No Todos Somos Chávez: Venezuela says ‘No’

Posted on December 4, 2007 by @ndy

“The history of the world is but the biography of great men.”

Local Chávistsas in the DSP/Resistance/Socialist Alliance have been busy counting their pollos before they hatch. A breathless piece of late-breaking news recapitulating The Great Leader’s warning should the Yanqui imperialistas interfere in the country’s domestic politics accompanies the rather obvious expectation of a win in the December 2nd referendum:

Breaking news on Venezuela’s constitutional reform referendum
Green Left Weekly
December 1, 2007

BREAKING NEWS — As Green Left Weekly goes to press, the Venezuelan government has released video evidence of a violent destabilisation campaign being planned by US-funded opponents of the Chavez government and the process of change. The campaign is based on reject[ing] the outcome of the referendum being held on December 2. Speaking to up to a million supporters of the constitutional reforms and the revolution on November 30, President Hugo Chavez threatened to cut off oil supplies immediately to the US, in retaliation against any violent attacks. Chavez has referred to the constitutional reform campaign, which aims to open the way to socialist transformation, as the revolution’s most important battle yet…

As it happens, the referendum (and “the revolution’s most important battle yet”) has been lost — just. Exactly why it was lost is obviously very difficult to establish, but of the 69 proposed changes to the Venezuelan Constitution voters were asked to approve, the most controversial appears to have been that which would’ve allowed Hugo to remain in office until 2050 (God-willing) (Venezuela rejects bid by Chávez to amend charter, Simon Romero, International Herald Tribune, December 3, 2007). In which case, minus Chávez, the referendum may have succeeded, and Venezuela be that much further along the road to ‘socialism’.

Oddly enough, at the same time Venezuelan voters rejected ‘socialism’, Russian voters endorsed Putin’s continued rule of the former Communist stronghold. And while the election in Venezuela appears to have been relatively ‘fair’ — at least in the sense that votes were counted, even if they were contra the ‘reforms’ — the same cannot be said for Russia. Well, not according to independent observers anyway. Putin’s Party Wins Russian Election, Vladimir Isachenkov, AP, December 3, 2007: “European election monitors said Monday that Russia’s parliamentary ballot was unfair, hours after President Vladimir Putin’s party swept 70 percent of the seats in the new legislature. The victory paves the way for Putin to remain Russia’s de facto leader even after he leaves office next spring…”

Still, like Chávez in Venezuela, Putin does have his supporters, including among youth. The BBC recently profiled one: Andrei Tatarinov, “an activist for the youth wing of the United Russia party” (Viewpoint: Pro-Putin cheerleader, Patrick Jackson, November 26, 2007). A few interesting facts about Andrei are that he used to be a follower of Eduard Limonov’s National Bolshevik Party (“I was going through a rebellious phase, reading books about Che Guevara, Trotsky, the Russian Revolution”) and that he identifies the political opposition to Putin as being “either anarchists or… want[ing] to drag us backwards – to the chaos of the 1990s or to the communist past”. Chávez, on the other hand, has described opponents of the referendum not as “anarchists” but ‘as “daddy’s little children”, “fascists” and “the children of the rich”, accusing them of acting on orders from the US Government’ (100,000 march against Hugo Chavez reforms, The Times, November 30, 2007). In Venezuela, anarchists — routinely denounced as bourgeois, fascist and right-wing, not only by Chávez, but by all the lapdogs of all the powers, old and new — have issued a few statements on the proposed reforms. One, Venezuela’s Constitutional Reform: A Threat to What Was Won Through Struggle is available via World War 4 Report; an extract from another is below.

INSURGENTES against Venezuela’s constitutional reform

Various organizations and individuals within Venezuela, each with a history of social struggle and each bringing with them diverse proposals from the anti-authoritarian and critical left, have assembled in the space of INSURGENTES (INSURGENTS) to forge a position against the proposed constitutional “reform” offered by the republic’s President, Hugo Chavez Frias.

Constitutions, in all countries, invariably reflect the power relations that exist between society’s different social classes. Today’s proposed “reform” simply confirms the victory obtained by transnational capital during the coup and petrol sabotage of 2002-2003 which created mixed businesses and has led to the handover of vast new mineral and petroleum concessions to foreign capital.

The President’s “reform” proposals, the modifications passed by the National Assembly and all of the other modifications that have been announced, fundamentally inscribe and accommodate global capitalism’s agenda to demolish, across the board, any obstacles which impede the growth of profit, access to the country’s enormous energy and mineral reserves, and the free circulation of capital, goods and services. They are an extension of what is called the “globalization” of the world economy – a process which reflects the predatory nature of international capital.

As a provider of energy, minerals and hard currency, Venezuela is one of the pillars of the world capitalist economy, offering vital support to the profitability of the big energy and mineral corporations and thus entirely implicated in a perverse and genocidal model of civilization.

The principal objective pursued by big capital with this “reform” is to give constitutional authority to the system of mixed property established between the National State and private capital (through mixed businesses), which is implied in the offering of sovereignty to the transnationals and foreign governments — and not only in oil but also in minerals and all public services.

This alliance was legalized in 2006 by the National Assembly when, without consulting anyone, they approved the Standard Contract of Mixed Businesses. By applying this organizational structure, transnational oil businesses changed their role from that of service providers to owners of 40% of the hydrocarbons that are under the subsoil of Venezuelan territory. This represents the essence of the so-called “reform” and explains the speed with which they want to place this issue before the people — in order to legitimize electorally their new political swindle. Once it has attained its primary objective of privatization, global capitalism will permit the Bolivarian government any number of corresponding structural changes; so long as it continues to allow the intensification and stabilization of their lucrative and exploitive activities. With the subordination of the State firmly in place via the creation of mixed-property (State/international Capital alliance) sovereignty is violated at the economic base of the entire society – not only in the oil industry but in all branches of the economy.

To obtain this the government, in the interest and behest of international capital, has by necessity to introduce, among others, the following changes:

1. Concentration of power in the President of the Republic (Articles 11, 16, 18, 70, 136, 141, 156, 158, 167, 184, 185, 225, 230, 236, 251, 252, 305, 307, 318, 320, 321, 328, 329 and the transitory measures), in flagrant contradiction to the principle of popular participation and leadership.

The proposed “reform” grants the President extensive powers which are not subject to any external control: Chief of State; Head of Government; Administrator of Public Finances and the National Budget; Author and Ratifier of International Accords and Treaties; Commander and Chief of the Armed Forces with the power to intervene in all of its branches and appoint officials; Creator and Director of New Territorial Entities and Public Powers; Directing the Budgets for the Missions; naming vice-presidents; establishing and arranging international reserves; Inspector and Director of the National Counsel of Government and the Counsel of State, and establishing and unilaterally directing the country’s developmental plans.

It is abundantly clear that the usurpation of the right to choose local and regional representatives by the President of the Republic — who under the terms of the reform will appoint them himself — is in direct contradiction to his claim of public electoral responsibility (article 70). In open complicity with the National Assembly and other public powers, the President will have the unilateral authority to execute these sweeping powers…

[Continued… DOC]

On a vaguely-related note, see also Alex Nunns, Car crash on the left, Red Pepper, December 2007–January 2008. “The increasingly bitter division of Respect into two conflicting factions looks set to destroy the most effective electoral challenge to the left of Labour in many years. Alex Nunns spoke to the main protagonists on either side of the split…” RESPECT (SWP) // RESPECT (non-SWP) // Socialist Alliance (UK) // Democratic Socialist Alliance (UK) // Campaign for a New Workers’ Party (UK) // Campaign for a Marxist Party

Posted in State / Politics, Trot Guide | 47 Comments

History | Music

Posted on December 3, 2007 by @ndy

Phil Ochs (1940–1976) | Joe Hill (1879–1915)

Posted in History, Music | 8 Comments

“New Zealand Civil Liberties Union” site closed down

Posted on December 1, 2007 by @ndy

Update December 3 : New Zealand police affidavit also to be found here, here and here (and likely elsewhere too).

US website hosting Urewera ‘terror’ evidence shut down
November 29, 2007

A United States-hosted website which published secret evidence about alleged military-style weapons training camps in the Ureweras has been closed down. The site nzclu.org was created by Michael Ross, of Springfield, Missouri, this month, claiming to be the official website of the “New Zealand Civil Liberties Union”. But GoDaddy.com, one of the world’s biggest providers of internet domain names, today confirmed it had shut the site. “We received a complaint about the content of nzclu.org, reviewed it and decided it was in breach of our terms of service,” Go.Daddy.com communications manager Nick Fuller said by email. “Due to our privacy policy, we cannot release specific information about why it was taken down.”

The Crown Law Office, which has expressed concerns about news media quoting evidence contained in the police affidavit that was posted on nzclu.org, had nothing to do with the site’s closure, a spokeswoman said.

NZPA was unable to contact Mr Ross about the site which, before it was closed, said it was “protecting God’s Own from erosion of essential civil liberties and human rights abuses that threaten all of us”. It said recent events – including the Electoral Finance Bill and “massive round-up of 17 New Zealand citizens without bail or trial for four weeks” – prompted the site being launched.

The New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties says it has no connection to the New Zealand Civil Liberties Union.

The 156-page police affidavit was filed in Manukau District Court to obtain search warrants for police to stage raids in eastern Bay of Plenty, Auckland, Wellington, Hamilton, Palmerston North and Christchurch on October 15. The version of the affidavit that was posted on the website was taken from a photocopy, which had hand-written legal notes in the margins and marked references to Jamie Lockett – one of those arrested – throughout the document. Lockett is one of the 16 defendants facing firearms charges as a result of the raids on October 15. The 17th person arrested solely faces drug charges. Solicitor-General David Collins decided against any prosecutions under the Terrorism Suppression Act. Lockett’s counsel Jeremy Bioletti, who filed a complaint to the Solicitor-General against various Fairfax Media publications for publishing contents of the affidavit, has not responded to NZPA calls since its website posting was pointed out to him this week.

– NZPA

What’s also noteworthy about the police affidavit is that it names 36 individuals as being involved in “a group of people who have been training in the Tuhoe Forest, Te Manawa o Tuhoe and Ruatoki Blocks of land and surrounding area wearing camouflage clothing and using military style semi automatic firearms, Molotov Cocktails and they are committing the offences of Participating in a Terrorist Group, Unlawful Possession of Firearms and Unlawful Possession of Restricted Weapons”; and yet just 16 of these 36 individuals are being charged with Firearms offences.

Posted in !nataS, Media, State / Politics, War on Terror | 4 Comments

Anarchy, Chaos & Trotsky

Posted on November 30, 2007 by @ndy

On the one hand…

Greek student charged over anarchist arsons
AP
November 29, 2007

GREECE – A Thessaloniki prosecutor has charged a 27-year-old student for alleged involvement in a string of recent arson attacks by suspected anarchists, police said. The suspect was charged under strict anti-terrorism laws passed in 2001 to target left-wing extremists and organised crime. He was formally accused of committing acts of terrorism, participation in a criminal group, arson and explosives possession, police said. If convicted, the postgraduate student faces up to 25 years in prison. Police said the suspect allegedly took part in an arson attack Monday on a Thessaloniki back lot belonging to a French car dealership – in an apparent show of solidarity with youths rioting in the suburbs of Paris. At least five cars were damaged. The student is also suspected of involvement in attacks in recent months on a bank ATM and two trucks owned by the state power corporation, police said. An anarchist group claimed responsibility for the ATM attack. Anarchist groups frequently carry out arson attacks on banks, government buildings and vehicles in Athens and Thessaloniki.

And on the other…

Police Chief Quits over Massaging Neo-Nazi Crime Data
Spiegel Online
November 28, 2007

The chief of police in an eastern German state has resigned following criticism of his decision to change how the state’s notoriously high far-right crime statistics are calculated. The new method miraculously halved far-right crimes recorded in the state this year…

And on the third hand…

More melodrama from everybody’s favourite Trotskyist groupuscule, The International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist), aka the Spartacists. They’re currently engaged in a ding-dong battle with another mob (splitters!) called the International Bolshevik Tendency, at the head of which is The Renegade Logan. As part of their ongoing polemic against Logan’s mob, the Sparts have recently published The Logan Dossier, concerning ‘Documentary Evidence and Testimony in the August 1979 Trial and Expulsion of Bill Logan from the international Spartacist tendency for Crimes Against Communist Morality and Elementary Human Decency’. A sample of their purple prose:

In 1987, we wrote of the BT:

“Ex-members of the socialist movement do sometimes bear malice toward the organizations that ‘failed’ them. But people who voluntarily leave even very bad organizations normally find that their grievances recede as they go on with their lives. Hostility doesn’t make a program and ex-membership in a party doesn’t provide a sufficient reason for publishing a newspaper or crossing North America and Europe year after year seeking others similarly inclined. The BT is manifestly an assemblage of garbage, a heap made up of worse than worn-out people, the worst of those who have departed from the SL, which we think is a pretty good revolutionary organization. But to take that refuse heap and make it move like a loathsome living thing requires something more, an animating principle like the electric charge Dr. Frankenstein used to imbue his monster with life.”

—“Garbage Doesn’t Walk By Itself—What Makes BT Run?” [Workers’ Vanguard] No. 428, 15 May 1987

The IBT, on the other hand, is no slouch at slander itself, as the following reveals:

We stand on the Trotskyist positions defended and elaborated by the revolutionary Spartacist League in the years that followed [the struggle of the Revolutionary Tendency of the SWP]. However, under the pressure of two decades of isolation and frustration, the SL itself has qualitatively degenerated into a grotesquely bureaucratic and overtly cultist group of political bandits which, despite a residual capacity for cynical “orthodox” literary posturing, has shown a consistent impulse to flinch under pressure. The “international Spartacist tendency” today is in no important sense politically superior to any of the dozen or more fake-Trotskyist “internationals” which lay claim to the mantle of the Fourth International.

The splintering of several of the historic pretenders to Trotskyist continuity and the difficulties and generally rightward motion of the rest opens a potentially fertile period for political reassessment and realignment among those who do not believe that the road to socialism lies through the British Labour Party, Lech Walesa’s capitalist-restorationist Solidarnosc or the Chilean popular front. We urgently seek to participate in a process of international regroupment of revolutionary cadres on the basis of the program of authentic Trotskyism, as a step toward the long overdue rebirth of the Fourth International, World Party of Socialist Revolution.

Note that:

The predecessor of the SL/ANZ, the Spartacist League of New Zealand, traced its origins to one Owen Gager, who in 1967 declared his solidarity with the SL/U.S. Declaration of Principles (see “Development of the Spartacist League,” New Zealand Spartacist League Revolutionary Communist Bulletin No. 1, August 1972). Logan was later drawn to Gager, and as Gager spun off in the direction of Pabloism (i.e., political liquidationism), the tiny Spartacist League consolidated in 1972 around Logan and his companion, Adaire Hannah.

Owen has since become an anarchist, and took part, as one of the prosecution, in the conduct of Lenin on Trial in 2001.

See also :

1) Fourth International (International Viewpoint) | United Secretariat of the Fourth International
2) Fourth International (League for the Fourth International) | Internationalist Group
3) Fourth International (International Committee of the Fourth International) | ICFI

Posted in !nataS, Anarchism, Trot Guide | 10 Comments

NZ Police affidavit: Just gimme a Bl@ckmask

Posted on November 30, 2007 by @ndy

So yeah, the affidavit. It’s no longer available via the ‘New Zealand Civil Liberties Union’ site, but presumably those responsible, however briefly, for making it available online shouldn’t have too many difficulties doing so again if they wish. One noteworthy aspect of the affidavit — which consists, in large part, of a tediously long list of names, dates, places and records of conversations and movements — is to be found in the Introduction. This has already been mentioned previously in the NZ press, but I thought it might be worth drawing attention to anyway. Thus “The Herald on Sunday understands police first became concerned about alleged “terror-related” activities in the early part of 2004. It is understood that in one incident the National Party website was hacked into by a group calling itself “Bl@ckmask”…” (Stephen Cook, Terror charges Cullen’s job – law expert, November 11, 2007).

INTRODUCTION

1. My full name is [ABC]. I am a Detective Sergeant currently working in the Special Investigation Group at Auckland Metro Crime Services.

2. My duties include the investigation of matters of national security and the monitoring of radical groups operating in New Zealand.

BACKGROUND

3. On the 12th and 13th of March 2004 the New Zealand National Party website was the subject of attacks, or ‘hacks’, via the internet. A ‘hack’ is an unauthorised access of any computer system. The offender(s) uploaded images and text to the website which were predominantly anti the National Party [among other things “Neo Capitalist, Multinational, Racist, Trash” next to a picture with a circled A on a black background].
3.1. An activist organisation by the name of Bl@ckmask claimed responsibility for the ‘hack’.
3.2. An activist named [XYZ] was the main suspect for the ‘hack’ based on him occupying the hotel where the hack was made from, however he was not charged.

4. RELATES TO INFORMANT INFORMATION

5. RELATES TO INFORMANT INFORMATION

6. RELATES TO INFORMANT INFORMATION

And so on and so on… whatever. Anyway, here’s The (International) Noise Conspiracy:

And yeah, the whole thing seems to have been kicked off in March 2004 by the relatively insignificant act — for which nobody was ever prosecuted — of hacking into the National Party website. Fast forward three-and-a-half years and in:

CONCLUSION

566. I believe that the above mentioned persons (refer para’s 339 to 565) are part of a group of people who have been training in the Tuhoe Forest, Te Manawa o Tuhoe and Ruatoki Blocks of land and surrounding area wearing camouflage clothing and using military style semi automatic firearms, Molotov Cocktails and they are committing the offences of Participating in a Terrorist Group, Unlawful Possession of Firearms and Unlawful Possession of Restricted Weapons.

567. I believe that the last quasi military training camp occurred on the 14 and 15 September 2007 and that the next quasi military training camp has been scheduled for 12 and 13 October 2007.

568. Information to date suggests that the group intends to use the firearms to take control of an area of land. I believe that this land will most probably be in the Tuhoe area of New Zealand.

569. I believe on reasonable grounds that a search of the above addresses and vehicles (refer para’s 332 to 555) will locate evidence of Participating in a Terrorist Group, Unlawful Possession of Firearms and Unlawful Possession of Restricted Weapons.

570. I therefore seek the search warrants as outlined in paragraphs 339 to 565 which will obtain evidence relating to the offences of Participating in a Terrorist Group, Unlawful Possession of Firearms and Unlawful Possession of Restricted Weapons.

571. Participating in a Terrorist Group is an offence under the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002 and is punishable by a term of imprisonment; the Unlawful Possession of Firearms and the Unlawful Possession of Restricted Weapons are offences under the Arms Act 1983 and are also punishable by terms of imprisonment.

And here they are again. The (International) Noise Conspiracy I mean:

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

“Sounds of Hate” revisited… again

Posted on November 29, 2007 by @ndy

‘The Music of the Nightmare: “Sounds of Hate” revisited’ is the title of an article by Allon Lee, published in the December 2007 issue of the Australia/Israel Review, the monthly publication of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council. It’s a re-examination of neo-Nazi trends in contemporary music, based on an earlier article by Tzvi Fleischer called ‘Sounds of Hate’, published in the August 2000 issue. What follows is a brief commentary on Lee’s article in which I make a number of criticisms and corrections.

And now the end, the end is near / It’s time to say our last goodbyes
Doomsday, doomsday / It’s doomsday, doomsday
Is it reality or just a nightmare / Nightmare, nightmare
Doomsday, doomsday / It’s doomsday, doomsday
Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide / No escape, no escape
Doomsday, doomsday / It’s doomsday, doomsday
Is it reality or just a nightmare / Nightmare, nightmare
Doomsday, doomsday / It’s doomsday, doomsday

While a little on the lurid side — “neo-Nazi and far-right wing music is designed to lure, inculcate and brainwash impressionable minds to hate in the name of blood, honour and the supremacy of the white man” — Lee’s description of the purpose of neo-Nazi music is fairly accurate: it’s a propaganda tool. Further, like fascist doctrines generally, it appeals (like music generally), on a non-rational, emotional level, as well as a conscious, ‘political’ level. The $64,000 question, of course, is what kind of a society is it that produces young white men for whom such ideological and emotional posturing is, in fact, appealing…

Roots

On the history of neo-Nazi muzak, Lee is on some fairly shaky ground. For example:

1) “Punk music grew out of “Oi!” music which was itself influenced by Reggae and Ska, and was a manifestation of British working class culture”; in reality, the reverse is true — ‘oi!’ grew out of punk. And in terms of influences, Lee appears to be confusing the musical genre of oi! with the skinhead subculture as a whole. Thus skinhead predates oi!, and while oi! is usually defined as being a skinhead genre — while reggae and ska music are also very popular among skinheads — oi! owes far more to punk than it does the latter two genres, to which it owes very little.

2) “The attraction of “Oi!” bands like Sham ’69, the Angelic Upstarts and the Cockney Rejects for neo-Nazi skinheads was not necessarily a desirable outcome for many of these bands, especially when racist slogans [were] chanted by audience members. Eventually the skinhead movement produced their own authentic bands like the 4-Skins”; an odd statement, in some ways. Thus while it’s true that bands like Sham ’69 (1975–1980…), the Angelic Upstarts (1977+) and the Cockney Rejects (1979–1985…) didn’t appreciate racist sloganeering at gigs, the fact is the presence of neo-Nazis caused all sorts of trouble for the bands, both at gigs and in general. In their early years, this — rather than any principled opposition to fascism in the guise of the National Front (for example) — is what appears to have caused the most tension. Secondly, by any measure that I’m aware of, the 4-Skins (1979–1984, 2007+) are no more nor less authentically ‘skinhead’ than any of the other bands mentioned; in fact, one of the former members of the 4-Skins (1983–1984) Paul Swain later joined Skrewdriver.

3) “An anti-skinhead initiative in the late-1970s by British punk bands called “Rock Against Racism” provided a united front against the skinheads and the rising influence of the neo-Nazi National Front political party, prompting the latter to establish its own record label called White Noise Records in the early-1980s”; in reality, RAR was not initiated by British punk bands, nor was it ‘anti-skinhead’. RAR was what it’s name implies — Rock Against Racism (not British Punk Against Skinhead). Its formation was prompted not just by racist skinheads, but racism in the mainstream of the music industry; famously, remarks by Eric Clapton (against immigrants and for Enoch Powell) and David Bowie (in support of Nazism). Their dickheaded tirades prompted others to organise a series of concerts in which not just punk but reggae and ska bands, with black and white musicians, played together on stage. Why the NF established White Noise, on the other hand, was so it could make money from the racist skinheads by selling them B-grade rock ‘n’ roll with racist lyrics. And that’s exactly what it did.

4) “Skrewdriver’s first album, “All Skrewed Up”, released in 1977, received favourable reviews in mainstream music magazines, including New Musical Express, Sounds, and Melody Maker, emboldening [dead bonehead icon Ian Stuart] Donaldson in his view that the far-right was his spiritual home”; not really. All Skrewed Up contains none of the retarded outpourings on race and nation that characterised later Skrewdriver recordings.

5) “By making the transition, Donaldson made it seem cool for many people to accept the message of white power”; arguably… but again, not really. What made it ‘cool’ for young white men to celebrate white racialist politics was not just poor old boneheaded Ian, but the economic and political circumstances of late ’70s and early ’80s Great Britain, especially those confronting the losers in Thatcher’s class war — the working class. His ‘transition’ also sparked a backlash against the far right’s corruption of skinhead and working class culture more generally.

6) “Although Skrewdriver aligned itself with, and, indeed, was promoted by the British far-right, Donaldson was instrumental in setting up Blood and Honour in 1987, as the National Front was collapsing. To a certain extent the Blood and Honour movement was a trade union for skinhead musicians, who often played gigs organised by political parties but would end up being paid a pittance of the takings”; Donaldson, alongside his good (gay) comrade Nicky Crane, was instrumental in establishing B&H not only because the NF was collapsing — both as a result of its own internal contradictions but also under pressure from anti-fascist activists outside of it — but also because he and other musicians were tired of being used by groups like the NF. In that sense, B&H was not just a union, but a workers’ co-operative (of sorts) for fascist rock ‘n’ rollers.

7) “In the early 1990s, the highly violent Combat-18 (the 18 stands for the position in the alphabet of Adolf Hitler’s initials) was the banner organisation of neo-Nazi ideals in the British music scene, and it was largely formed as a response to the aggressive and successful tactics of anti-fascist groups like Searchlight magazine”; er, no. Searchlight was a magazine which specialised in documenting the far right — true — but in and of itself played a minor role in squeezing the life out of B&H in Great Britain. Combat-18 was, in turn, established partly in order to protect BNP (and B&H) events from disruption by militant anti-fascists organised via networks such as Anti-Fascist Action (1985–2001) and, before that, other groups operating on the margins of the Anti-Nazi League.

Great White Records

Having examined some of the history of skinhead, and the emergence of a fascist current within it in the late ’70s, Lee then turns to the BNP and their much more recent attempt to put their Scheiße to music. The establishment of Great White Records (GWR) represents a further shift away from the crude racism of the BNP’s past, as well as its crude expression via oi! music. Its arrival in January 2006 was greeted not only by groans from music lovers but also an article in The Observer by Neil Mackay (White off the scale, January 22, 2006). The following quote gives some idea of its flavour:

The BNP man, dressed smartly in a pressed white shirt and suit trousers, is about to lay down his first track. He admits that he doesn’t have a strong singing voice. ‘With our swords and our cutlasses, we’ll fight until we die!’ he essays to an old military tune, before forgetting the lyrics and shouting ‘Bollocks!’ Later he talks about the type of music Great White Records will be releasing: ‘I personally quite like reggae but I draw the line at reggae [being released on the label], obviously. We’re not having any bhangra. Unless we turn it into a heavily Anglo-Saxon version, we’re not having any rap either.’

Bonkers, as the Brits like to say. The Lancaster UAF provides some more detail:

What the membership of the party doesn’t generally know is that the GWR studios in Leeds (shared with the BNP’s Excalibur books scam) cost over £1000 a month to run – roughly £12000 per year which is equivalent to the annual membership fees of 400 members. And what precisely does the BNP get for that large investment? A few third-rate songs penned by the Leonard Cohen of the far-right Nick Griffin, BNP councillor Colin Auty singing a racist song about how many Asians there are in Dewsbury and Lee Haggan droning another Griffin song ‘about the domination by foreign cultures of many of our cities and how one day we will reclaim them for the native people’. For God’s sake…

In short, GWR is unlikely to set either the charts or the world ablaze. Note that UK-based doomsters The Prophecy are doing their bit for the BNP and the promotion of racism by recording all their material at Performance studios in Huddersfield with Alan Smith acting as producer; along with David Hannam, Alan is the creative, er genius, behind the fishy label.

Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi Oi!

Lee concludes his survey by looking at the scene in Australia and New Zealand. Here he finds that things have quietened down, and he’s largely correct. However, Lee fails to note the role of The Birmingham Hotel in Fitzroy in providing a home for B&H and the Southern Cross Hammerskins for the better part of the last ten years, as well as the fact that the annual Ian Stuart Donaldson memorial gig — most recently hosted by the Melbourne Croatia Social Club — has been held every year since its inception. Further, not all of the musicians who were active in the ’80s and ’90s have simply gone away, and a number continue to perform in other bands. One prominent local example is Bulldog Spirit, a right-wing skinhead band whose drummer once played not only with Fortress but local neo-Nazi band Deaths Head on a tour of Europe. Another is that of the band THUG, whose lead singer once performed in White Lightning.

The most recent neo-Nazi gig (October 13) was a collaboration between elements of the local Croatian community and B&H and the SCHS. Final War did in fact play at the gig, as did Perth band Quick & the Dead; the gig marking their return to the scene, and with the support of local punk bands in Perth such as The Homicides, happy to share the bill with the aging (and some not-so aging) racists. It’s also worth noting that, just a few short years ago, B&H and the SCHS arranged for the Bully Boys, another US band, to tour locally. Further, that Newcastle-based band Blood Red Eagle, having played Adolf Hitler’s birthday celebrations in Wellington in April (at the HQ of the local branch of the Satan’s Slaves MC) rowed their way to Portland in October to play the abortive 20th birthday celebrations of the global Hammerskins franchise. (Unfortunately for the neo-Nazis, the Elks’ Club proved to be less amenable hosts than the Melbourne Croatia Social Club, and upon learning the true nature of proceedings, told the boneheads to piss off; MCSC, on the other hand, first lied and then agreed to allow the gig to go ahead.)

To be continued…

Posted in Anti-fascism, History, Music | 24 Comments

NZ Police “terror” affidavit published online

Posted on November 28, 2007 by @ndy

The New Zealand police affidavit used to procure search warrants in the recent case of the Urewera 16 (nee 17) — or at least a document which purports to be that — has been published online in the name of the New Zealand Civil Liberties Union. It’s 155 pages long [one page is missing], and available as a PDF.

Weird shit.

    Update : Sometime in the last few hours, the site has been closed. “This site is currently unavailable. If you are the owner of this site, please contact us at 1-480-505-8855 at your earliest convenience.”

The site appears to be hosted by GoDaddy, a US-based company, which the report below claims is headquartered in Missouri (although it’s business address is given as being in Scottsdale, Arizona). Extracts from the affidavit were published by The Dominion Post as “The Terrorism Files” several weeks ago (November 14) and one month after police made their initial arrests. Those arrested have all since obtained bail following the decision by the NZ Solicitor-General not to proceed with charges under the Terrorism Suppression Act. Meanwhile, The Dominion Post and its publisher Fairfax continue to face the possibility of contempt of court charges being laid against them for having published the extracts.

Aside from anything else, the publication of the affidavit online raises a number of interesting legal questions regarding New Zealand and international law and the issuing of suppression orders. Thus media accounts such as the one below refer to the fact of publication but not its location, while some blogs record the name of the site, but do not link to it.

Secret police evidence posted on the net
NZPA
November 27, 2007

Secret evidence in a 156-page police affidavit used to carry out raids on Maori and other activists last month has been posted on a United States-based website.

The version of the affidavit on the website is taken from a photo-copy, which has hand-written legal notes in the margins and marked references to Jamie Lockett throughout the document.

Lockett is one of the 16 defendants facing firearms charges as a result of the raids on October 15.

Lockett’s lawyer, Jeremy Bioletti, this month filed a complaint to the Solicitor-General against The Dominion Post and other Fairfax Media publications for publishing contents of the affidavit filed at Manukau District Court on October 10 to obtain a search warrant for the raids.

Following the publication, Mr Bioletti said he expected The Dominion Post publisher, editor and the reporter involved, Phil Kitchin, would stand trial for contempt of court.

When contacted by NZPA today, Mr Bioletti was surprised to learn about the internet posting of the affidavit.

He declined to comment until seeing the website, which is under the name of a New Zealand organisation but appears to be hosted from Missouri.

Last week Solicitor-General David Collins wrote to Fairfax Media newspapers and the Stuff website, seeking their explanation for publishing information from the leaked affidavit.

Dominion Post editor Tim Pankhurst said today the Solicitor-General had given the newspaper until Friday to respond, and it was still preparing that response. He declined further comment.

Police launched an inquiry into how the information was leaked, initially to TV3, and whether any laws were broken. The inquiry was widened to include Fairfax outlets after they published excerpts from the affidavit.

The Dominion Post ran an editorial saying it believed it was acting within the law and in the public interest.

Posted in !nataS, Media, State / Politics, War on Terror | 5 Comments

Left, Right…

Posted on November 28, 2007 by @ndy
    Update Saturday December 8.

Having examined the Leninist vote at the 2007 Federal election, it’s time to turn right…

AUSTRALIA

Neither Pauline nor her former Party experienced much success at the polls this election. Well, not in terms of votes anyway. In terms of money, she’s laughing ka-ching! all the way to the bank, with a cheque for over $162,000 (Loser Hanson cleans up, Herald Sun, Ellen Whinnett, November 25, 2007).

In what will probably be her final tilt at Parliament, Ms. Hanson came fourth in the Queensland Senate race, having gained 95,131 votes or 4.12% and 0.2883 of a quota. One Nation, on the other hand, gained a meagre 4,144 votes, or just 0.18%, placing them fifteenth of 24 Senate tickets. In other states, One Nation fared a little better: in NSW obtaining 16,611 votes or 0.41% (by contrast, Pauline’s United Australia got 38,165 votes or 0.95%); in Victoria, 12,414 votes or 0.41%; in WA, 10,354 votes or 0.93%; and in SA, 5,583 votes or 0.61%. In total then, across the nation ON received 49,106 votes: a far cry from 2004, when in Queensland alone ON received 71,032 votes. In 2001, the Hanson ticket in Queensland received 215,400 votes…

In the seat of Murray, Diane Teasdale, with 623 votes, placed sixth of nine candidates. In Werriwa, Dr James Saleam’s comrade Joe Bryant fared a little better, gaining 2,019 votes, and placing fourth among a field of six.

Other parties on the right include the Jesus Freaks in the Christian Democratic and the Family First Parties, and the Free Market Fanatics in the LDP (Liberty and Democracy Party). In the Lower House, 129 Family First candidates received 245,144 votes, or 2.0%; 63 Christian Democratic Party candidates Hallelujah! received 104,433 votes or Can I Get A Witness? 0.8%. In the free market of ideas, the Liberty and Democracy Party found much fewer buyers, their 47 candidates collecting just 17,003 votes or 0.1%.

God and the Market have spoken.

Finally, in one of the finer displays of complete gibberish I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading, here’s Sue ‘I hate Jews’ Bateman with her election screed, one apparently worth 801 votes by the people of Fremantle:

    VOTE 1 – SUE BATEMAN
    ONE NATION WESTERN AUSTRALIA
    FREMANTLE

    This Election is possibly the most crucial,
    This Nation has ever faced.

    Your VOTE and Preference will decide whether
    we continue
    this greedy and destructive course we are on.

    Or will you say enough is enough?

    This election, Stop! And sit quietly.

    Clear all your mind of all of the confusion
    and propaganda that has been forced upon you.

    Quietly think of your 5 million Australian
    Brother and Sisters who live below the poverty line.

    Think of the depth of moral degradation
    WE have stuck to.

    Quietly, visualise how obscenely the Rich and
    Privileged few have become and how the poor have to
    Struggle harder each day just to exist.

    As you “THINK”, let your conscious and commonsense
    Guide you.

    Do not be afraid of change it will be unhurried.

    It will only effect, what is disadvantageous to YOU,
    Or OUR country AUSTRALIA.

    What do you think you will miss out on If you vote
    For a new and vibrant unshackled party?
    What could be worse than the two BURNT OUT,
    “Derelicts” we have now.

    VOTE 1 – SUE BATEMAN
    ONE NATION WESTERN AUSTRALIA

Speaking of “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer!”…

GERMANY

On November 17, a group of around 30 neo-Nazis, armed with cobblestones and batons, attacked the Casablanca restaurant in Dortmund. According to the police report, the group shouted “shit Turks” and “shit foreigners,” a reference to the Turkish guests inside. Nevertheless, the police are refusing to admit that the attack was racially motivated, and the offenders have been charged only with disturbing the peace…

Using a variety of tactics, the right-wing scene has attempted since the 1970s to establish itself in Dortmund and has a long record of criminal offences. At one time, in an attempt to recruit football fans, it formed Borussenfront. It also established the since-banned FAP (Free Comradeship) and most recently the “Anarchist Nationalists” and the RechtsRockszene (right-wing rock scene)… ~ Germany: Neo-Nazi attack in Dortmund restaurant, Sybille Fuchs, wsws.org, November 27, 2007

Also in Germany, four Übermensch allegedly carved a swastika into the leg of a sixteen-year old girl. They did so after the teenager tried to stop the men from harassing a six-year old outside a supermarket (Police Hunt Neo-Nazis Who Cut Swastika Into Woman’s Hip, Spiegel Online, November 26, 2007). The story was apparently originally reported on German indymedia. Of course, numerous other accounts of fascist and neo-Nazi intimidation never make it even as far as this.

RETURN TO OZ

On a completely unrelated note, I sometimes wonder why Welf Herfurth, the German-born neo-Nazi yuppie and chief (and only) ideologue of national anarchism in Australia and New Zealand fled Germany to come to Australia all those years ago…

On a somewhat related note, this Saturday night local scabs will be gathering at The Birmy in Fitzroy to reward Gary K’s support for neo-Nazi groups Blood & Honour (banned in Germany) and the Southern Cross Hammerskins over a period of a decade; a privilege recently claimed by the Melbourne Croatia Social Club. Herfurth attended the 2006 Ian Stuart Donaldson memorial, but I’ve no idea if he attended this year’s. It’s likely that Jim Perren did however. (See also : Allon Lee, The Music of the Nightmare: “Sounds of Hate” revisited, Australia/Israel Review, December 2007; response to follow)

Oh yeah, and someone claiming to be a corporate shill from some advertising agency sent a message to the Boycott the Birmingham blog. Here’s what it read:

John Hawley Says:
November 21, 2007 at 8:01 pm

To Whom it May Concern,
I would like to inform the persons running this site that some one in your organisation is illegaly [sic] placing posters inside JCDecaux bus shelters.
As these are owned by us and are private property we will be contacting the Police and prosecuting if any further posters are found in our shelters. We will also charge for advertising and removal costs.
I hope that this does not re-occur.
Regards,
John
JCDecaux Australia

JC Decaux are an interesting mob. Based in Paris, with branches in 45 countries including, obviously, Australia, they’re also apparently the second-largest outdoor advertising corporation in the world, and likely able to afford some otherwise expensive legal representation. Thus according to a Reuters report from March: “The company said 2006 net profit rose 4.1 percent to 201.1 million euros ($265.1 million) and announced a 5 percent dividend hike to 0.42 euros per share. Earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) increased 10.9 percent to 331.9 million euros and EBITDA rose 12.6 percent to 533.6 million euros.” Coincidentally, and perhaps encouraged by the sale of another former public asset — our ‘public’ transport system — to another French corporation — Connex — Jesus Christ Decaux wants to buy advertising space from the Victorian Government in exchange for bicycles.

Keen-eyed students of European radical history, as I’m sure most of my readers are, will note that this is in fact the neo-liberal, corporate version of a scheme first attempted to be implemented by Dutch radicals in the 1960s. According to Peter Marshall (Demanding the Impossible):

The Provos set out to provoke the staid burghers of Amsterdam and upholders of the Dutch State. In their journal Provo, they announced a series of White plans to deal with city problems. These included the White Bicycle Plan, which set up a number of white bikes around the city to be used communally; unfortunately, and perhaps predictably, many were stolen. They also mooted the White Chicken Plan (kip, or chicken, is slang for policeman); this would have seen policemen dressed in white uniforms and had them distributing contraceptives. Provo (which as a monthly reached a circulation of ten thousand) regarded anarchism as the ‘inspirational source of resistance’ and wanted to revive anarchism and to teach it to the young. The happenings and demonstrations of the Provos reached its climax in a violent confrontation with the police during a royal wedding on 10 March 1966…

Fast forward 40 years and traverse a continent (or two), and the situation has obviously shifted. 1) The ‘organisers’ of a blog advocating a boycott of a local pub which has 2) hosted White supremacists for the last 10 years is 3) the subject of a legal threat from 4) the local arm of a foreign corporation which is 5) simultaneously seeking to acquire advertising rights over public property by implementing a White Bicycle scheme first proposed by 6) anarchists in Europe and 7) from which political tendency the boycott is being most actively promoted. Meanwhile, the pub in question continues to be patronised by both boneheads and people who wear @ symbols on their clothing.

AOTEAROA/NEW ZEALAND

In New Zealand/Aotearoa, another well-known bonehead, 22 year-old Brendon ‘Nasty’ Rimmer, has recently gone to court for exhibiting similar fortitude in the struggle against ZOG as his German comrades, in Rimmer’s case, by spitting in the face and then allegedly assaulting an Asian teenager:

A Taupo man who spat in an Asian teenager’s face and told him to “get out of my country” has been labelled as nasty by a judge. Brendon James Rimmer, 22, appeared in the Taupo District Court yesterday facing three charges of common assault. He has pleaded guilty to the charges, which relate to an incident in Napier in July when Rimmer approached a group of four teenagers – aged between 15 and 17 – and verbally abused them before assaulting some of them.

Judge James Weir described Rimmer as “nasty” after hearing the details of the incident. Rimmer ran up to a group of boys walking along Wycliffe St in Napier and began verbally abusing them, a police summary of facts said Rimmer asked them “why are you hanging around with this chink?”, the summary said. He then asked the Asian teenager what he was doing in “my country” before saying “why are you here? Get out of my country”.

Rimmer then spat in the teenager’s face before hitting him in the face. Three of the boys escaped but one was left with Rimmer who pulled on his shirt, then asked why he was crying and threatened to “smack” him in the face…

Rahowa! you wanker.

Posted in !nataS, Anarchism, Anti-fascism, History, Music, State / Politics | 3 Comments

Viva Chávez? WSJ on the student opposition…

Posted on November 26, 2007 by @ndy

To Oppose Chávez, Youth In Caracas Rally Behind Stalin
John Lyons and José Córdoba
Wall Street Journal
November 24, 2007

CARACAS, Venezuela — As Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez attempts to push through what he calls 21st-Century Socialism, his biggest obstacle is an army of students led by a leftist named Stalin.

Ivan Stalin González, who prefers to be called just plain Stalin, is president of the student body at the Central University of Venezuela, or UCV, Venezuela’s biggest public university. During the past few weeks, Mr. González and other student leaders here have organized protest marches by tens of thousands of students opposed to a constitutional referendum set for Dec. 2. The proposed changes would dramatically expand Mr. Chávez’s power and allow him to seek perpetual re-election.

“Historically, students have represented the hope and conscience of Venezuela,” says Mr. González, who, unlike his bushy-moustached and sinister-mannered Soviet namesake, is scruffy-bearded and laid-back.

The student movement has taken the government by surprise, highlighting an embarrassing irony for the fiery Mr. Chávez: University students, long a bastion of the left here as in the rest of Latin America, are overwhelmingly opposed to him. They have also emerged, along with the Catholic Church, as among the last major opposition to Mr. Chávez in a country where he already controls the congress, courts, army and most media outlets.

Elia López, a 22-year-old architecture student at UCV, worries that by the time she is designing buildings, the only client will be the state, limiting her creativity. “Imagine if you studied to do something creative, and suddenly you couldn’t do it, or you could do it only if your ideas were the same as the government,” she said.

Variations of that concern are almost universal among Venezuela’s university students, whether they are majoring in sociology, dentistry or law. In a UCV campus election that became national news in mid-November, anti-Chávez student slates won 91% of the vote. Mr. Chávez’s student supporters garnered 9%.

Students like Mr. González have traditionally played an outsized role in Latin America’s turbulent politics. In the 1950s, University of Havana students led a struggle against Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Fidel Castro, who forced Mr. Batista from power — and who is Mr. Chávez’s revered mentor — got his start as a student leader at the university. In Mexico, a massacre of students and other protestors in 1968 helped inspire the creation of half a dozen small guerilla groups in the 1970s.

And in Venezuela, UCV holds an important place in political history. In 1957, a student strike that began here eventually led to the downfall of dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez. Half a century later, many Venezuelans hope Mr. Chávez will meet his political Stalingrad at UCV. “Student struggles have always preceded great historical changes,” says Fernando Ochoa, a former defense minister who was jailed when he participated in the 1957 strike as a high school student.

The sprawling UCV campus shows the scars of battles between pro- and anti-Chávez students earlier this month, involving stones, homemade bombs and gunfire. The law school’s student-center room, a base for Chávez supporters, still smells of charred wood and plastic from a fire that recently destroyed it. Workmen are still cleaning up the School of Social Work. There, pro-Chávez students barricaded themselves for several hours during a standoff with a crowd of students, until a group of armed civilians on motorcycles intervened to allow the Chávez supporters to escape.

On a recent day, the student radio station that plays constantly from speakers around the campus augmented the usual salsa tunes with student-movement classics, such as “Age of Aquarius” from the musical “Hair.” Protest marches, although sometimes met with violence by police, have been generally marked by whimsy and wit.

Taking to the streets, students have thrust their palms up in the air. The idea: They are a peaceful movement, bearing no weapons. This week, at a student press conference, a tortoise bearing the initials of Venezuela’s Supreme Court crept across a table while students complained that the court had been slow to take up their challenge to the proposed constitutional changes. (The court rejected the students’ request to delay the referendum to give citizens more time to study the proposals.)

Anti-Chávez sentiment on Venezuelan campuses burst into the open in May, when the government pulled the plug on RCTV, a television network critical of Mr. Chávez. Tens of thousands of students viewed the move as a blow to freedom of speech. They were also alarmed by Mr. Chávez’s promises that the “revolution within the university” would be next — likely expanding government control over areas like the curriculum. They took to the streets, creating a protest movement in campuses across the country. The Dec. 2 referendum has sparked a round of new protests.

Caught off guard, Mr. Chávez has called the students “terrorists” and written them off as “pampered, rich mama’s boys.” UCV, which charges no tuition, has a range of students, from the scions of businessmen to the sons of taxi drivers.

Mr. Chávez’s description also hardly fits Mr. González. The 27-year-old, sixth-year law student grew up in a poor household that dreamed of a Communist Venezuela. His father, a print-machine operator, was a high-ranking member of the Bandera Roja, or Red Flag, a hard-line Marxist-Leninist party that maintained a guerrilla force until as recently as the mid-1990s. Its members revered Josef Stalin as well as Albania’s xenophobic Enver Hoxha. As a boy, Mr. González remembers packing off to marches with his sisters, Dolores Engels and Ilyich, named in honor of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

As a young man, Mr. González burnished his leftist credentials, joining Marxist youth groups and following his father into the Bandera Roja. He traveled to Socialist youth conferences in Latin America.

Mr. González was still in his teens when Mr. Chávez was voted into office in late 1998. Even then, he says, he was skeptical about Mr. Chávez’s socialist rhetoric, as are many Venezuelan leftists. Mr. Chávez, a lieutenant colonel who had staged an unsuccessful coup attempt in 1992, would be more authoritarian than egalitarian, Mr. González reasoned.

He says his suspicions were confirmed when Mr. Chávez started forming the “Bolivarian Circles” of civilian supporters, some of which turned into armed gangs used to break up opposition gatherings. “Military men belong in the barracks,” he said.

Still seeking to make a life out of left-wing politics, Mr. González enrolled in 2001 at UCV. Rising in the ranks of the student body can be a fast track into political life, and as head of the 40,000-member student federation, his studies have taken a back seat to politics. He plans to graduate next year.

Even before the recent marches, Mr. González took positions on Venezuela that set him apart from other leftists. In 2003, organizers of a conference for young socialists in Guadalajara, Mexico, jumped him to the top of the speakers’ list.

“I think they saw my name, Ivan Stalin, from Venezuela, and put me first,” he says.

They regretted the move, he says. Speaking about a coup attempt against Mr. Chávez the year before, Mr. González pointed out that Mr. Chávez had been reinstated by generals in the military — not by a popular protest of supporters as the audience seemed to think.

“After I spoke, the place went nuts. All the Cubans were lining up to denounce me,” Mr. González says. He says he wasn’t invited to the group’s meeting this year in Quito, Ecuador.

For all his disappointment with Mr. Chávez’s brand of leftism, Mr. González still holds a candle for his revolutionary heroes. He has a signed copy of a seven-hour speech Fidel Castro delivered at the university several years ago. “I never got bored,” he says.

He also hasn’t totally broken with his namesake, who was responsible for the deaths of millions. “Of course, there’s the murder and repression,” he says. But the Soviet leader defeated Hitler, he says, and propagated ideas of fairness and sharing that inspired the left in subsequent decades. “He was important for publicizing some important ideas.”

See also : Media lies about Venezuela’s democratic revolution, Lauren Carroll Harris, Green Left Weekly, November 17, 2007 (and generally) for supportive accounts | El Libertario for anarchist analyses from Venezuela (English)

Posted in State / Politics, Student movement, Trot Guide | Leave a comment

Socialism vs. 2007 Federal Election: Results

Posted on November 25, 2007 by @ndy
    Update Thursday May 22 2008 (final results!).

    Update Saturday December 8.

    Update Saturday December 1 : The SEP has published its own assessment of its performance at the election.

    Update Monday, November 26 : Figures constantly updated. The latest issue of the GLW is understandably quiet on the fate of its candidates; the SEP, meanwhile, has published its own version of events: “The working class will soon come into conflict with the new Labor government, directly posing the need to build its own political party. Herein lies the significance of the Socialist Equality Party’s election campaign. The SEP advanced the only independent political perspective for the working class, and fought to clarify both the current and historical role of the Australian Labor Party and the unions as the key props of bourgeois rule. We explained that Rudd Labor in no way represented a “lesser evil” to Howard and that it would rapidly emerge as even more ruthless in prosecuting the interests of corporate Australia at the direct expense of the working class.”

Yeah so Kevin07 won. But how did the Trots fare? A cynical whining rightwinger posing as an anarchist guides you through the results…

In general, the Socialist Alliance continues to have the upper hand in its struggles with its arch-rivals in the electoral arena, the members of the LaRouche cult, beating them into second-last place in almost every contest. On the other hand, despite being jam-packed with experienced socialists who’ve contributed enormous amounts of time and energy to building literally innumerable social campaigns and struggles, this revolutionary enthusiasm does not appear to be reflected at the ballot box. Meaning that The Lessons of The Bolivarian Revolution have yet to be translated into Australian terms.

House of Un-Representatives:

Blaxland, NSW: Raul Bassi got 522 votes, or 0.7% of the total, a gain of 0.2% on 2004. On the other hand, and slightly less positively, in the popularity stakes socialism remains the most unpopular political doctrine among the voters in Blaxland, Bassi polling last of eight candidates; his closest rival, Gabrielle Kent of Family First, gaining over twice as many votes.

Brisbane, QLD: The massive swings to the ALP in Queensland didn’t quite translate into massively increased votes for SA. Nevertheless, Ewan Saunders (placed first on the ballot) gained 566 votes in Brisbane, an increase from 0.4 to 0.7% of the vote since 2004. In other positive news for the Alliance, Ewan, while not proving to be quite as popular as either the Democrats or Family First, managed to absolutely trounce the CEC candidate, much to the undoubted chagrin of the cult’s followers.

Calwell, VIC: Frank Gagliotti (SEP) asked for the votes of the people of Melbourne’s outer north-western fringe, and the people responded by giving him 273. Unfortunately, 99.7% of votes went elsewhere, Frank finishing last of nine candidates.

Charlton, NSW: Terry Cook of the SEP got 404 votes, or 0.5%, which, on the bright side, is an increase of 404 votes on 2004. Terry also managed to beat David Stow of the CEC by 110 votes; which, given the fact that Lyndon LaRouche is a bona fide genius, is no small feat.

Chifley, NSW: A good result for the SEP, James Cogan getting 1,069 votes, or 1.3%. Still, at risk of being called a cynical whining rightwinger posing as an anarchist, I suspect this may have had something to do with James being placed first on the ballot.

Corio, VIC: Hmmm. Chris Johnson appears not to have fared so well, gaining just 332 votes, a decline of 0.3%, from 0.7% to 0.4%.

Cunningham, NSW: Congratulations go to Jess Moore of the SA. With 706 votes, or 0.8% of the total (a gain of 0.4), Moore has beaten John Flanagan of Non-Custodial Parents Party (Equal Parenting) into last place, John gaining a measly 489 votes.

Denison, TAS: Susan Austin of SA has at this stage proven to be slightly less popular than her predecessor, gaining just 494 votes, a decline of 0.1 (from 0.9 in 2004) to 0.8% of the total.

Franklin, TAS: Matt Holloway has managed to maintain the line for SA in Franklin, gaining 365 votes or 0.5% of the total, a swing of 0.0%.

Fraser, ACT: A bit of a disaster in the ACT for the SA. Farida Iqbal got just 539 votes, or 0.5% of the total, an actual reduction in support of 3/4 from a dizzying high of 2.1% in 2004.

Fremantle, WA: Dockworker Sam Wainwright of the SA has experienced a disappointing result in the struggle for the hearts and minds of voters in Fremantle in this, his first tilt at the seat. With 361 votes, or 0.5% of the total, Sam is in a remarkably similar position to SA in 2004. Less positively, Sam has proven to be a lot less popular than the Jew-hating Sue, Ms. Bateman of the One Nation Party gaining 988 votes.

Gellibrand, VIC: Ben Courtice trounced both the CEC and the Democrats, gaining a relatively massive 1,334 votes or 1.6% of the total, a gain of 0.9% on 2004. Well done Ben! (Note: this may have had something to do with Ben being placed first on the ballot…)

Grayndler, NSW: Pip Hinman did really well, gaining 1,394 votes, or 1.7% of the vote, a gain of 0.5%. Patrick O’Connor of the SEP did less well, gaining just 328 votes, or 0.4%. At this point, the Trots have trounced both the Democrats (on 1.7%) and also the CDP (1.2%).

Griffith, QLD: A disappointing result for SA in Griffith, Jim McIlroy receiving just 293 votes or 0.4%, a decline from 0.7% in 2004. The halving of the socialist vote is doubly perplexing in Jim’s case, given that he’s been politically active since opposing the Vietnam War in the 1960s, is renowned locally as a grassroots campaigner (from anti-WorstChoices to the Dr Haneef civil rights campaign), and especially as he spent 2006 in revolutionary Venezuela reporting for Green Left Weekly, as well as having authored numerous pamphlets in labour and socialist history. Are beardy blokes that unpopular?

Kingsford Smith, NSW: Another relatively good result for the SEP, Alex Safari gaining 1,096 votes, or 1.3% of the total. Unfortunately, Safari still managed to come last, his combination of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky being (slightly) less popular than the winning combination of Christianity and Democracy embodied by Marcus Campbell of the CDP.

Melbourne, VIC: This seat would not seem to be a socialist stronghold. Will Marshall of the SEP got 418 votes; Kylie McGregor of the SP 539. This renders them the two least popular candidates, less popular even than the LaRouche fanatic, Andrew Reed (586 votes — Andrew was placed first on the ballot).

Moncrieff, QLD: Another mixed result for SA in Moncrieff. Perhaps the most positive dimension to Tim Kirchler receiving 315 votes for Socialism is that this proves Socialism is more popular than Lyndon LaRouche (214 votes), and adds yet another victory to the SA in their intense rivalry with the CEC.

Newcastle, NSW: Unfortunately, despite wearing a hardhat, Geoff Payne gained a rather meagre number of votes for the SA, just 333 or 0.4% of the vote, a decline from 0.5%. Noel Holt of the SEP didn’t do quite as well as Patrick O’Connor, gaining a relatively meagre 277 votes, or 0.3%. As such, the socialist candidates in Newcastle came last.

Parramatta, NSW: Here, the SA and SEP fared better, Rachel Evans of the SA gaining 1,015 votes or 1.2%; Chris Gordon of the SEP 261 votes, or 0.3%.

Pearce, WA: Annolies Truman of the SA scored 316 votes, or 0.4% of the total; steady as she goes for the SA in Pearce.

Perth, WA: Chris Latham of the SA got 464 votes, a decline from 1.3 to 0.6%.

Swan, WA: Not a great result for Joe Lopez of the SEP: 157 votes or 0.2%. On the bright side, Joe thrashed Norman R Gay of the CEC, who received a meagre 92 votes or 0.1%.

Watson, NSW: Results obtained by Ronald Poulsen of the Communist League suggest that the inevitable historical transition from Capitalism to Communism is indeed dragging its heels. Ron got just 424 votes, or 0.5% of the total. Still, that’s an increase from 0.3. In which case, a majority Communist vote will surely be obtained by… a long, long time from now.

Wills, VIC: The rappin’ skillz, phat beats with tight cuts and incisive lyrics of Zane Alcorn, aka MC Doc Fruit, have failed to set the electorate on its head. Zane got 624 votes, or 0.7% of the total, a reduction of 0.4%. On the bright side, he still managed to soundly defeat the CEC candidate, which is something.

    Party Totals

    Socialist Alliance: 17 candidates, 9,973 votes, 0.1% (average approximately 587 votes)
    Climate Change Coalition: 7 candidates, 9,470 votes, 0.1% (ave 1,353 votes)
    Democratic Labor Party: 4 candidates, 6,018 votes, (0.0%) (ave 1,505 votes)
    Socialist Equality Party: 9 candidates, 4,283 votes (0.0%) (ave 476 votes)
    What Women Want: 4 candidates, 3,870 votes (0.0%) (ave 968 votes)
    Conservatives for Climate: 4 candidates, 3,239 votes (0.0%) (ave 810 votes)
    The Fishing Party: 2 candidates, 2,083 votes (0.0%) (ave 1,042 votes)

Senate

New South Wales

17) Socialist Alliance: 3,351 votes or 0.08%
[20) Citizens Electoral Council: 2,224 votes or 0.05%]
21) Socialist Equality Party: 2,139 votes or 0.05%
25) Group P Independents (Progressive Labour Party): 948 votes or 0.02%

Queensland

17) SA: 1,941 votes or 0.08%
[22) CEC: 1,155 votes or 0.05%]

South Australia

16) SA: 770 votes or 0.08%
[19) CEC: 267 votes or 0.03%]

Victoria

[12) Group I Independents: 5,695 votes or 0.18%]
17) SA: 2,535 votes or 0.08%
18) SEP: 2,403 or 0.08%
[19) CEC: 1,697 votes or 0.05%]

Western Australia

[12) Group P Independents (Graeme Campbell): 1,621 votes or 0.13%]
[15) CEC: 1,002 votes or 0.08%]
17) SA: 928 votes or 0.08%

Total SA vote: 9,525
Total SEP vote: 4,542
Total ‘anarchist’ vote: 5,695

Posted in State / Politics, Trot Guide | 53 Comments