G20: ‘riot suspects unmasked’

Posted on January 18, 2007 by @ndy

Identifying crazy, ultra-violent, hostile, abusive, threatening, ultra-sectarian, provocative, fascist-sympathising, foreign fucking football hooligans: a game the whole family can enjoy (even revolutionary Marxists)!

1) Fairfax Corporation:

G20 riot suspects unmasked
[AAP]
The Age
January 18, 2007

Police have released images of 28 “people of interest” as they tighten the net on rioters wanted over the violent G20 protests in Melbourne.

A police officer’s wrist was broken and several were bitten* and injured by broken glass when mobs of protesters clashed with police outside the G20 summit in central Melbourne in November.

Police are reviewing thousands of hours of video footage and more than 10,000 images of the riots as they hunt those responsible.

Images of 28 people, some wearing face scarves, were released today with police calling on the public for help.

Detective Superintendent Richard Grant of the Salver Task Force said 26 people had been arrested and charged with a range of offences including assaulting police, rioting, affray and criminal damage.**

“Victoria Police respects the rights of individuals and the community to protest and express their opinions lawfully, however the right to demonstrate doesn’t given individuals licence to assault police and damage property,” he said.

The Age: G20: Most wanted photo gallery

* The ‘biting’ incidents allegedly took place not during the course of the day’s “riot” but during the course of arrests later that night outside Parliament.

** As mentioned previously, only 10 (see below) or possibly 11 names (if one includes Drasko Boljevic) have been released of persons alleged to have committed crimes (as indicated — riot, affray and criminal damage for the most part), so presumably this total includes both those arrested during the course of the day’s events as well as a number of other arrests that have taken place subsequently (and for a range of alleged crimes either directly or indirectly related to G20).

2) News Corporation:

New faces in G20 hunt
Matthew Schulz
Herald Sun
January 18, 2007

POLICE have released a gallery of “persons of interest” as they continue their hunt for rioting protestors involved in Melbourne’s G20 mayhem last year.

Police are continuing their hunt for protestors who attacked police, destroyed a police van and damaged buildings in a city riot in November.*

So far, 26 people have been arrested on a string of charges linked to the protests.

Among them, a Caulfield North woman, 39, and a Carlton man, 37, were charged today with riot, affray and criminal damage.

Police were bitten and suffered broken bones, every window in a police van smashed and barricades and other objects thrown at officers during the riots in the city on November 18 last year.**

Others had invaded buildings during the mayhem.

Protestors had converged at an anti-globalisation [sic] rally in the city while the world’s financial leaders met at the Grand Hyatt hotel.

Today, a special taskforce released 28 fresh images of people at the protest, including six who they believed could assist police reach further breakthroughs in the investigation.

So far, police had been unable to identify those “key people” associated with the protests, and investigators had given the group nicknames including “balaclava man”, “red tutu lady”, “blonde boy”, “camo man” and “red dress man”[!].

Police would not say whether any of the people they wanted to speak to had broken the law, or were just witnesses to the violence, but most were from Victoria.

Tasforce Salver Det Supt Richard Grant said police continued to review thousands of hours of video footage in the hunt for perpetrators.

“We respect peoples’ right to demonstrate, but the level of violence is unacceptable,” he said.

“The general public were appalled by the anarchy and the violence by some at the demonstration.”

Witnesses with mobile phones and video cameras had so far helped with the investigation, and he urged others with records of the riot to approach police.

He stressed the taskforce’s focus was on “high-level” criminal activities including serious damage to property and attacks on police.

“I would encourage those people (identified in the photographs) to consider their options and contact the Salver Taskforce.

“The taskforce will go for as long as necessary to identify the key perpetrators and bring them before the courts,” he said.

“We’re in this for the long haul,” he said.

* The police van was not “destroyed”; according to initial reports the damage to the van — consisting largely, it seems, of broken windows, but presumably extending to some further damage to the body of the vehicle — was estimated at $1,000. By the same token, there have been no reports thus far of any damage to any buildings as a result of the protest.

** Inre ‘biting’, see above. And that’s one broken wrist, not broken bones.

Posted in Media, State / Politics | 1 Comment

Greek anarchists do what Greek anarchists do be do be do… in styleee

Posted on January 18, 2007 by @ndy

Australian corporate media think Greek anarchists are very stylish:

“GREEK riot police clashed with stylish anarchist youths in Athens today, turning the city centre into a battleground of billowing smoke for hours. The youths hurled hundreds of petrol bombs at police, burning four cars and one shop. Police retaliated with several rounds of teargas that choked up the capital’s streets” (Police clash with anarchists, ‘Correspondents in Athens’ a/k/a Reuters, The Australian, January 18, 2007).

According to a fuller and — presumably — more accurate account than the Reuters report that The Australian (and the Fairfax and Murdoch press generally) have relied upon, the Athens News Agency claims:

…Shop windows, including a cafeteria and a bank, were smashed and four cars were torched along Fillelinon street during collisions between protestors and riot police, while police responded with use of teargas.

The fires were attributed to firebombs lobbed at a car belonging to the Bosnia-Herzegovina embassy by masked anarchist and extreme-left elements, which frequently incite confrontations and clashes with police at protests and demonstrations in Athens. The fire then spread to three adjacent vehicles and a nearby cafeteria.

Fire-engines stationed nearby responded immediately and quickly put out the blaze, while traffic and the protest march were interrupted during the fire-fighting operation.

Minor clashes with police also occurred in the main body of the rally when protesting students attempted to break through a police cordon around Parliament but were repelled with limited use of teargas.

Wednesday’s rally had been organised in advance to coincide with a planned second debate on Article 16 in Parliament, which did not finally take place as the debate was wrapped up on January 10…

Violent incidents, in which riot police officers briefly caught fire when attacked by firebombs, also occurred as the masked protestors withdrew from Syntagma Square and Panepistimiou toward the Athens Metsovian Polytechnic, where they barricaded themselves into the university grounds and threw stones and fire-bombs at police.

Students and workers in the Greek education sector are pissed off by the Greek government’s plans to introduce private Universities (quite a contrast to Australia eh?), and organised a demo — of somewhere between 3,000 (BBC) and 9,000 (The Australian / Reuters) people — in Athens (and other cities, including Thessaloniki) to protest. AP expresses concern over the possibility of previous militancy having ‘spilt over’ into the student demos, simultaneously demonstrating massive ignorance over recent — and not-so-recent — Greek political history (Cars burnt as clashes in Greece make student protest against education sabotage, International Herald Tribune, January 17, 2007).

Both the statist reactionaries currently occupying the Greek parliament, and their ‘Socialist’ opposition, support the proposed sabotage of the higher education sector (quite similar to Australia eh?); ‘reforms’ requiring an amendment to (Article 16 of) the Greek constitution: “The final vote in Parliament is expected in late February. If approved as expected — the reform is also backed by the main opposition Socialists — the change would come into effect after 2008.”

Local Australian ‘socialists’, meanwhile, have placed the blame for the ultra-violence squarely at the feet of approximately 40 or so jet-setting psychotic Kiwis — possibly acting in close co-operation with football hooligans from either England or Germany or Sweden — and demanded that governments the world over initiate an immediate crackdown on border-crossings by such crazed political malcontents.

Posted in !nataS, Anarchism, State / Politics, Student movement | 8 Comments

Go read something

Posted on January 18, 2007 by @ndy

The Southern Poverty Law Centre (SPLC) has released a new issue of their Intelligence Report (No.127, Winter 2007). Among other items of interest, it contains an interview with Anthony Pierpont, the former fuehrer of neo-Nazi record label Panzerfaust Records (1998–2005), which collapsed in 2005 following Pierpont’s drug bust and the discovery by his bonehead comrade and business partner Bryant Cecchini (alias Byron Calvert) of Pierpont’s birth certificate, which revealed that his mum was in fact… Mexican! Cecchini has since gone on to establish Free Your Mind — while Pierpont uses the funds generated by dumbarse boneheads the world over to celebrate his new-found yuppiedom — but before the split the pair was responsible for establishing Project Schoolyard in 2004, which distributed shit racist muzak to schoolchildren… tho’ on the brighter side, also prompted Insurgence Records to release a free sampler of their own: the excellent Project Boneyard. (See also : ‘Hate Rock to Spiritual Revelation — The Transformation of George Burdi: An Interview by Brian W. Blueskye’; David Gergen interviews Ingo Hasselbach)

In other news, the Report reports that Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan — who, since his appointment in the 70s, and in keeping with the teachings of nutty NOI (almost) founder Elijah Muhammad, preached “a belief system that includes the idea that a black scientist named Yacub created whites, seen as inherently evil ‘blue-eyed devils’, in a test tube 6,600 years ago”! — has effectively retired as a result of a deteriorating prostate condition. (See also : Sing-A-Long with Louis Farrakhan; The Malcolm X Project at Columbia University)

Oh yeah. The new edition of Counterpunch — “America’s Best Political Newsletter” according to some zine I’ve never heard of called Out of Bounds — contains a neat article by John Ross (author of ¡Zapatistas! Making Another World Possible: Chronicles of Resistance 2000-2006, Nation Books, New Yawk, 2006) on ‘Oaxaca’s Rising’:

…Still stippling public walls posted with “Do Not Post” warnings and private businesses (a Neurotics Anonymous billboard was an appealing target) is a ubiquitous image of a supermarket-shopping cart filled with rocks and ready for the next march. Anarchist A’s are everywhere. A little girl in a pink dress hugs a large bomb. The machetes of San Salvador Atenco are a repeated icon. A stencil of a protestor aiming a slingshot at a helicopter. A stencil of a kneeling youth spray-painting a wall…

Zapata in a gas mask is still up there just under the whitewash, Benito Juarez with a Mohawk. Mug shots of Gandhi, the old [so old he’s dead] anarchist Ricardo Flores Magon, the martyred guerrillero Lucio Cabanas, the Zapatistas’ Comandanta Ramona. Sometimes the walls functioned as the morning newspaper. One day, Oaxaca arose to find life-sized photo-real figures of three presidential candidates dressed as boxers in a ring. The stolen July 2 election was a touchstone for the street artists…

Go read something. And remember: “[The] Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude.” — Australian President George W. Bush, 60 Minutes interview, January 2007

Posted in !nataS, Anarchism, Anti-fascism, Media, Music, State / Politics | Leave a comment

Stormfront Down Under on Tamworth: Not. Happy. Adolf.

Posted on January 18, 2007 by @ndy

Racist twats on Stormfront Down Under are positively fuming over Tamworth Council’s recent (8:1) reversal (January 16) of an earlier (6:3) decision (December 12, 2006) to oppose the presence of Sudanese refugees in the town, the initial decision arising partly on the basis of Mayor James Treloar’s designation of the refugees as being anti-social, disease-ridden criminals: as it happens, a description of the general character of ‘blacks’ not terribly dissimilar to that constantly reiterated on Florida businessman Don Black‘s site.

(See also Australian town council reverses decision rejecting African refugees, Associated Press, International Herald Tribune, January 16, 2007.)

One pseudonymous member, ‘Aquila Audax’, is vewy upset, and has left a very personal message for the Mayor: “YOU SPINELESS GUTLESS USELESS VILE UN-AUSTRALIAN FILTH”. Another, ‘Standarten’, accuses the Mayor and the other “treasonous” councillors who joined him in reversing the decision as having “committed an act of Genocide against the white population of Tamworth”. (He also describes Tamworth’s Catholic parish priest Father Richard Gleeson (St Nicholas) as being a “piece of filth” for supporting the presence of Sudanese refugees in the town.)

Former spokesperson for the now-defunct Patriotic Youth League, Luke Connors, a/k/a ‘young_soldier’, opines that “We need a bigger organisation. We could have stopped this.” Stopped what? According to aussie_lad, the presence of “filthy criminal Africans” in Australia.

Jim Perren, a/k/a ‘303SMLE’, meanwhile, senses the shadowy influence of (gasp!) Communists in relation to the Council’s reversal: “The people of Toowoomba[,] to put it simply[,] have been the victims of nothing but lies and Marxist treachery”. Carl D. Thompson, a/k/a ‘Wodensvolk’, usefully reminds the reading public that, in reaction to this “disgusting display by [a] bunch of spineless race traitor cowards” regarding “these ugly retarded black savages”: “I have a rope and look forward to using it”.

Another thinker, Skrewdriver fan, Sydney bouncer and Australia First Party member, James Newman, a/k/a ‘JN’, claims that Tamworth Council is “terrified of being called that meaningless word ‘Racist’“. In a statement that is not at all racist, war widows’ retirement village vandal Ben Weerheym, a/k/a ‘Patriot Alliance Down Under’, decries the entry of “Third World Negro life-forms” into Tamworth.

As to ‘What to do?’ in order to forestall the Communist Jews’ dastardly plans to “destroy the unity of White Australia”, ‘mithar’ recommends joining the convicted neo-Nazi criminal Dr. James Saleam‘s Australia First Party — which, incidentally, is fielding John Moffat for the seat of (where else?) Cronulla in the upcoming (March 24) NSW state election.

All in all, they’re not a happy team at Stormfront, and while they ‘love’ their race — and will stoop to doing and saying just about about anything to ‘win’ their imaginary race war — they certainly seem incapable of riding the bumps with a grin!

The council’s original decision to “reject a Federal Government offer to be involved in a one-year trial resettlement program of five Sudanese refugee families” in The Country Music Capital of Australasia was made at a council meeting in mid-December, 2006, and was in response to an initial Federal Government proposal made in July, 2005. As Damien Murphy wrote in December:

Much of the heat is on Treloar, a lucerne farmer whose mercantile family belongs to Tamworth’s ruling class.

The Mayor says he is not against refugees, but fears the Federal Government program would maroon Sudanese in town without adequate support. The trouble is that Treloar keeps talking.

He links concerns about refugees with “Cronulla-style riots” and smears the Sudanese already in town, saying they live in overcrowded conditions, have been charged with eight offences — including driving without licences and assaulting local Aborigines — and fudges around suggestions of sexual assault. When pushed, Treloar says they harass librarians when told to stop hogging the internet.

“You see, in the culture they come from, women are treated abysmally. I mean, we’ve given [sic] women the vote here.”

While Treloar keeps running off at the mouth about resident Sudanese, the Oxley Local Area commander, Superintendent Tony Jefferson, gives the lie to the Mayor’s words.

He says some have been charged with assault, traffic and domestic matters — but “they do not stand out over any other ethnic group in the community”.

Unrepentant, Treloar says: “If this is racist, well so be it. Call me a racist then.”

Er… well yeah, anyway (*whistles*), for whatever reason, Treloar claims to have apologised for his initial outburst and decision — which fact has been reported in the local paper:

Mayor Treloar apologises to Sudanese
David Ellery
The Northern Daily Leader
January 15, 2007

EMBATTLED Tamworth mayor Cr James Treloar has apologised to members of both the local and the national Sudanese communities for negative remarks made as part of the city’s refugee resettlement centre debate.

The remarks, which included allegations of criminal offences and claims local Sudanese posed a health risk to the Tamworth community, were widely reported as racist slurs within Australia and across the world.

Cr Treloar said he had apologised to local and visiting Sudanese on two occasions, the most recent being on Sunday.

The apology revelation came yesterday when The Leader asked Cr Treloar if he felt the local Sudanese — who have been reported as feeling stigmatised by the remarks — were owed an apology.

“I have already given them (Sudanese) an apology,” he said. “I spoke to them in person. This was never about the Sudanese already living in Tamworth.”

Cr Treloar said it was unfortunate that when speaking about previous refugee resettlement program failures he used the existing Sudanese as an example. He regretted involving them in the debate and had acknowledged this at a meeting on Sunday.

“It was never my intention (to target the local Sudanese community),” he said. “I met them to let them know that they are welcome in Tamworth and that they are part of the Australian community.”

Cr Treloar said many of the problems had stemmed from the fact that the media had been running its own agenda…

The mayor did concede the refugee resettlement centre dispute had damaged Tamworth’s reputation in the national and the international marketplace and also expressed concern at the way the issue had been picked up by neo-fascist organisations such as Stormfront.

“It concerns me when I see white supremacy groups — who have no understanding of what the real issues are — support the decision,” he said…

See also : Sudanese Australian Integrated Learning (SAIL) Program: “a volunteer, non-profit, secular organisation that provides free English support & community services to the Sudanese refugee community in Melbourne, Australia” | Sudanese Online Research Association (SORA): “This website is devoted to the issues, journeys, images and stories of the Sudanese Diaspora. Whilst the civil war in Sudan’s South and West has forced many of the country’s inhabitants to flee across the world, there is still limited global awareness of the Sudanese situation. SORA strives to provide an internationally accessible centre for Sudan-related research and to raise awareness in academic and wider circles of the hopes, struggles and realities of the Sudanese people living outside Sudan.” | African Studies Centre: Sudan

Posted in Anti-fascism, State / Politics | 7 Comments

(Under pressure from anarchists) Police end fascist demo: South Moravia, Czech Republic

Posted on January 17, 2007 by @ndy

The Prague Daily Monitor reports that Czech ‘Police terminate demonstration of right extremists’ (January 13, 2007) in the town of Otrokovice in Zlín, South Moravia (incidentally, playwright Tom Stoppard‘s place of birth), allegedly as a result of fighting between the 200 neo-Nazi scum and a comparable number of righteous Czech anarchist comrades. As a result of their efforts, the swine’s public assembly was truncated by two hours.

The demo was organised by a stupid mob called National Corporativism. Their fuehrer, some silly bugger called Martin Bacik, “said that the march was to highlight the problems with extreme leftist movements”; among which, presumably, is their tendency to keep Czech streets clean of scum like him…

Five radicals were detained during the brawls… both camps were throwing bottles and explosive charges [at] one another. One radical was treated with minor [facial] injuries… Afterwards, police… directed the [fascists] to the railway station and watched their departure. Other police… guarded the anarchists gathered some 300 metres from the station. Despite the security measures, [fascists] and anarchists clashed again near the station.

And from a Czech press survey (January 15):

Czech police deserve praise for [their intervention] against a meeting of ultra-right radicals in Moravia this weekend, Petruska Sustrova [ex-Charter 77] writes elsewhere in Lidove noviny (LN), adding that police… have finally realised [sic] that the extremists’ slogan Czech Lands to Czechs does not express love for homeland, but only racism.

Sustrova adds that police should study the real ideas and intentions of these ultra-right movements that are available on their websites, and listen to their supporters’ debate to understand that pure racism and worshipping of German Nazism is hidden behind the… patriotic phrases [they] pronounce in public.

[Shit: that sounds familiar!]

Sustrova recalls that in… past years police often protected neo-Nazis, who announced their meeting officially before-hand, in similar clashes with left anarchists.

National Corporativism is a fascist groupuscule which was established in 2004, and is closely allied to another, larger mob of racist losers called National Resistance. The (mostly teenaged) pinheads who form its membership have previously distinguished themselves by paying tribute to dead Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet — “a model for all world rulers to follow”, apparently — in December, 2006; dead Spanish dictator Francisco Franco — “They are banned from celebrating Hitler, so they have found a replacement” one astute observer of the fascist dingbats commented — in November, 2006; and rallying in support of professional Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel, in November, 2005.

Completely batshit, in other words.

See also : @-Kontra (Czech anarchist zine); Anarchist Yellow Pages (Czech Republic); Michael Löwy, Franz Kafka and Libertarian Socialism, New Politics, Vol.6, No.3, Summer 1997; Marta Kolářová

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

Paladin persecutes Australian photojournalist in Malawi

Posted on January 17, 2007 by @ndy

pal·a·din

n.

1. A paragon of chivalry; a heroic champion.
2. A strong supporter or defender of a cause: “the paladin of plain speaking”.
3. Any of the 12 peers of Charlemagne’s court.
4. A Perth-based uranium mining company, winner of the 2006 Pick the Public Pocket award, persecutor of Australian photojournalists.

[French, from Italian paladino, from Late Latin palātīnus, palatine.]

Uranium Good. Independent journalism Bad. A shake of my protective helmet in the direction of Rowan Cahill and Leftwrites.

Australian Company Uses Malawian Police Against Critics
MUA News
January 15, 2007

Two Malawian NGO members allege that they were ordered to Karonga Police Station by the Chief of Police in northern Malawi on Thursday January 4 and then threatened with arrest for taking an Australian photojournalist sponsored by the MUA [Here to stay!] and the CFMEU (mining) [Dare to struggle; dare to win!] to photograph and interview community members at the controversial Australian uranium mine site.

According to Reinford Mwangonde from Citizens For Justice (CFJ) in Malawi, a police van carrying around 10 police officers went to Foundation for Community Support Services (FOCUS) looking for Kossam Jomo Munthali and ordered that he and Munthali attend Karonga Police Station.

Mwangonde alleges that at the police station Sale, Chief of Police, then told them that [Perth-based] Paladin Resources had called them ‘from a long way away’ and complained that the NGO members had taken an Australian photojournalist to the mine site.

Mwangonde said that he told the police that he had taken the photojournalist Glenn Lockitch* to interview affected community members with the permission of the village headman but did not go to the mine site itself. Munthali said that he told the police that he was not even in the district on that day.

According to Mwangonde “it’s unfortunate that Paladin is harassing us by using the Malawian police to promote its own agenda and protect its own interests at the expense of Malawians”. He said that he told Sale that he had not broken any law and dared Sale to arrest him. Mwangonde said that they were then told that in the future any meeting that the NGO’s hold in regard to uranium should be reported to the police.

The Perth based mining company is waiting for approval from the Malawi Government to mine uranium in the remote northern region where an open pit mine is to be constructed with a tailings waste dam 600m x 300m and 135m deep which will sit just above a local river used by the community.

*Glenn Lockitch is a documentary photographer and activist born in 1968 in Cape Town, South Africa. For well over a decade he has been involved in the arts and media, primarily working as an independent human rights and environmental photojournalist. Read Lockitch’s tribute to anti-apartheid activist Norma Kitson (1933–2002), A beacon of integrity and courage.

Herald Sun photographers are reportedly in the process of composing a letter to Lockitch, advising him to follow their lead and to make his work available to Malawian police so that they may apprehend the criminals responsible for getting in the way of legitimate businessmen making profits for the rich and pollution for the poors.

Some background…

Global capital still volatile, uneven, destructive
Patrick Bond
ZNet
December 24, 2006

…One of the world’s poorest countries, Malawi is under the thumb of Western donor governments — which pay much of the state’s budget and cover the large trade deficit — and the Bretton Woods Institutions, which even gift the local finance minister a top-up salary.

For ordinary people there are no obvious improvements, we’re told, in spite of reduced foreign debt levels, higher prices for some exports and lower prices for Asian manufactured imports, and the prospect of uranium exports after an Australian mining house, Paladin, began a project that it claims could boost GDP by 5%.

When the NGO groundWork and the Centre for Civil Society gave out the Southern African Corpse Awards — an annual mock ceremony for big business — in Durban last month, Paladin took the Pick the Public Pocket prize, thanks to a nomination from the Malawi groups Citizens for Justice, the Centre for Human Rights and Rehabilitation, [FOCUS], Karonga Development Trust and the Uraha Foundation Malawi…

See also : Concern about Australian uranium miner in Malawi, Reinford Mwangonde, Green Left Weekly, November 24, 2006; (Malawian President) Bingu misled on uranium mining—civil society, Juliet Chimwaga, The Nation, November 21, 2006; Concerned civil society organisations query 16-year tax holiday to uranium company, Fatal Transactions, August 28, 2006 | Centre for Human Rights & Rehabilitation (CHRR) | Malawi, BBC country profile

Posted in Media, State / Politics | Leave a comment

G20: Media, ‘particularly the Herald Sun’

Posted on January 17, 2007 by @ndy

An article in today’s Herald Sun (Australian Open chiefs slam brawl, Ellen Whinnett and Mark Buttler, January 17, 2007) — regarding local youths’ impromptu re-enactment of the Balkans War at the Australian Open — confirms what has been known for some time: the corporate media is an arm of the state. According to the report: “Police will examine media images of the violence to try to track down those responsible. Officers yesterday contacted Melbourne newspapers and TV stations. Police used media images to investigate the violent chaos at November’s G20 summit. Some of the 11 arrested were identified through media images, particularly from the Herald Sun.”

In other news:

Protester faces court
Charmaine Camilleri
Moonee Valley Community News
January 16, 2007

A 25-YEAR-old Moonee Ponds woman charged over protests at the G20 summit faced the Melbourne Magistrates Court last Thursday. [XYZ] appeared at a filing hearing charged with riot, affray and criminal damage. She has been scheduled to reappear on May 11 in the same court for a committal mention. Operation Salver detectives recently charged three more people — including a 19-year-old East Brunswick man and a 17-year-old male — over the protest. Police have now charged 11 people over the protests in November.

By my count, police have arrested and charged ten — not eleven — individuals. In addition to the above-named woman — whose name was previously suppressed, along with those of a 17 year old youth and a 19 year old male arrested last week — Danya Bryx, David Caldwell, Rosalie Delaney, Julia Dehm, Dominic Richardson, Akin Sari and David Vakalis have also been arrested and charged for a variety of offences allegedly committed during the course of the protests last November.

Of course, it’s possible that the identity of the eleventh person arrested and charged as a result of the protests has simply not been publicly released. Or that legs eleven is Drasko Boljevic. Only problem is Boljevic appears not to have been in Melbourne at the time of the protest, and that police, in a case of ‘mistaken identity’, unlawfully arrested and assaulted the wrong man (or alternatively, a “Fucking bastard” who should “Shut the fuck up” and “Get the fuck out of this city”; and whom police allegedly declared that they would bash should he refuse their helpful advice).

Posted in Media, State / Politics | Leave a comment

New(ish) documentary film on Sacco & Vanzetti

Posted on January 15, 2007 by @ndy
    On this day: Rosa Luxemburg murdered by the Freikorps, 1919; fascists form coalition in European Parliament, 2007.

    Red Rosa now has vanished too,
    Where she lies is hid from view,
    She told the poor what life is about,
    And so the rich have rubbed her out.

    May she rest in peace.

The two Italian-American anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, framed and murdered (August 23, 1927) by the US state, are the subjects of a new documentary film by filmmaker Peter Miller. Their case has obvious contemporary resonances — especially in relation to those held in the US torture camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; including, of course, Australian citizen David Hicks — whether as demonstration of the (US) state’s ability to arbitrarily kidnap, imprison, torture and execute designated enemies; as exercises in (US) state power which serve to terrorise recalcitrant populations and intimidate opposition to the (US) state’s institutional practices (war and exploitation); or as demonstration of the (US) state’s ability to flout (inter-)national laws. It can also be read as evidence “of the dangers of pitting civil liberties against national security, and of the fear of militant foreign ideologies”; which is what Saul Austerlitz maintains:

New film connects ’20s trial, 21st century
Saul Austerlitz
Boston Globe
January 14, 2007

Sacco and Vanzetti argues that the events it documents are a perfect illustration of the dangers of pitting civil liberties against national security, and of the fear of militant foreign ideologies. Images of Muslims in shackles mingle with 1920s footage of police raids on Italian radicals, illustrating the common thread of political intolerance and racial or religious prejudice.

Through a combination of archival material, interviews with experts, and dramatic readings of the accused men’s words (with John Turturro as Vanzetti, and Tony Shalhoub as Sacco), Miller’s documentary tells the story of their lives, their trial, and the efforts made to save their lives. If this sounds like the formula for a Ken Burns film, Miller has the credentials: he produced Burns’s Jazz and Frank Lloyd Wright…

According to the film’s producers, Willow Pond Films:

SACCO AND VANZETTI is an 80-minute-long documentary that tells the story of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian immigrant anarchists who were accused of a murder in 1920, and executed in Boston in 1927 after a notoriously prejudiced trial. It is the first major documentary film about this landmark story.

As far as I’m aware, the film has yet to be released in Australia, though local leftist publisher Ocean Press has recently issued an anthology of largely historical writings, edited by John Davis, on the lives (and murder) of the two anarchists as part of their ongoing series on ‘Rebel Lives’. There is also a wonderful audio documentary available, published by The Journal of MultiMedia History (Charles Zappia, ‘Sacco and Vanzetti’, Vol.2, No.1, 1999), from which the following letter from Vanzetti to Alfonsina Brita is drawn:

Dear Alfonsina,

I heartily laughed to hear that the fingernails of the little cat have scratched Zora’s nose, and I continue to laugh every time I think about it. Surely, it is a good lesson not only for Zora and other child, but for mankind. The little cat knows very well it has a sharp nails, and that when a little girl molests it, it is enough to scratch a little her nose for be let free. People too have sharp fingernails, and the noses of tyrants and oppressors is make of flesh too. Oh, how much less sorrowness and misery would be among the mortals if they know just what a little cat knows.

    Sacco and Vanzetti’s story was also the subject of a prior film, Sacco E Vanzetti (1971), and (sadly now-departed) anarchist historian Paul Avrich (1931–2006: PDF obituary) wrote about The Anarchist Background (Princeton University Press, 1991) to their lives. See also : Mumia Abu-Jamal’s Freedom Journal: Updating the Campaign to Free Mumia! | Leonard Peltier: The Case of Leonard Peltier
Posted in Anarchism, Film, War on Terror | Leave a comment

Robert Anton Wilson : 1932–2007

Posted on January 14, 2007 by @ndy

Author Robert Anton Wilson, once alive, is now dead.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Greece vs. America?!?

Posted on January 14, 2007 by @ndy

[Update : The activities of naughty Greek anarchists (in smashing state-sponsored police CCTV cameras) is further mentioned in an AP report, U.S. experts examine footage of Athens embassy attack caught on camera, International Herald Tribune, January 16, 2007. According to the report, “In the pre-dawn attack, which apparently targeted the blue and white embassy seal, the anti-tank weapon smashed a window and damaged a third-floor toilet. It was the first major strike in Greece by suspected left-wing militants on a Western target in six years. Police blame Greek left-wing militants, but there have been no arrests and no statement from any group”. Which fact tends to contradict the assertion that the attack was the responsibility of Revolutionary Struggle…]

Anarchists own up (ekathimerini.com, January 12, 2007):

“Self-styled [shit — is there any other kind in the minds of bourgeois pundits?] anarchist group Revolutionary Liberation Action claimed responsibility yesterday for a series of arson attacks on three banks and the offices of New Democracy in Patissia, central Athens, earlier in the day. Branches of Eurobank, National Bank and Geniki Bank were damaged in separate attacks across Athens in firebombings using cooking gas canisters. No one was hurt in the incidents which all took place around 3 a.m. The group said that the attacks were made in support of three convicted anarchists [arrested at the May 6 Fourth European Social Forum protests in Athens] who have launched a hunger strike“; [Bombs & Shields].

The US Government-sponsored MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base* describes RLA as “a small group that [prior to these latest incidents] has claimed responsibility for two arson incidents in Greece” (in October 2002 and December 2003), and which “mimic[s] the actions of many other short-lived groups that sporadically appear in Greece. Most of these groups are comprised of 18-25 year old men that [allegedly] voice support for [the now defunct, as a result of a series of successful Government prosecutions prior to the Olympic Games in Athens] 17 November in order to express their general discontent with their government or position in life.”

Another, Marxist mob, calling itself Revolutionary Struggle, has generated vast amounts of media reportage following its attack upon the US Embassy in Athens on January 12. The group successfully struggled to launch a rocket at the Embassy in an action which Malcolm Brabant of BBC News Athens has predictably ‘analysed’ as an example of ‘Greek anti-Americanism‘ (January 12, 2007) and whom, in a rare concession to reality, has noted that “Many Greeks will have reacted with satisfaction to the dawn rocket attack on the US embassy in Athens”, further noting that this reaction is in turn a product of long-standing US Government support for military dictatorship (1967–1974) and authoritarian rule in Greece, as well as the current slaughter in the Gulf.

    *”The Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT) is a non-profit organization dedicated to preventing terrorism on U.S. soil or mitigating its effects. MIPT was established after the April 1995 bombing of the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, and it is funded through the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Grants and Training (G&T).” US state-sponsored terrorism does not exist as far as the MIPT is concerned, natch. See also : ‘Anarchist group detonates devices next to ND office and embassy car’, ekathimerini.com, December 22, 2006; one of a large number of similar actions that are rarely reported in the Western corporate/state media.

…And in @-Infos news just to hand:

Today, January 13, 2007, police attacked the anarchist and anti-authoritarian motorbike demo in solidarity with the three comrades arrested at the Social Forum on May 6, 2006 in Athens. The demo was attacked by special motorbike forces (Z team) on the way back from Nikea hospital, where there had been a solidarity gathering for two of the imprisoned comrades — Tarasio Zadorozni and Gerasimos Kiriakopulos — who are on hunger strike.

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The (anti-)riot police squads (MAT) then stormed the comrades on the ground: 42 were taken into custody at the national security police headquarters in Athens, many of them injured, and 4 of them are still being held 9 hours later.

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Tarasio Zadorozni and Gerasimos Kiriakopulos have been on hunger strike for 46 and 28 days respectively, and were transferred from Koridalos prison to a secure unit in Nikea hospital on January 9 as their condition had deteriorated.

They have been held in prison since May 6, 2006 along with another demonstrator, Kostas Kachadouras, accused of rioting during the international anti-war demo of the European Social Forum in Athens.

The imprisoned demonstrators of May 6 are 3 of the thousands of people that took to the streets that day when riots erupted between the forces of repression and anarchists and young rebels, and attacks were made against state and capitalist targets. The police arrested 17 demonstrators who were accused on (trumped-up) heavy charges, and 3 of them have been held in prison awaiting trial without any evidence against them (with the political consent of the traditional leftist parties and groups) so that they can be punished, and serve as an example to those who choose to resist without mediation or institutional representation.

The struggle that those on hunger strike began for their freedom, using their body as a weapon, has now become the terrain on which a general conflict between the state and those who fight it is being expressed.

It is about an attack in which the state, using all the repressive mechanisms of propaganda and control in its power, is attempting to isolate and eliminate anarchists and anti-authoritarians, who are the most radical part of social resistance, with the surrender of the whole of society as its final objective.

Under these conditions of intensifying state terror, every action of solidarity with the imprisoned fighters has been under attack. The aim of this repression is not only to keep the 3 in prison as long as possible, it is also to eliminate the very dynamic of solidarity, self-organisation and resistance against the plans of the state and the bosses.

So, on January 12, the police attempted to prevent the solidarity demonstration that had been organised by anarchists and anti-authoritarians. The order was pronounced by the chief of police forces present, stating that he had instructions from the prosecutor; but this was subverted by the persistence of the demonstrators and finally a strong demo was held in the centre of Athens.

The attack on today’s demonstration (January 13), with the arrests and the wounded, is the peak of this repressive violence, showing the state’s intent to bury the struggle of those on hunger strike in silence, to terrorise those in solidarity and attack the development of the anarchist struggle.

What has preceded today’s events: the arrest of an anti-authoritarian comrade outside his home following the motorbike demo to the house of the minister of justice; intensive provocation and pressure by the Z motorbike police squad on another motorbike demo to Koridalos prison on December 15; a police attack on the New Year’s Eve motorbike demo on its return from the prison (that resulted in many comrades being taken into custody and one arrest), and, on January 9, the surrounding by (anti-)riot police squads of a radio station which had been occupied by 50 anarchists in order to transmit solidarity messages and news of the hunger strike.

AGAINST the attempts of the state to isolate the struggle of our imprisoned comrades who are on hunger strike behind a wall of silence;

AGAINST the constant repressive attacks against anarchists and anti-authoritarians, aiming at their isolation and annihilation;

AGAINST the attempt to impose social acquiescence;

WE ARE TAKING OVER THE POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY OF ATHENS!

AND WE DEMAND:

THE IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF OUR 4 COMRADES BEING HELD IN THE NATIONAL SECURITY BUILDING FOLLOWING TODAY’S ATTACK BY POLICE AGAINST THE SOLIDARITY MOTORBIKE DEMO;

AND

THE IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF THE IMPRISONED PROTESTORS OF MAY 6, 2006!

By taking over this University building we are creating a place of constant counter-information and solidarity within our city, an attempt that is operating horizontally and against all hierarchy, on the basis of the occupiers’ general assembly.

No repressive action will extinguish our solidarity with our imprisoned comrades, or prevent the social struggle for liberation from the chains of Authority.

THE PASSION FOR FREEDOM IS STRONGER THAN ANY PRISON CELL!

SOLIDARITY TO THE HUNGER-STRIKERS:

TARASIO ZADOROZNI (SINCE NOVEMBER 29 2006)

AND

GERASIMOS KIRIAKOPULOS (SINCE DECEMBER 15 2006).

IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF THE 3 IMPRISONED PROTESTORS OF MAY 6!

THE IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF OUR 4 COMRADES WHO ARE BEING HELD IN THE NATIONAL SECURITY BUILDING FOLLOWING TODAY’S ATTACK BY POLICE AGAINST THE SOLIDARITY MOTORBIKE DEMO!

SOLIDARITY TO ALL IMPRISONED AND ACCUSED SOCIAL FIGHTERS!

FREEDOM TO ALL THOSE IN PRISON CELLS!

SOLIDARITY IS OUR WEAPON!

Assembly of the Occupied Polytechnic University (January 13 2007, 7pm).

PS. At the time of writing the four arrested have been set free, one with serious chest and back wounds, and many stitches in the head. The occupation continues…

Posted in Anarchism, Anti-fascism, History, Media, State / Politics, War on Terror | 4 Comments