Just cause you don’t understand what’s going on
don’t mean it don’t make no sense
And just cause you don’t like it,
don’t mean it ain’t no good
And let me tell you something;
Before you go taking a walk in my world
You better take a look at the real world
Cause this ain’t no Mister HoWARd’s Neighbourhood
Can you say “feel like shit”?
Yeah maybe sometimes I do feel like shit
I ain’t happy ’bout it, but I’d rather feel like shit than be full of shit!
And if I offended you, oh I’m sorry…
But maybe you need to be offended
But here’s my apology and one more thing…fuck you!
While tens of thousands of young Australians do a Pauline and take to the streets with Australian flags wrapped around their heads, shoulders, waists and bottoms — and painted on their faces, chests, arms, legs and stomachs (they’re obviously a forgetful mob) — and while comrade Tracey maintains that “right wing groups such as Australia First, the League of Rights, One Nation, etc. have been very successful in mobilising working class people around a nationalist ideology” (while teh left remains mired in an unproductive ‘internationalism’), there has been some re-arranging of the deckchairs on the Good Ship White Australia. Thus:
The Australian Nationalism Information Database is now closed.
Go to www.ironbarkresources.com for essential information on Australian nationalism and the fight for our nation’s future.
Following in the footsteps of the Australian Nationalism Information Database, Ironbark Resources is an educational resource to promote Australia’s national identity and culture, and to offer criticism of mass immigration, multiculturalism, and Asianisation as major threats to our environment, our people, and our way of life. A wide range of on-line publications and articles are provided on these issues, as well as on other issues of interest to Australian Nationalists.
Files are being transferred to Ironbark Resources, with updates or additional work as appropriate.
What follows is a potted account of the groups Tracey mentions; much more information is available on this blog or at FightDemBack!
Australia First (AF)
While still linked to by that Lebanese bloke from Tempe, the ‘Australian Nationalism Information Database’ has switched its allegiances to AF’s chief rival, the Australian Protectionist Party, linking to it, its zine, and its disco forum. By the same token, AF has been reduced to 53-year-old Dr James Saleam and a coterie of similarly middle-aged White racists in Sydney, 58-year-old John Drew in Brisbane (who, it should be noted, enjoys “mixing and relating to young people especially fit and virile chaps”), a 40-something nutzi named Jim Perren in Crows Nest (Toowoomba, Queensland) and a relatively youthful Nathan Clarke in Newcastle.
Like the other groups referred to below, it would be mistaken, I think, to believe that AF has been “very successful in mobilising working class people around a nationalist ideology”. Rather, nationalism is a deeply-rooted phenomenon (hardly unique to Australian society), but in the development of which (White) racialist ideology has, historically speaking, been of critical importance. The Australian nation-state was, after all, based on the establishment of a British penal colony, the genocide of the indigenous peoples, and, for the bulk of its life, consolidated through the institution of a White Australia policy. This policy has been embraced by the vast bulk of the population, and only began to fracture following the mass migrations after WWII, the re-classification of indigenous peoples as citizens rather than fauna (as a result of the 1967 referendum), the gradual abandonment of this policy in the 1960s and 1970s, and the re-conceptualisation of Australia as a ‘multi-cultural’ (multi-ethnic and multi-racial) society.
NB. There is also a rump AF based in Shepparton in Victoria, led by Diane Teasdale.
At this point, an extract from an essay by Koori activist Gary Foley:
The first thing that Anglo-Australian supporters [of indigenous struggles] have to face up to is that the society from which they come has a long history of entrenched, institutionalised racism. As Ruth Frankenberg says,
For the greater part of…history…arguments for the biological inferiority of people of colour represented the dominant discourse…for thinking about race. Within this discourse, race was constructed as a biological category, and the assertion of white biological superiority was used to justify economic and political inequities ranging from settler colonisation to slavery.
Australians must come to terms with the fact that their perceptions have been shaped by their culture and its construct of time, space and history. Australian racism has manifested itself as fear and loathing of all who might be perceived as racially or culturally different (or the ‘other’). But the first and longest suffering victims of White Australian racism have been the Koori peoples. From the very first contact Aboriginal peoples have been regarded as ‘sub-human’ and ‘primitive’ and the imposition of British sovereignty under the guise of terra nullius formalised the non-acknowledgment of Kooris as human beings. The subsequent mass slaughter of Aborigines and the appropriation of their land without compensation a clear sign of the contempt that white settlers had for the indigenous occupants, and that contempt has been transmitted culturally from generation to generation to this day.
From the beginning of the British invasion of Australia indigenous people were slaughtered on a grand scale. In Tasmania between 1804 and 1834, the Aboriginal population was reduced from an estimated 5000 people to just 200, which represented a 90% reduction in just 30 years. In Victoria it has been estimated that the Koori population declined by about 60% in just 15 years between 1835 and 1850 as more than 68 individual ‘massacres’ were perpetrated in that period. According to representative of the North West Clans of Victoria, Mr Gary Murray, of the 38 clans that lived in Victoria B.C. (Before Cook) only 24 today have living descendants. By 1850 virtually all active resistance to the invasion had been quelled in Victoria. Census figures published in March 1857 showed only 1,768 Aborigines were left in all of that state. So comprehensive was the ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Australia that out of an estimated 500 language groups on mainland Australia when the British arrived, barely half that number of languages were to survive. By 1871, one correspondent, G. Carrington, felt compelled to write:
We shall never possess a detailed history of this singular and gradual work of extermination – such a tale would be too horrible to read – but we have an opportunity of seeing a similar process in full work in the colony of Queensland, and when we have seen that, we shall understand the mystery of Tasmania, New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia.
By the middle of the 19th Century the situation for Aborigines in most parts of Australia looked very grim. Barry Morris has described it thus: “‘The colonial process had reduced the Aborigines to a residual minority, but they had not been eliminated. The problem was expected to resolve itself.” In other words a new policy emerged dubbed ‘Smooth the Dying Pillow’, based on the assumption that what was left of the Aboriginal populace would now die out. So whilst indiscriminate killings of Aborigines were to continue well into the 1930s, the widespread genocidal activity of early ‘settlement’ gave way to a policy of containment. This was embodied in the Aborigines Protection Act 1909, which established the first Australian ‘concentration camps’ to provide a place for the doomed race to die off. It is also interesting to note that the first Act of the new Commonwealth of Australia in 1901 was to restrict non-white immigration so, as Pat Grimshaw put it, “Australia’s spaces would be filled instead by pure white babies”.
Social Darwinism was also a popular notion in Australia about that time, especially among the scientific community. Andrew Markus has said, “one doesn’t have to read extensively to discern that a central concern of anatomists was to establish whether Aborigines were closer to the animal than human”. The Elder Professor of Anatomy at the University of Adelaide in 1926 said that Aborigines were “too low in the scale of humanity” to benefit from “the civilising influence of Anglo Saxon rule”.
Many eminent Australian scientists of the day were to express similar attitudes. In Victoria, as Christie notes, ‘Throughout the frontier years (between 1835 and 1850) the intellectual argument that the Aborigines more closely resembled “the ourangoutangs than men” made it easier for the squatter to treat the Aborigines as subhuman, to lump them with the dingo and shoot them as a “rural pest”.’ Thus was Australian society’s justification for the terrible treatment meted out to the original inhabitants. In the face of such racism pervading society and resonating down the white generations, Koori activists and thinkers realised that the path forward was necessarily through self-reliance and Koori control of Koori affairs.
See also : Warwick Anderson, The Cultivation of Whiteness: Science, Health and Racial Destiny in Australia, University of Melbourne Press, 2002 (review) | Race… (interview with Anderson), ‘Lingua Franca’, ABC, July 27, 2002 | Anarchy 102 : Race (April 10, 2007) | Anarchism and Aboriginal sovereignty (July 16, 2008)
Australian League of Rights (ALOR)
The League of Rights is The League of Rights is The League of Rights. If it has experienced any upsurge in support recently, I’m unaware of it. Rather, following the death of “fascist fruitcake”/”Lion of Freedom” Eric Butler, the Empire Loyalists are under the command of fellow South Australian Betty Luks. According to the League, “We are now into the year 2009 and the demands on the League to keep up with providing news and information, educating and serving our people is as great as ever. Will you help us by supporting the League’s Basic Fund[?] We start the year with $14,038.45 already contributed. The target is $60,000. Please support us generously – and thank you to those who contributed over the Christmas/New Year break.”
Alexander Downer spoke at an ALOR event in 1987, but this fact was only publicly exposed in 1994. Typically, Downer relied upon his reputation as an idiot to escape criticism, claiming that — despite being filmed ‘looking on as SA ALOR director Frank Bawden urges the audience to read the literature “explaining the aims of the League” on their seats’ — he didn’t know who he was addressing, who organised the event and — for all I know — why he was even there (perhaps he tripped and fell?). In any case, no harm was done to the witless Adelaide private schoolboy’s career: twenty years later, he became Foreign Minister; after the Tories lost the 2007 Federal election, he was appointed vewy special envoy to Cyprus, and joined the spooky Hakluyt.
One Nation (ONP)
Minus Pauline, One Nation is up shit creek without a paddle, a fact reflected in the miserly electoral results the Party — which continues, in one form or another, to eke out an existence in NSW, QLD, SA, VIC and WA — has received since its foundation. In fact, Pauline’s election to the Australian Senate in 1996 (One Nation was formed in 1997 by Pauline Hanson, David Oldfield and David Ettridge) and the election of 11 members at the Queensland state election in 1998 proved to be the peak of its success.
Thus in November 1998, one member (Charles Rappolt) had resigned his seat, in February 1999 five members resigned from the Party to become Independents, and in December 1999, the five remaining members split from ONP to form the ‘City Country Alliance’ (CCA). Of the 11 ONP members elected in 1998, one had resigned his seat, while eight — including all six members of the CCA — lost their seats at the subsequent election in 2001, and just two (Dr John Kingston and Dorothy Pratt) were re-elected as Independents. Kingston subsequently resigned in 2003, while Pratt continues to hold her own in Nanango in Queensland.
In essence, ONP’s downfall — and leaving aside the dirty tricks campaign overseen by the Mad Monk Tony Abbott — was its inability to establish a real base outside of Queensland, and the absorption of its key policies by the HoWARd Government.
Neither Pauline nor her former Party experienced much success at the polls in the 2007 Federal election. Well, not in terms of votes anyway. In terms of money, she’s laughing ka-ching! all the way to the bank, with a cheque for over $162,000 (Loser Hanson cleans up, Herald Sun, Ellen Whinnett, November 25, 2007).
In what will probably be her final tilt at Parliament, Ms. Hanson came fourth in the Queensland Senate race, having gained 95,131 votes or 4.12% and 0.2883 of a quota. One Nation, on the other hand, gained a meagre 4,144 votes, or just 0.18%, placing them fifteenth of 24 Senate tickets. In other states, One Nation fared a little better: in NSW obtaining 16,611 votes or 0.41% (by contrast, Pauline’s United Australia got 38,165 votes or 0.95%); in Victoria, 12,414 votes or 0.41%; in WA, 10,354 votes or 0.93%; and in SA, 5,583 votes or 0.61%. In total then, across the nation ON received 49,106 votes: a far cry from 2004, when in Queensland alone ON received 71,032 votes. In 2001, the Hanson ticket in Queensland received 215,400 votes…
In the seat of Murray, Diane Teasdale, with 623 votes, placed sixth of nine candidates. In Werriwa, Dr James Saleam’s comrade Joe Bryant fared a little better, gaining 2,019 votes, and placing fourth among a field of six.
Other parties on the right include the Jesus Freaks in the Christian Democratic and the Family First Parties, and the Free Market Fanatics in the LDP (Liberty and Democracy Party). In the Lower House, 129 Family First candidates received 245,144 votes, or 2.0%; 63 Christian Democratic Party candidates Hallelujah! received 104,433 votes or Can I Get A Witness? 0.8%. In the free market of ideas, the Liberty and Democracy Party found much fewer buyers, their 47 candidates collecting just 17,003 votes or 0.1%.
Australian Protectionist Party (APP)
The APP emerged as a split from the AF in September 2007, in part as a result of wanting to de-Nazify Australian fascism, and based on the understanding that the British National Party’s strategy of mainstreaming was impossible under the leadership of Dr James Saleam, given his unabiding hatred of Jews, criminal past, and continued association with outright nutzis (of which Ross ‘The Skull’ May is the most prominent example). Thus far, the APP has contested just one election, with derisory results.
Established in 1988, the CEC is a front group for the followers of former Trot Lyndon La Rouche. It regularly contests elections, and can frequently be found in the CBD, suburban shopping malls, and outside University campuses flogging its crackpot ideology, the most awesome aspect of which is their belief that The Queen sits at the heart of an illegal international drugs cartel. The ALOR has noted some of the other, equally-appealing characteristics of the La Rouchites. ‘La Rouche Misleads’, OnTarget, Vol.33, No.13, April 11, 1997: “In spite of our warnings over the years concerning the activities of the American-based La Rouche movement, operating in Australia through the “Citizens’ Electoral Council” which publishes The New Citizen, we continue to come across sad cases of sincere people who have been pressured on the telephone to donate thousands of dollars to a movement which claims it is the only movement which can save Australia. Like all such movements, some of what they say or write is correct. But much is dangerous rubbish. The Royal Family is constantly alleged to be behind the international drug problem, while the Republican cause is constantly advocated. It is not without significance that the La Rouche movement constantly targets conservative movements. Whatever the motive, the effect is one of tending to neutralize the genuinely conservative cause.” Further, (OnTarget, Vol.28, No.48, December 18, 1992): “Initially the League provided tacit support for establishing the Citizens Electoral Councils, believing they offered a mechanism for advancing citizens initiated referenda. The C.E.C. movement has changed completely, and we are now no longer sure that initiative and referenda is still even a policy of this group. If the C.E.C. is using the high pressure fundraising techniques of some North American groups, we issue a strong warning of caution to our readers. We now hold the gravest reservations about both the methods and motivation of this group.”
Boneheads (Wankers)
There are a few organised groups of boneheads in Australia, all of which are foreign imports. The biggest (but still tiny) are Blood & Honour Australia and the Southern Cross Hammerskins. In addition, Volksfront has recently announced a new franchise. There are also a few boneheads belonging to the bizarro Creativity movement, while a number of older boneheads find a happy home in the local punk rawk milieu.
B&H and the SCHS have been in and out of the media spotlight over the last few years as a result of the difficulties they’ve experienced organising their annual knees-up in Melbourne. Briefly, in 2006, the boys held their noisefest at the Birmingham Hotel in Fitzroy. In 2007, it was held at the Melbourne Croatia Social Club (Sunshine). In 2008, at the Beaconsfield pub in Beaconsfield. Note that the location for these events is never publicised.
Over to the boneheads:
The crowning achievement of B&H Australia activities each year is the Ian Stuart Memorial concert. Every year we put this on in conjunction with the Southern Cross Hammerskins, the organization that we’ve worked with hand-in-glove, in brotherhood, for the past fifteen years or so. Together we brought out from Europe one of the most inspiring and active bands in the White Nationalist world, Kill, Baby Kill!, for last year’s concert. The year before that it was the infamous Final War from Orange County, California. Other bands and/or members to take the trip to Antipodean shores include the awesome Bully Boys, Ken McLellan from Brutal Attack, Billy and Lyndon from Celtic Warrior, Jim of Squadron fame, and guests from German band Noie Werte, one of the few bands still active that actually played with Skrewdriver.
The exposure of their first venue, the Birmingham Hotel, and the institution of a boycott, eventually resulted in the pub changing hands. Under new management, it’s no longer available to fascists to hold events. That said, two dozen or so local punk bands continued to support the venue and its manager, Gary K. Unfortunately for them, their support was insufficient to render the pub a going concern.
Of the over 20 bands that elected to support the pub, the most vocal were Bulldog Spirit / Marching Orders / Napalm Hearts (which have overlapping memberships) and The Worst. None of these bands appear to have suffered greatly as a result of their support for a fascist-sympathising pub, and Marching Orders are scheduled to play the Rebellion ‘punk’ Festival in August 2009, along with a number of ‘anti-fascist’ and ‘anti-racist’ bands.
This tells you more or less all you need to know about the current status of the there’s no business like punk business.
In 2007, the tricksy boneheads arranged with fascist-sympathising Croatians to hold the gig at their social club. Bonehead again:
[In 2007] there was an unprecedented amount of harassment from the Red scum. These dickheads seem incapable on focusing on their own crappy lives and instead dedicate themselves to trying to give us grief. As usual, however, they rose to the same pathetically ineffectual standard they’ve managed in previous years and had absolutely no bearing on how the gig went. And, again as usual, they’ve upheld a long tradition for Red filth by spreading disinformation and dragging innocent parties through the mud in their frustration that they have no chance of stopping any B&H Australia functions.
My advice? Have a Cornetto, and harden the fuck up.
In 2008, “Because of police interest, the gig was a low key event, without the usual banners, flags & such, but hey we all knew what we were there for & that’s what matters”. Which is as it should be, although bringing out a group of nutzis from Europe isn’t cheap… LOL.
As for the future, the boneheads are organising a gig in Perth on ANZAC Day to celebrate the deaths of Australians who fought Nazism. Playing for the White traffic will be Indigenous Hate, Quick & the Dead and Ravenous (the former drummer of which now plays for local band Bulldog Spirit).
New Right (NR)
The New Right Australia (and er, New Zealand) is the brainchild of Sydney-based fascist Welf Herfurth. A former member of the NPD, Democrats and ONP, the yuppie racist is a also a former friend of B&H and the SCHS, but has recently teamed up with Douglas Schott (Blood Red Eagle) to (re-)establish Volksfront Australia. One critic — Poodle38 on Stormfront — has attacked Welf and accused him of loving “slopes” and cheating on his wife. Which is not very nice, but one of the hazards of “trying to appear everything to everyone”; Welf has also, at different times, embraced both Dr. James Saleam (AF) and Darrin Hodges (APP). Currently, Welf acts as the brains for the handful of brainless teens who believe their destiny is best placed in his hands rather than Don Black’s or David Duke’s.
KKK (White Bedsheets)
The KKK come and go: currently, there at least two different factions of white bed-sheet wearers, the (possibly defunct) ‘White Legion Knights’ and the ‘Church of the National Knights of the Ku Klux Klan’ (CNKKKK). Some believe that the KKK is an elaborate conspiracy hatched by members of the haberdashery industry, but this rumour is unconfirmed. Readers interested in joining the handful of racist psychotics in the CNKKKK are encouraged to contact the GRAND DRAGONESS OF AUSTRALIA/ASSISTANT TO THE IMPERIAL WEBMASTER at [email protected].
Stormfront Down Under (White Bread & Circuses)
Stormfront is the brainchild of Don Black, a convicted terrorist (he and a small group of fellow racist cranks attempted to take over the island of Dominica in 1981) and David Duke, both former Grand Poobahs in the KKK. Black’s wife (and Duke’s ex-wife) Chloe is friends with some of Florida’s richest, while his son, Derek, has been embraced by the local (Florida) branch of the Republican party.
Currently, the Grand Poobah of Stormfront Down Under is Paul Innes of Perth. In addition to being granted the authority by his Fat Yanqui Controllers to perform this vital task, Paul is also planning a ‘Pioneer Little Europe’ in the Perth foothills. Fellow nutzi Kyle Chapman (a KKKiwi) recently got his ugly mug in the papers following the ‘disclosure’ that he and some of his White mates are planning the same for Canterbury. Otherwise Paul, a bonehead, is a supporter of B&H.
in the quest for the test to fulfill an achievement
everybody’s only loaded just to shoot themselves
when the fact of the matter is they just don’t care
to extend a helping hand to anyone else
so tell me why, did you have to lie
and try to make me all confused about PTBA
when the fact of the matter is you just don’t hear
to comprehend or understand a single word I say
why oh why oh why to go against I?
why oh why oh why to go against I?
well let me tell you now…
the same old story, no factual glory
I against I against I against I
and I say I don’t like it
and I know I don’t want it
I against I against I against I
almighty watching
almighty watching
I against I against I against I
and I say I don’t like it
and I know I don’t want it
I against I against I against I
I said who’s gonna tell the youth about the drugs
about the drugs, mugs, bugs, and the police thugs
about the rotten stinkin’ rackets and the fantasies
around the nation
around the nation
oh what you gonna do?
I tell you the truth is looking straight at you
oh baby baby what you gonna do?
I tell you the truth is looking straight at you
I got a brass continental with a 300 Z
I got a plasma TV with DVD too
I got a rest home in Victoria with my fantasy for my family
around the nation
what you gonna do?
what you gonna do?
what you gonna do?
what you gonna do?
Gordon Ramsay is in hot water for his swearing. One of his television shows is called The F-Word, but celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay’s famous use of the expletive – and others – has landed him in hot water with British audiences. Viewers flooded Channel 4 with complaints after Ramsay swore 243 times in a two-hour screening of Gordon’s Great British Nightmare on Friday, The Sunday Mirror reported. His language included “187 F-words”, the newspaper said…
Angry ticketholders have hit out at organisers of yesterday’s St Jerome’s Laneway Festival in Melbourne’s CBD, saying poor organisation and overcrowding left hundreds of frustrated fans locked out of the venue, unable to watch the bands they had paid for…
Girl Talk‘s latest smash hit, summer’s most anticipated urban experience:
“Two young men decide to escape their problems and head to [New South] Wales for a weekend in a small village. They arrive to find a coach-load of Swedish females and a cursed hamlet under the spell of vampires of a specific sexual persuasion. Welcome to Lesbian Vampire Killers, a comedy horror film project from British firm AV Pictures…”
See also : Dead Snow [Død Snø] | Top 10 lesbian vampire movies, Holger Haase, Den of Geek: “Taste the deadly passion of the blood-nymphs as we explore the Sapphic side of vampire movies… With the March release of Lesbian Vampire Killers, European horror returns – if not very seriously – to the Sapphic vampire subgenre that has spawned an awful lot of duds, but a few well-appreciated gems…”
10. Dracula’s Daughter (1936)
9. Blood and Roses (1960)
8. Any Jean Rollin film
7. Vampyros Lesbos (1971)
6. Lust for a Vampire (1971)
5. Vampyres (1974)
4. The Blood Spattered Bride (1972)
3. The Hunger (1983)
2. Daughters of Darkness (1971)
1. The Vampire Lovers (1970)
European governments tremble as anger spreads, Ian Traynor, London, The Age, February 1, 2009: “FRANCE paralysed by strikes, the boulevards of Paris resembling a battlefield. The Hungarian currency sinks as unemployment rises. Greek farmers block the road into Bulgaria. New figures show the three Baltic states face the biggest recessions in Europe…”
Important segments of the transnational capitalist/ruling class — including millionaire PM KRudd [sic: Deputy PM Julia Gillard took his place after KRudd cancelled] and his billionaire boss Rupert Murdoch (Murdoch appointed KRudd in April 2007) — are meeting once again in the Swiss resort town of Davos. While eating turkey and glutting wine, the bourgeois swine will be tut-tutting the fact that the same economic system that ensures they live lives of luxury also ensures that every day thousands of children literally shit themselves to death. Or, as a polite BBC puts it: “The biggest criticism [of the WEF Summit]… will be that many of the people who hope to solve the world’s problems are also those who have caused them”. Which is semi-correct: many of the ‘problems’ of the world — war, poverty, starvation, ecocide, Soulja BoyTell ‘Em — are attributable to capitalism, but these ‘problems’, like capitalism, are systemic.
Diarrhea, known medically as gastroenteritis, is a major cause of children’s death in the world–second only to acute respiratory infections (ARI). One out of every four childhood deaths is from diarrhea, which drains the life out of at least 3 million infants and young children every year. Of these deaths, 99.6% occur in the Third World, where one in ten children dies of diarrhea before the age five… ~ David Werner & David Sanders, Questioning the Solution, Chapter 6: Diarrhea: A Leading Killer of Children, 1997
Speaking of violence, in the 27 months since the G20 Summit in Melbourne — in which a number of rock *s, in addition to bureaucrats, foreign and imported, warbled about ‘making poverty history’ — the UN estimates 24,120,000 children have died of “poverty-related” causes (one might just as well say ‘wealth-related’ causes).
And yet, even now — as former Treasurer Costello put it — there are some socialists, there are some anarchists, there are some people that want to disrupt world trade. Thankfully, police forces around the world give short shrift to such troublemakers. Of course, not all troublemakers are bad.
In Putin’s Russia, for example, police happily collude in the fascist butchering of oppositionists. (In Davos, police have successfully contained the scum.)
The global economic crisis poses our rulers some curly questions, the most important of which is whether or not it will trigger widespread social unrest. Australia, like other countries, is headed for recession (the term ‘recession’ generally describes the reduction of a country’s gross domestic product (GDP) for at least two quarters). According to the IMF, Australia “would likely have a negative growth rate of -0.2 per cent this year” (Australia heading for recession: IMF, Anne Davies in Washington and Kerry-Anne Walsh in Canberra, The Sydney Morning Herald, February 1, 2009).
There is some good news however, as world-renowned political economist yuppie scribbler Christian Kerr retains his faith: “Capitalism got us into this mess, but capitalism will get us out. Just as fortunes have been lost, fortunes will be made cleaning it up” (Give capitalism some credit, The Australian, January 30, 2009). Why, Naomi Klein even wrote a book about it!
In Iceland, the crisis has already witnessed mass protest, and the collapse of the government (See : The Icelandic Government has Collapsed… and then what?, aftaka.org, January 30, 2009). In the UK, wildcat strikes have broken out in oil refineries. (See : Unofficial refinery walkouts ‘over foreign workers’ spread, Joseph K., January 30, 2009.) In France, “As the recession begins to bite in France, transport, education and other services are brought to a halt by a national strike demanding action on unemployment and the rising cost of living” (Ex temp, libcom.org, January 29, 2009).
I work for a contracted company in charge of the maintenance of an oil refinery in south Wales. The start of the strike occurred due to an Italian company being contracted to increase refinery capacity at the Lindsey refinery. The strikes quickly spread across the rest of the refineries, sporting the slogan “British Jobs for British workers”.
In the area where I work there are two oil refineries and two LNG terminals plus an oil storage facility. Recently due to the economic crisis workers at all of these sites have been made redundant, which is pretty much uniform across the UK and even the world. With the prospect of work coming in the form of new building projects such as the planned gas fired power stations and nuclear power stations there is hope for workers who are out of work. However due to the recession the fat cats want to cut costs. As a result they will use the company who will charge the least. It’s unfortunate that overseas companies can do the job for less than the British companies. This is where the problem began — workers recently made redundant were horrified when local jobs when to an Italian company who would use Italian and Portuguese labour.
A lot of my colleagues regularly work overseas in places such as Kazakhstan, Dubai and in other countries. When this work is offered people jump at the chance. Don’t blame the workers – it’s not their fault at all. It’s the system: capitalism. To quote one of my colleagues, “foreign workers are in the same boat as us, if were offered work we would take it.” The recent wave of redundancies had nothing to do with overseas workers “taking our jobs”. It’s the whole greedy system that is to blame. In the engineering industry, especially the oil and gas industry, the job takes you world wide. Contractors can work all over the world. As I’m sure the media is pushing this on the front pages they are doing nothing to defend the foreign workers who also face threats of redundancy and unemployment. Who can blame the workers who just want to work and support their family? What happened to international workers’ solidarity?
A. It’s under constant assault. In the meantime, KRudd has provided the reading public with another tacky souvenir of pre-revolutionary Australia.
KEVIN RUDD has denounced the unfettered capitalism of the past three decades and called for a new era of “social capitalism” in which government intervention and regulation feature heavily.
The Global Financial Crisis
Kevin Rudd The Monthly
In “The Global Financial Crisis”, Kevin Rudd offers a comprehensive and lucid analysis of the current economic situation. In mid January, while on annual leave, the prime minister wrote this 7700-word essay that brings historical perspective to bear on the causes, precedents and ramifications of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Sheeting home much of the blame to the neo-liberal agenda that has prevailed in Western economies over the past 30 years, he outlines a series of broad reforms – many of which, he argues, must be undertaken on an unprecedented, global scale. This major essay on the most pressing issue of our time is a unique contribution from a sitting prime minister.
In an essay to be published next week, the Prime Minister is scathing of the neo-liberals who began refashioning the market system in the 1970s, and ultimately brought about the global financial crisis.
“The time has come, off the back of the current crisis, to proclaim that the great neo-liberal experiment of the past 30 years has failed, that the emperor has no clothes,” he writes of those who placed their faith in the corrective powers of the market.
“Neo-liberalism [Bad Cop] and the free-market fundamentalism it has produced has been revealed as little more than personal greed dressed up as an economic philosophy. And, ironically, it now falls to social democracy [Good Cop] to prevent liberal capitalism [TINA] from cannibalising itself.”
“When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said, ‘Let us pray.’ We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.” ~ Desmond Tutu
From The Department of Some-of-My-Best-Friends-are-Jewish:
A one-day conference on ‘Justice for Palestine’, scheduled to take place on Thursday, January 29 @ The Theatrette, NSW Parliament House in Macquarie Street, Sydney, was cancelled following the publication of anti-Semitic remarks by the principal organiser, Maqsood Alshams (former Honorary National Coordinator of the ‘Coalition for Justice for Refugees’, currently Project Director with the ‘Asia Pacific Human Rights Institute’). The conference was titled “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”, and organised by the Institute and the “Edmund Rice Centre in association with Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning – University of Technology Sydney and Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Sydney”. The cancellation appears to have been triggered by the withdrawal of two speakers — Antony Loewenstein and Peter Manning — and, one assumes, the negative publicity attached to Alshams’ outburst.
Alshams, after having first declared that “Only Me, You and Us together can turn today’s dream into a reality tomorrow. And let us get it done!”, initially defended his right to a private argument (Rights activist apologises for anti-Semitic comments, Erik Jensen, January 28, 2009), but later apologised to the motherf—– bastards. Alshams explained that he was “intoxicated and angry” when he wrote the email messages to Richard Benkin, “a human rights activist based in Chicago” and “Sydney management consultant”, Anna Berger (Rights activist apologises for anti-Semitic comments, Erik Jensen, January 28, 2009).
Speaking of motherf—– Jewish bastards, one rather notorious example is Noam Chomsky. See“Exterminate all the Brutes”: Gaza 2009, chomsky.info, January 19, 2009.
On Saturday December 27, the latest US-Israeli attack on helpless Palestinians was launched. The attack had been meticulously planned, for over 6 months according to the Israeli press. The planning had two components: military and propaganda. It was based on the lessons of Israel’s 2006 invasion of Lebanon, which was considered to be poorly planned and badly advertised. We may, therefore, be fairly confident that most of what has been done and said was pre-planned and intended.
That surely includes the timing of the assault: shortly before noon, when children were returning from school and crowds were milling in the streets of densely populated Gaza City. It took only a few minutes to kill over 225 people and wound 700, an auspicious opening to the mass slaughter of defenseless civilians trapped in a tiny cage with nowhere to flee…
Once proud to claim to represent the interest of white Australian workers, the contemporary ALP — a largely middle class institution — now claims to represent the interests of ‘working families’; a mantra repeated endlessly during the last Federal election campaign by KRudd & Co.
Despite a declining membership, however, the ALP still retains a stranglehold over the trades union movement, and the labour movement more generally. (See : Union Control of the ALP, Presentations given on 26 March 2008 by [former] trade union leader and Senator Elect for NSW, Doug Cameron, and former union official [and Communist] Mark Aarons.) The ALP, in turn, is dominated by the right.
Future ALP politicians and current trade union officials are reportedly “furious” at former trade union officials and current ALP politicians for doing what pundits have expected: introducing “business-friendly” industrial relations laws. “Furious” trade union leaders are widely tipped to remain furious for some time, before becoming “angry”, “upset”, “bitter”, and then merely “resigned”.
The broad structure of the coal-powered fluorescent bulb on the hill was explained by Gillard in her speech to The National Press Club on Wednesday titled ‘Introducing Australia’s New Workplace Relations System’. Gillard also took this opportunity to burn her bra black armband, declaring in her opening remarks that “The signature values of nations are often defined by the circumstances of their birth… And for us there’s one value above all others that we identify with as truly our own. It’s the value that emerged out of the circumstances of Federation, which coincided with the industrial turbulence of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. That value is fairness. Or as we like to put it: ‘the fair go’.”
Which is all rather odd, especially given that — as angry White men across the country know — one of the first Acts of Federal Parliament was the Immigration Restriction Act. This Act (together with the Pacific Island Labourers Act 1901) formed the legal cornerstone of the White Australia policy; the Conciliation and Arbitration Act — which in Labor Party mythology has ensured a ‘fair go’ for ‘working families’ for the bulk of the country’s history — was only assented to by Edward VII in 1904. Further, while 100 years ago the Gub’mint couldn’t get rid of the Pacific Islanders quick enough, they now wanna import them — albeit if only for a coupla years…
Aside from a plummeting membership (a dilemma also faced by the Tories and their country counterparts the Nationals), the average age of an ALP member is now around 50. Yoof, in other words, find little of appeal in the ALP. Or at least, yoof in general: the party still manages to recruit ambitious young apparatchiks, principally students, Darren Ray being perhaps the example par excellence of this tendency.
Despite its hostility to socialism — formally abandoned some years ago — the Australian Labor Party “maintains formal links with fraternal parties overseas through ongoing membership of the Socialist International. This supplements the close, bilateral ties the ALP maintains with counterparts around the world”.
There’s also the Fabian Society, but nobody really pays them much attention. This may be because they have next to no influence.
See also : ARE FACTIONS KILLING THE LABOR PARTY?, Senator Robert Ray, Address to The Fabian Society Sydney, 20 September 2006 (“Thirty years ago I was doing research on the First International – an international socialist organisation formed by Marx and Engels [sic] to unify the working class movement. It quickly became the battleground between the Marxists and the Anarchists, who were to have their showdown at the Hague Conference of 1872. While not yet a nation, Australia was nevertheless represented at this Congress by a Ballarat miner whose task was to argue for an extra shilling a day for Australian miners. As the colossal ideological firestorm engulfed the Hague Conference, as Karl Marx and Michael Bakunin fought it out, the Australian delegate was reported to have intervened on only one occasion, and that was to say “Monsieur le President, I do not understand what is happening”.)
The decline in the labour movement has proven to be the wave upon which a number of its representatives have surfed into state power. This decline is evidenced in the declining number of industrial disputes (the result of an exercise of industrial power by the unions) and the even steeper decline in union membership. Australian Social Trends, 1996, Industrial Relations: Industrial disputes: “In the period 1969-83, the number of industrial disputes recorded annually fluctuated considerably but was consistently higher than the number of disputes in the period 1983-94. Since 1984, there has been a steady downward trend in the number of industrial disputes. While this is part of a world-wide trend, the decline in Australia has been much greater than in other parts of the world. In 1994, there were 560 industrial disputes — the lowest number since 1940.”
Prices and incomes policy 1983-96
The Statement of Accord between the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) was endorsed in February 1983/4. Shortly after the ALP won the federal election the Accord became government policy. In September 1983 the Australian Conciliation and Arbitration Commission agreed to establish a centralised wage fixing system based on productivity and price movements as outlined in the Statement of Accord. The ACTU agreed to exercise restraint in wage claims in exchange for social programs.
During the first three years of the Accord wages were indexed, but at the end of 1985-86 the government and the ACTU agreed to partially index wages. Subsequently, indexation was abandoned and wage adjustments were significantly below the inflation rate. In 1987 the Industrial Relations Commission recommended a two tier system. The first tier was an automatic flat increase for everyone. The second tier was related to identifiable improvement in productivity. In the following years the two tier system remained with increasing flexibility occurring. For example in 1991 the first wage increase was replaced by a tax cut. The Accord was abandoned in March 1996 following the change of government.
Number of Industrial Disputes, 1996–2007, Australia:
See also : Industrial Disputes, Australia, December 2007, ABS, March 13, 2008. Note that the number of disputes is one indicator of industrial unrest; the number of participants, and longevity of the dispute, are others. Some of the key disputes which the ALP effectively neutralised towards the beginning of its last period of Federal rule include the Australian Pilots’ dispute of 1989 and, prior to that, the successful de-construction of the Victorian Builders’ Labourers’ Federation. On the BLF, see Liz Ross, Dare to Struggle, Dare to Win! Builders Labourers Fight Deregistration 1981-1994, Vulgar Books, 2004. Finally, John Stone of the HR Nicholls Society tips his hat to the Drover’s Dog:
By way of illustration, I remind you of the airline pilots’ dispute in August-September, 1989. In that dispute, we saw a Prime Minister actively facilitating:
o Use of ‘the troops’ (RAAF) to help defeat the walkout by a key body of airline employees;
o The bringing of common law actions for breach of contract against individual pilots to the same end;
o Use of Sections 45D and 45E of the Trade Practices Act for the same purpose;
o The import of foreign pilots to take the place of Australian pilots who had withdrawn their labour;
o The import of charter aircraft (and associated foreign crews) to supply services being withheld by the Australian pilots; and even
o The provision of some kind of financial assistance designed to assist a major employer (Ansett Airlines) and thus help ‘keep it in the field’ until the Australian Federation of Air Pilots had been crushed.
Mr Hawke’s zeal in all these matters thus went even further than our own. The H.R. Nicholls Society had never argued that a body of employees should not have the right to be represented by a union (or Association) of their own free choosing—a basic right which Mr Hawke and Sir Peter [Abeles] were determined to deny to the pilots.
Trade Union Membership as Proportion of Employees, 1912–2001:
See also : Social Democracy: No Future? Introduction to Articles on the Retreat of Social Democracy, Aufheben, 7, Autumn 1998: “Social democracy is in retreat. That its institutions continue to be the focus of struggles raises the question of what we want and how we should fight. But to answer such questions requires a proper understanding of the nature of social democracy. In this, the Introduction to a series of articles on the current retreat of social democracy, we unravel the essence of this dominant form of political mediation of working class needs.”
The Retreat of Social Democracy… Re-imposition of Work in Britain and the ‘Social Europe’, Aufheben, 8, Autumn 1999: “In this, the latest exciting instalment of our analysis of social democracy in retreat, we show how the left-of-centre governments now dominating the European political arena are attempting to re-impose work through common neo-reformist policies. We argue that reports of social democracy’s rebirth have been greatly exaggerated: and we never lamented its passing anyway.”
THE ALP faces extinction because of an ageing and declining membership and a destructive culture of personal and factional advancement, one of the party’s elder statesmen has warned.
In a letter to leaders of Premier John Brumby’s dominant Right faction, former cabinet minister Race Mathews reveals the party’s national membership has plummeted to about 50,000 — down from about 370,000 immediately after World War II — and the average age is about 50.
Dr Mathews’ letter, dated last Thursday and obtained by The Age, says there are fewer than 13,000 ALP members in Victoria and most are inactive.
He says this is “a recipe for extinction, and places the party in the category of an endangered species”.
“Sooner or later we will again find ourselves in opposition at the state or federal levels and maybe both, and our predicament at that point in the absence of a numerous and active rank and file will be truly pitiful,” he says.
Dr Mathews’ reform-or-die call to arms has been prompted by splits in both the Right and Left factions over Labor preselections for next year’s federal and Victorian elections.
He says the party is in “crisis” and accuses Mr Brumby’s Right faction of spending too much time and energy on “who gets what, at the expense of ensuring that we have an effective party”.
“Nobody — and least of all the people whose needs and interests we are meant to represent — will get anything if the deterioration of the party remains unchecked,” he warns in the letter.
“Too much squabbling over spoils ends up ensuring there are no spoils to divide.”
His warning comes as Mr Brumby returns from holidays today with Victorian Labor in turmoil after a damaging month for the Government.
Veteran minister Theo Theophanous resigned from cabinet on Christmas Eve to fight a rape charge that is likely to be before the courts for much of this year.
Mr Brumby was then embarrassed when his choice to fill the cabinet vacancy, former internet entrepreneur and “star” Labor recruit Evan Thornley, decided to quit Parliament for a lucrative private-sector job.
One of the Premier’s main tasks at a two-day state caucus retreat in Ballarat starting tomorrow will be to calm the nerves of ministers and backbenchers who fear the internal factional brawling and the global economic crisis will undermine the prospects of Mr Brumby and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd retaining office at next year’s elections.
Dr Mathews was chief of staff to former prime minister Gough Whitlam before becoming a federal MP, a minister in John Cain’s state government, and a long-time head of Australia’s oldest left-leaning political think tank, the Fabian Society.
His letter was distributed to key Labor figures on Friday by one of Mr Brumby’s strongest supporters, former ALP state president and high-profile union leader Bill Shorten, who is head of the Victorian Right and a rising star in the federal Labor caucus.
Dr Mathews writes that while it may be true that Victorian Labor is in no worse shape than the state Liberal Party, at least the Liberals are taking their problems seriously and have done a comprehensive review of the way their party runs itself and connects with the community.
A special meeting of about 1000 Victorian Liberals last October endorsed a radical reform package after a report from party president David Kemp warned that Liberal membership in Victoria had slumped to fewer than 14,000 — down from more than 45,000 when Robert Menzies won government in 1949 — and that more than a quarter of the members were over 75.
In his letter, Dr Mathews calls on Labor leaders to begin work urgently on a “party renewal charter” to try to ensure the ALP retains its rank-and-file members, attracts new ones and forges closer links to its affiliated unions.
“To paraphrase an old saying, all that is necessary for the party to die is that good members do nothing,” he writes.
Dr Mathews, who joined the ALP in 1956 and the Victorian Right in 1976, declined to comment last night.
ALP faces extinction, expert warns
January 26, 2009
Australian Associated Press
AN ageing and declining membership and a culture of personal advancement and factional fighting could spell the end of the ALP, a former party heavyweight has warned.
In a letter to leaders of the Right faction that dominates the party, former Victorian cabinet minister Race Mathews said Labor’s national membership has dropped from about 370,000 at the end of World War II to 50,000 today, The Age newspaper said.
Dr Mathews’ letter, distributed on Friday, said most of the less than 13,000 party members in Victoria are inactive and said the situation is “a recipe for extinction, and places the party in the category of an endangered species”.
“Sooner or later we will again find ourselves in opposition at the state or federal levels and maybe both, and our predicament at that point in the absence of a numerous and active rank and file will be truly pitiful,” he said.
Dr Mathews’ said Premier John Brumby’s Right faction concentrates on “who gets what, at the expense of ensuring that we have an effective party”.
“Nobody – and least of all the people whose needs and interests we are meant to represent – will get anything if the deterioration of the party remains unchecked,” he said.
Dr Mathews joined the ALP in 1956.
He was chief of staff to former prime minister Gough Whitlam before becoming a federal MP.
He joined the Right faction in 1976 and was a minister in the Cain government in the 1980s.
The two principal, party-political protagonists of White nationalism in Australia are the Australia First Party (NSW), under the leadership of Dr. James Saleam, and the Australian Protectionist Party, under the nominal leadership of Andrew Phillip (its National Chairman), but having as its chief spokesperson Darrin Hodges (NSW state chairman, and a former member of AF).
At present, while AF is registered in NSW, neither party has Federal registration; both have launched campaigns to obtain it. Whether one or both succeed is open to question. Thus AF was initially registered in 1996 by former ALP hack Graeme Campbell; it was de-registered in 2004. Saleam has declared the goal of 500 members within reach on a number of occasions, most recently in December 2008. The real level of support for the party — which is really a measure of support for Saleam himself — is at this stage perhaps no more than a few hundred, mostly in NSW, principally in Sydney, but also in Newcastle, where real estate agent Nathan Clarke does his best to keep the town a Jew-free zone.
Outside of NSW, the party has a tiny presence in Queensland — where its two chief spokesmen are a neo-Nazi from Toowoomba named Jim Perren, and a tennis-playing bachelor called John Drew in Brisbane (who also doubles as the Patriotic Youth League: “I may be too old to be a youth but I am very fit and an excellent tennis player”) — and also some support from a phone box in Croydon (Victoria).
As for APP, it appears to have fared a good deal better following the split in AF that produced the party (September 2007), although it has yet to reach the dizzying heights of popularity among the far right that AF has. In an attempt to hurry along the process of registration, on Invasion Day the party offered “free membership (no tabouli)”. How many accept the offer remains to be seen; certainly, there is some small degree of excitement on Stormfront Down Under.
“Why should patriots help APP? The Protectionist Party is the ONLY patriotic party to have an official policy of offering financial incentives to encourage Third World migrants to return home. Without this, Australia will become overwhelmingly an Asian country” quotes ‘Aussie13’. TrueDiversity1488 (14 = the 14 words of dead neo-Nazi David Lane, “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children.” / 88 = HH = Heil Hitler) and ‘AryanQueen2000’, “a member of APP since the beginning” are also excited.
At the time of his death, Lane (November 2, 1938 – May 28, 2007) was serving consecutive sentences totalling 190 years for racketeering (20 years), conspiracy (20 years) and violation of the civil rights of radio talk show host Alan Berg on June 18, 1984 (150 years). Berg was shot and killed in the driveway of his Denver home by three members of The Order.
Less excited is ‘Hobbit’, a supporter of AF. Unfortunately for Hobbit, and other critics of APP, while Saleam’s rants about the Jewish-sponsored ASIO campaign against AF are tolerated, criticisms of APP are considered to be strictly verboten by Perth-based moderator Paul Innes, and hence removed from public circulation. The same applies to criticism of Volksfront Australia, a new project being spearheaded by Douglas Schott (of neo-Nazi reich ‘n’ roll band Blood Red Eagle) in Newcastle and Welf Herfurth in Sydney. Poodle38, a supporter of the rival bonehead gangs Blood & Honour and the (Southern Cross) Hammerskins, whinged online about the new group, accusing Douglas of being a short-arsed loudmouth and Welf of loving “slopes” and cheating on his wife. Naturally, the moderator had to yank Poodle38’s chain, and little has been heard from him since he returned to his kennel.
Welf himself has his fingers in a number of different racist and fascist pies. Having previously been a member of the NPD, the Democrats, and One Nation, in addition to Volksfront, Welf is currently the leader of both the New Right (Australia and er, New Zealand), the National Anarchists, and is a close comrade of James Saleam, the terrible twosome overseeing the running of the annual Sydney Forum. This close association, and Welf’s more general dalliances with nutzis, did not prevent NSW state chairman of APP, Darrin Hodges, from joining the fascist ‘black bloc’ in Sydney in September 2007, where he and a few dozen like-minded unidentified flying racists gathered behind the banner of the New Right and the ‘national anarchists’.
Like Volksfront Australia, the fascists claiming to be anarchists have been criticised by their fellow racists, typically on the basis of their political incoherency (see: The New Right, “national anarchism”, and A White Australia, Monday, April 21, 2008). This may explain why, at this stage, Welf has only managed to recruit a handful of racist teenage refugees from Stormfront. Certainly, Darrin has not chosen to flog his very special brand of anarchism while promoting the APP.
In the final analysis, there is little doubt that Saleam will be remembered — along with his good mate Jack Van Tongeren — as being one of the hardest-working non-Whites to espouse a return to White Australia. Two of his most recent hare-brained schemes include protesting at the Coroner’s inquest into Tyler Cassidy’s death and pledging his support for any teens charged by Manly police for their racist shenanigans on January 26. In this context, Herr Doktor also asks: “What’s next: will some political time server Superintendent ‘do a Tyler Cassidy‘ and allow Australian youth to be unlawfully killed?”
Possibly. Or possibly Jim should treat himself to A Cup Of Tea, A Bex and A Good Lie Down.
“No offence but honestly who gives a shit about some [journalist] in Russia.” ~ Nowave, Melbourne Punx Forum
Slain Moscow reporter buried in Ukraine
AFP
January 27, 2009
A young female journalist who was gunned down last week on a busy Moscow street was buried on Monday in her home city of Sevastopol in the south of Ukraine.
Several dozen mourners bade a last farewell to Anastasiya Baburova, a 25-year-old intern reporter for the opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta, after her body had been taken home by plane.
Baburova was shot dead on January 19 alongside leading Russian human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov, who had just given a news conference protesting the release of a Russian army colonel convicted of murdering a Chechen girl.
The funeral mass was held in the Saint Vladimir Orthodox Cathedral in the centre of the Crimean port city before her corpse was laid to rest in a cemetery on the city’s outskirts.
Her mother, Larissa Baburova, told AFP that her daughter a year ago had complained that her work was too dangerous, saying: “Mum, I am not going to live long like this.”
The European Union and France had raised concerns after her killing but a Russian foreign ministry official said the slaying of Baburova had been “artificially politicised and used to discredit Russia”.
The newspaper – one of the few Russian publications ready to explicitly criticise the Kremlin – had already been hit by tragedy when its star reporter Anna Politkovskaya was gunned down in Moscow in 2006.
Police said that no witness has come forward over the murder but that security cameras had recorded images of the suspected killer, a tall, thin man wearing a mask.
AFP earlier reported that “About 200 people also gathered in Moscow to protest the killings of Markelov and the journalist, Anastasiya Baburova, a 25-year-old intern reporter for the opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta“. “Russia is the third-deadliest country in the world for journalists, according to CPJ research. Since 2000 alone, 16 journalists have been murdered in Russia in direct retaliation for their work; only in one of these cases–Domnikov’s–have the killers been convicted. In all 16 cases, however, the masterminds remain at large” (Journalist, human rights lawyer shot dead in Moscow, Committee to Protect Journalists, January 20, 2009). Baburova is the fourth Novaya Gazeta journalist killed since 2000.
As a result of her murder, ‘Russian newspaper to seek arms licenses for its journalists’ (January 22, 2009): “MOSCOW, January 22 (RIA Novosti) – The Novaya Gazeta newspaper will ask Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) to issue arms licenses to its staff after one of its journalists was shot in broad daylight in downtown Moscow, a co-owner of the daily said on Thursday.” A previous request was denied. The Moscow police chief has already indicated his opposition.
20th of January in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Grozniy various actions were organized to commemorate Stas Markelov and Anastasiya Baburova, murdered 19th of January. At noon around 400 people gathered at the place of murder to leave flowers. Police and several buses of OMON riot police were present at the spot, but eventually they did not intervene.
Moscow anarchists decided, that candles and flowers are not enough of a reaction against such an outrageous murder, thus they decided to organise an illegal demonstration.
First gathering place was leaked to police, and it was surrounded by a tight cordon of OMON. Eventually gathering place was moved to Bolshoy theater, but police got there as well, around 7:30 PM they attacked peaceful people. Around 15 people got arrested, few more were arrested at the metro station “Okhotniy Ryad”, rest of the people moved to exit of metro Novokuznetskaya.
From there, march was launched 8:20 PM, and it blockaded Pyatnitskaya street. March went to Obvodnaya canal proceeded by embankment, from there demonstration moved to Bolshaya Ordynka street, blocking it.
People scanned “Fascists murder, authorities are covering!”, “We do not forget, we do not forgive”, “Our motherland is the whole humanity”, there were banners “No to impunity” and “Fascist murder, authorities are covering”. Trash containers were thrown to street to stop traffic. In end of the march, few bank windows and windows of McDonald’s at metro Tretyakovskaya were trashed. Altogether around 200 people joined demonstration.
During the action, around 50 people altogether got arrested, good part of them random passers by, but it seems everyone got released without charges during the same evening.
Text of the leaflet is available in Russian, but it could not be distributed in action as whole printout got confiscated before it got started.
In St. Petersburg, around 100 people gathered at Ligovskiy street 7 PM. This was openly announced action and police attempted to stop it, however people managed to launch march towards Marsova fields, where is a memorial to victims of white terror. There a small meeting was organised.
There was also a rather strange demonstration in Chechnya. This was officially sanctioned by the authorities, and among human rights organizations there were such strange entities such as “Fan Club of Ramzan Kadyrov”. It was reported, that more than 1000 people joined demonstration. Stas and Nastya were definitely no fans of current totalitarian regime in Chechnya, however Stas was defending interests of relatives of victims in two most prominent Russian war crimes courts. Whereas current Chechen regime is not too keen to punish their own power structures for human rights violations, they pursue course of prosecuting non-Chechen officials of Russian army for reasons of public relations, and also to erase from the republic all federal structures not directly subordinate to the current regime.
According to the above accounts, around 250 people protested in Moscow, 100 in St. Petersburg and 1000 in Grozny. At the Moscow protest, busloads of special police were present, and many protesters were detained, including ‘suspicious’ passers-by. It is not known if any were charged. However, some were tortured while in custody, and also threatened with having drugs planted on them. Trash bins and sundry other items were used to block a road in Moscow, a road used mostly by wealthier citizens (the beneficiaries of Putin’s regime). At least one protester was badly beaten by police, and police are stitching up a criminal case against him for assaulting police.
Two Greek anarchists are making molotov cocktails. One says to the other: "So who will we throw these at then?" The other replies: "What are you, some kind of fucking intellectual?"
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