The Future of Rap

Posted on December 14, 2007 by @ndy

Supposedly someone called Cazza, almost undoubtedly a glimpse into Vents‘ future.

Posted in Music | Leave a comment

Free Speech is Awesome!

Posted on December 14, 2007 by @ndy

In an hilarious tribute to the Shoah, Hammerskin Jesse, of local band Deaths Head, has created two videos. The first is called Sheky’s Got the Blues…

…and the second is called Sheky’s Got the Blues 2: Sheky and the Bonehead:

Note that Jesse also employs a really funny handle on YouTube: ‘genocidal88’.

Antifa, ha ha ha!

Tragically, Deaths Head no longer performs locally, but you can check out Jesse’s latest project Kilgore on myspace… well, you used to be able to. Unfortunately, it got shit-canned. As a matter of fact, so did the site belonging to Final War, the Nutzis from Orange County who recently graced the stage at Melbourne Croatia Social Club. On the bright side, you can still hear the boys Seig Heil for Rudolf Hess, Hail the New Dawn, and celebrate the Land of the White here.

Naturally, such outrageous attacks on freedom of speech have sparked an equally outraged reaction on the part of local free speech advocates, who’ve condemned those responsible for withdrawing hosting services to neo-Nazi propagandists, and compared them to the Nazi regime itself — the one responsible for the mass murder of Jews, Roma, Blacks and other people of color, Slavs, Jehovah’s Witnesses, people with mental and/or physical disabilities, homosexuals, and political opponents.

On the other hand, that was years ago, so who cares?

Thankfully, you can still find neo-Nazi string-pluckers and tub-thumpers such as Midtown Bootboys, Tattooed Motherfuckers (TMF) and Youngland on myspace, and let’s face it, anybody who objects to their presence is no better — and probably worse — than the Nazis.

Alright!

As well as being available through local music distro Deadset Music, TMF is The Band Steve ‘Jonesy’ Jones of English Rose Built. Jonesy’s story is one of persistence over time, having been subjected to all kinds of vicious attacks by the freedom of speech loathing British political Establishment (almost certainly acting on behalf of ‘dirty Jews’, just as was alleged by one of the junior coaches at the Melbourne Knights upon being contacted with regards the 2007 ISD gig). For example:

1991 was a year with more than the usual share of nazi skinhead violence. After a concert on 23 November that year, held at the Buffs Club in Baldock in Hertfordshire, 11 Blood and Honour supporters were charged with violent disorder after they were involved in a vicious racist attack in nearby Buntingford.

As five Asian waiters left work in the early hours of the morning, a van pulled up beside them and a number of skinheads jumped out, attacking them with beer bottles. The van drove off and returned minutes later. The skinheads drove at the waiters, who had to leap out of the way to avoid being crushed. The skinheads then attacked them with baseball bats. One of those attacked ran to a nearby house but was caught and struck on the back of the head with a baseball bat and knocked unconscious. When he came to, he was being dragged by his feet into the road.

When the police searched the van they found weapons including CS gas, a machete, baseball bats, knuckle dusters, clubs and knives. There was also an assortment of national socialist literature in the vehicle including copies of Blood and Honour.

Many of the 11 arrested were prominent activists. There was “Big Nick” Marsh, Neil Parish and Paul Parish (Neil’s brother and a prominent BNP activist in Milton Keynes)… Steve Jones was lead singer of the band ‘English Rose’.

~ White Noise, Nick Lowles and Steve Silver, eds, Searchlight, 1998, p.24

In the split of the mid-1990s between Blood and Honour and C18/ISD Records (triggered in part by the Skrewydriver‘s death in 1993), Jonesy and English Rose went with members of the British Movement (BM), and then the British Hammerskins (BHS). Years later, Jonesy was still banging away on behalf of fascism, appearing with English Rose at the ninth annual ISD gig in 2002:

The major players in Blood and Honour hold membership of groups including the BNP, National Front, British Movement and the elite nazi group the League of St George. In addition to Bullman, Lane and Swinfen they include Simon Dutton, organiser of Blood and Honour in west London, and Billy Bartlett, leader of the band Celtic Warrior, who organises Blood and Honour in Wales and has previously safehoused German nazis. Steve “Jonesy” Jones from Leicestershire, who sings with English Rose, is a regular face at events…

More recently, Jonesy and English Rose have performed in Belgium for Blood & Honour Flanders in 2005, and again in 2006. But that was then and this is now and now he’s

Alright!

Finally, word on the street is that freedom-loving locals have freely initiated a new freedom project in support of free speech. The tentative title for the new group is ‘Nazis Are People Too!’, and its inaugural meeting will be held sometime in January at: The Birmingham Hotel, 333 Smith Street, Fitzroy (corner of Johnston and Smith Streets). For more details, phone (03) 9417 2706 and ask for Gary. NB. No fukn gooknigger scum. Negroid girls take part at own risk. Token azn singers and singers with crossed out swastikas tattooed on their necks welcome.

Posted in !nataS, Anti-fascism, Media | 3 Comments

More Nazi schmazi

Posted on December 12, 2007 by @ndy

Udo Voigt of the German NPD has gotten his big ugly head in the news again, this time for talking shit about Auschwitz. “Six million cannot be right. At most, 340,000 people could have died in Auschwitz,” he said in an interview with Iranian journalists (in an article in The Telegraph). Voigt is a good mate of local fascist dingbat Welf Herfurth (a close political ally, in turn, of Dr. James Saleam), the co-founder and host (with Saleam) of the annual fascist gathering the Sydney Forum, and member of both the Australia First Party and Blood & Honour Australia. Most recently, Herfurth is responsible for establishing a group in Sydney called the New Right, who call themselves ‘national anarchists’.

Herfurth was unable to extend a personal welcome to Voigt when he was invited to address the Sydney Forum in 2003 because the Australian Government denied him a visa. The denial of a visa to Voigt was on the basis of ‘Public Interest Criterion 4003′, which states: “The applicant is determined by the Foreign Minister, or a person authorised by the Foreign Minister, to be a person whose presence in Australia – (a) is, or would be, prejudicial to relations between Australia and a foreign country, or, (b) may be directly or indirectly associated with the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction”. Note that since 2006, part (a) has been changed to refusal where a person’s presence would be “contrary to Australia’s foreign policy interests”.

In other schnews, the SPLC has published a new issue of its quarterly Intelligence Report, No.128, Winter 2007. (You can also read the SPLC blog here.) It contains a brief report on the Russian neo-Nazi execution video briefly available on YouTube and currently in circulation on a number of fascist and neo-Nazi websites. “The video is hard to watch. Just three minutes long, “Operation of the National-Socialist Party of Russia to Arrest and Execute Two Colonists From Dagestan and Tajikistan” opens to the sound of machine-gun fire. Then comes horrifying footage of the grisly execution of two bound and gagged men under a swastika flag. One man is beheaded, and the second is shot in the head.” Naturally, Russian Government officials deny the authenticity of the tape, but few who watch it can do so easily. The only real question is who produced it, when, where and why. The answers to these questions, unfortunately, probably won’t be known for a very long time.

Posted in Anti-fascism | 28 Comments

Doug Smith Drops A Bombshell

Posted on December 11, 2007 by @ndy
    Update : Mark Bastard is really really upset. In response to a question (“This from a silly who boasts about how he and his mates are going to beat me up? On an Internet forum?”) he writes “nice side-step [shit] for brains, but the one barrier me and my buddies have regarding beating the [shit] out of you is your anonymity. so basically you can hide behind that, but if so you don’t really have a leg to stand on as far as calling me out for making internet threats and not following through. Give me your name, address, daytime and night time 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.” Doug really does have some terrific friends… Oh yeah, when I asked Mark to provide his details, he then proceeded to provide one of his mate’s presumed names, addresses and mobile phone number!

Oh dear.

On a thread on a forum hosted by the Sydney-based online music zine Bombshell, Doug Smith of local band Bulldog Spirit writes the following:

Mr 47
Eagle Rock

Joined: 29 Oct 2003
Posts: 12826
Location: Beowulf is a dude

PostPosted: Fri Dec 07, 2007 2:26 pm Post subject: Reply with quote

Twinklebutt wrote:

http://birmyboycott.wordpress.com/category/uncategorized/

You would have to call that a pretty unsuccessful boycott.

A bunch of bands half from interstate that have never played there and wouldn[‘]t have played there anyway hahaha.

The guy that does that boycott thing has it in for me and Bulldog Spirit so bad. He basically thinks I am the fu[e]hrer reincarnated. I can’t remember his webpage, but it[‘]s worth looking at. I’m sure if you googled “doug smith” and “bulldog spirit” you would find it. It’s some anarchy thing.

He emailed all the bands at Wasted and told them that we were a nazi band.

His sources include the illustrious Melbourne Punx Forum which for what seems like a decade has consisted of anonymous posters calling everyone nazis.

He thinks his identity is secret but he has a shop called 1+1=3=8 [sic] on Sydney Road in Brunswick that prints leftist t-shirts with spelling errors and stuff. I fronted him about the [shit] that he talks on the internet it [sic] but he denied it.

He was also wanted for questioning in relation to an old woman getting bashed when he left his teddy bear behind on someone[‘]s front door step at three o’clock in the morning.

Top guy.

After having intervened on the thread in question, I received a number of thoughtful responses. Here’s one:

:ohno:
Mark Bastard

Joined: 07 Oct 2005
Posts: 7481
Location: ass2ass lol

PostPosted: Sun Dec 09, 2007 11:23 am Post subject: Reply with quote

@ndy you’re a fucking idiot mate and you better watch your back because when me and my mates are out and about, if we see you, ur dead

And here’s another, from the same Bastard:

:ohno:
Mark Bastard

Joined: 07 Oct 2005
Posts: 7495
Location: ass2ass lol

PostPosted: Mon Dec 10, 2007 11:56 am Post subject: Reply with quote

@ndy im still going to bash you, fukn gooknigger scum

Not very nice, but also based on a misapprehension: I do not work at the business in question, and never have. As well as having pointed this out on the thread in question, I asked Doug why he believed I worked at this shop, what was the source of his information, and why he believed it was a legitimate action to publish the job location of an anti-racist activist in this fashion. Unfortunately, Doug is yet to reply to these questions.

In many respects, Doug’s attempt at intimidation is the same as that attempted by one of his fellow supporters of The Birmy — Chunga, of the band The Worst — only while Doug wrote “He thinks his identity is secret but”, Chunga opted for ‘Anyway… anarchy is a fag… that’s all I have to say to you Mr Moran… See how fast words travel my friends? Be careful what you write on the internet…”

Speaking of which, another person, giving the name ‘Joel’ — the name of the drummer in the band Bulldog Spirit, about whom the Bombshell thread was partly concerned — posted the following:

Joel | [email protected]

Honestly, I am going to fucking kill you. I hope it was worth it.

Dec 10, 3:40 PM — BNP: Carry On Up the Khyber

Note also that someone using the handle ‘Birmy HammerSkinz’ has acknowledged the assault upon a black woman on the night of the 2006 ISD gig, claiming that the woman in question was asking for it.

At this stage, none of the handful of other Bombshell zine regulars who’ve commented on the thread in question have objected to any of the above, and have in fact acted as a kind of demented cheer squad for Doug and The Birmy Hotel.

Unfortunately, the forum is down at the moment… but up on YouTube, for a very limited time I expect, you can view the execution video for which a Russian neo-Nazi was a few weeks ago fined for distributing online. It depicts the beheading of one young man and the shooting death of another — for the crime of not being ‘white’ — and is extremely graphic. Perhaps these pictures, if viewed, will help explain why neo-Nazi groups such as Blood & Honour and the Hammerskins have no place in our pubs or in our cities.

Pride. Strength. Honour. // Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer

To be continued…

Posted in !nataS, Anti-fascism, Collingwood, Music | 31 Comments

G20 : Arrest #28 in Brisbane

Posted on December 11, 2007 by @ndy

According to police media:

G20 protestor arrested in Queensland
Release date: Tue 11 December 2007

More than one year on from the event, police continue to pursue protestors involved in last year’s G20 forum. Queensland police today arrested a 37-year-old High Gate Hill man in High Gate Hill, on behalf of Victoria Police. He has been charged with riot and will face Melbourne Magistrates Court on Friday, after making his own way to Victoria. It is expected more charges will be laid against him later. This arrest takes the total number of G20-related arrests by the Salver Taskforce to 28.

Katherine Jess
Media Officer

Newscorpse by way of The Australian regurgitates the police media release while adding a few more details of its own:

Man arrested over G20 violence
The Australian
December 10, 2007

A QUEENSLAND man today became the 28th person arrested in relation to violent protests outside the G20 economic summit in Melbourne last year. The 37-year-old man, from the inner Brisbane suburb of Highgate Hill, was arrested by Queensland Police on behalf of officers in Victoria and charged with riot, a Victoria Police spokeswoman said. The man was arrested at an address in Highgate Hill. He will make his own way to Victoria to face a hearing at the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on Friday. Police expect to lay further charges against him.

The man was arrested as part of Operation Salver, which was formed to investigate violence at the G20 protests in Melbourne in November last year. At the time, police Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon described the level of violence at the protests as the worst seen in Melbourne since the demonstrations outside the World Economic Forum at Crown casino in 2000. Ten police were injured in the G20 protests and seven protesters were arrested at the demonstrations.

A few points: if Nixon claimed that ‘the violence’ at G20 was the worst seen since S11, in a way, she’s correct — although perhaps not in the terms implied. To put it another way, while not one single member of the public was convicted of a violent offence at S11, earlier this year Victoria Police settled a number of claims out of court, made by S11 protesters injured by police, with the law firm Slater & Gordon. Note that as a result of this settlement, Slater & Gordon — in a manner completely unrelated to either the signing of a lucrative contract with the not-at-all corrupt police union, or its multi-million dollar listing on the local sharemarket — has declared it will no longer handle such cases.

In the meantime, since G20, over 11,000,000 children have died from poverty-related causes.

It remains unclear at this stage if police will be laying any charges.

Posted in State / Politics | Leave a comment

BNP: Carry On Up the Khyber

Posted on December 10, 2007 by @ndy

Ah, it appears that Nick Griffin’s British National Party is in a spot of bother following the expulsion of two of its officials, ostensibly for conspiring against the Party leadership, in particular Duh Fuehrer Nick and two of his close allies, Mark Collett and Dave Hannam.

According to the BNP website: “This morning, Kenny Smith, Head of Administration and Sadie Graham, Group Development Officer, were expelled from the BNP for, amongst other things, creating and setting up a treasonous blogspot designed to attack and smear fellow party officials.”

Oh my.

Apparently, the expulsions are the result of investigations carried out by the “BNP Intelligence Department”.

Awesome.

Collett is a vulgar little fascist twat whose antics have been caught on film: Young, Nazi and Proud. Dave Hannam, on the other hand: “runs the disastrous Great White Records (GWR), the alleged musical wing of the BNP, which features such timeless classics as Paul Cromie on the mandolin (comparable, so we’ve been told, to George Formby on the banjo), and Colin Auty singing rubbishy racist songs about how much he likes to annoy MPs. Most of the songs on GWR’s mercifully short list seem to have been penned by Griffin himself, who would do better to stop writing talentless crap and start hassling the party’s treasurer to get the accounts in to the Electoral Commission, which has been waiting for them for over six months beyond the due date.

Rumour has it that GWR cost around £50,000 to set up and consumes around £1000/1200 per month in running costs. As it produces hardly any recordings, we can only assume that most of those costs cover rent and wages – something of a sinecure for Hannam at the expense of the membership.”

Speaking of which, in-between battling boofheads on bomsbshell about boycotting The Birmy,** I’ve been reading White Noise: inside the international nazi skinhead scene, edited by Nick Lowles and Steve Silver (Searchlight, 1998). A few tidbits:

    *”Donaldson and his followers were also discovering that being a well known nazi in London had its problems. Donaldson was attacked several times, which resulted in him leaving London towards the end of the year. One of the attacks came after a [bonehead] fanzine had referred to one of the organisations that made up the Anti-Fascist Action coalition, Red Action, as “Pink Action”. On his way home with a take-away meal one evening Donaldson was set about and left lying on the ground. Having several enemies he cried “who are you”, “Pink Action” came the reply.”

    *Following the “debacle” at Waterloo, in 1992 Combat-18 was formed: “Its leader was Paul Sargent, Charlie to his mates, a man with a long history in the right wing and an even longer criminal record. Sargent had become active in the late 1970s, where he mixed football violence and drug dealing with a skinhead adolescence. A close friend for much of this period was Chris “Chubby” Henderson, lead singer of the right-wing band Combat 84 and a prominent figure in the notorious football gang, the Chelsea Headhunters. An even closer friend was Gary Hitchcock, formerly manager of the skinhead band 4-skins, and another Chelsea “face”.”

    *Steve “Jonesy” Jones, the lead singer of English Rose (now the lead singer of Tattooed Mother Fuckers) also gets a guernsey; the band were one of a number to eventually turn against C18, partly by aligning themselves with the British franchise of the Hammerskins. On C18, Jonesy wrote “There’s no room within our ranks for such pathetic fools, nor for the people who believe their lies and support their actions against racial brothers”.

    *In October 1996, Wilf “The Beast” Browning went to Sweden. Three months later, his Swedish comrade Thomas Nakaba posted letter bombs to an English TV personality, AFA and the third to the guitarist for Squadron. “The bombs never reached their targets. The police had infiltrated C18 to its very highest level, with its leader, Charlie Sargeant, and possibly also his brother, Steve, tipping off police about the bombing campaign.”

** “Pat2” of South Brisbane (with woodz) writes on Monday December 10, 2007 @ 3:13 pm “Can you please document that [“i… want to punch you as well because you seem like such a nosey know-it-all cockhead”] on your blog with proper attribution so that when I actually do punch you in the face then you can act all smug about it and then properly reference that further blog post”.

Posted in !nataS, Anti-fascism, History, Music | 11 Comments

aNaRcHy! PuNk!

Posted on December 9, 2007 by @ndy

A proposal for a Regional Anarchist Federation

Introduction

Even as many of us constantly engage in struggles to enact our revolutionary politics and ideas in collectives, as individuals, at work and at play, there is often an underlying sense of isolation from broader anarchist activity from which to draw knowledge and inspiration. We feel that this is a severe barrier [to] our ability to maintain effective struggle or to even propagate a revolutionary, anarchist politics on a larger scale. We believe a Federation that collectives (and individuals) over the wide distances of this region can align with would begin to solve these problems…

[Continued]

You can get free noise at oLd PuNkS nEvEr DiE: Hellbastard; Culture Shock; Political Asylum and more. Top blog.

7inchcrust is another great PuNk blog about seven… inches… of… crust, and otherwise “always brutal and aggressive” punk.

Speaking of making a fucking racket, I wonder what ever happened to Warsore? 1995 really doesn’t seem all that long ago.

*sigh*

Posted in Anarchism, Music | 3 Comments

Thompson / Croatia // Spain / de la Hija

Posted on December 9, 2007 by @ndy

Call to stop ‘Nazi’ rock gig
Megan Byrne
The Age
December 9, 2007

JEWISH groups have asked the Government to prevent a Croatian band accused of glorifying Hitler from entering Australia for a national tour.

The controversial rock group Thompson, which has already been banned from entering the Netherlands because of its anti-Semitic lyrics, is booked to perform at Festival Hall this month before playing in Sydney on New Year’s Eve, Adelaide and Perth.

The band’s lead singer and songwriter, Marko Perkovic, has been criticised for using anti-Semitic lyrics, including the catchcry of the nationalist Croatian party Ustashi, whose collaboration with the Nazis resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Jews, Serbs and Gypsies. Thompson’s performances frequently attract Ustashi and Nazi supporters, who are allegedly encouraged in the glorification of Hitler with shouts of “Heil Hitler” and the Nazi salute.

The B’Nai B’Rith Anti-Defamation Commission, a Jewish human rights organisation, has asked the Federal Government to ban the group.

The Melbourne leg of Thompson’s tour is being sponsored by the Australian Croatian Association, based in Geelong, which could not be contacted despite several attempts by The Sunday Age. The gig follows a rock concert organised by neo-Nazi music promotion group Blood and Honour, which was held at the Croatia Social Club in mid-October.

Manny Waks from the Anti-Defamation Commission said the commission was “disturbed” by the Blood and Honour concert in October, and was disappointed that the Croatian community had now invited Thompson to perform.

“We deplore the Croatian community for associating themselves once again with a racist individual by hosting this event,” he said.

But not everyone is against the group. Catherine Lukic, who works at the Australian Croatian Association’s club, said she worked with the band when they played there several years ago. Ms Lukic describes Thompson as excellent entertainers who are extremely popular with both the young and old.

“I am nearly 60 years old and I enjoy them,” she said. Ms Lukic was surprised to hear that Thompson had been criticised for anti-semitic lyrics.

“I never heard them say (nationalist catchcry) ‘Za dom-Spremni’ when they were here,” she said.

Spain: 16-year-old murdered by fascist
Vicky Short
wsws.org
December 8, 2007

Violent social and political conflicts have exploded in Spain’s main towns, following the passing of the Law of Historical Memory by the Spanish Congress last month. The Law officially condemns the mass executions and other crimes carried out during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and the military dictatorship of General Francisco Franco (1939-1975) that followed. The conflicts have already claimed several victims, one fatal, and provoked pitched battles between police and anti-fascist demonstrators. Several youth have been stabbed by neo-Nazi and racist thugs, and beaten up and imprisoned by the police.

One of the first confrontations took place in the Madrid Underground on Sunday November 11. Sixteen-year-old Carlos Javier Palomino died on the spot in the station of Legazpi after being stabbed in the heart. Another 19-year-old male received a stab wound to the chest, which caused his lung to collapse. He was taken in critical condition to hospital. Another youth was shot in the eye later by police Others sustained lesser injuries.

The young people were travelling in a group with the intention of stopping a demonstration organised by the ultra-right-wing party “Democracia Nacional” in Usera, a working class district where many immigrants live. The demonstration was extremely provocative, called under slogans such as “Against anti-Spanish racism” and “Against immigration.” It had been authorised by the Madrid government and was protected by hundreds of policemen. The fascist Frente Nacional (National Front) later held another protest against immigrants, with the slogan “For your security and that of your family.”

After the stabbing, 24-year-old Josué Estébanez de la Hija, an Army soldier serving in the King’s Immemorial Regiment, was pursued and caught outside the Underground station. After being treated in hospital, he was taken into custody, suspected of carrying out the fatal stabbing of Carlos Javier Palomino. The soldier, of reported Nazi leanings, was travelling in the same train in order to take part in the Usera racist demonstration…

Posted in Anti-fascism, Media, Music, State / Politics | 16 Comments

Briefly…

Posted on December 8, 2007 by @ndy
    Truth, for example, pontificated on May Day 1892: ‘All ignorant and vicious people are Anarchists … [most] prisoners in gaol are Anarchists and most Anarchists who are not in gaol ought to be’.

ONE

…The extent of such complicity, even duplicity, can be gauged by the open military training undertaken by the Croatian fascist front, the Ustashi, near Wodonga in 1963. Not only did the Ustashi members have the use of Citizen’s Military Forces’ armoured cars, but they also sported Army issue Owen sub-machine guns. Their political leaders, Srecko Rover and Ljenko Urbancic, found support at the highest levels of government to carry out such training displays. It is perhaps doubly ironic if not perverse that with the political malaise and fragmentation from which contemporary Yugoslavia suffers, Urbancic can pose before his Kurrajong fort as an honorary consul for Slovenia (see The Sydney Morning Herald, July 17, 1990). Can his Nazi past be so easily overlooked?

TWO

@ndy: The drummer for Bulldog Spirit, “Joel, is a bonehead — a neo-Nazi “skinhead” — who’s played, recorded and toured with neo-Nazi bands such as Deaths Head, Fortress and Ravenous, [which] make me wonder exactly what BS is on about.”

Doug Smith: “and for the record, before you keep running around calling people nazi, i think you’ll find that joel is not a “neo-nazi skinhead”. yes, he has drummed in those bands in the past but does not any more.”

~ http://bombshellzine.com, Off Your Chest Forum, December 7, 2007

THREE

Neo-Nazi Acquittal: Dismay over Release of Extremist Attackers
Spiegel Online
December 7, 2007

The trial of four neo-Nazis charged of attacking a group of actors took an unexpected turn on Wednesday, when a district court released them from custody on the basis of [insufficient] evidence. Two of the victims have decided to move out of town.

The victims of a summer neo-Nazi attack were dealt a shocking blow on Wednesday, when those charged with the offense were released from custody. On the ninth day of hearings, all four of the accused men between the ages of 22 and 29, were allowed to walk free from the district court in Magdeburg…

FOUR

Pro-Nazi band to tour Melbourne
Naomi Levin
Australian Jewish News
December 6, 2007

A REPRESENTATIVE from Festival Hall has confirmed that pro-Nazi Croatian singer Marko Perkovic, together with his band Thompson, will play in Melbourne on December 29. Thompson has publicly expressed its support for the Ustashe, a pro-Nazi regime that was responsible for the murder of tens of thousands of people during World War II, and was known for singing nationalistic songs in support of Croatia…

Finally… It’s the End of the World As We Know It And I Feel Fine:

Posted in !nataS, Anarchism, Anti-fascism, History, Music | Leave a comment

G20! Millions of Dead Children! Nazis!

Posted on December 5, 2007 by @ndy

Former police union boss, the bloke they call Mullett, has gone on a little holiday — possibly to face charges of perverting the course of justice, perjury, breaching the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act, misleading the OPI director and breaching the OPI Act secrecy provisions — so it’s been left to his temporary replacement, Bruce McKenzie, to moan about police being subjected to unfair treatment:

Six members who were involved in last year’s G20 riots attracted some media attention today as they have, for more than a year, been ineligible for transfer or promotion as their conduct during the riots remains under scrutiny. It is both outrageous and unfair that members simply performing [their] duty, especially under such violent and dangerous circumstances[,] have remained under investigation and consequently unable to advance their careers. Protesters (some of who[m] punched, kicked and bit police during the G20 conflict) have already appeared in court, while it is hard-working members, who simply turned up to do their job, acting in good faith and in the interests of community safety[,] that remain under investigation. The inquiry into the G20 riots must be accelerated to allow these six members to continue their policing careers – the Police Association will continue to put pressure on those in charge of the investigation to expedite the process as a matter of urgency.

Typical bloody union thugs.

Strangely, the Herald Sun — the paper that backed the Tories in their failed attempt to maintain power (even in the face of union intimidation) — has backed the (police) union, describing the six subject to internal investigation as being ‘heroes’. What is unacknowledged is that the six are being investigated for possible offences committed on Sunday, November 19, outside of Melbourne Museum, when approximately 50 individuals, mostly women, who had peacefully assembled outside of the building, were confronted and then assaulted by several hundred police (including members of the riot squad).

Real heroic stuff. In the meantime:

G20 protesters facing legal setback
AAP
The Age
December 5, 2007

A group of 19 people charged over last year’s G20 riots in Melbourne has lost its bid to have a possible trial heard in a lower court.

Lawyers for 19 demonstrators applied to have riot and affray charges dealt with at Melbourne Magistrates Court rather at a higher court if they went to trial. But magistrate Sarah Dawes on Wednesday refused the request, following prosecution arguments that the matters were too serious.

The defence lawyers wanted the case be dealt with by a magistrate, who has the power to deal with some serious offences such as riot in a contested hearing. This is essentially a trial in a magistrates court. But Ms Dawes ruled this was inappropriate. She ordered the defendants appear before a contested committal hearing to determine whether there was enough evidence for them to stand trial in a higher court.

Ms Dawes said five people were already set to appear before the Victorian County Court charged over the riots and it would make no sense to run a lengthy trial twice. However, the defence lawyers argued their clients would face a significant delay of more than a year if ordered to appear before the County Court. Having the case heard in a lower court would also result in a significant saving of public money. The defence also argued that conduct by the defendants represented only an “average or ordinary” example of riot and affray offending.

Ms Dawes also rejected this argument.

“I take the view this offence is more serious than that,” she said. She said the fact some demonstrators wore disguises during the riots indicated an element of pre-planning.

Ms Dawes set a further hearing date at the same court on February 11 for a mention and ordered a four-week contested committal hearing begin at Melbourne Magistrates Court on February 18.

    “…a parcel of big ugly fat-necked wombat headed big bellied magpie legged narrow hipped splaw-footed sons of Irish Bailiffs or english landlords which is better known as Officers of Justice or Victorian Police…”

    – Ned Kelly (1855–1880), the Jerilderie Letter, February 1879

Speaking of violence, in the year since the G20 Summit in Melbourne — in which a number of rock *s, in addition to bureaucrats, foreign and imported, warbled about ‘making poverty history’ — the UN estimates 11,460,000 children have died of “poverty-related” causes (one might just as well say ‘wealth-related’ causes). But hell, who’s counting? And yet, even now, there are some socialists, there are some anarchists, there are some people that want to disrupt world trade. Thankfully, police forces around the world give short shrift to such troublemakers. Of course, not all troublemakers are bad. In Putin’s Russia, for example, police happily collude in the fascist butchering of oppositionists; while in Germany, they’re just plain tricksy.

German police ‘routinely ignore racist attacks’
Harry de Quetteville
Daily Telegraph
December 5, 2007

Police in eastern Germany routinely ignore racially motivated attacks, according to local politicians. They have also been accused of manipulating statistics to hide the soaring number of incidents involving neo-Nazis.

The chief of police in the state of Saxony-Anhalt was forced to resign yesterday after it emerged that he had instructed officers not to classify incidents as hate crimes unless the perpetrators were caught. The force headed by Frank Hüttemann claimed its region went against Germany’s national trend of rising race crime when it reported that attacks by neo-Nazis had halved in the first six months of the year. But state interior ministry statistics show the number of hate-crime victims rose by more than a quarter in the first nine months of the year.

The resignation of Mr Hüttemann is the latest blow to the Saxony-Anhalt police, which is already the target of a state parliamentary investigation into its failure to act against neo-Nazi activity. The committee is examining six cases, including one assault in which police failed to detain the suspects even though they remained at the scene after officers arrived.

Germany has been rocked in recent months by an upsurge in neo-Nazi attacks, with mobs targeting people from ethnic minorities. Jewish and anti-racist groups claim parts of eastern Germany have become “no-go areas”.

Last month a 17-year-old girl had a swastika carved into her hip by a gang of neo-Nazis after she tried to stop them bullying a six-year-old foreign girl. A pregnant Iraqi woman needed hospital treatment last weekend after being punched on a bus in Magdeburg, the state capital of Saxony-Anhalt. In another incident, a group of German men attacked three men and a woman from Niger as a crowd of 30 people looked on.

In Melbourne meanwhile, gumby punks continue to support Gary K’s venue in Fitzroy, where until recently neo-Nazi skinheads have gathered. However, word on the street is that last weekend’s benefit gigs were slightly spoilt by an assault on a punter… more details to follow. In a tearful address, leader of the gumby punks, Chris Crocker, has denounced the boycott of the pub, declaring: LEAVE GARY ALONE!

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