a group of men hitting another man and shouting “fascists”‘; Palfreeman also appears to have been a teenage socialist.

Posted in !nataS, Anti-fascism | Tagged | 375 Comments

2007 — fuck off and die

Posted on December 31, 2007 by @ndy

Here’s to 2008, mate.

And following on from Rosario Dawson in This Revolution and Charlize Theron in Battle in Seattle comes Sacha Baron Cohen in The Trial of the Chicago Seven: “Sacha Baron Cohen will portray Abbie Hoffman, a figure from the 1960s counterculture who used a series of pranks to campaign against the war. Baron Cohen is expected to be paid about £3m for the film” (John Harlow, No more jokes as Borat turns war protester, The Sunday Times, December 30, 2007). The article gives a typically garbled account of the trial, Hoffman, and his significance; a better account may be found elsewhere (including the period he spent underground from 1973–1980, re-emerging to give an interview with Barbara Fucking Walters / 60 Minutes!) in Marty Jezer’s Abbie Hoffman: American Rebel.

On a slightly more modest scale, the life and times of Ian Bone, another troublemaker (still making trouble), is being made into a film:

Anarchist’s life to be filmed
James McCarthy
Wales On Sunday
December 30, 2007

AN anarchist once dubbed “the most dangerous man in Britain” is to have his life story turned into a film. Swansea University graduate Ian Bone’s father used to be a butler to a member of the aristocracy. But his son went on to found outrageous newspaper Class War in 1983, which campaigned for the overthrow of capitalism. It supported strikers, carried snaps of beaten policemen and once ran a picture of Margaret Thatcher with an axe in her head on its front cover. It led to The Sunday People newspaper labelling Mr Bone Britain’s most dangerous man and he even appeared on the Jonathan Ross show…

Posted in !nataS, Anarchism, Film, History | 8 Comments

a week later, a few more bits and pieces

Posted on December 24, 2007 by @ndy

Full Marx to some cheese-eating surrender-monkeys, who have an interesting blog called La Bataille socialiste. It’s got some pages in English too, which is definitely useful to a mono-linguist such as myself.

A spectre is haunting Europe, and it’s being exorcised. A while ago it was Ungdomshuset in Copenhagen, now it’s The Köpi in Berlin (Last Stand for the Far Left: Berlin Commune Fights the Property Developers, Stefan Berg and Marcel Rosenbach, Spiegel Online, December 21, 2007). Some body or other writes:

Berlin, end of December 2007: the situation in the city is continuously getting worse.
While until a few years ago this city stood as one of the fortresses of the squatter’s movement, nowadays we are reduced to the few remaining autonomous spaces. House projects, trailer-parks, autonomous youth clubs and so on are slowly disappearing – and sometimes without the slightest sound of resistance – under the pressure of State, capitalist relationships and its active servants.
The process known as gentrification keeps on changing entire neighbourhoods, fast and pitiless, in order to make place for yuppies, investors, alternative artists and generally all the people who feel themselves to be at home in mainstream society.
It seems as if, very soon, there will be no place left for self-organized, uncommercial and anti-authoritarian spaces. But despite this, there are still signs of active resistance all around.
The riots in Copenhagen last December, and the struggle for Ungdomshuset, brought forward – explosively and uncompromisingly – the somehow sleepy movement for autonomous spaces. In Germany, as on an international level, this movement is again on the offensive. As well as the fact that a lot of supporters travelled from Germany to Copenhagen to fight the battle there, solidarity actions happened in more than 30 German cities: among them, two long weeks of actions in Berlin.
Here, we also took back the streets for ourselves through a large, energetic and resolute demonstration, rocking the city and reclaiming public space once more for our uncontrollable, spontaneous and direct actions.
Rigaer94/Kadterschmiede, Köpi, Bethanien, Schwarzer Kanal, Liebig 14, Liebig 34/XB and the Infoladen Daneben, the Linienhöfe and the Brunnenstr.183/Umsonstladen, are some of the autonomous spaces under threat of eviction: these, as all the others, must stay, and this can be achieved only through a movement based on resoluteness, solidarity and active resistance.
We want to push forward offensively to keep our freespaces and to fight for the creation of new ones: to show the City that every eviction carries its own price.
We therefore call on everybody to join a demonstration on the 8th of December – almost one year after the “final battle“ in Copenhagen – in order to destroy together the winter lethargy of investors, yuppies and cityplanners and to show clearly and unequivocally our rage against the current situation ….

Active solidarity with all threatened autonomous projects – in Berlin as worldwide! Fight and defend autonomous freespaces!
For autonomous spaces and self-organization against dominion and capitalism.

*sigh*

The naughty policeman who tried to bugger off following an assault upon a Jewish fella last year can now enjoy being named as such on the front page of today’s edition of The Age (Police ‘hindered’ race probe, Liz Porter, December 23, 2007). Apparently, another naughty policeman may have tried to subvert the course of justice: “Two versions of a statement by a witness who came to Mr Vorchheimer‘s aid have been viewed by The Sunday Age — showing that the original was edited to remove material suggesting the off-duty policeman tried to take offenders from the scene before police arrived”.

Ah. The sound of one wrist slapping.

Love & Rage is being published online: the newspaper, the network, the revolutionary anarchist federation (see also a proposal for a regional anarchist federation). When it died in 1998, L&R gave birth to a number of other groups, including the Fire By Night Organizing Committee. It eventually evolved/collapsed into the Freedom Road Socialist Organisation, a Maoist sect. That is the FRSO/OCSL, to be confused with the FRSO; both groups consider themselves to be the only legitimate Freedom Road Socialist Organization. Nowadays, the FRSO is sending fraternal greetings to the PFLP, which this year (December 11) celebrates its 40th birthday:

Dear Comrades,

We send you our warmest fraternal greetings, and salute you on the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Popular Front of the Liberation Palestine. Your steadfastness and courage in the face of cruel and dangerous oppressors is an inspiration to people across the globe, including here in the United States. We are confident that the next 40 years will bring still more victories over imperialism and Zionism, and the compete liberation of every inch of Palestine…

And on another spotterly note, there’s a great family tree of Love & Rage online available here.

Crypto-fascist pop * Marko Perkovic and his band Thompson will be in town soon (Tour visa for ‘fascist’ rock singer attacked, Greg Roberts, The Australian, December 22, 2007), although it’s unlikely he’ll be reprising his version of the song ‘Jasenovac i Gradiška Stara’:

Jasenovac and Stara Gradiška,
That’s the house of Maks’s butchers.
There was a slaughterhouse in Čapljina,
Neretva carried away many Serbs (from there).

O Neretva, flow downhill,
And carry the Serbs into the blue Adriatic.
Through Imotski trucks rush,
Driving the black uniforms of Jure Francetić.

I am Ustasha and so was my father,
Father left the craft to his son…
Whoever said that Black Legion is not coming back,
May his father fuck him.

Lady Sinjska, if you can, take away Stipe and bring back our Franjo.
O Racan, may a dog fuck your mother, and the ones who voted for you.
Shining star above Metković,
Send our greetings to Ante Pavelić.

For a sympathetic account, see Who is Marko Perkovic “Thompson”? by Frano Budimlic.

Back in Berlin again, Neo-Nazi victim plans to kill himself in Berlin: report: “BERLIN (AFP) — A British man left paralysed after an attack by neo-Nazis is planning to travel to Berlin to kill himself, Bild newspaper reported on Tuesday. Noel Martin, a 48-year-old former builder who lives in Birmingham, told the popular German daily: “I will come to Berlin to die. Making it my last destination will close an open circle in my life.”

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i really gotta stop blogging so…

Posted on December 17, 2007 by @ndy

…this will possibly be my last entry for a while.

some people (and i was one of them) went and saw some (other) people perform on saturday night — in the name of entertainment, and in order to raise funds to aid in the defence of some (other) people accused of upsetting newspaper editors, breaking a few things, and — last but by no means least — making the empty, arrogant and pathetic claim to pass definitive judgements, sinking to outright abuse, on their fellow workers, their employers, God, religion, the media, the governments and political systems of the whole world; rejecting all morality and restraint; commending theft, the destruction of scholarship, the abolition of work, total subversion and a worldwide proletarian revolution with ‘unlicensed pleasure’ as it’s only goal.

and i asked them what they meant by “anti-social”
was he flooding the estates with low-paid jobs
did he make a million pound knocking public housing down
and making space for yuppie apartments for smart-arsed yobs

…

see i find it hard to take the double standards
to look down on the people doing time
it seems the rich can rob us all
take our produce and have a ball
oh but when we take it back they call it crime

“Anarchy and smash the state and all that crap sounds pretty violent too”… “he tells lots of lies on that blog, that’s for sure”… “i was actually referred to the site by a nice police woman from The Gap station in Brisbane who is in fact my flatmate”… “just let him go rohan and maybe threaten him a little so you can feature in his blog, this guy is some kind of posting wizard and I am now more interested in encouraging him to set a new posting record rather than mocking his beliefs and actions“… “Give me your name, address, daytime and nighttime contact phone numbers, and I promise you I will beat the fucking shit out of you and then make a black man take a shit in your face”… “let the good times roll”…

Posted in Uncategorized | 26 Comments

Argentina : Héctor Febrés, torturer, murdered

Posted on December 16, 2007 by @ndy

And it couldn’t have happened to a nicer person. Unfortunately, being dead, Febrés will now be unable to reveal the whereabouts of babies stolen from political prisoners and given to military families, or the whereabouts of the bodies of the many killed during the regime’s War On Terror®…

Buenos Aires Herald, December 14, 2007:

Former coast guard officer Héctor Febrés, who was on trial for crimes against humanity during the last [1976–1983] dictatorship, was found dead [from] unknown causes yesterday morning inside his cell in the Tigre district, Buenos Aires province, only four days before his trial verdict was to be read out.

[Febrés was the first to be prosecuted for crimes committed at the military dictatorship’s main prison, beginning in 1976.]

Aged 66, Febrés was serving prison at a coast guard base pending the court’s final finding. Security guards said that he had dinner as usual on Sunday night, later talked to his wife, and went to bed. Yesterday morning, guards noticed that he did not wake up for breakfast, so they broke into his room and found his corpse lying on the bed.

Febrés was accused of torturing prisoners at the Naval Mechanics School in Buenos Aires, known as ESMA, and the prosecution had asked for life imprisonment.

Cyanide death of jailed Dirty War defendant causes uproar in Argentina
The Associated Press
International Herald Tribune
December 14, 2007

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina: Police detained the wife and two grown children of a former coast guard officer who died mysteriously in jail amid a dictatorship-era human rights trial, hours after an autopsy found cyanide in his blood, a judge said Friday.

Hector Febres, 66, was accused of kidnapping and torturing dissidents during Argentina’s past military dictatorship. He was found dead in his cell at a navy brig on Monday, four days before an expected verdict in his high-profile case.

Official reports initially suggested Febres had died of natural causes, but autopsy results released midweek revealed a large quantity cyanide in his bloodstream — alarming human rights activists who feared he may have been poisoned to silence his testimony and prompting the court to swiftly open an investigation…

See also : Uki Gona, Justice Still Delayed in Argentina, Time, November 28, 2007

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