“You do not change your circumstance as an asylum seeker or a refugee with an adverse security assessment through hunger striking.”
~ Julia Gillard, April 15, 2013
“We are not prepared to consider special category status for certain groups of people serving sentences for crime. Crime is crime is crime, it is not political.”
An innocuous building
for so monumental
a task!
behind iron gates
& anonymous
windows
technicians
in white smocks
toil like
busy
little
bees
investigating
in electromicroscopic
detail
the vinegrated cerebrums
of late soviet luminaries
to determine
what made
their heads
tick
this is
their mission
in its 67th
& final year
long rumored
now uncovered in
Room 19 at the
Brain Institute
of Moscow
former reputed
capital
of Marxism-Leninism
historical materialism
& militant atheism
Row upon row
of bowls of
pickled gray
matter
the cranial
entrails of
Lenin
Sergei Eisenstein
Maxim Gorky
Vladimir Mayakovsky
Kirov
Kalinin
the famous Pavlov
but not his celebrated
dog
various generals of
the Red Army &
forgotten members
of the Central
Committee
their noodles
excavated under the
orders of
the boss
of all bosses
Joseph Djugashvili
who tells ‘em
in the cerebellums
the secret to
the data:
mind is matter
ideology is
phrenology
she is no witch
who
tied with rocks
sinks
That’s the theoretical premise
of the Brain Institute
from the organ
itself
its flesh
its cells
can be deduced
the source of
political clarity
artistic creativity
military technique
will &
genius
which if found
could be reproduced
tested &
ingested
thus advancing the
formation of the
new soviet man
by leaps & bounds
especially at the
pinnacle of
collective social life
forgetting
however
Lenin declared
with that
not as yet fully
paralyzed brain
of his still
functioning:
“Stalin
having become
General Secretary
has concentrated
enormous power
in his hands
& I am not sure
that he always
knows how to
use that
power
with sufficient
caution.
I propose to
the comrades
to find a way
to remove Stalin
from that position
& appoint
another man
more loyal
more courteous
& more considerate
to comrades
less capricious, etc”
Or that
the last act
of Mayakovsky’s
tortured noggin
was to
pull its plug
rather than submit to
the muse
of police art
unaware that it would
float in a jar of
the people’s formaldehyde
for six decades
scrutinized under
advanced
detection methods
sibling to
astrology
vitalism
numerology
aka existing socialism
Watch them
bustle & scurry
each night
sealing
the locked doors of
Room 19 & its
vaulted booty
with paraffin
carefully eyed
by dutiful
disciplined
Lydia Malofeyeva
comrade chief deputy
of brainkeeping
no peeking
no sneaking
watch them put chunks
of the tissue into a
block of wax
then sealing off
a patina of brain
with a motorized
razorblade
a veg-o-matic
type device
to finely slice
the subject of slides
hundreds of thousands of
slides
of head cheese
for the big cheese
under the close &
quiet supervision of
the latest & last
incarnation of the
Central Committee
Gensec &
KGB
their ultimate act
of skullduggery
still fresh in
brine
scooped
from Sakharov’s
late pate
(the technicians
unsure which morsel
is his
engage in polemics
simultaneously
piling up shavings
since they are paid
piecework)
30,000 slides
alone of
Lenin’s brain
30,000!
how many cases
of carpal
tunnel
syndrome &
other
repetitive
motion
infirmities
befell
the unionized
workers
at the Brain Institutes
to get Lenin’s
key
organ
reduced to its
physiological essence?
each synapse
individually wrapped
here is what
is to be done
there is state &
revolution & the
right of oppressed
nations to
self-determination
all obviously assimilated
by comrades
as indicated by
recent events
In 67 years
of rigorous
scientific inquiry
the earnest cadres
discovered
they had absolutely
nothing to learn
at all
“They
thought maybe
the political figures
would have some type
of specific
brain structure”
Leonid Khaspekov
vicedirector of the
Brain Institute
says of the commissars
“that their brains
would differ greatly
from those of
other people
but of course
that’s hardly possible”
The narcotic
monotony of
the tasks
the automatic lullaby
of the machine
the routine
exponential
accumulation of cells on
glass
the fixed aroma of
the crypt
measured the
seemingly immutable
atmosphere
its fog
obscuring
the historical
u-turn
the reverse of
the pendulum
the dystrophic
conquests of the
apparently eternal
politbureau & its
perennial catechism:
they thought
that maybe
the political
figures
would have
some type
of specific
brain
structure
that their
brains
would differ
greatly from
other
people
but
of course
that’s hardly
possible
But
of course
that’s
always been
the
whole
point
comrades
~ Jon Hillson, ‘Room 19’
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse began last Wednesday (April 3).
The Royal Commission’s Terms of Reference are broad-ranging. They are not confined as to the time at which a person says he or she was abused and the definition of institution is broad. It extends from the organised churches through schools, childcare centres and recreational bodies. It also includes any state run institution providing residential care for children and each of the state departments and non-government organisations responsible for organising and supervising foster care arrangements.
Barney Zwartz summarises the Commission’s role here.
At the same time as the Royal Commission is beginning the Victorian state inquiry continues. Zwartz (Church heads ‘ostracised victims’, The Age, April 5, 2013) writes:
Catholic Church leaders in Australia were contributing to the ostracism and scapegoating of child sex abuse victims, showing little leadership and very little ”will to know”, the Victorian inquiry into how the churches handled sex abuse was told on Thursday.
Caroline Taylor, professor of social justice at Edith Cowan University, said church leaders as well as judges and lawyers too readily followed misleading stereotypes that minimised child abuse.
This is a slightly odd statement, I think: given that the Church is guilty of perpetuating child sex abuse by its clergy, this apparent reticence has a much more mundane explanation. But such tepid criticism may also be expected given too the Church’s commitment to and significant expertise in employing the law against both victims and/or critics. Of course, as has been observed elsewhere, the continued suffering to which the Church subjects victims through its policies does not derive from any pleasure gained through such bastardry, but rather because these policies protect the Church and its very material interests. Denial, obfuscation, minimisation of responsibility are functional behaviours in keeping with preserving its massive wealth and power (or at least the interests of its most powerful members: the laity say baa).
Taylor adds:
”The greatest insurance policy offenders have is the ignorance of the community,” she said. ”I don’t believe the Catholic hierarchy has changed its attitude. There has been no leadership to take this forward. I haven’t seen that probity and will to know, which means setting aside preconceived ideas and being open to learn. It takes courage.”
Instead, Professor Taylor said, when she suggested ways to help educate the community, she was ”severely rebuffed”.
In reality, the Church has its own insurer: Catholic Church Insurers. It’s underwritten by Allianz, “a German multinational financial services company headquartered in Munich, Germany. Its core business and focus is insurance. As of 2010, it was the world’s 12th-largest financial services group and 23rd-largest company according to a composite measure by Forbes magazine”. In other words, it’s Business As Usual, and a zero-sum game for the Church in its battles with victims for compensation.
Notwithstanding the reservations already expressed above, old men for whom the Church has been their central focus and whose lives have been arranged in obedience to it are among the least likely to break ranks and to speak the truth. Within Australia, there are very rare exceptions: Father Kevin Dillon is a prominent critic of the Church’s response to date. Commenting on Church scandal in Scotland, Kevin McKenna writes that parishioners should consider withholding their weekly donations. Invariably, its victims and their advocates who are forced to break the silence.
See also : They survived clergy abuse but are still paying a price, Jane Lee, The Age, September 11, 2012.
Update : Australian Networks Censor Community Education Website, Danny O’Brien and Eva Galperin and Peter Eckersley, April 11, 2013: “UPDATE 2013-04-12: Apparently as a result of this blog post, social media attention, and questions from the Australian Greens to the Australian Federal Attorney General’s Department, the block has been lifted. But there has not yet been any explanation of why these 1,200 sites were blocked in the first place…”
Huh. That’s odd. According to the Melbourne Free University (MFU), the MFU website — http://melbournefreeuniversity.org/ — has been blocked by the Federal Government.
Have you been trying to get on the MFU website and not getting through? Yes? Us too. We’ve spent a few days trying to figure out what is going on, and have finally been told that the MFU website has been blocked by the Australian Federal Government for ‘undisclosed reasons.’ Our supplier is legally prohibited from disclosing any further information to us.
We don’t if we’ve been specifically targeted or perhaps others who share our server have been, if it’s a mistake, or how long we will be unable to access it. Due to the quirks of the blocking regime, some of you will find that you can actually access it, but about 90% of the population can’t.
We can’t believe how O[r]wellian this is! This is the arbitrary exercise of authority with no transparency or accountability, or any recourse to appeal processes. We have absolutely no idea what has happened, why, how we can respond, [or] if we should be contacting lawyers! And all we’re trying to do is make a space for free education.
We’re trying to move our website to a new provider, and we’re hoping that that will resolve the issue, but it’s pretty scary that this can happen in a democratic society. Obviously, if we’ve been specifically targeted this won’t work, but we really can’t believe that we have been, and this really is the insidious nature of the process – that we can be blocked by accident, and there’s no accountability at all about it.
So. You can’t view the site from Australia but you can outside of it (so to speak). Why that’s the case is rather perplexing, but no doubt a reason will emerge at some point.
Now, like a little snake, it curls into a ball,
Bewitching your heart,
Then for days it will coo like a dove
On the little white windowsill.
Or it will flash as bright frost,
Drowse like a gillyflower…
But surely and stealthily it will lead you away
From joy and from tranquility.
It knows how to sob so sweetly
In the prayer of a yearning violin,
And how fearful to divine it
In a still unfamiliar smile.
November 24, 1911
Tsarskoye Selo
Love conquers by deception,
With a simple, artless tune.
Just recently–how strange–
You were neither sad nor gray.
…
And when it smiled,
In your garden, in the house, in the field,
No matter where you were, it seemed to you
That you were free to come and go.
You became luminous,
And, drinking its poison, enslaved.
And how much bigger the stars became,
And even the grass smelled different,
That grass of autumn.
Autumn 1911
Tsarskoye Selo
The rape scandal which has engulfed the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in the UK appears to have left its local franchise Solidarity relatively untouched. Back in February, the party released the following statement in solidarity with the SWP. It describes the process by which the rape allegation was investigated by the party as scrupulously fair and entirely consistent with the understanding of and record of fighting sexism which revolutionary socialists and the SWP itself embody.
This does not exactly recommend Solidarity to anyone interested in fighting against sexism or for revolutionary socialism I reckon.
For those interested, Jim Jepps has compiled a massive series of links to and about the rape scandal, while dissident/expelled SWP members have published a blog titled International Socialism.
A number of reports have been circulated on the internet, some of which have been posted to this list, about the British SWP’s handling of a serious allegation of rape against a member of the party’s leadership body, the Central Committee (CC).
The National Committee has discussed the issue and wanted to set the record straight as we believe that there is a huge amount of misinformation circulating, as well as entirely opportunistic and unsubstantiated attempts to present the SWP as somehow sexist or sectarian towards feminism.
Against the wishes of the woman who brought the complaint, and the SWP itself, a long transcript of the debate about this issue at the SWP’s recent party conference was posted on the internet. While its posting is unfortunate, it does clarify that the process through which the allegation was investigated was scrupulously fair and entirely consistent with the understanding of and record of fighting sexism which revolutionary socialists and the SWP itself embody.
The SWP has released a statement on this issue (pasted below) which points out that, “Our party has a proud tradition of fighting for women’s liberation, as is shown, for example, by our consistent campaigning over the decades to defend abortion, and by our criticism of George Galloway for his remarks about the Julian Assange rape accusations.
“Reflecting this tradition, our internal structures seek to promote women to leading roles and deal rigorously with any action by any member that is harmful or disrespectful of women. It is in the context of this commitment that we took allegations against a leading member of the party very seriously.”
The decision to deal with this complaint internally through the party’s Disputes Committee was entirely appropriate. The courts and the police have a terrible record in handling issues of rape and sexual assault. The only people we can have confidence in to deal with these issues are those with a clear political understanding of the way sexism is constructed under capitalism, how it affects men and women and how it must be fought. This means it is only experienced and trusted comrades who are capable of defending revolutionary principles and properly dealing with such sensitive issues.
For exactly this purpose, the SWP has a standing Disputes Committee that is designed to deal with complaints about personal behaviour by party members. It is elected annually by the party conference and reports only to the conference, the highest democratic forum in the group and the one most representative of the wider party membership. The Disputes Committee is composed of up to 10 members elected by conference plus two representatives from the CC, and operates entirely independently of the CC and other leading bodies in the party.
In this case the woman who brought the complaint against the CC member chose to have it handled by the Disputes Committee rather than going to the police.
The claim that the Disputes Committee was composed of friends of the accused and therefore could not be impartial is wrong. While everyone on the Disputes Committee knew the CC member accused, it would have been impossible to find experienced comrades in the party who were not in this situation given his long-term role in the group. The mandate of the Disputes Committee, set out in the SWP constitution, is specifically to investigate complaints against CC members where necessary.
The accusation that the Disputes Committee asked inappropriate or sexist questions of the woman who brought the rape complaint has not been substantiated and was specifically refuted by the Disputes Committee at the party conference.
Unfortunately the Disputes Committee issue appears to have been conflated by some SWP members with pre-existing grievances about party democracy that were raised by factions formed before the recent party conference.
Nonetheless, the SWP conference, which heard first hand reports from the Disputes Committee members and debated the issue, voted by a narrow majority to accept the Disputes Committee’s report and then re-elected unopposed the same Disputes Committee. Far from revealing any democratic failing, the National Committee believes that the democratic structures and decision-making of the SWP provided the best possible way to handle this issue.
There has also been considerable social network fascination with the expulsion of four SWP members for undeclared factionalising on Facebook. We are in no position to draw clear conclusions about all the issues at such a distance. But we reject the idea that the expulsions necessarily indicate any issue with the democratic functioning of the SWP. Expulsions are unfortunate and difficult decisions in any organisation and we note that the expulsions were ratified by conference by a margin of 3-1.
Golden Showers
Y’know, when it comes to the response by some local Greek community leaders to the emergence of Golden Dawn in Melbourne, I’m honestly somewhat surprised. According to a number of anti-fascists who attended Greek independence day celebrations this year, for example, the fascist (neo-Nazi) party was welcomed by organisers, while those opposed to their presence were informed by state security to leave the event. As far as I can tell, this embrace of the anti-immigrant party by organisers has raised few questions subsequently (though it does evoke parallels with Pastor Danny Nalliah’s ‘multicultural’ party and its promotion of anti-multicultural policy) and would be a mildly disconcerting development if apathy towards and/or support for GD was replicated more widely among locals. In any case, Joolya has apparently declared that GD poses no particular problems as far as Australian authorities are concerned, meaning that those petitioning it so as to disallow the entry of its MPs and other leading figures to the country are going to be disappointed, and the struggle against GD’s influence in Melbourne and Australia generally assume different forms…
Speaking of which, next Saturday (April 6) there’s a benefit gig at The Reverence Hotel in Footscray. Performing are ExtinctExist, Faspeedelay, Go Genre Everything, Pope’s Assassins & Pretty City. The gig starts at 8pm, tickets cost $10 and proceeds goto Rocinante, a Greek anarcho-syndicalist group.
(Oh, and don’t forget A New World In Our Hearts, a benefit compilation by Iron Column Records, available for download with proceeds to Freedom Books.)
As for Golden Shower, you can read a recent scholarly account of their evolution in ‘The Rise of Golden Dawn: The New Face of the Far Right in Greece’, Antonis A. Ellinas, South European Society and Politics:
The article examines the rise of the one of the most extremist political parties in Europe, Golden Dawn. It sketches the historical trajectory of the Greek far right, examines the ideological, organisational and voter profile of Golden Dawn, and offers possible explanations for its breakthrough in the 2012 elections. The article shows how the economic crisis has brought a massive realignment of the Greek electorate away from mainstream parties, giving rise to anti-system and anti-immigrant sentiments. Golden Dawn’s violent tactics have allowed the party to establish an anti-system and anti-immigrant profile and capitalise on these sentiments. The party’s future will depend on its capacity to absorb organisationally any future tensions between party pragmatists and idealists.
See also this account of the party’s vigilantism — “The Golden Dawn were beating us with no mercy. It’s a miracle we are still alive” (March 27, 2013) — and some infos on the love affair between the party and their Italian counterparts in Golden Dawn and Italian neo-fascism: A Love story (March 25, 2013).
As a final aside, the fuehrer of the Australia First Party, GD’s comrades Down Under, has written a superbly entertaining account of how “a witches’ coven of radical lesbians” prevented him from coming to power in the 1980s. The batshittery [http://australiafirstparty.net/pitt-street-uniting-church-1980s-90s-deserves-investigation-by-royal-commission-into-institutional-paedophilia/] has been produced by the group’s Lebanese leader in order to exploit the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which holds its first sitting next week (April 3). The bizarro antic echoes a previous threat to picket the coronial inquest into Tyler Cassidy’s death.
Gold Coast nazis
For the fourth year in a row, boneheads belonging to Blood & Honour Australia and the Southern Cross Hammerskins will be holding a gig (May 4) on the Gold Coast titled Hammered, and as usual, there have been gasps of horror in the corporate media, patient explanations from authorities that they can do nothing to stop the nazi shindig, and general wailing and gnashing of teef on the part of People Who Dislike Racism. For those who care, it was alleged last year that one of the principal organisers of the event is a guy called Brad Giles, a Hammerskin (a claim he publicly denies) and tattooist at Valley Ink.
For those of you arriving late, the Southern Cross Hammerskins are the Australian chapter of an international network of neo-Nazi skinheads established in the late 1980s. The Hammerskins’ most famous member is Wade Michael Page, who in August last year did his bit to oppose race-mixing and multiculturalism by shooting dead six Sikhs:
The Indian-American community in the small midwestern town [in Wisconsin] was in shock after the killings, and planned to hold a candlelight vigil later on Monday.
The dead were identified as Paramjit Kaur, a 41-year-old woman; and Sita Singh, 41; Ranjit Singh, 49; Satwant Singh Kaleka, 65; Prakash Singh, 39; and Suveg Singh, 84, all men. Singh is a common surname in the Sikh community.
The Indian embassy in Washington said it had been told that four of the six were Indian nationals, but did not respond to a request for more details.
The Washington-based Sikh Coalition said there had been “thousands” of incidents of hate crimes, discrimination and profiling against Sikhs since the September 11 attacks of 2001, attributing blame to anti-Muslim sentiment.
You can read more about the heroic Hammerskin in Wade Michael Page and the (Southern Cross) Hammerskins (August 15, 2012).
International Week of Solidarity with Jock Palfreeman – 22nd-28th April
A call out for solidarity with Anti-fascist prison resister Jock Palfreeman
“We are urgently calling all anarchist, anti-fascist and other anti-authoritarian left wing groups to act in solidarity with Jock Palfreeman… Jock has already served several years of his 20 year sentence in Bulgaria. He actively works towards organising his fellow prisoners and highlights cases of repression by the prison authorities. He is one of the founders of the Bulgarian Prisoners Association. In the last few years, the response to his imprisonment and calls for solidarity with him from the anarchist and anti-fascist movement have been underwhelming. He needs more groups and individuals to join the campaign for his freedom. His family and some liberals have been organising support for him and trying to raise money for his fine; but Jock was always asking for a more direct kind of solidarity other than just politely asking the authorities to be nice. He needs people to not only constantly put pressure on the Bulgarian authorities in the form of letters and emails, but also organise demos and pickets outside embassies and/or any other Bulgarian institutions, generally spreading awareness about his case.
Please keep publishing information about Jock on your blogs, websites and social media. We hope you will all join the upcoming International Week of Solidarity with Jock Palfreeman on 22nd-28th April, and use your creativity and imagination to express solidarity.”
Brighton Anarchist Black Cross
International Week of Solidarity with Jock Palfreeman – 22nd-28th April
Sieg Fail!
As you may already know, the singer for the band Dropkick Murphys won a good deal of applause recently when he unceremoniously escorted a bonehead off the stage. Internet nazis were of course enormously butthurt by Ken Casey’s actions, and one in particular felt compelled to put on public display his idiocy:
Dropkick Murphys are touring Australia in late March and early April.
Update (April 2, 2013) : I didn’t realise this ’til now but the chair of the organising committee, Kostas Nikolopoulos, is also an editor at Neos Kosmos. Anyway, the Guardian has a report today on the global ambitions of the neo-Nazis the committee apparently has no problems with joining them in celebrating Greek nationalism.
Huh. According to anti-fascists who attended the ceremony in Melbourne, organisers of the annual Greek Independence Day celebrations have actively welcomed the neo-Nazi group Golden Dawn to the event.
Yesterday was the annual march to commemorate Greek Independence Day on the 25th of March at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne.
Around 6-7 Golden Dawn members turned up with shirts and a large flag to draw attention to themselves and their cause, clearly using the opportunity to recruit and speak to sympathisers.
A group of anti-fascists arrived to hand out pamphlets amongst the crowd, only to be told by Protective Services Officers to stop at the risk of removal from the Shrine. When asked why it was still ok for fascists to stand around and recruit, the PSO responded that they got permission from the organisers before the event to be there. So this means Golden Dawn were given a free opportunity to advance their cause, protected by the organisers and PSOs.
The organising committee for the event and its chair, Kostas Nikolopoulos, owe an explanation to the Greek community as to why they gave Golden Dawn permission to spread their ugly message at such a prominent event for Melbourne’s Greeks.
