How to Make Trouble… // The Dole Army

Posted on November 6, 2009 by @ndy

Sarah is 29 and homeless. She lives on welfare. When she is not on the streets she is in rooming houses. At the moment she pays $160 a week for a single room in a house in the suburbs of one of the world’s most liveable cities. There is no bedding provided. Her room is so small there is not enough space for her belongings. The door to her room was kicked in three times in a recent week. But at least her door has a lock on it. The front door of the house has no lock. Sarah shares a bathroom with 10 other residents, sometimes more. She says it is covered in blood most days. During winter the heating in the house was switched on for two hours a day, one in the morning and one at night. There are no lights in the corridors.

In other news, How to Make Trouble… was thrown upon the floor of Victorian Trades Hall last night, and a bloody battle among the 57 varieties of Red ensued over the grisly remains of the many years of trouble-making condensed on to its pages.

I’ve not read any reviews of the book as yet, but the following review by Jim Perren of the ‘Australia First Party’ provides a chillingly accurate account of the historic role of Jews in causing decent, law-abiding, White folks like you — but not me, apparently — so much trouble.

@ndy the ‘trouble maker’
Whitelaw Towers
October 15, 2009

Well, that title just about covers it. It neatly encapsulates FDB’s modus operandi.

Yeah, we suppose, when you’re a bored, whiny little prat who was unpopular at school and ‘awkward’ with girls like @ndy this kind of thing must seem really ‘radical’ and ‘cool’. You know the stuff. Sorta like what ‘The Chaser’ crew and other private school, university wasters get up to. It’s all just put down to youthful high spirits and ‘creative’ or ‘progressive’ minds ‘pushing the envelope’ and stuff IF you happen to be from a wealthy or influential family or, like Darp and @ndy, just well connected Middle Class brats.

Of course real Working Class Men just have to… well… WORK ‘n’ stuff (that’s getting dirty and grimy and tired) and get on with the daily grind of paying bills and taxes and raising a family etc. Yeah, that’s right @ndy. That’s how your handlers in the system prevent real revolution and overthrow from ever happening. Most people, especially the Proles you seem to idealise in ‘Neo-Soviet’ fantasies, haven’t got the energy to spare for dissent and resistance. They are simply too busy, tired, stressed, to read ‘challenging’ literature, study politics and involve themselves in activism.

That’s left, largely, to lazy pricks like you and the FDB crew who are still thinking and acting like ‘youth’ at thirty something while living at home with mummy. The only reason blokes like us at Whitelaw Towers are even involved is because you and your very, very stupid mates attacked us with an over the top ferocity well out of proportion to our original interest and involvement in politics. You, or more accurately Darp and Weezil, basically did what nobody else seemed able to do for decades in Australia. They united many disparate elements of White Nationalism in a common cause and enlightened many to the sheer scale and depth of the conspiracy against White people.

The FACTS are that FDB have created more ‘born again’ White Men and strengthened the resolve of many more who were already dedicated to the cause than any amount of recruitment drives from various Nationalist groups could ever have achieved. Thanks for that. You IDIOTS! Just remember that next time you’re all sitting around and smugly claiming the great ‘success’ of the Fight Dem Back project.

Just as Darp has a homoerotic fetish for gigantic pacific islander thugs dressed in lumber jackets and playing at builder’s labourers so too is @ndy so fascinated with work he could watch it all day. @ndy, you and your ‘Anarchists’ are like kids playing dress up games. If anyone does have a right to glamorise the Working Class imagery it is the Working Class themselves. I am sure most real blue collar blokes would find it puzzling, suss perhaps, or even outright insulting to find that the iconography of their way of life has been appropriated by pasty, chicken necked, spotty little middle class twats.

Particularly when it swiftly becomes apparent that it is little more than a big laugh for most of these indulgent bourgeois hobbyists and political dilettantes. We won’t even [mention] how pissed off many would be if they found out about YOUR reasons for involvement. Lucky for you, we suppose, that most wouldn’t even be able to spell Sayanim, let alone have a clue what it really means.

[Sayanim (Hebrew: helpers, assistants) is a term that former Mossad katsa and author Victor Ostrovsky and author Thomas Gordon use to describe a network of Jews living outside Israel who volunteer to provide assistance to (the Israeli intelligence agency) Mossad. Sayanim are not directly involved in intelligence operations, and are only paid for their expenses.]

Oh, and @ndy, we’re all looking forward to Darp’s book coming out. Send him our best. We’re hoping it will include the hotel vandalism and kiddie bashing stuff. It’s all vital ‘trouble making’ and ‘influential’ stuff. But gee, I bet he’s a tad peeved that this McIntyre dude kinda beat him to it and all. Oh well, at least he’s got his Law career to look forward to. Oops! We almost forgot. He won’t even have that now, will he?

UN-lucky!

Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!

Ahem.

Anyway, one ingredient missing from the recipe book is an account of ‘The Dole Army’, a (spectacularly) successful media hoax directed at tabloid ‘current affairs’ TV shows A Current Affair and Today Tonight. The hoax took place in February 2002. Since that time, whiles its C.O.s have retired to well-fortified bunkers located somewhere in the Dandenongs, rank-and-file members of the Dole Army are believed to have gone rogue, and continue to operate as a guerilla force under the command of 40 Kiwi anarchists.

one

Group owns up to media hoax
Lateline [ABC]
February 5, 2002

Now to a story that reads like a script from the satirical Frontline program. They dwell in the storm-water drains under Melbourne, a group of masked anarchists called “The Dole Army”, urging fellow Australians to defraud the Government of welfare benefits. It sounds too far fetched to be true but that didn’t stop channels Nine and Seven from falling for the story hook, line and stinker. Today the group of pranksters in Melbourne owned up to the hoax, screened last night on the Nine network’s A Current Affair and Seven’s Today Tonight. The group says the stunt is revenge for the news media’s portrayal of the jobless and other disadvantaged groups in society.

Continue reading →

Posted in Anarchism, History, Media, State / Politics, Television | Tagged , | 4 Comments

antifa notes (november 6, 2009)

Posted on November 6, 2009 by @ndy

Russia Arrests Two Men in High-Profile Murders
Gregory L. White and Olga Padorina
Wall Street Journal
October 5, 2009

MOSCOW — Russian authorities charged two alleged neo-Nazi activists with the murders of a prominent human-rights lawyer and a journalist, in what appeared to be an unusual success in cracking a high-profile case…

Stanislav Markelov, a lawyer who had defended many victims of nationalist violence, and Anastasia Baburova, a young reporter for the opposition Novaya Gazeta newspaper, were gunned down on a downtown Moscow street in January, shortly after leaving a news conference together on one of Mr. Markelov’s latest cases. They became the latest in a series of human-rights campaigners and journalists killed in Russia. Few of those cases have been solved…

Prosecutors said the accused were Muscovites Nikita Tikhonov, about 29 years old, and Yevgenia Khasis, about 24. Lawyers for the two made little comment to reporters outside their closed arraignments Thursday, news agencies reported.

Mr. Bortnikov said they were members of radical nationalist organizations. He said they were implicated in another murder and had planned a further killing of a prominent figure whom he didn’t identify.

Mr. Markelov had been threatened and attacked in the years before his death by members of the increasingly aggressive nationalist and neo-Nazi underground. He often defended antifascist activists, who were also a subject Ms. Baburova wrote about for Novaya Gazeta.

Allegedly a member of a neo-Nazi group, Mr. Tikhonov was a suspect in a 2006 murder of an antifascist youth in Moscow. In that case, Mr. Markelov, representing the victim’s family, had pushed prosecutors to bring stiffer charges. Three assailants were convicted of “hooliganism” and other lesser crimes and sentenced to prison; Mr. Tikhonov was charged in the case but fled and was never caught.

“Tikhonov looks like a quite credible suspect,” said Galina Kozhevnikova, deputy director of SOVA, a Russian group that tracks neo-Nazi and nationalist groups. But she noted that the January murders — in which the masked killer fired point-blank on a crowded sidewalk and escaped unimpeded into the metro — seemed unusually polished for neo-Nazis.

“There aren’t professional killers among these ultra-rightists,” she said. “This killing shows the hallmarks of experience in military action.”

The leader of a nationalist group, Alexander Belov of the Movement Against Illegal Immigration, described Mr. Tikhonov as “a journalist … a very responsible person and rather smart. I don’t believe he could have done this,” the Interfax news agency reported.

See also : Found: Two Double Murderers?, Roland Oliphant, Russia Profile, November 5, 2009 | Russians Gather for Unity Day Rallies, The Other Russia, November 4, 2009.

Neo-Nazis infiltrate the US military: The FULL evidence
Matt Kennard
The Comment Factory
November 5, 2009

I touched down in Tampa, Fl, on a bleak day in early March on a quest to meet Forrest Fogarty, a neo-Nazi who had served the U.S. Army for two years in Iraq. I’d been speaking to him intermittently on the phone for a couple of months but getting inside the neo-Nazi network in the United States is not easy and takes reams of arduous appeals to penetrate the walls of resistance. I’d been uniquely successful with Fogarty, a loquacious character with a compelling story, so I took a flight from New York City down to Tampa to meet him…

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Abahlali baseMjondolo

Posted on November 5, 2009 by @ndy

for freedam is nat noh idealagy
freedam is a human necessity
it cycan depen pan now wan somebody
is up to each an evry wan a wi

Ruling in Abahlali case lays solid foundation to build on
Marie Huchzermeyer
BusinessDay
November 4, 2009

[See also : Solidarity with Abahlali baseMjondolo, Anarkismo, November 4, 2009 | squattercity : Robert Neuwirth is “a writer who spent two years living in squatter communities in four continents” — this is his blog | Against Chauvinism, Against Nationalism! (May 24, 2008).]

ABAHLALI baseMjondolo hit the headlines recently. First, attacks on Durban’s Kennedy Road informal settlement drew a ground swell of newsworthy international condemnation, including a statement from US intellectual Noam Chomsky. A week later, media reported on the outcome of Abahlali’s Constitutional Court appeal on the KwaZulu-Natal slums act.

What is Abahlali? And was anything really noteworthy about the ruling?

Abahlali, a shack-dwellers movement that started in Durban in 2005, is a deeply democratic, nonpartisan political organisation. Its elected leadership makes itself accountable to its membership through regular consultations with its structures on its every move. Its central concern is to secure participatory informal settlement upgrading for its members.

Abahlali has built a sympathetic network of support among a small group of faith-based organisations, legal entities, nongovernmental organisations and academics. Its website keeps overseas sympathisers abreast. However, Abahlali remains independent, cautious that its struggle not be “gentrified” or utilised for the realisation of middle-class agendas. This has gained the movement enemies in the much romanticised realm of “civil society”.

Its other enemies are in the increasingly autocratic local structures of the African National Congress (ANC), which find it hard to distinguish themselves from the state.

Abahlali’s approach to engaging the state is to exhaust other democratic avenues, before resorting to legal action and, where appropriate, peaceful protest.

In the case of the KwaZulu-Natal Slum Elimination and Prevention of Re-emergence of Slums Act, Abahlali requested participation in the mandatory public hearings on the bill. The provincial legislature reluctantly conceded, but dismissed all of Abahlali’s submissions (and many others) and enacted the law irrespectively.

Immediately, Abahlali’s members felt more vulnerable, as section 16 of the Act gave the housing MEC the powers to make it mandatory for landowners and municipalities to institute eviction proceedings. The Act undermined tenure security for all informal settlement residents in the province.

Abahlali then sought legal representation. With legal support sourced within its sympathetic network, Abahlali challenged the act in the Durban High Court. An unsympathetic judge dismissed the case.

Abahlali’s appeal to the Constitutional Court raised only two questions. First, was the Act concerned primarily with land tenure or housing? If land, the province had no power to enact it. Assuming that the Act was about housing, the question then became whether its operative provision — section 16 — was constitutional.

The ruling handed down by Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke last month found that the Act was primarily concerned with housing, and therefore fell within the legislative power of the province.

More significant was the court’s ruling that section 16 of the Act is unconstitutional. This section harked back to a provision in the 1951 Prevention of Illegal Squatting Act, which mandated landowners to evict illegal occupants irrespective of their desperation. It was a very worrying regression in law that needed to be challenged.

In our recent history, some landowners have been sympathetic to desperate households and have consented to informal occupation. In other cases, landowners (including municipalities) have unintentionally allowed informal settlements to emerge.

We have to accept that this is often how the desperately poor get access to land, in some cases well-located land. When this opportunity is closed by decree, then desperate people are even worse off.

This is not to condone conditions in informal settlements. No doubt, our legislation must evolve to regulate and improve the conditions of such occupation. In Brazil, the constitution provides that anyone occupying (a moderate portion of) privately owned land informally for an uncontested period of five years has the right to ownership.

SA needs to go further in ensuring not only legalisation but also servicing, infrastructural integration, access to social facilities and housing. In short: proper upgrading.

The focus of section 16 was not on upgrading informal settlements. Instead, it equated the elimination of slums with the eviction of people living in them and was intended to make this much more frequent and easily facilitated. Abahlali’s victory was to ensure section 16’s deletion from the statute books before it could do any real damage.

Of course shack dwellers’ struggles do not end here. Collectively, we need to find ways to ensure that relevant provisions in existing legislation and policy are consistently implemented, especially insofar as they promote upgrading. It is also important to propose policy and legislative changes that don’t take us back to an apartheid-era attitude to informal settlers, but take us forward.

Some argue that the ruling is insignificant because living conditions remain the same as before. But what is different since the judgment is that the fear of unfair eviction is removed for shack dwellers in the province.

But it is removed only in law. Expecting this judgment, the local ANC has unlawfully evicted Abahlali from its base in Kennedy Road. Since the judgment, this hatred has intensified and severe intimidation of Abahlali activists, including death threats and arrests, has spread to other settlements.

Abahlali activist Zodwa Nsibande, a part-time student at Wits University’s School of Public and Development Management, was publicly threatened for her comments on TV about the judgment.

A sympathetic commentator has suggested that the “Constitutional Court is just about the only place (Abahlali) are not being beaten up, criminalised, evicted and blamed for the state’s own failure to make good on its promises”. And that is the issue that South African society, including ANC leaders, must be concerned about.

Collectively, we must also note that the judgment goes beyond restoring the “dignified” legal framework (as the judgment calls it), which has been evoked successfully in defending many an unlawful eviction since 1994. It underlines — and for the first time cements into law — provisions of the much ignored Upgrading of Informal Settlements Programme, introduced into the national Housing Code in 2004. Moseneke states clearly that “the owner or municipality may only evict as a matter of last resort and after having taken all possible steps to upgrade areas in which homeless people live”.

Further, “eviction can take place only after reasonable engagement…. This of course means that no evictions should occur until the results of the proper engagement process are known. Proper engagement would include taking into proper consideration the wishes of the people who are to be evicted, whether the areas where they live may be upgraded in situ; and whether there will be alternative accommodation.”

The Constitutional Court has once again underscored that informal settlements need “proper” treatment. The ruling states unambiguously what this means. It is now up to all of us to ensure that this is realised in every informal settlement in SA.

There is no other way under South African law that informal settlements can be made a thing of the past.

Bonus!

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Neo-Nazism ~versus~ humanism

Posted on November 4, 2009 by @ndy

Neo-Nazism.

Humanism.

Whose cuisine will reign supreme in Chippendale?

A fascist group that has been meeting at the NSW Humanist House was itself met with protest last month. This month, the group — known as either ‘Klub National’ or ‘Klub Naziya’ — will again face public protest.

“Today, the Humanist Society of New South Wales is part of the International Humanist and Ethical Union that has formal consultative status with the United Nations”; “Based in London, IHEU is an international NGO with Special Consultative Status with the UN (New York, Geneva, Vienna), General Consultative Status at UNICEF (New York) and the Council of Europe (Strasbourg), and maintains operational relations with UNESCO (Paris). IHEU has observer status at the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights.”

LOL.

There will be another community rally at 7pm on Friday 6 November, at Humanist House – 10 Shepherd St, Chippendale.

This is the next scheduled KN gathering. The Humanist Society are being very cagey about whether or not they’re going to continue to support neo-nazis, and KN may or may not chose to meet where they know they will face collective opposition.

If they turn up we will be there to tell them they are not welcome. If they don’t, we’ll have a street party to celebrate.

See also : Fear and loathing in Chippendale, Razors Edge (2SER), October 24, 2009 | Is neo-Nazism humanist? (October 14, 2009).

Bonus!

Exclusive footage of the the Humanist Society of New South Wales (part of the International Humanist and Ethical Union that has formal consultative status with the United Nations) amateur musical theatre troupe and its 2009 co-production — with the talented members of Klub Naziya — of The Producers.

Sadly, audience response thus far has been mixed (to say the least).

WARNING! Spoilsports!

Three elderly men recount their experiences of the Nazi genocide declare themselves to be bitter enemies of humanism.

Or something.

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Good Game : If Six Was Nine

Posted on November 4, 2009 by @ndy

From the Department of Different Vocal and Guitar Mix:

Good Game is the TV show by Gamers, for Gamers™. You can catch full episodes at 8:30 PM Monday nights on ABC 2 and 11:30 PM Friday Nights on ABC 1.

Ratings

Date (Ranking) Total : Sydney Melbourne Brisbane Adelaide Perth

Monday 2nd November (154) 44,000 : 2,000 11,000 13,000 8,000 10,000

(Friday 30th October (130) 51,000 : 17,000 8,000 10,000 9,000 7,000)
Monday 26th October (140) 47,000 : 9,000 10,000 10,000 7,000 11,000

(Friday 23rd October (100) 78,000 : 19,000 32,000 8,000 9,000 9,000)
Monday 19th October (155) 40,000 : 4,000 15,000 6,000 8,000 6,000

(Friday 16th October — ?)
Monday 12th October (116) 70,000 : 20,000 24,000 9,000 6,000 11,000

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Roaring Jack : Playing For The Traffic

Posted on November 4, 2009 by @ndy

From the album The Cat Among the Pigeons, Mighty Boy, 1988.

He was playing for the traffic and the nine to fivers
Tooraloo you’re bound for Botany Bay
And he gave more to this world than all the penny pinching bastards
That turned around and looked the other way…

Bonus!

Too many Florence Nightingales
Not enough Robin Hoods
Too many halos not enough heroes
Coming up with the goods

So you thought you’d like to change the world
Decided to stage a jumble sale
For the poor, for the poor

So you thought you’d like to see them healed
Got Blue Peter to stage an appeal
For the poor, for the poor

It’s a waste of time if you know what they mean
Try shaking your box in front of the Queen
‘Cause her purse is fat and bursting at the seams
It’s a waste of time if you know what they mean…

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Charges against Elliot Madison (and Michael Wallschlaeger) dropped…

Posted on November 3, 2009 by @ndy

Apparently…

In the face of a PR nightmare, Pennsylvania authorities have withdrawn all charges against two members of Tortuga accused of using Twitter to aid protesters at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh. At a hearing today [November 3], instead of oral arguments regarding a defense motion to unseal the secret 18-page affidavit authorizing the arrests of Elliott Madison and Michael Wallschlager at a motel just outside of Pittsburgh, the prosecution immediately moved to withdraw all charges against the two before the defense had a chance to argue its case. Although clear from the beginning that these charges were absurd based on the State’s very own laws, our housemates were incarcerated for 36 hours, had their van towed and belongings confiscated, and one house member was given $30,000 in straight bail…

For more infos : Friends of Tortuga | Friends of Tortuga! (October 19, 2009) | Fuck the FBI! Free Elliot Madison! (And other stuff…) (October 15, 2009) | Man Arrested for Twittering Goes to Court, EFF Has the Documents (October 6, 2009) | Queens ‘terror’ raid hits G-20 anarchist (October 3, 2009).

Posted in Anarchism, Media, State / Politics, War on Terror | Tagged | 1 Comment

Jock Palfreeman : November 2009 Update

Posted on November 3, 2009 by @ndy
    An update on Jock Palfreeman’s ongoing trial (for murder and attempted murder) in Sofia, Bulgaria. For further details, see : Jock Palfreeman : October 2009 Update. His last court date was on October 29. Below is an account of that hearing.

Court started at 9.30am and was finished by approximately 10am. One witness summoned by the court gave testimony: the civilian operator of a camera (footage from which was, unlike other cases, not deleted). She gave an account of the footage (already screened in court), and reiterated the fact that the footage contained evidence of a conflict between two groups: a small group filmed crossing a road and also a much larger group. Following this, both groups began running — the small group away from the larger group. (NB. The small group crossing the road are Roma; the larger group composed of football hooligans.) When asked why she believed the two groups were running, the witness stated that, on the basis of the footage, she was unable to venture an opinion.

In addition to the camera operator, six expert witnesses, composed of two groups of three, were called upon to give testimony. The first group of experts were expected to provide details of the autopsy conducted upon the body of Andrei Monov, the second group to provide details of the medical report upon Anton Zahariev (whom Jock is being charged with attempting to murder). These two groups are the last expected to be called upon to give testimony.

Note that all experts are state-appointed. This is unlike Australian law, where both the defence and the prosecution are able to call upon their own experts. Further, both teams of experts must be present in court before their reports can be officially submitted, and so that they are available for cross-examination. In other words, if one member of either group doesn’t appear, no report can be submitted to and be accepted by the court.

At the most recent hearing, experts again failed to appear, so the trial has again been delayed.

Bulgarian media

    Naturally, Bulgarian media have been following Jock’s case fairly closely. However, this reportage has contained a number of factual errors:

Jock’s father: the lawyer

Under Bulgarian law, one member of the accused’s family may be appointed as a defendant’s legal guardian. One result of this legal provision is that it entitles the family member to act on their relative’s behalf (to address the court, to question witnesses, and so on). Jock’s father has acted in this capacity since March 2008 — but he is not a lawyer.

Denial of bail

Some media reports have stated that the reason Jock’s initial bail application was denied was on the grounds that he was deemed to be ‘aggressive’. His initial application was lodged three days after his arrest. On that occasion, the magistrate cried during proceedings and repeatedly shouted at Jock that he was a ‘hooligan’.

Unsurprisingly perhaps, bail was denied.

A subsequent appeal — lodged a few days after the magistrate’s original refusal — was also dismissed, although it found, in contradiction to the original denial, that there was no evidence of aggression on Jock’s part, or that he was a threat to society. Instead, the appeal was dismissed on the grounds that: a) it is unlawful to grant bail in cases where, if the defendant is found guilty, the minimum sentence is above 10 years; b) Jock is a foreign citizen (and therefore a flight risk).

A third bail application, submitted on July 2, 2009, was refused on similar grounds: Jock is a foreign citizen and there are insufficient links between Jock and Bulgaria to mitigate against his status as a flight risk. This is despite the fact that a number of Bulgarian citizens have volunteered themselves to act as Jock’s guarantors.

Experts contradicting Jock’s account

There has been some suggestion that experts contradict Jock’s version of events, but it would be just as possible, appropriate even, to suggest that expert accounts do not conform with the account given by the prosecutor (which is, in essence, that Jock launched an unprovoked, violent attack upon a large group of strangers. Note that in this account, the Roma have been disappeared). Thus, for example, the expert called upon to give testimony regarding video footage on the clash has stated in court that “the video material can show and come to the conclusion that the people involved show aggression in their actions — throwing of objects from the floor, throwing of people, kicking and shoving”.

Experts requiring more time

The relevant experts concluded their reports on the case in April 2008, at the conclusion of the prosecution’s investigation period. Since that time, there have been no updates from any experts other than from the court-appointed psychiatrists. Their report concluded that, inter alia, ‘Jock’s motivation is social justice’ and ‘Jock is not aggressive’. The only experts who have failed to appear — and whose final reports have therefore yet to be accepted by the court — are those detailed above: their testimony is expected to simply confirm the contents of their reports.

Some eyewitness testimony…

    From the original court transcripts, translated from Bulgarian into English.

December 28, 2007
Anton Zahariev:

There was already a fight between my friends and other people whom I do not know and have not seen before. Some of these people I believe were gypsies, however, I am not certain. I do not know who started the fight. My friends and I were around 10 people. (Anton later changed his statement in court.)

January 1, 2008
‘Hotel worker’:

I saw a boy (Jock) running from Stamboliski St. towards the metro, a group of people was chasing him. I cannot give any description of the boy running. Just before the entrance of the metro the group caught up with the boy, knocked him down and began to kick him. They kicked him around 30 to 40 seconds in no apparent order. As far as I could tell there was much strength behind their kicks. Then one of the people from the group came from behind the boy (Jock) and threw an object at him, as far as I could tell it hit his head and the boy fell to the ground.

‘Unnamed witness’:

I saw a few boys chase one boy (Jock) in the direction towards the metro. They caught up to him near the entrance of the metro and knocked him to the ground then began to kick him. I can’t give description of the boy that was running or the people that were chasing him. At first three or four of them were kicking him but after a few others ran over and also began kicking him. There was no coordination behind their movements, who ever decided to kick him just went over and kicked him. During this whole thing the boy (Jock) was on the floor.

February 5, 2008
Victor Lubomirov (police officer):

I understood that a group of around 10 boys had a fight with one or two people who were gypsies. We did not find these (gypsy) boys at the scene. I also understood that the other boy (Jock) came to defend the gypsies. (Officers Peter Kacarov, Krasimira Stoianova and Slavei Tconkov tendered the same statement.)

February 19, 2008
Martin Stoletov:

The boy (Jock) said in broken Bulgarian, “Back off, back off.”

October 13, 2008
Asen Stoichev (police officer):

I talked to Anton Zahariev and he told me that there was a fight between his group and others. Jock came over to help the minority and then the group attacked Jock. Jock tried to defend himself and … that is when Andrei was killed.

Posted in Anti-fascism, Death, State / Politics | Tagged | 1 Comment

A (Simple) Solution to ‘The Blood & Honour Problem’

Posted on November 3, 2009 by @ndy

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Ark Tribe : Update

Posted on November 3, 2009 by @ndy

Adelaide construction worker and unionist Ark Tribe went to court last Friday (October 30): “Mr Tribe’s appearance before a magistrate was brief, with the case adjourned until December 18” (Jail threat sparks union protests, Ewin Hannan and Gavin Lower, The Australian, October 31, 2009).

Interestingly, the CFMEU has vowed to undertake “a national strike in the construction sector if Mr Tribe were jailed”, which claim naturally brings to mind The Curious Case of Clarrie O’Shea (1906–1988), the Victorian State Secretary of the Australian Tramway & Motor Omnibus Employees’ Association (ATMOE), jailed in 1969 by Sir John Kerr for contempt of the Industrial Court. The marriage ceremony between O’Shea and prison, conducted by Kerr, gave premature birth to a general strike in May of that year — O’Shea was released shortly thereafter (see : John Arrowsmith, Abolish the penal powers: freedoms fight of ’69, Trades Hall Council Administrative and Financial Review Committee, Melbourne, 1969 [PDF]).

‘Friends of Hawthorn Tram Depot’ on Clarrie O’Shea:

…Over a period of five years from 1964 to 1969 the ATMOEA had accumulated 40 fines totalling $13,200 as a result of industrial action, none of which were paid by the union. O’Shea was ordered by the Commonwealth Industrial Court to provide the financial records of the ATMOEA, so that the court could determine the union’s ability to pay the outstanding fines. However, he point blank refused to provide the records.

The culmination of this conflict occurred on 15 May 1969 when O’Shea was jailed by Justice Kerr (later Sir John Kerr and Governor-General of Australia, notable for the sacking of the Whitlam Government) of the Commonwealth Industrial Court for contempt over the failure to answer summonses and pay fines totalling $8,100.

This sentencing resulted in national general strike action across a wide range of industries. There were a number of marches in many state capitals, often culminating in violent clashes between strikers and police. The level of public unrest caused anxiety to both Federal and State Governments, but they could not afford to be seen to back down, as they would otherwise appear to be soft on union militancy. This dilemma was only broken by the action of Dudley MacDougall, a former advertising manager for the Australian Financial Review, who paid the outstanding fines acting on behalf of an anonymous public benefactor who was said to have won the NSW State Lottery. O’Shea was released from Pentridge Prison on 21 May 1969.

On his release, O’Shea announced, “My release is a great victory for workers. I am certain that all workers remain adamant in their opposition to the penal powers, which are designed to suppress the workers. The infinite power of the workers when they are really aroused has frightened the life out of the government and the employers … I am certain the workers will continue the struggle for the abolition of all penal powers.”

The jailing of O’Shea was the last use of the penal sections of the Conciliation and Arbitration Act, although these provisions have never been repealed, so O’Shea did not get his wish. In order to prevent similar mass action over industrial issues, the Fraser Government introduced in 1977 sections 45D and 45E of the Trade Practices Act, which outlaws secondary boycotts within Australia – the very mechanism used to place pressure on the government of the day in the O’Shea case. These secondary boycott provisions still remain in force, but the public outrage generated by the jailing of O’Shea has prevented similar court action by the Federal Government.

Some things do change however, and one Sir has been replaced by the KRudd Government with another: the Australian Building & Construction Commission (ABCC): the failure of building workers like Ark to doff their caps when in its presence is another sure sign of society’s decay.

See also : “A dose of libertarianism would enhance our democracy” — and if my aunt had balls, she’d be my uncle., October 20, 2009.

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