APEC Announces Theme Song For 2007 Summit!

Posted on August 26, 2007 by @ndy

In 2000, John Farnham generously contributed ‘You’re the Voice’ as the theme song for the World Economic Forum’s Asia-Pacific Economic Summit in Melbourne. Seven years later, while Farnham’s manager Glenn Wheatley — the greedy cunt — is appealing a 15-month sentence for tax evasion, Britpop * Jarvis has kindly donated the following song for APEC leaders to sing while wearing their Akubras, Driza–Bones® and having their ‘traditional’, $105,000 holiday snaps taken. What remains unknown — at this stage — is what proportion of the estimated $7 million entertainment budget total has been eaten up by royalty payments to the Paris-based artist and musician…

Posted in Music, State / Politics | Leave a comment

Québec Police. Not Big. Not Clever.

Posted on August 25, 2007 by @ndy

File Under : Pathétique.

Quebec Police Admit Protesters Were Undercover Agents But Deny Wrongdoing
August 24, 2007
CityNews.ca Staff

After an embarrassing day for the Québec Provincial Police, where they first denied and then confirmed they had undercover officers acting as protesters at the ‘Three Amigos’ summit in Montreal last weekend, many questions still linger.

At a news conference scheduled by the QPP to answer questions regarding their behavior on Friday afternoon, Inspector Marcel Savard defended the three and insisted they were not there to provoke demonstrators. He also says one of the officers was given a rock by protesters but the officer had no intention of using it.

After originally denying it, the force has admitted the trio was involved in the protest after a video clip of the them showed up on the popular website, Youtube.com. But the provincial police are denying they were attempting to provoke protesters into violence and say the three officers were planted in the crowd to locate any protesters who were not peacefully demonstrating.

Blah blah blah…

See also : Campbell Clark, Ingrid Peritz and Ian Bailey, Sûreté du Québec to review practices: Police say undercover officers were not at protest to incite violence; union leader to file charges, Toronto Globe & Mail, August 25, 2007. The union leader who confronted the undercover officers, Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada president David Coles:

…said he believes the police acted on political orders to discredit protesters, and that an inquiry would find that politicians gave the police orders, just as they did at the 1997 APEC protests in Vancouver. “They were sent in to agitate, to try to create trouble,” Mr. Coles said. “I say the politicians are in this up to their eyeballs. They were at APEC and they are in this one.” Martin Courcy, an expert in conflict management who has advised several police forces in Quebec, including the SQ, says the mere fact an officer was holding a rock was an act of provocation. “They could serve as models to others, and in that sense there’s provocation,” he said. Police infiltration is meant to defuse conflicts. “In this case, they didn’t defuse conflict, they provoked conflict.”

Oh, and Stuart Neatby with ‘More on police provocateurs’, The Dominion, August 24, 2007, in which he claims “During a trial against protest organizers of an anti-G20 demonstration in Montreal in 2003, police were forced to admit to having 23 plainclothes officers infiltrating a demonstration of about 1000…”

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

Russian anarchists framed for train bombing

Posted on August 24, 2007 by @ndy

On August 13, a bomb derailed a train traveling from Moscow to St Petersburg, injuring 60 people. Russian authorities immediately placed the blame for the explosion on Chechen rebels (Chechen rebels suspected in Russia train bomb, The Times, August 14, 2007). Since then, blame for the blast has been extended, first from ‘nationalists’ (that is, fascists: Russian nationalists suspected of train bombing, Christian Lowe, Reuters UK, August 15, 2007) to now include, apparently, two anarchists. The International Herald Tribune‘s Russian press review of August 22 states that Kommersant reports that “Police have detained a 25-year-old Chechen man suspected of planting a bomb that derailed a train on August 13. Investigators suspect that two anarchists from St. Petersburg hired Khasan Didigov to plant the bomb, but do not consider him ideologically driven. Lev Ponomaryov, the head of For Human Rights disagreed with the authorities’ assessment. “Out [Our?] anarchists are peaceful people,” he said. The newspaper said the bombing could serve as another pretext for law enforcement to toughen security measures.”

A similar tale is told by The Moscow Times:

‘Nationalists Blamed in Blast’
The Moscow Times
August 24, 2007

First Deputy Prosecutor General Alexander Bastrykin said nationalists were the most likely culprits in a bombing which derailed a train traveling from Moscow to St. Petersburg on Aug. 13, Interfax reported Thursday. “The most serious [line of inquiry] is a terrorist attack by nationalist youth groups from Moscow or St. Petersburg,” Bastrykin said in an interview to be published in Rossiiskaya Gazeta on Friday. Investigators, however, are not ruling out the possibility that the bombing was linked to Chechen insurgents or organized crime, he said. Meanwhile, a St. Petersburg anarchist detained this week in connection with the blast has gone on a hunger strike, Ekho Moskvy reported Thursday. Two anarchists and an ethnic Chechen have been detained on suspicion of involvement in the blast. (Reuters, MT)

Soon to be guest of local Australian elites at the upcoming APEC Summit in Sydney, Russian President and war criminal Vladimir Putin’s regime was condemned by the European Court in July for the mass murder of civilians in Chechnya. According to The Times (Tony Halpin, Kremlin is condemned for Chechen massacre, July 27, 2007) “Russia was held responsible for the massacre of dozens of civilians in Chechnya in a judgment yesterday by the European Court of Human Rights. A chamber of seven judges, including one Russian, criticised the Kremlin in unusually severe terms after ruling unanimously in favour of relatives of 11 of the victims. It awarded the five Chechens €143,000 (£95,000) in damages and €20,000 in costs after finding Russian military forces guilty of murder. The dead were among more than 50 people killed in the village of Novye Aldy, near Grozny, the Chechen capital, in February 2000.”

This is the man and the regime the Australian Government wishes to sell uranium to…

The Anarchist Initiative of St. Petersburg has issued a statement in support of the two anarchists arrested by Russian police under suspicion of complicity in the bombing:

Freedom to Andrei Kalyonov and Denis Zelenyuk!

16th of August 2007 in Novgorod Region, in area of Maloy Vishery two members of St. Petersburg Anarchist League (PLA) Andrei Kalyonov and Denis Zelenyuk were arrested. Police suspects they participated to bombing of a bridge under train #166 “Nevskiy express”, which took place 13th of August between Okulovka and Malaya Vishera, and which is investigated as a terrorist attack. 18th of August court of Malovisherskiy area of Novgorod region agreed on arrest of both for 30 days, after which they have to be accused or released.

We, participators of anarchist initiatives of St. Petersburg, categorically refuse accusations against our two comrades, and we declare that they have nothing to do with bombing of “Nevskiy express”.

Anarchist views do not allow violence against innocent people. A. Kalyonov and D. Zelenyuk were in St. Petersburg 13th of August, which may be confirmed by witnesses. Our comrades happened to be in area of Maloy Vishery, because they were traveling to a general meeting of Association of Anarchist Initiatives (ADA-IFA) in Yaroslavl with local trains.

We consider arrest of our comrades as just another aggression from side of authoritarian state regime. Violating norms set by the state for itself, police searched home of Andrei Kalyonov when nobody was there. Door was broken, and officers from the nearest police station were used as witnesses, although neighbours of A. Kalyonov were not against being witnesses. Mother of Andrei, also resident of the flat, was not provided a search warrant. Due to these violations, no “proof” confiscated from house of Andrei may be regarded legal, as nobody was controlling police officers and in uncontrolled situation they could have planted anything to the house without any consequences for them.

We believe, that FSB and police are ultimately responsible for provocation against our comrades. An explosion under train, which takes place half years before yet another parliamentarian elections, reminds us of FSB-inspired bombs in Moscow and Volgodonsk in September of 1999, which served purpose of launching second war in Chechnya and takeover of criminal state regime of V. Putin. Current aggravation of the situation in country only benefits those, who would like to stay in power in Russia for any price. Nothing is too much for them, they will go for any crimes, terrorist attacks and provocations to gain their goals.

We are calling for actions of solidarity for imprisoned anarchists, one of whom, Andrei Kalyonov, announced that he has started a hunger strike.

Free our comrades!
22th of August 2007
St. Petersburg, Russia

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

Anti-Semitism in Australia

Posted on August 24, 2007 by @ndy

The recent assault on a Jewish teenager in Melbourne — by a pair of racist bogans armed with baseball bats and blonde mullets — has prompted a more extensive AAP article on anti-Semitism in Australia, Anti-Semitism ‘reaching scary levels’ (The Age, August 23, 2007). The impetus for the article is presumably provided by the fact that the bashing follows on from the widely-publicised assault on Jewish businessman Menachem Vorchheimer last October (by a number of incredibly brave Ocean Grove footballers), and racist Internet postings made earlier this month by some other terrifically sporting cricketers from McKinnon. Note that, to its credit, McKinnon Cricket Club appears to have responded much more positively to the racist commentary (allegedly) made by some of its senior members than Ocean Grove Football Club did in relation to the racist abuse and assault of Vorchheimer: in the immediate aftermath, club coach Matthew Sproule denied any wrongdoing on the part of his boys. (The situation was further complicated by the involvement of an off-duty policeman in the incident.)

An extract from the article:

…In Victoria last year, Jewish organisations recorded 160 anti-Semitic incidents while the [Executive Council of Australian Jewry] listed 442 incidents Australia-wide in the year ending September 2006.

At the end of the Second World War, Australia could boast the largest number of Holocaust survivors per capita outside Israel after accepting thousands of Jewish refugees, mostly from Poland. The latest census showed there were 50,000 Jews living in Victoria, but Jewish leaders believe the number is closer to 80,000 because many people do not feel comfortable recording their religion.

Jewish Holocaust Museum executive director Bernard Korbman says 30 survivors of the Holocaust work as volunteers at the centre in Elsternwick and they have been shaken by what happened at Glick’s. “It wasn’t just the bashing, but what they were yelling out as they did it – things like ‘go back to where you belong, you f…ing Jew’,” Mr Korbman said. “We are Australians, this is where we come from. The Holocaust survivors have told me how much they see Australia as a safe haven and how much they love it and respect its democratic institution. But these people are trying to disenfranchise us of our country and our nationality.”

The Glick’s attack also reverberated in State Parliament where Premier John Brumby said such behaviour was totally unacceptable. “Our sympathy obviously goes out to the particular individual and to members of the Jewish community, but moreover, to any member of an ethnic or minority community which is assaulted or abused,” Mr Brumby said. “Such behaviour has never been a part of the culture that we have in this state. We pride ourselves on being the multicultural capital of Australia.”

That “Such behaviour has never been a part of the culture that we have in this state” is, of course, an outrageous lie; ‘such behaviour’ as violent assault having been a rather crucial element of the state’s foundation (to say nothing of the White Australia policy which formed its ongoing basis for most of the twentieth century). Thus:

In Victoria it has been estimated that the Koori population declined by about 60% in just 15 years between 1835 and 1850 as more than 68 individual ‘massacres’ were perpetrated in that period. Indeed, according to [a] representative of the North West Clans of Victoria, Mr Gary Murray, of the 38 clans that lived in Victoria B.C. (Before Cook) only 24 today have living descendants. By 1850 virtually all active resistance to the invasion had been quelled in Victoria. Census figures published in March 1857 showed that only 1,768 Aborigines were left in all of that state. ~ Gary Foley, Australia and the Holocaust: A Koori Perspective, 1997

Nevertheless, Brumby is indeed correct to note that contemporary Melbourne is a multicultural city, and public, organised forms of anti-Semitism currently have a very limited presence on the Australian political landscape. Instead, over time, political expressions of hatred for Jews, while maintaining local roots, have evolved into globalised, electronic-based forms. Stormfront, for example, is the world’s largest gathering of anti-Semites, and has a section dedicated to promoting hatred of Jews and assorted other forms of racialised prejudice within Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand. Despite claiming many tens of thousands of members, the active membership probably numbers no more than a few hundred. Nevertheless, these several hundred belong to probably all the major racist right-wing institutions in Australasia, from the geriatric bigots associated with The League of Rights to more recent interventions such as the Australia First Party, online forum Australian New Nation and the New Zealand National Front, as well as more straightforwardly neo-Nazi ‘skinhead’ (sic) groupings such as Blood & Honour and the Hammerskins.

Racism, punks and yuppies

In Melbourne, the yuppification of punk, combined with the residues of the more classically reactionary — though contested — genre that is heavy metal, has resulted in a more depoliticised subcultural milieu, one in which the presence of boneheads, both on stage and at gigs, is certainly tolerated (if not publicly acknowledged). The best recent example of this is the band Bulldog Spirit. Originally from Canberra, drummer Joel is a bonehead, and has previously recorded and toured with neo-Nazi bands including Deaths Head, Fortress and Ravenous. Some punk bands have also voiced their support for a local neo-Nazi venue, The Birmingham Hotel, in Fitzroy.

On a micro-political level, then, the punk subculture reveals the same sorts of tensions as exist within the broader public sphere: bourgeois indifference to struggles for freedom and equality is matched by a laissez-faire attitude towards the nature of political projects supported. As further example, two minor local punk distributors — Deadset Music in Melbourne and Snapshot Records in Sydney — happily make money from the sale of music produced by neo-Nazi, fascist and White Power bands and labels. In addition, both Fiona Deadset and Jay Snapshot count boneheads among their closest friends and allies; Fiona further lending her support to B&H and the SCHS by attending last year’s memorial gig, and Jay lending his support for the venue in which it took place by attempting to organise a gig at ‘The Birmy’.

In an earlier period, fascist infiltration was sometimes dealt with by way of some of the more spiky punks adopting a zero tolerance approach — again, whether at gigs or on the streets. Some even adopted the same approach as The Baldies did at another time and place: attack on sight. More generally, however, the failure to not only develop autonomous institutions — not only labels, but more crucially social centres and venues — but even the failure to recognise their importance, lends itself to forms of cultural and political recuperation (and the dominance of owners and promoters) antithetical to the anarchic spirit of the best of ‘punk rock’ culture. Further, the emphasis on the development of a reactionary hyper-masculinity in punk and ‘hardcore’ — aside from encouraging bands like Black Fag, Gayrilla Biscuits and Youth of Togay — has also witnessed a concomitant de-emphasis on developing collective forms of struggle. Instead much — though of course not all — of the political terrain is occupied by chickenshit conformists, fashion victims, yuppies with gym memberships, and jocks with spiky hair… although to what extent depends, as always, on the patience of those who know ‘punk’ to be something more and other than this.

Within more mainstream (read: elite) circles, anti-Semitism is rarely endorsed, at least seldom directly. Thus while Alexander Downer’s address to The League of Rights caused him some minor embarrassment, and Pauline Hanson’s address to the Inverell Forum drew some further media attention, few others are willing to be seen to be associated with such bigotry (or at least not openly).

Anti-Semitism, Stormfront Down Under & the Sydney Forum

Stormfront, on the other hand, is resolutely and unashamedly anti-Semitic, and all who join it — including individuals such as Dr James Saleam and Welf Herfurth of AF / the Sydney Forum and Luke Connors in Melbourne (formerly of the now defunct youth wing of the AF, the Patriotic Yoof League) — are obviously aware of this fact, and endorse it. Or as one Little Hitler puts it:

Here is the current Statement of Stormfront policy:

…First, we share a racialist vision for the general prosperity, security, and betterment of our people.

From that commitment flows our most important message: we name the Jew as the deadliest, if not the only, threat to our existence as a race. Forge this message in titanium.

…That, in a nutshell, is Stormfront policy.

–jack_boot,
–Chief of Staff, Stormfront

Two upcoming events of interest to anti-Semites and members of the far right generally are this weekend’s Sydney Forum and the Ian Stuart Donaldson memorial gig in Melbourne in October. I’ve discussed both previously, but organisers of the Sydney Forum (Saleam & Co.) have since announced that their special international guests are a Croatian fascist by the name of Dr. Tomislav Sunic and an anonymous speaker from Palestine.

Like many other English-speaking far right intellectuals, it seems, Sunic is a former US academic, whose work seeks to expand upon that of previous fascist intellectuals such as Carl Schmitt. He most recently addressed a meeting of the Institute for Historical Review in March of this year, while in 2004, Sunic addressed the official launch of “New Right” in the UK. Sunic’s address to another fascist gathering (“Euro-Fest 2003”) the year previously is reported by the SPLC as follows:

…billed as the highlight of the evening, was a former Croatian diplomat whose topic was “Europe Under Attack: From the Early Islamic Onslaught to Communist Disaster.” Tomislav Sunic began by telling the audience about his childhood in Croatia, his visit to Amsterdam as a young man, smoking pot and listening to the Grateful Dead. After that, he said, he went on to get his Ph.D. in political science in America.

Sunic’s central theme was that Europe has been repeatedly invaded by “alien” peoples and that whites have become a minority in Western Europe. He railed on about non-white immigrants, ending with the Turkish workers who have moved to Germany. “The Turks,” he said, “are enslaving white people in Germany.”

“Wow,” [National] Alliance leader Stojkovic said as Sunic ended. “I am really moved.”

Further tear-jerking is revealed in White Nationalism: National Vanguard, Confederate Knights are Kaput, Intelligence Report, No.126, Summer 2007.

To Be Concluded…

See also : Jeremy Jones, Confronting Reality: Anti-Semitism in Australia Today, Jewish Political Studies Review, 16:3-4 (Fall 2004): “Paranoid and extremist views about the “political and economic establishment” have drawn together far-Right, far-Left, and some anarchist groups in opposition to “globalization,” to various government policy proposals that they perceive as empowering a state that is an enemy, and to Israel. There has been almost interchangeable anti-Semitic rhetoric coming from groups that would regard themselves as being diametrically opposed, politically and ideologically.”

Posted in Anti-fascism | 17 Comments

APEC : Sorry, it just sounds like a crazy idea for me :)

Posted on August 22, 2007 by @ndy

Hi Emma,

Gabrielle Boyle here from the TEN Newsroom in Sydney.

We are currently covering a series of stories about the lead-up to APEC.

We are wondering how to contact you or a spokesperson for your group today?

Kind regards,

Gabrielle Boyle
TEN News.

Network Ten Pty Ltd ABN 91 052 515 250

While the leftist Stop Bush Coalition battles to obtain a permit to rally and march somewhere authorities find acceptable — and fascist dingbats on Stormfront mutter darkly about hordes of anarchists invading Sydney — authorities are preparing water cannons and padded mobile cells for the more adventurous protesters, and taking numerous other measures intended to wrest the title of Pig City from its northern neighbour Brisbane. Adding to the general sense of impending doom will be the appearance, from September 6, of a five-kilometre fence — a 2.8-metre-high barrier extending across half the Botanic Gardens and the Opera House.

As was the case with the G20 protest in Melbourne last November, the main leftist coalition has appointed a spokesperson drawn from the DSP: in Melbourne, that person was Marcus Greville; in Sydney, it’s Alex Bainbridge. Marcus distinguished himself in the immediate aftermath of the G20 protest by blaming “the violence” on “Arterial Bloc and a group called Mutiny”. Since that time, Mutiny has functioned as a kind of whipping boy for the tabloids, but in the absence of proclamations regarding the group’s intent to burn Sydney to the ground, attention has shifted to more amorphous possibilities, including the prospect of several thousand high school students declaring that, this year, Schoolies has come early, and making the empty, arrogant, and pathetic claim to pass definitive judgments, sinking to outright abuse, on their fellow-students, their teachers, God, religion, the clergy, the governments and political systems of the whole world. Rejecting all morality and restraint, these cynics will not hesitate to commend theft, the destruction of scholarship, the abolition of work, total subversion, and a world-wide proletarian revolution with unlicensed pleasure as its only goal.

Or so upper middle class leaders of the party of the working class appear to believe.

Ferals! Idiots! P A N I C !

Don’t recruit students, Iemma warns
Alexandra Smith and Edmund Tadros
Sydney Morning Herald
August 22, 2007

THE Premier, Morris Iemma, has warned “feral” protesters they would be exploiting school students if they recruited them for rallies during the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum next month. He said the protesters, whom he likened to the “ferals” who jumped on his car in Newcastle during the election campaign, should not encourage students to skip school to protest. He warned police would “come down hard” on activists causing trouble. “It’s a big enough exercise to make sure it goes smoothly without idiots making it more difficult because they want to cause trouble,” he said. The state’s deputy director of schools, Trevor Fletcher, has written to principals instructing them to mark students who attend the protest on September 5 as absent without leave. “On previous occasions students have found themselves suddenly in the middle of a dangerous situation for which they were not prepared, and could not control. The best way to avoid such danger is to not attend the protests,” his letter read…

APEC protest mayhem plan
Kara Lawrence and Joe Hildebrand
The Daily Telegraph
August 22, 2007

A WEEK-long campaign of mayhem involving every major protest group in Sydney will cause mass CBD disruption during next month’s APEC summit… The groups to clog up Sydney for 11 days leading up to and during the summit include protest groups Resistance and the Socialist Alliance, according to secret security planning documents. Also planning protests are the Maritime Union of Australia, Amnesty International, the Greens, Vietnamese and Chinese groups, and Critical Mass, with its monthly bike ride. On Saturday, September 8, at least 15,000 protesters are expected to clog the CBD. The biggest protest, at 10am on that day, is expected to be the 10,000-strong Stop Bush Stop Howard rally and march from Sydney Town Hall to Hyde Park North…

Among the criminals scheduled to gather in luxury in Sydney in September is Russian plutocrat Vladimir Putin. According to one report “Foreign Affairs, Stockings & High Heels Minister Alexander Downer says negotiations on a new agreement to sell uranium to Russia could be signed” during the ex-KGB operative’s visit. In Russia itself, the plan to secure foreign uranium received a boost when an anarchist, Ilya Borodaenko, was last month murdered by Russian fascists at the site of a protest camp outside of The International Uranium Enrichment Centre in Angarsk, Siberia…

See also : Sydney Morning Herald APEC coverage | slackbastard APEC coverage

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

And the winner is… Sydney!

Posted on August 22, 2007 by @ndy
    Welf: [threateningly] We Germans aren’t all smiles und sunshine.
    Jones: [recoils in mock horror] Oooh, the Germans are mad at me. I’m so scared! Oooh, the Germans!
    [hiding behind Gerbil] Uh oh, the Germans are going to get me!
    Welf: Stop it!
    Claus: Stop, sir.
    Jones: Don’t let the Germans come after me. Oh no, the Germans are coming after me.
    Claus: Please stop the ‘pretending you are scared’ game, please.
    Welf: Stop it! Stop it!
    Jones: [brief pause, then resumes] No! They’re so big and strong!
    Claus: Stop it.
    Welf: Stop it, Mr. Jones.
    Claus: Please stop pretending you are scared of us, please, now.
    Jones: Oh, protect me from the Germans! The Germans…
    Welf: Jones, STOP IT!

This weekend, August 25–26, Sydney will be playing host to the Sydney Forum 2007, Australia’s premiere gathering of white racists, fascists and neo-Nazis. As noted previously — 2007 Sydney Forum (May 23); 2007 Sydney Forum : Phantasy vs. Reality (June 15) — this year’s Forum has had its share of ups und downs, and the main organiser, Dr James Saleam of the Australia First Party (the Forum functions as a de facto annual conference for AF) has had to purge at least one speaker from the list following his successful campaign to have Baron Von Hund / David Innes expelled from first Stormfront and now, it seems, the weird and wacky world of (Australian) “White Nationalism” as a whole.

The crafty old bugger.

Notably, Saleam — with the full support of the National Council what runs the show — has also recently engineered the expulsion of a number of AF organisers; while at the same time failing to register the Party for the upcoming Federal election… and er, still working really really hard on gathering evidence to support his application to the Supreme Court to overturn the conviction won against him by the “corrupt” Special Branch in 1991; a marathon effort which is now entering its fourteenth year.

For the seventh year in a row, participants in the event will gratefully receive the strict disciplining only a bona fide German neo-Nazi can provide, in this case ex-NPD and One Nation member Welf Herfurth. Note that Welf gets (brown)shirty if you call him by name, these days preferring the idiotic label of ‘national anarchist’. On which subject, as comrades in the UK have remarked:

    The National Anarchists

    As an ideology National-Anarchism would appear to be about as logical as the creation of an organisation of Catholic Orangemen [or Aryan Anarchist Skinheads for that matter]. That does not stop Troy Southgate however.

    Attempts at finding anyone in the Anarchist movement to speak to them have been unsuccessful (can anyone forget Jamie DeBayo/Damji leaving the Anarchist Bookfair in 1998 head first?) whilst Southgate and co are just a little bit too weird for the rest of the British far-right. More years in no-man’s land beckon.

    Do say “National-Anarchism — now that is a brave innovation.”
    Don’t say “But how can you be a nationalist and an Anarchist?”

The stoopid is multiplied when you read that the mob he’s a part of (‘New Right’) — which used to include David Innes, since given the shiny black boot — has for months been exhorting readers to protest the G20 (sic) meeting in Sydney this September. Still, I guess the stoopid is only half as appalling as Mr. Wolf’s denial of the Holocaust. Speaking of which, below is a photo of Welf and Australia’s leading Holocaust ‘revisionist’ Frederick Töben; the two are pictured annexing Sydney using the MaGiCaL pOwErS invested in Horst Mahler’s flag and on behalf of the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (January 27, 2005).

In any event, this is how Herr Doktor describes (in addition to himself, blonde-haired, blue-eyed fetishist Andrew Fraser, ex-Confederate Action Party dingbat Perry Jewell and a twat from One Nation) this year’s line-up.

Of filthy foreigners.

SPECIAL OVERSEAS GUESTS: A NEW RIGHT SPEAKER, A SYRIAN SOCIAL-NATIONALIST PARTY SPEAKER

This year, we are expecting two overseas guests.

In the interests of ensuring a quality event, we are not quoting names until the last possible moment.

We are offering a speaker with a deep knowledge and attachment to the movements of a ‘New Right’ character in Europe, someone who has published and spoken in several countries. Our speaker will address us twice on the first day. We are desirous that Australians are introduced to the radical ideas that have re-shaped political movements such that they can better assail the fortress of liberalism.

We are offering a speaker from the Syrian Social-Nationalist Party (SSNP) with up-to-date information on Middle East contention. This secular party, active in several countries, involves both Moslems and Christians, opposes the Islamist movement and the so-called ‘war on terror’ directed at it, locates Israel as the main reason for Middle Eastern contention and the driving opposite to Islamism.

Yeah, so a speaker from the New Reich (same as the) and a Syrian fascist. Oh, and word on the street is that the Forum will also be addressed by a bona fide supporter of Saddam Hussein’s regime, a member of the Ba’ath Socialist Party of Iraq (although whether or not he does so will depend, one imagines, on a number of other factors). In conclusion, it will be a rare honour that’s extended to the lucky venue that hosts this year’s Forum. Last year’s winner was Boris Lees, Secretary, the Estonian House Co-operative Society, and Sydney’s pro-fascist Estonian community, but this year…

—– Original Message —–
From: Adelaide Institute
To: Adelaide Institute
Sent: Monday, March 05, 2007 10:37 PM
Subject: FW: Another lie exposed – much like the ‘HOLOCAUST’ has reality only in memory but not in space and time!

From: Welf Herfurth [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Monday, 5 March 2007 11:53 AM
Subject: Another lie exposed

Another lie exposed… I wonder if the Jewish Board of Deputies and/or Jeremy Jones will step forward and complain about anti-Semitism…

[Linkto: David Marr, Manning Clark’s fraud revealed, SMH, March 5, 2007]

The point here is not that he lied about having been there, the point is that he claimed to be there; used this to became a [sic] “acclaimed historian” and … other people started to quote him as a witness.

Welf.

See also : Neo-Nazi rampage triggers alarm in Berlin, The Times, August 20, 2007, in which 50 German youths — taking their cues from Kevin Andrews perhaps — attack 8 Indian men | Racist Manhunt in Small-Town Germany, Philipp Wittrock (in Mügeln), Spiegel Online, August 21, 2007

Next : APEC

Posted in Anti-fascism, State / Politics, War on Terror | 5 Comments

The Day the Nazi Died // “They’ll need good garages”

Posted on August 20, 2007 by @ndy

August 17 was the 20th anniversary of the death of Rudolf Hess, formerly Adolf Hitler’s deputy in the Third Reich. Like Der Fuehrer, Hess chose to die by committing suicide (albeit at the age of 93). Since then — and, like the incestuous coprophiliac himself — the anniversary of Rudolf’s death has been marked each year by neo-Nazi commemorations. Thus the ABC announced Danish neo-Nazis to march in Rudolf Hess’s memory (August 17), while a similar march in Germany was banned. The latter march was to have been organised by the NPD — which, incidentally (and according to a report in Deutsche Welle), has come up with a novel solution to a permanent problem: “NPD leader Udo Voigt meanwhile told Berlin’s Der Tagesspiegel newspaper that his party was going to set up “mobile offices” in cars after the organization was unable to find a landlord willing to rent them space for fear of attacks. “They’ll need good garages,” an anonymous official for Berlin’s domestic intelligence service told the newspaper, adding that the high number of left-wing radicals in the capital made the vehicles likely targets for attacks.”

Arf arf.

In Denmark, meanwhile…

Clashes mark Nazi’s death anniversary
AFP
August 19, 2007

COPENHAGEN • Some 60 people were arrested in Denmark yesterday following a neo-Nazi march marking the 20th anniversary of the death of Rudolf Hess, Adolf Hitler’s deputy in the Nazi Party, police said.

Clashes broke out between neo-Nazis and counter-demonstrators from the anarchist Autonomer group in the Danish town of Kolding, police said.

Some 50 counter-demonstrators were detained after they attacked a car belonging to a neo-Nazi, Kolding police spokesman Frede Nissen told AFP.

Eight neo-Nazis had previously been arrested during a “Hess Memorial March” that attracted 100 people. Three of the demonstrators were arrested for assault, four for violating public order laws, and one for illegal weapons possession, Nissen said. The neo-Nazi march was originally due to be held in the southern German town of Wunsiedel where Hess is buried but German authorities had banned the demonstration.

In Denmark, unlike Germany, it is not illegal to display the swastika, utter “Heil Hitler” or use the Nazi salute.

The two groups had been given permission to hold separate demonstrations at separate locations in Kolding.

Rudolf Hess was tried at Nuremberg and sentenced to life internment at Spandau Prison, where he died after committing suicide on August 17, 1987, aged 93.

On the night of August 18 in Melbourne, two racist wankers smashed the window at Glick’s and assaulted a Jewish student with baseball bats (Melissa Singer, Students assaulted in racist attacks on Carlisle Street, AJN, August 19, 2007). Whether or not the wankers in question did so with Rudolf in mind is unknown; it is known that a handful of boneheads in Aotearoa (New Zealand) marked the anniversary by looking silly in public…

we’re taught that after the war
the nazis vanished without a trace
but batallions of fascists
still dream of a master race
the history books they tell of their defeat in ’45
why did they all come out of the woodwork
on the day the nazi died

they say the prisoner of spandau
was a symbol of defeat
whilst hess remained imprisoned
then the fascists they were beat
so the promise of an aryan world would never materialize
so why did they all come out of the woodwork
on the day the nazi died

the world is riddled with maggots
the maggots are getting fat
they’re making a tasty meal
of all the bosses and bureaucrats
they’re taking over the board rooms
and they’re fat and full of pride
and they all came out of the woodwork
on the day the nazi died

so if you meet with these historians
i’ll tell you what to say
tell them that the nazis never really went away
they’re out there burning houses down
and they’re peddling racist lies
and we’ll never rest again
until every nazi dies

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

Computer games

Posted on August 19, 2007 by @ndy

In a reasonably subtle piece of what used to be called pro-Soviet propaganda, here’s Russian TV channel ‘Russia Today’ on the video “Execution of a Tajik and a Dagestani” by Russian neo-Nazis:

Interestingly, Vladimir Novitsky, the President of the Russian branch of the International Society for Human Rights (and formerly associated with the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights) reckons that the video is most likely a hoax:

Russia Today: Could you comment on this video that has been released on the internet? Do you think that it is real?

Vladimir Novitsky: You know, most probably it is a provocation without any real basis, aimed to agitate the mass media in order to stir up interest in the subject of inter-ethnic relations. We do not know the people being shot in this video. At the moment, as far as we know, there is no information that such a crime took place in reality. As for the possible circumstances of publishing such a material, then surely it is quite possible that this video was published by those who do want to warm up interest to the subject and possibly recruit new members to an existing organization.

So… one presumed expert believes the video in question is a publicity stunt, and possibly contains footage of what is, in reality, a mock execution; police authorities have to this point refused to rule either way; others speculate that the authors are not Russian neo-Nazis but the Russian secret police, the FSB, who wish to manufacture a pretext for further police repression of dissent to Putin’s regime — in this case, coming from the far right.

    Coming soon: interview with an anti-fascist hacker…
Posted in Anti-fascism, Media, War on Terror | Leave a comment

By the skin of their teeth

Posted on August 17, 2007 by @ndy

For the 137th time, the Collingwood proletariat has secured victory against the bourgeois Melbourne establishment, albeit in a manner about as convincing as used car salesman Joe Hockey is in the role of Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations. After a very promising first half, Collingwood scored just two measly goals in the second, while Melbourne booted six, and could (and perhaps should) have won the match — had their kicking been a little straighter. At this rate, playing as they are, even if Collingwood makes the finals they’ll soon be bundled out of them.

COLLINGWOOD 11.15 (81)
Melbourne 9.16 (70)

Posted in !nataS, Collingwood | Leave a comment

Nothing to see here, just murder, apathy, and collaboration

Posted on August 15, 2007 by @ndy

For several years, Russian neo-Nazis have been butchering their enemies — principally dark-skinned Russians, those from neighbouring territories, and anarchists — with relative impunity. Further, given generalised xenophobia on the part of the Russian population as a whole, they’ve done so with relatively little opposition. Crucially, however, their violent repression has taken place with the implicit support of the Russian state. Thus, as is becoming increasingly widely acknowledged, even by the Western media, perpetrators of fascist violence usually escape capture, and when prosecuted, receive relatively light sentences, their crimes often described as mere ‘hooliganism’. The apparent decision by one group of neo-Nazis to video their murderous crime and to broadcast it online represents a relatively (although not entirely; other assaults resulting in death have been broadcast previously) new development. The sentencing of the murderers of Timur Kacharava, on the other hand, does not…

Update : Man who says he posted execution video online turns himself in to police in Russia, AP, International Herald Tribune, August 15, 2007: “ROSTOV-ON-DON, Russia: A man who says he posted a video on the Internet showing the brutal execution of two men from Central Asia and the Caucasus has turned himself in, a police official said Wednesday…”

Neo-Nazi video shows execution
Adrian Blomfield
Daily Telegraph
August 14, 2007

A previously unknown Russian nationalist [sic] group has posted a video on the internet showing the execution of two Muslim men, prompting fears that neo-Nazis are beginning to ape the techniques used by Islamic extremists in Iraq. The footage surfaced on the Russian version of the popular social networking website LiveJournal over the weekend. It was quickly taken down.

The three-minute video, titled “Execution of a Tajik and a Dagestani”, begins with two men kneeling before a masked extremist in combat fatigues. Apparently unprompted, they mumble that they have been taken hostage by “Russian Nationalist Socialists”. The masked man then uses a knife to decapitate one of his prisoners in a grim sequence lasting 90 seconds. The second captive is later forced to kneel in front of a grave before he is shot in the back of his head. The clip, which has a caption claiming to have been filmed by “The National Socialist Party of Rus”, ends with a still image of a red and white flag emblazoned with a swastika.

Police have opened an investigation but said it was too soon to determine whether the video was authentic. But human rights activists who saw the video said it was too realistic to have been staged.

The motive for the attack does not appear to have been revenge for similar executions in Iraq. A Chechen news agency sympathetic to rebels fighting for the republic’s independence from Russia received a “policy statement” yesterday from the group that claims to have ­carried out the killings. It called for the expulsion from Russian territory of all Asians and people from the Caucasus, the independence of Chechnya and the resignation of President Vladimir Putin.

Attacks on ethnic minorities in Russia have risen dramatically in recent years. More than 50 people have been murdered by ultra-nationalist groups this year alone. Human rights groups have accused Russian authorities of ignoring or even tacitly encouraging the extreme right in the country.

    Above : Damien Ovchynik of Bail Up!, performing at the 2006 Ian Stuart Donaldson gig at The Birmingham Hotel, Cnr. Johnston & Smith Streets, Fitzroy; Bail Up! will also be performing at this year’s event

Offline, Russian fascists perform a highly useful police role in Russian society, providing Russian youth a politically acceptable means of channeling their energies (even forming death squads on occasion), but otherwise functioning as a means of quashing dissent, through violence and intimidation, to Putin’s highly authoritarian and corrupt regime. Note that online, the Russian-language LiveJournal is jam-packed with neo-Nazis and fascists of all descriptions. One, which featured the video in question, is http://community[dot]livejournal[dot]com/ns_wp (‘ns’ = ‘national socialism’; ‘wp’ = ‘white power’). Note also that many users are fans of Ian Stuart Donaldson and Skrewdriver, and organise their activities through such groups as Blood & Honour and Combat-18.

Closer to home, Blood & Honour Australia, the Southern Cross Hammerskins and other (foreign) fans of Ian will be assembling in Melbourne on October 13, to commemorate Stuart’s death in a car accident in 1993; a ritual performed each year at about this time. Finally, note that local ‘skinhead’ band Bulldog Spirit features a neo-Nazi named Joel on drums, who regularly collaborates with other neo-Nazi bands and projects including Fortress, the most infamous neo-Nazi band to come out of Australia — and also scheduled to give their final performance at the October 13 rally.

See also : Online video by Russian nationalists shows apparent execution of 2 nonwhite men, The Associated Press, International Herald Tribune, August 13, 2007 | Russia probes ‘executions’ video, BBC, August 14, 2007

Beheading and Shooting by Russian Neo-Nazis on Video
C. J. Chivers
The New York Times
August 15, 2007

MOSCOW, Aug. 14 — The Russian authorities said Tuesday that they were investigating a video recording of what appeared to be the grisly execution of two bound and gagged young men, filmed in a forest beneath a large Nazi flag. At least one of the men was beheaded on camera as he lay in a shallow grave.

The video, which appeared Sunday on several Russian ultranationalist Web sites, circulated on the Internet with a note from a previously unknown organization calling itself the National-Socialist Party of Russia. The note announced that a “military vanguard” had begun an armed struggle against “black colonists and those who support them from the Russian government.”

It demanded the expulsion from Russia of all Asians and people from the Caucasus and the granting of independence to all of Russia’s internal republics in the Caucasus.

The note also called for the resignation of President Vladimir V. Putin and the establishment of a government formed by Dmitri G. Rumyantsev, the leader of the National-Socialist Society, a neo-Nazi group.

It further demanded the release of Maksim Martsinkevich, the leader of Format 18, another Russian neo-Nazi group, who has been held since last month on charges of fomenting ethnic hatred and threatening violence.

It is not clear when or where the video was made.

But Aleksandr Verkhovsky, director of the SOVA Center, a private organization that examines hate crimes in Russia, said the video appeared to be real. Mark Tolchinsky, the acting spokesman for the Interior Ministry of Dagestan, a region in the Russian Caucasus, said investigators there had watched the video and also believed it to be authentic.

Slightly less than three minutes long, the video begins with scenes of the countryside and the title “Operation of the National-Socialist Party of Russia to Arrest and Execute Two Colonists From Dagestan and Tajikistan.” For a date, it gives only 2007.

The video then shows two terrified dark-skinned men kneeling in the forest under a Nazi flag. Each speaks through a gag in accented Russian, saying only, “We were arrested by National-Socialists.” One has been bound with heavy tape, the other with rope.

One of their captors shouts, “Glory to Russia!” and then lunges forward and decapitates one of the men with what appears to be a large knife. Heavy metal music plays throughout.

Later, the second captive is shown kneeling, head lowered. The bolt of a gun is heard to slam closed. The prisoner is shot in the head and falls face down into a grave. The video ends with two men in camouflage uniforms and black masks giving the Nazi salute.

The graphic scenes drew heavy traffic on Russian-language Web sites and prompted intensive commentary on Internet discussion groups. Many viewers, including those who identified themselves as nationalists, expressed horror and denounced the acts.

Nationalist Russian politicians reacted similarly and said the video was meant to discredit them. “This video tarnishes our image most of all,” Yevgeny Valyayev, an assistant to Nikolai V. Kuryanovich, a nationalist member of the lower house of Parliament, said by telephone.

“It’s a provocation, it’s clear,” he added. “In the near future similar things will happen.”

A spokesman for the national prosecutor general confirmed that the federal Interior Ministry and the F.S.B., a successor agency to the Soviet K.G.B. secret police, were investigating, but he provided no further comment.

Irina Zubareva, a spokeswoman for the Interior Ministry, told RIA Novosti, the official Russian news agency, that the video originally had been posted from two foreign Internet domains. That claim could not be confirmed.

Format 18 did not reply to queries sent by e-mail. A court in Moscow on Monday ordered Mr. Martsinkevich, the group’s leader, to be held in pretrial confinement.

Mr. Martsinkevich, who uses the name Hatchet, burst in on a debate between two journalists on the state of democracy in Russia earlier this year with about 20 followers and shouted, “Sieg heil!” and “Slaughter the liberals!” while making Nazi salutes. Since his arrest, his supporters have labeled him a “prisoner of conscience.”

There was no immediate indication whether the video had been made by members of his group, his sympathizers or — as many ultranationalists on Web sites suggested — by people seeking to discredit him and the larger movement he has personified.

Mr. Verkhovsky, who studies hate crimes, said the party claiming to have made the video had never been heard of before and might be a very small number of people, as few as two or three. “Usually such things are not done by members of well-known organizations, but by marginal people, even marginal for such movements,” he said.

Videotaped beheadings and executions, a gruesome propaganda tool used by insurgents in Iraq, have a history in Russia that predates the Iraq war.

Chechen separatists have been accused of beheading captured Russian soldiers since the first Chechen war, which began in 1994, and recordings of such grisly acts have circulated in markets in the Caucasus for years. Three British citizens and a New Zealander working for a British telecommunications company were abducted in Chechnya and beheaded in 1998 after being forced to confess on video to spying.

But Mr. Verkhovsky said the latest video was new ground for Russian ultranationalists and neo-Nazis, and perhaps a “symmetrical reaction to Chechnya.”

Michael Schwirtz contributed reporting.

And ah, speaking of New York, and er, racism, Benita Eisler writes of L’Affaire Némirovsky (New York Sun, June 27, 2007):

Where French anti-Semitism was concerned, there was something for everyone. Jews led an international conspiracy of profiteers and swindlers; at the same time, there was hardly a communist or anarchist who wasn’t a Jew, behind every plot to undermine the social order. For France’s increasingly secularized urban Catholic circles, the accusation of “Christ Killers” would have already been an embarrassment, strictly for peasants. A pastoral mystique had replaced the biblical curse: As rootless inhabitants of cities, Jews had no stake in the land — that inherited community that bound the French to one another, but also to their ancestors who had tilled the same soil. (If you think this one has gone the way of the horse-drawn plow, you haven’t heard the stump speeches of Jean-Marie Le Pen). More immediately, pacifists on the left and right united in accusing Jewish “warmongers” of fomenting hostilities with Hitler’s Germany…

And um, speaking of Jews… In the old joke, two rabbis are sitting in a cafe. One is reading a Jewish newspaper, but the other opens a notorious neo-Nazi rag. The first, stunned, says, “Why would you read that?” The second replies: “In your paper, I read how Jews are being harassed and persecuted and endangered. In this one, I read that Jews are rich! Jews are clever! Jews run the world! I prefer good news.”

So do I. But the world generally only gives me bad.

Kacharava Killer Gets 12 Years
Galina Stolyarova
The St Petersburg Times
August 10, 2007

The killer of 20-year-old antifascist student Timur Kacharava was sentenced to 12 years in prison on Tuesday, with the St. Petersburg City Court also handing down sentences to six accomplices in the murder. Alexander Shabalin was earlier convicted of stabbing to death Kacharava in downtown St. Petersburg in November 2005 and inciting social hatred. The six other defendants received between three years in a penal colony to suspended sentences of two years for inciting social hatred. Another suspect, who Timur’s friends suspect plotted and masterminded the murder, is still at large according a lawyer close to the case.

Kacharava’s mother Irina watched in silence as the defendants, all of them around her son’s age, grimaced at reporters, cheered and waved at their parents and friends from behind the bars of the dock in the St. Petersburg court. Neither the judge nor guards restrained the men as one of the defendant’s mothers shouted, ‘I told you it is going to be just fine!’

The seven convicts were between 17 and 20 years old when the crime was committed.

Defendant Andrei Moskovkin received three years in a penal colony, the Russian equivalent of an open prison. Defendants Sergei Panaskov and Sergei Golovlev were sentenced to two years in a penal colony. The remaining defendants — Valery Yefremov, Kirill Semyonov and Dmitry Kushakov — received suspended sentences of between two and three years.

Shabalin’s lawyers said Shabalin and Moskovkin may appeal.

In court, the sentencing bewildered Kacharava’s friends. “Every member of this gang should have been tried for murder but what happened instead was that the judge conveniently piled everything up on Shabalin and let everyone else have a lucky escape,” said an anti-fascist activist who goes by the alias Sedoi. His face was almost completely covered in a black scarf. “According to this trial, the person who slit Timur’s throat is a murderer but the people holding Timur and preventing him from resisting did not assist in a murder. This is absurd.”

Human rights lawyer Olga Tseitlina, who represented the Kacharava family in the trial, said the convicts’ bravado was consistent with their behavior throughout the trial. “None of them, not once, showed the slightest sign of remorse, regret or compassion,” the lawyer said. “They feel that they are kind of heroes and behaved in a highly insulting manner all the time. For example, they drew swastikas on the bench where they were sitting.”

Tseitlina said Kacharava’s killers had been aggressive during the trial and their lawyers consistently made attempts to present anti-fascists as a radical, extremist youth group. “The defendants’ lawyers almost made it sound as if Timur got what was coming to him and the judge and prosecutors just turned a blind eye,” Tseitlina said. “We were being forced to prove the most obvious things, like the difference between fascism and anti-fascism, so the discussion at times found itself balancing on the brink of the absurd.”

Prior to the fatal attack, Kacharava, who had been targeted by extremists before, complained to his friends that he was being followed. Three days prior to his murder, he told his girlfriend he felt threatened and worried for his life. Prosecutors were unable to prove that Kacharava’s murder was premeditated, and that a planned murder was carried out by a group of people.

Tseitlina said apparently a mistake was made — either deliberately or because of incompetence — when the case was classified during preliminary investigations. “The investigators bought Shabalin’s scenario in which he said he spontaneously suggested beating up an anti-fascist and took the initiative in attacking him, with the whole thing getting out of control,” she said, adding that as a lawyer representing the victims she had no authority to initiate a reclassification of the case. “By the time a case reaches court it is too late to requalify it anyway, and we all have to make do with the articles that have been applied,” Tseitlina said. “The judge squeezed absolute maximum of the articles that applied in each case.”

Svetlana Yefimenko, the state prosecutor in the trial, said the prosecution would not appeal the verdict. “The sentences were fair: most of the culprits were juveniles when the murder was committed, they all were of good standing with their municipalities, most of them pleaded guilty and actively cooperated with the investigation,” Yefimenko said. “These are all factors, and the court is obliged by the law to take them into account when delivering a sentence.”

See also : Galina Kozhevnikova and Alexander Verkhovsky, ‘The Sowing Season in the Field of Russian Nationalism’, July 17, 2007. “We publish the English translation of our new report which was presented on June 20, 2007, in Moscow. The report describes radical nationalism and resistance against it in the spring of 2007.”

Posted in Anarchism, Anti-fascism, Media, State / Politics, War on Terror | 7 Comments