Anarchy! Spies! Private eyes! Libraries!

Posted on November 26, 2008 by @ndy

OMG!!!!1!!

Next thing you know, tricksy police and corporate whores will be infiltrating groups, sending undercovers to punk gigs (and to protests wearing Che Guevara caps), and freeing chickens.

Oh.

Wait.

Private spies hired by police
Richard Baker and Nick McKenzie
The Age
November 26, 2008

THE internet communications and websites of anti-war campaigners, environmentalists, animal rights activists and other protest groups are being secretly monitored by state and federal agencies.

A Melbourne private intelligence firm specialising in “open-source intelligence” has been engaged by Victoria Police, the Australian Federal Police and the federal Attorney-General’s Department to monitor and report on the protest movements’ use of the internet.

The monitoring, which has been secretly conducted for at least five years, includes exploring websites, online chat rooms, social networking sites, email lists and bulletin boards to gather information on planned demonstrations and other activities. Many of those monitored have not broken any laws, but it is believed information about their participation in online activities is conveyed to government agencies that also deal with terrorism…

On the other hand, the National Library of Australia has recently decided to archive http://anarchy.org.au — “your portal to the world of anarchy in Australia… and beyond”. “As agreed this licence permits the Library to copy your publication into the Archive and to retain that copy and provide online public access to it in perpetuity.”

What next? slackbastard?!?

    Welcome to anarchy.org.au!

    This site is your portal to the world of anarchy in Australia… and beyond. It contains:

    a Forum;

    a Reading Room with a selection of anarchist texts;

    a Regional Directory to various anarchist groups and projects around Australia, as well as links to various other libertarian sites and;

    a guide to Organising Resources.

    anarchy.org.au is hosted by xchange, Australia’s oldest anarchist internet presence.

anarchy.org.au in the PANDORA Archive at http://nla.gov.au/nla.arc-89883

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

Cheese-eating surrender monkeys vs. very fast trains : Free the Tarnac Nine!

Posted on November 25, 2008 by @ndy

Update : For infos in English, see site of the US support committee for the Tarnac 9, featuring a ‘Letter from the parents of the Tarnac nine’. “When all the media come together in a cacophony of lies to slander a handful of young people currently languishing in jail it is very difficult to find the right tone with which to call an end to this racket and make room for a little truth. Many journalists bent over backwards to confirm the statements of the Minister of the Interior, even while the raids were still taking place. Those arrested were assumed to be guilty from the outset…”

    On 11 November 1887 the prison in Illinois is preparing for the execution of Parsons, Spies, Fischer, and Engel, the Haymarket anarchists. The Haymarket Affair started in May 1886 when a mass meeting was held in the Chicago Haymarket in the course of a strike for the eight-hour workday. When the police ordered the protest meeting to disperse, a bomb was thrown by an unknown person, killing several officers. Four [sic] anarchists were accused. The drawing in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper shows the scaffold, complete with a trap door. The balcony outside the cells was on the same level. At the back was a large box in which the hangman waited to release the rope for the trap door. At the execution Parsons could not be prevented from speaking his last words: “Let the voice of the people be heard!”

French company Connex — a fully-owned subsidiary of Veolia Environnement — owns and manages Melbourne’s rail system: part of Melbourne’s shitful, ever-deteriorating public transport system. In addition to transport, Veolia owns water — lots of water. In fact, Veolia is the world’s largest water company; in 2007, it had revenues of $47bn and employed around 300,000 people.

The French corporate sector has a thing for transport, and the French state has a thing for anarchists — to be precise, the “anarcho autonomous milieu” — especially those who tamper with the mandate to destroy the ecology the state gives the corporations which dominate the ‘public’ transport system.

The thoroughly depressing Tory Government of Jeff Kennett began the privatisation of Melbourne’s public transport system — with the grudging cooperation of the ALP and its union — in the early ’90s: that is, within a few short years of a small revolt by tram workers who for one day placed the system under workers’ self-management.

    “The 1990 tramways dispute is one of many industrial disputes in which rank and file unionists displayed the courage and daring to take control of their working situation. Workers’ self-management raised its head for a week or two. In this dispute, like many others, the union bosses sold out their members, through a deal done with the State Labor government. But the real story is how a small group of militants succeeded for a few years in setting the agenda among rank and file workers in the public transport industry in Melbourne.”

The period immediately prior to this witnessed the elimination of large numbers of jobs (train guards, tram conductors, station staff) and the introduction of a new ticketing system, the attempted closure of unprofitable lines, and a range of other measures intended to prepare the ground for privatisation and corporatisation.

And corporations like Connex.

In France, on November 11, 121 years after the US state executed four anarchists for a crime they did not commit, ten radicals were arrested by French ‘anti-terrorist’ squads. Those arrested have been accused of various crimes against property — in this instance, high-speed rail networks.

French police arrest anarchists for train sabotage
November 11, 2008

French police raided alleged anarchist cells in three cities on Tuesday and arrested at least 10 suspects following a series of sabotage attacks on the country’s high-speed rail network. Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said police intelligence officers had been investigating an “ultra-left anarchist movement” for several months and had acted following the weekend’s disruption of train services. “We found that this ultra-left movement has links in five European countries and in other non-European countries,” she said, alleging that the French gang has contacts in Belgium, Germany, Italy and Greece. None of those arrested works for the SNCF state rail network, she added.

A source close to the investigation told AFP anti-terrorist officers were examining “possible links between the suspects and the German hard-left, which has claimed responsibility for actions agains trains carrying nuclear waste”. President Nicolas Sarkozy congratulated police on the arrests and welcomed “the rapid and promising progress made in the context of the inquiry.”

…

Despite the most intense protests by anti-nuclear campaigners for several years, a French shipment of radioactive waste arrived in Germany early on Tuesday after a 20-hour delay. Eleven lorries carrying 123 tonnes of nuclear waste arrived at the Gorleben dump in northern Germany just after midnight (2200 GMT), police said. For most of the journey from western France the waste travelled by train and was halted for half a day at the German border by three activists who had jammed their arms into a concrete block under the track. Once in Germany, around 16,000 baton-wielding police were deployed as around 15,000 demonstrators rallied along the route to try to hinder progress using tactics such as setting barricades on fire on the tracks. The train eventually arrived at its final destination on Monday, more than 14 and a half hours late and the cargo was then transferred to lorries for the final 20 kilometres (12 miles) trip to Gorleben. Along the final leg some 1,000 activists had to be removed one-by-one by riot police before the lorries could pass. Tractors had been parked across the road and activists chained themselves to tall cement pyramids. (See also : Nuclear Waste Reaches German Storage Site Amid Fierce Protests, Spiegel Online, November 11, 2008.)

Since then one of those arrested has been released without charge (French court investigates 9 over railway sabotage, International Herald Tribune (The Associated Press), November 14, 2008).

soutien aux inculpés du 11 novembre is a website in some foreign bloody language (I think French?) what will presumably provide information in English at some point for impoverished mono-linguists such as myself. In the meantime, here’s the thoughts of Comrade George:

‘Terrorism or Tragicomedy’
Giorgio Agamben
3:AM Magazine
(Originally published in French in Libération)

On the morning of November 11, 150 police officers, most of which belonged to the anti-terrorist brigades, surrounded a village of 350 inhabitants on the Millevaches plateau, before raiding a farm in order to arrest nine young people (who ran the local grocery store and tried to revive the cultural life of the village). Four days later, these nine people were sent before an anti-terrorist judge and “accused of criminal conspiracy with terrorist intentions.” The newspapers reported that the Ministry of the Interior and the Secretary of State “had congratulated local and state police for their diligence.” Everything is in order, or so it would appear. But let’s try to examine the facts a little more closely and grasp the reasons and the results of this “diligence.”

First the reasons: the young people under investigation “were tracked by the police because they belonged to the ultra-left and the anarcho autonomous milieu.” As the entourage of the Ministry of the Interior specifies, “their discourse is very radical and they have links with foreign groups.” But there is more: certain of the suspects “participate regularly in political demonstrations,” and, for example, “in protests against the Fichier Edvige (Exploitation Documentaire et Valorisation de l’Information Générale) and against the intensification of laws restricting immigration.” So political activism (this is the only possible meaning of linguistic monstrosities such as “anarcho autonomous milieu”) or the active exercise of political freedoms, and employing a radical discourse are therefore sufficient reasons to call in the anti-terrorist division of the police (SDAT) and the central intelligence office of the Interior (DCRI). But anyone possessing a minimum of political conscience could not help sharing the concerns of these young people when faced with the degradations of democracy entailed by the Fichier Edvige, biometrical technologies and the hardening of immigration laws.

As for the results, one might expect that investigators found weapons, explosives and Molotov cocktails on the farm in Millevaches. Far from it. SDAT officers discovered “documents containing detailed information on railway transportation, including exact arrival and departure times of trains.” In plain French: an SNCF train schedule. But they also confiscated “climbing gear.” In simple French: a ladder, such as one might find in any country house.

Now let’s turn our attention to the suspects and, above all, to the presumed head of this terrorist gang, “a 33 year old leader from a well-off Parisian background, living off an allowance from his parents.” This is Julien Coupat, a young philosopher who (with some friends) formerly published Tiqqun, a journal whose political analyses – while no doubt debatable – count among the most intelligent of our time. I knew Julien Coupat during that period and, from an intellectual point of view, I continue to hold him in high esteem.

Let’s move on and examine the only concrete fact in this whole story. The suspects’ activities are supposedly connected with criminal acts against the SNCF that on November 8 caused delays of certain TGV trains on the Paris-Lille line. The devices in question, if we are to believe the declarations of the police and the SNCF agents themselves, can in no way cause harm to people: they can, in the worst case, hinder communications between trains causing delays. In Italy, trains are often late, but so far no one has dreamed of accusing the national railway of terrorism. It’s a case of minor offences, even if we don’t condone them. On November 13, a police report prudently affirmed that there are perhaps “perpetrators among those in custody, but it is not possible to attribute a criminal act to any one of them.”

The only possible conclusion to this shadowy affair is that those engaged in activism against the (in any case debatable) way social and economic problems are managed today are considered ipso facto as potential terrorists, when not even one act can justify this accusation. We must have the courage to say with clarity that today, numerous European countries (in particular France and Italy), have introduced laws and police measures that we would previously have judged barbaric and anti-democratic, and that these are no less extreme than those put into effect in Italy under fascism. One such measure authorizes the detention for ninety-six hours of a group of young – perhaps careless – people, to whom “it is not possible to attribute a criminal act.” Another, equally serious, is the adoption of laws that criminalize association, the formulations of which are left intentionally vague and that allow the classification of political acts as having terrorist “intentions” or “inclinations,” acts that until now were never in themselves considered terrorist.

Sounds familiar…

See also : Anarchist arrest sweep in France: “French Anti-Terrorism Police arrested around twenty people across France today (Nov. 11th)”, Tommy, nyc.indymedia.org, November 11, 2008. From the commentary: “Minister of Interior Michèle Alliot-Marie (or MAM) has been on a crusade for at least a year against what she’s dubbed the “l’ultra-gauche” Movement (or the “Anarcho-Autonomous Movement”) [and] has continued to trumpet the arrests as a blow against terrorism, and claims that there are “around 300” members of such groups in France. She has studiously refused to link them to what the French call “l’extrême-gauche” (Communists, Trotskyists, Revolutionary Syndicalists, etc), who are helping Rail unions organise work stoppages against a possible plan to privatise the railways. It seems a transparent attempt to criminalise elements of the left and create a bogeyman to split left groups.” | RNC 8 (October 1, 2008) | October15thSolidarity.info : “online project organised by a small group of people spread around the world. We hope to provide a platform to help support those affected by the [October 15, 2007, Aotearoa/New Zealand] raids and their wider communities. We also hope to strengthen the networks of existing and future support groups.”

PS.

French anarchists linked to New York bombing
Henry Samuel
The Daily Telegraph
November 14, 2008

French anti-terrorist police are holding 10 alleged members of a violent anarchist movement suspected of sabotaging power cables on high speed TGV train lines. But it now transpires that the alleged culprits were netted thanks to information from the FBI, which allegedly linked two of them to the home-made bomb attack on an army recruitment centre in New York’s Times Square in March. Julien Coupat, 34, the suspected head of the “anarcho-autonomist” group, and his 25-year old girlfriend, known only as Yldune L, were stopped allegedly trying to enter Canada from the US illegally in January. It was claimed they were carrying anarchist texts in English and photos of an army recruitment centre in New York. Although they had left the US before the bomb attack, they had allegedly been spotted shortly before at American anarchist meetings in New York. Tipped off by the FBI, France’s domestic intelligence services and anti-terrorist police had been watching them for months in a tiny village in the Corrèze region, central France. Police also carried out arrests in the northern city of Rouen, the Meuse region in the northeast and in the Paris area. Tens of thousands of French were hit by severe delays at the weekend when power was cut by metal bars hooked onto overhead electric cables on TGV lines around Paris. “These individuals are characterised by a total rejection of any democratic expression of political opinion and an extremely violent tone,” said Michele Alliot-Marie, the interior minister.

Bonus!

KYEO!

Posted in Anarchism, War on Terror | 7 Comments

It takes one to know one

Posted on November 25, 2008 by @ndy

Former Marxist bizarro turned Tory weirdo Mick Hume reckons the British National Party is being subject to over-policing. And he’s got a point. But it irks me to read “As one who exchanged blows rather than opinions with the National Front in the 1980s, it gives me no pleasure to say this. But we ought to uphold the right of the British National Party to express its views, however vile, after Merseyside Police arrested 13 of its members for distributing leaflets. I’m afraid that free speech means freedom for fools and scumbags, too.” Fools and scumbags being an eerily appropriate term for the rich kids surrounding the remnants of the Revolutionary Communist Party and its lider maximo Frank Furedi.

Wankers.

In 1970, nevertheless, Furedi and his future comrades were in the International Socialists (IS), the precursor of the Socialist Workers’ Party. They were ambitious and impatient, so they did what a certain kind of activist does: they formed a faction. Unlike all the other left-wing groups, then and now, they did not have a set of ideas. Instead, as a contemporary pamphlet called The British Left Explained described, they watched and waited: “When asked to contribute to a discussion, faction members would either remain silent or mutter . . . Any attempt to agree on specific proposals would have split the group.”

By 1973, the other members of IS had tired of this posing. Furedi and his allies were condemned as “the Right opposition” and expelled. They decided to call themselves the Revolutionary Communist Group (RCG). At first, the RCG sought success through theorising: in particular, about the precise rate by which profits would fall as capitalism inevitably – they assumed – exhausted itself. David Yaffe, an academic at Sussex University, unveiled a calculating machine, called the velocitometer, which he had invented to measure this decay. Claiming his device was accurate to five decimal points, he made a bid for the RCG leadership…

Posted in Anti-fascism, History | Leave a comment

Well I read it in the paper…

Posted on November 25, 2008 by @ndy

November 12, 2008
FOR IMMEDIATE [Ah… er… um…] RELEASE

SPECIAL TIMES EDITION BLANKETS U.S. CITIES, PROCLAIMS END TO WAR

* PDF: http://www.nytimes-se.com/pdf
* For video updates: http://www.nytimes-se.com/video
* Contact: mailto:[email protected]

Early this morning, commuters nationwide were delighted to find out that while they were sleeping, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had come to an end.

If, that is, they happened to read a “special edition” of today’s New York Times.

In an elaborate operation six months in the planning, 1.2 million papers were printed at six different presses and driven to prearranged pickup locations, where thousands of volunteers stood ready to pass them out on the street.

Articles in the paper announce dozens of new initiatives including the establishment of national health care, the abolition of corporate lobbying, a maximum wage for C.E.O.s, and, of course, the end of the war.

The paper, an exact replica of The New York Times, includes International, National, New York, and Business sections, as well as editorials, corrections, and a number of advertisements, including a recall notice for all cars that run on gasoline. There is also a timeline describing the gains brought about by eight months of progressive support and pressure, culminating in President Obama’s “Yes we REALLY can” speech. (The paper is post-dated July 4, 2009.)

“It’s all about how at this point, we need to push harder than ever,” said Bertha Suttner, one of the newspaper’s writers. “We’ve got to make sure Obama and all the other Democrats do what we elected them to do. After eight, or maybe twenty-eight years of hell, we need to start imagining heaven.”

Not all readers reacted favorably. “The thing I disagree with is how they did it,” said Stuart Carlyle, who received a paper in Grand Central Station while commuting to his Wall Street brokerage. “I’m all for freedom of speech, but they should have started their own paper.”

======

November 12, 2008
FOR IMMEDIATE [Ah… er… um] RELEASE

CONTACT:
[email protected]
917-202-5479
718-208-0684
415-533-3961

“SPECIAL” NEW YORK TIMES BLANKETS CITIES WITH MESSAGE OF HOPE AND CHANGE
Thousands of volunteers behind elaborate operation

* PDF: http://www.nytimes-se.com/pdf
* Ongoing video releases: http://www.nytimes-se.com/video

* The New York Times responds: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/pranksters-spoof-the-times/

Hundreds of independent writers, artists, and activists are claiming credit for an elaborate project, 6 months in the making, in which 1.2 million copies of a “special edition” of the New York Times were distributed in cities across the U.S. by thousands of volunteers.

The papers, dated July 4th of next year, were headlined with long-awaited news: “IRAQ WAR ENDS”. The edition, which bears the same look and feel as the real deal, includes stories describing what the future could hold: national health care, the abolition of corporate lobbying, a maximum wage for CEOs, etc. There was also a spoof site, at http://www.nytimes-se.com/.

“Is this true? I wish it were true!” said one reader. “It can be true, if we demand it.”

“We wanted to experience what it would look like, and feel like, to read headlines we really want to read. It’s about what’s possible, if we think big and act collectively,” said Steve Lambert, one of the project’s organizers and an editor of the paper.

“This election was a massive referendum on change. There’s a lot of hope in the air, but there’s a lot of uncertainty too. It’s up to all of us now to make these headlines come true,” said Beka Economopoulos, one of the project’s organizers.

“It doesn’t stop here. We gave Obama a mandate, but he’ll need mandate after mandate after mandate to do what we elected him to do. He’ll need a lot of support, and yes, a lot of pressure,” said Andy Bichlbaum, another project organizer and editor of the paper.

The people behind the project are involved in a diverse range of groups, including The Yes Men, the Anti-Advertising Agency, CODEPINK, United for Peace and Justice, Not An Alternative, May First/People Link, Improv Everywhere, Evil Twin, and Cultures of Resistance.

In response to the spoof, the New York Times said only, “We are looking into it.” Alex S. Jones, former Times reporter who is an authority on the history of the paper, says: “I would say if you’ve got one, hold on to it. It will probably be a collector’s item.

======

[Ken Knabb komments:]

Regardless of critiques that might be made of the ideas in some of the imagined stories, the perpetrators of this scandal have pulled off a remarkable coup, a coup that may help to spread some salutary memes regarding social change.

The social changes envisioned in some of the articles could be accomplished even within the current social setup (in which case people will be contrasting these possible changes with the probably very different results of the new Democratic administration). In other cases, notably those involving economic matters, it will be evident that the imagined changes could not be effected under current conditions, but would require a fundamental transformation of the whole socio-economic system (in which case people might start considering what sort of transformation would be sufficient, and how such a transformation could be brought about).

But in both types of cases, an important first step is clearing away the existing clouds of habit and resignation, so that people are able to get some sense that things could be different. This “Special Edition” coup may help to do just that. As limited as the particular “solutions” suggested may be, they are presented with a freshness and good humor that may provoke people to start questioning supposed inevitabilities and encourage them to take the initiative rather than to remain in panic-stricken, passive-defensive positions.

Many of you will have recognized that this Times “Special Edition” is an example of the situationist tactic of detournement. For information on this tactic, see these two articles:

“A User’s Guide to Detournement”
“The Situationists and the New Forms of Action Against Politics and Art”

Then compare and contrast the New York Times scandal with the situationists’ notorious “Strasbourg scandal”, which helped prepare the way for the May 1968 revolt in France:

“On the Poverty of Student Life”
“Our Goals and Methods in the Strasbourg Scandal”

============

Wai Quarterly
November 2008
Available online

Posted in !nataS, Media | Leave a comment

Moaron Nick Griffin, the BNP and the APP

Posted on November 24, 2008 by @ndy

More absolutely “fantastic” (Nick Griffin) publicity for the British National Party!

“Fun-loving”, “romantic”, a “good listener” and a former RUC member who loves Thai

On the trail of names on leaked BNP ‘member’ list
Sunday Life (Belfast Telegraph)
November 23, 2008

A pretty blonde mum from Bangor, a lonely heart ex-RUC officer and a former fire chief are among the Northern Ireland people whose names have appeared on a leaked list belonging to the far-right British National Party. Sunday Life has been tracking down some of the 39 local people named on the alleged membership list of around 13,000 people UK wide. The BNP leadership has confirmed the list that has been spread across the internet is largely accurate, but say some non-members names had been added to create mischief. One Northern Ireland man who openly says he’s proud to be a member of the BNP is ex-RUC officer Sandy Alexander from Portstewart. The lonely heart divorcee may support the BNP’s tough anti-immigration policies, but he certainly seems to enjoy the company of foreigners having developed online friendships with a string of Thai beauties on a social network site. Ex-cop Sandy describes himself as “fun-loving”, “romantic” and a “good listener” on his Friendster site where he has posted pictures of himself posing with a machine gun, his sports car and in his old RUC uniform…

Happy Valley Tally Ho Pip Pip

Writer Juanita Carberry’s Right to remain silent
Tim Walker: Edited by Laura Roberts
The Telegraph
November 23, 2008

For many decades, Juanita Carberry kept silent about the confession that Sir Henry “Jock” Delves Broughton allegedly made to her about his murder of Lord Erroll in Kenya’s “Happy Valley”. Now, Mandrake can disclose another secret that she managed to hide: her membership of the British National Party.

“I’ve got a right to belong to any party and I joined the party to sound them out,” says the 82-year-old writer, whose name appears on the BNP membership list leaked on to the internet last week. “I do have some sympathy with them, but have never attended any of their meetings.”

Carberry, whose stepmother, Lady Carberry, was a close friend of Diana Delves Broughton, the wife of Sir Jock and lover of Lord Erroll, adds: “I am certainly not racist. A week before the American election I was going around with an Obama badge. I dispute that he is black, though. He is coloured.”

University of Cambridge upper class twit and BNP Fuehrer bringing racial hatred to The Colonies (like we needed any help)

Racial hatred fears over British visa application
ABC
November 23, 2008

The Federal Opposition says it is seeking a briefing from the Government on a visa application from the leader of the British National Party, Nick Griffin. Mr Griffin is reported to have accepted an invitation to speak in Australia. His visa application is being opposed by Jewish and Islamic leaders who fear his radical views on Britain’s immigration policy will incite racial hatred. The Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull says the Coalition’s immigration spokeswoman Sharman Stone has sought more information from the Government. “Certainly Mr Griffin’s views are completely and utterly abhorrent, absolutely abhorrent and his conduct in the past has, and I have been informed, resulted in him being declined a visa in the past,” he said.

Anyone looking for evidence for the espousal of racial hared could do worse than examine the contents of Australian Protectionist Party (APP) member and webmaster Martin Fletcher’s ‘Downunder Newslinks’ site. (The APP is sponsoring Griffin’s visit.) Along with his provision of a copy of the Muslim Massacre videogame, Martin provides hours of Yanqui infotainment on his ‘news’ site, including documentary videos on Barack Hussein Obama, Holocaust denial, David Duke, Stormfront and dead Nutzi Dr William Pierce (author of The Turner Diaries). Indeed, on Downunder Newslinks, The Turner Diaries, along with The Myth of the Six Million, The International Jew, Did Six Million Really Die? and The Protocols of Zion are all available to help White People interpret the Australian news.

Most recently, the APP has been referred to in connection to the dimwitted patriotik yoof belonging to the ‘Southern Cross Soldiers’. According to Liam Houlihan (Sunday Herald Sun, November 23, 2008) “Videos on their websites glorify the Cronulla riots to a neo-Nazi soundtrack promising ‘race war'”. Videos produced and distributed by guess who? Martin Fletcher and Darrin Hodges of the APP. The soundtrack, incidentally, being provided by Skrewdriver (the World’s No.1 White Supremacist Reich ‘n’ Roll band). In September, neo-Nazis organised gigs in tribute to Ian Stuart Donaldson, the (very dead) lead shouter with Skrewdriver, and co-founder of neo-Nazi muzak network Blood & Honour in Australia (Melbourne) and the UK (Somerset).

Below: One of dozens of racist cartoons promoted by and available on Martin Fletcher’s website. The cartoons were originally produced by Tom Metzger’s US-based neo-Nazi organisation ‘White Aryan Resistance’. “In 1988, Tom and John Metzger sent their best White Aryan Resistance (WAR) recruiter to organize a Portland bonehead gang. After being trained in WAR’s methods, the gang killed an Ethiopian student. Tom Metzger praised the boneheads for doing their “civic duty.” SPLC attorneys filed a civil suit, Berhanu v. Metzger, asserting the Metzgers and WAR were as responsible for the killing as the Portland boneheads. In October 1990, a jury agreed and awarded $12.5 million in damages to the family of the victim, Mulugeta Seraw. In 1994, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review Metzger’s appeal, allowing SPLC attorneys to begin distributing funds from the sale of WAR’s assets. The principal beneficiary is Seraw’s son, Henok, who receives monthly payments from WAR’s bank account.”

See also : Evil paedos are secret BNP thugs!!!1!! | Uncle Adolf is Not. Happy. Nick. | (November 23, 2008) | BNP : Roly Poly Fish Heads | BNP vs. 4chan | The Good Ship BNP is a Leaky Vessel | (November 20, 2008) | Scrutinising the religious and political right (Alan Matheson) (November 8, 2008) | Oh, Darrin! (September 30, 2008) | (Protect Australia from) Bloody Muslims! (September 27, 2008) | Nick Griffin Down Under? (September 22, 2008) | Nick Griffin Bound for Botany Bay? (September 11, 2008) | “What’s a Stormfront?” Darrin Hodges in The Canberra Times (August 6, 2008)

Posted in !nataS, Anti-fascism | Leave a comment

Always Look On The Bright Side of Life : The AIDEX ’91 Story

Posted on November 24, 2008 by @ndy

Iain McIntyre — in association with one of Melbourne’s leading cultural institutions, the Homebrew Cultural Association — has just published a great new book: Always Look On The Bright Side of Life : The AIDEX ’91 Story. The book’s publication loosely coincides with, and was aimed at pre-empting, the arms expo that was scheduled to take place in Adelaide on Remembrance Day (November 11) this year.

Sadly for warmongers, the Asia Pacific Defence and Security Exhibition (APDSE) was cancelled. The reason for the cancellation, according to the official line taken by state authorities, was in order to avert wide-scale disorder, which ‘feral anarchists’ — who were expected to descend on Adelaide for the event — would inevitably bring in their wake. In reality, however, it’s likely that the relevant agencies, including Special Branch — one of whose members, ‘Setha Sann’, infiltrated organising meetings of a protest group in Melbourne — concluded that the protests would be large, well-organised and effective enough to require massive police resources in order to smash.

Hence the event became cost-prohibitive.

If you’re in Sydney this weekend, the book, along with another title on resistance to evictions in the Great Depression, is being launched @ Jura: Saturday, November 29, 6–8pm. Iain will be speaking and strumming AC/DC tunes on his guitar, entry is by donation, and the launch will feature film screenings on AIDEX and eviction resistance.

Otherwise, the book is available at all the usual outlets: in Melbourne, @ Barricade, Friends of the Earth and the New International (among others).

Slackbastard rating : *****

AIDEX ’91

In November 1991 over 1000 protesters blockaded the National Exhibition Centre in Canberra with the goal of shutting down the Australian International Defence Exhibition. Over 12 days AIDEX ’91 saw the most police violence and the highest number of arrests in the Australian Capital Territory since the Vietnam era. Although the exhibition was eventually able to go ahead the blockades caused enough disruption to ensure that no one would dare hold another large scale arms fair in Australia again. The success of the protest came at a cost however with hundreds of demonstrators injured and their actions demonised in the mainstream media.

Alongside a detailed account of the blockade itself Always Look On The Bright Side of Life: The AIDEX ’91 Story traces the background of the protest amidst the growth of the Australian arms industry. Using the words of the protesters themselves the book also explores the lessons of AIDEX ’91, the effect of the protests on a generation of Australian activists and the way in which similar strategies were used to stop the 2008 Asia Pacific Defence and Security Exhibition from occurring.

Posted in State / Politics, Student movement, War on Terror | 3 Comments

Rally to defend student housing : Friday, November 28

Posted on November 24, 2008 by @ndy

Call out for support of the Student Housing Action Cooperative (SHAC)

SHAC is a collective of students and supporters who have been occupying four vacant buildings owned by the University of Melbourne for nearly four months [from August 20] in a campaign to secure affordable student housing, starting with turning the occupied buildings into a student run housing cooperative.

There’s a critical shortage of housing in inner city Melbourne with a vacancy rate of less than 1% and rents still going up at astronomical rates. Low income students are spending more than 40% of their incomes on rent. International students are particularly affected by the lack of affordable housing mostly being offered accommodation in overpriced apartments without legal rights due to exemptions from the Residential Tenancies Act.

Now SHAC is facing eviction. Melbourne Uni have asked us to ‘voluntarily’ leave on the 28th (reminiscent of their staff voluntary redundancy offers, perhaps?). We’re not planning on going anywhere (unless they hand us the keys to another property). Community support has always been the backbone of our campaign and we won’t be able to win without it. So come along and show your support for SHAC and the affordable student housing cause.

Rally @ SHAC
272-278 Faraday Street, Carlton
Friday, November 28
Midday

Posted in Student movement | Leave a comment

Evil paedos are secret BNP thugs!!!1!!

Posted on November 23, 2008 by @ndy

Hiding in the bushes?

Who would be part of the BNP? “The British National Party’s leaked membership list was supposedly full of middle-class professionals. So where were they during its annual festival, asks Anna van Praagh” (Anna van Praagh and Patrick Sawer, The Daily Telegraph, November 22, 2008): “In the same week that the list was leaked online – reportedly by an aggrieved party activist – two BNP members from Blackburn, both of whose names appear in the document, were jailed for a total of five years and three months for sexual activity with under-age girls. Ian Hindle, 32, and Andrew Wells, 49, plied two 14-year-olds with alcohol before taking advantage of them, Preston Crown Court heard.”

Pictures of Billy

Pictures of BNP members on web, Mark Stead, The Press, November 22, 2008: “PICTURES of British National Party members in York whose names and addresses were revealed on a leaked list of its supporters have been posted on the internet. The furious far-right organisation has branded the move “irresponsible and criminal” as police continue to investigate how the information – which also included phone numbers, e-mail addresses and, in some cases, occupations – was made public…”

Fascist police!

BNP members held over leafleting, BBC, November 22, 2008: “Twelve British National Party (BNP) members have been arrested on suspicion of distributing racist material in Liverpool city centre…”

Evil paedos are secret BNP thugs!!!1!!

SICK! Wells took snaps of depravity
SHAMED! Hindle had sex with child
LEADER! Griffin

“Their sentences came as the Metropolitan Police in London suspended four employees who were on the BNP list leaked on the internet. They are a PC, a special constable, a police community support officer and a civilian staff member…”

~ Ryan Sabey! News of the World, November 23, 2008

Best of the Politics Blogs

What’s been happening in the political blogosphere

Frothing extremists
Paul Evans
New Statesman
November 21, 2008

The leaked BNP membership list has preoccupied the blogosphere this week. Paul Evans gives us his regular round-up

Leaky

What has 410 misses, 2 captains and a professor? Sound like a bad joke? Well no, actually, it’s the BNP membership list.

Not for the first time, a story that started on the blogs soon found its way on the front pages, as the far-right party’s entire membership was published online. It was ever-vigilant Lancaster UAF that alerted the blogosphere, dryly noting:

“Curiously, there are quite a number of BNP members abroad, presumably ex-pats or those working abroad temporarily…Isn’t the BNP opposed to foreign workers? I’m sure it was last time I looked.”

The Register and Harry’s Place were soon all over the story like a rash. On Liberal Conspiracy Unity allowed himself a moment’s schadenfreude, observing that:

“There are very few things in life that contain quite as much entertainment value as a good old falling out amongst the far-right but this time out they’ve really surpassed themselves”.

And there is nothing that geeks love more than a huge pile of data from which to fashion novel visualisations – and so the BNP membership list proved a real treat. An interesting “heat map” indicating areas of support for the far right party was generated by Ben Charlton of spod.cx.

Frothing rage was the order of the day on nationalist blogs and message boards, where activists got itchy over the prospect of losing their jobs.

They were right to be concerned, because within a day TalkSport DJ Rod Lucas had been sacked. Lucas offers his explanation here. David Semple was delighted by the prospect of weeding out far right activists.

“Now it’s time to take this list of BNP members and their professions and use it to expunge BNP members from public services, where they are meant to be ready to serve all colours equally,” he argued.

With Nick Griffin reduced to invoking the same Human Rights Act that he professes to abhor, to protect member privacy, these are indeed curious times.

Posted in !nataS, Anti-fascism | Leave a comment

OH NOES! Southern Cross Soldiers go to war

Posted on November 23, 2008 by @ndy

Crazy kids and their intarwebs!

The Southern Cross Soldiers (SCS) finally make it into the papers.

(See below.)

They’re just like real soldiers (only not quite as well paid).

“Friends, today was an historic day, the day Australians stood up against state-imposed multiculturalism,” Darrin Hodges wrote on the night of the Cronulla riots. Accompanying his posting is a series of photographs he took at Cronulla that day, including one of a T-shirt emblazoned with the words “wog free zone” and another of a sign offering free sausages to the crowd, with “no tabouli”. Darrin also speaks of footage he filmed on the day which [FightDemBack!] believes was used in a video released over the weekend that glorifies a mob of rioters bashing various non-whites at Cronulla.

In his article (Victorian police vow crackdown to stop ‘another Cronulla’) Liam makes reference to a Cronulla vid (Videos on [SCS] websites glorify the Cronulla riots to a neo-Nazi soundtrack promising “race war”), which is presumably a reference to the vid Australian Protectionist Party (APP) members Darrin Hodges and Martin Fletcher helped to produce and distribute on Stormfront in the riot’s immediate aftermath. Hodges & Co. maintain that the ‘riot’ was in fact a ‘White Civil Uprising’, an opening shot fired in a civil war in which their side seeks to return Australia to its natural status as a 100% White outpost in Asia. While Hodges & Co. are based in Sydney, at the same time, in Melbourne, another APP member, Luke Connors, in his then capacity as spokesperson for the now-defunct ‘Patriotik Yoof League’:

…predicted further outbreaks.

“‘When you have areas which are majority Muslim, because they don’t tend to adapt that well, or majority African or Middle Eastern extraction, and right next door you have an area which is 90 per cent Anglo-Saxon, or Anglo-Celtic, there is going to be friction,” he said.

“West Heidelberg is a big one because you have a very large black working-class community next to a white middle-working-class community. That would be my best guess actually if it was going to start up in Melbourne.

“Also, out past Springvale, along the train line, there is that same sort of segregation going on, in working-class areas where they are competing for the same jobs and there is a high unemployment rate.”

~ Ewin Hannan and Richard Baker, Nationalists boast of their role on the beach, The Age, December 13, 2005

In the meantime, the silly boys manly Aryan worriers of the APP are currently trying to arrange for BNP Fuhrer Nick Griffin to pop over for a cup of tea and a chat about strategies for making Australia a wog-free zone averting the demographic genocide that is threatening his Fatherland and the Mother Country (“caused by the large-scale immigration of people from the Third World”). As things stand, however, and especially given what appears to be widespread opposition on the part of VIPs, it appears that Gub’mint authorities are unlikely to approve Nick’s visa application.


    Above: one of numerous racist images available on APP member Martin Fletcher’s webshite, ‘Downunder News Links’. The imgs were originally produced by the US-based neo-Nazi organisation ‘White Aryan Resistance’.

Earlier this year, spokesperson for the NSW APP, Darrin Hodges, described Third World immigrants as sub-human: “Australia was a beautiful place once, before it was flooded with third-world sewerage from African [sic] and Asia.” Adds, a Major-General in the Southern Cross Soldier Army, echoes this sentiment: “All these people that are coming over to our country that aren’t Aussies are trying to take it over,” Adds said.

Anyway, here’s an article about angry white teens.

Victorian police vow crackdown to stop ‘another Cronulla’
Sunday Herald Sun
Liam Houlihan
November 23, 2008

POLICE will use roadblocks, mounted coast patrols and fines for swearing to protect Melbourne beaches from a Cronulla-style anti-immigrant gang.

The crackdown follows boasts by the 200-strong Melbourne chapter of the Southern Cross Soldiers, who admit having criminals and neo-Nazis in their ranks, that they will converge on bayside beaches this summer.

Police in bayside suburbs will implement Operation Beachsafe, which shares the name given to NSW police’s post-Cronulla riots crackdown.

Inspector Neil Patterson, of Moorabbin police, said: “There’s one group in particular that has indicated they intend to hold parties on beach locations.

“The message is if you’re coming to the beach areas . . . to drink or cause problems, we’re going to be there ready to target you.”

Melbourne SCS co-leader Adds said members included criminals and self-described neo-Nazi skinheads, and some had relatives in the Hell’s Angels.

“All these people that are coming over to our country that aren’t Aussies are trying to take it over,” Adds said.

“We’re just trying to put the word out that we don’t like it.”

The radical police plan to protect beaches from December to March includes:

ROADBLOCKS and car checks to stop troublemakers heading to the beach.

A ZERO-TOLERANCE blitz, including on-the-spot $130 fines for swearing on the beach, to stop trouble before it starts.

MOUNTED horse patrols in troublespots and undercover beach officers.

PHONING parents of drunk and violent youths to pick up their children from police stations.

POSSIBLE referral to the Department of Human Services if parents of young offenders cannot be contacted.

Masked soldiers in the posse call themselves “SCS defenders” and “SCS enforcers” and pose in front of patriotic paraphernalia wearing matching hoodies and wielding weapons including a machete, jemmy and spanner.

Videos on their websites glorify the Cronulla riots to a neo-Nazi soundtrack promising “race war”.

Insp Patterson said the police blitz aimed to keep beaches safe for families.

“If we can stop anti-social behaviour in its starting forms, then it won’t increase into forms of violence,” he said.

Posted in Anti-fascism, Media, Student movement | 226 Comments

Uncle Adolf is Not. Happy. Nick.

Posted on November 23, 2008 by @ndy

Nick Griffin on Adolf Hitler: “Yes, Adolf went a bit too far. His legacy is the biggest problem that the British nationalist movement has to deal with. It just creates a bad image.”

On Mein Kampf: “At 13, I read Mein Kampf, making notes in the margins… I remember thinking, are the Jews really that bad? The chapter I most enjoyed was the one on propaganda and organisation there are some really useful ideas there.”

Adolf Hitler on Nick Griffin:

The BNP next door
Jon Henley
The Guardian
November 22, 2008

Ex-squaddies, accountants, engineers – the leaked BNP membership list is a snapshot of far-right Britain, and a chance to find out whether its supporters live on your street…

It’s a fascinating document. Row after row of names, addresses, telephone numbers, emails. Column upon column of personal, professional and biographical detail – career, education, family, hobbies. Here are 12,801 of our fellow citizens, their lives laid bare in this remarkable respect: we now know that they are, were once, or have at some time expressed an interest in becoming members of the organisation that calls itself “the foremost patriotic political party in Great Britain”.

When I say “we”, of course, I mean anyone with an internet connection and some time to spare. Nearly 13,000 individual records – 11,211 of them in England and Wales, the remainder in Scotland or abroad, from Alicante to California – is a lot of information. But it comes in a spreadsheet, which means it’s searchable and (sort of) analysable.

And what emerges from a few hours spent with the membership list of the British National Party that was posted on the net this week is a picture as alarming as it is, strangely, reassuring. It is a picture of a certain kind of England. At times, it’s depressing. At others, it’s frankly hilarious.

“Member describes himself as witch: potential embarrassment if active,” reads a worried note appended to the record of one Wiltshire supporter. “Will not be renewing,” laments another: “Objects to being told he shouldn’t wear a bomber jacket.” I’m also fond of: “Hobbies: letter-writing to local/national papers,” “Retired shoe-shop manager: model figure collector (mostly medieval)”, and “Retired local government officer. Static caravan on east coast”.

Your first instinct, naturally, is to check if you know anyone. I didn’t, as far as I could see: no one in the small Middlesex village where I grew up (though four in Pinner, where I was born), and only three in the district of west London where I now live. Colleagues have pored in amazement over the records for their home towns. “I would never have thought it,” said one friend, from Ripon in North Yorkshire. “It’s a prosperous middle-class market town, and there are are nine BNP voters there. Look! Two there; I know that street.” A university friend said she had discovered to her not-altogether-immense surprise that her parents’ next-door neighbours in Windsor were members. “Crusty,” she said. “And very cheap sherry at Christmas.”

The geographical stats are interesting, up to a point. Lancashire is our proud nation’s farthest-right county by a bootlace, with 861 names on the list. West Yorkshire comes a close second, with 858. Yorkshire as a whole has more than 1,600 BNP supporters, including 263 in Leeds, 164 in Kirklees, 190 in Bradford and more than 100 each in Barnsley, Sheffield and Wakefield. Essex is up there with 670-odd members, including 73 in Barking and Dagenham, and the West Midlands has more than 580, including 187 in Birmingham.

But there are some surprises. Six members in Maidenhead? Fifteen in Bognor Regis? Thirty-eight in Bournemouth, 13 in that haven of lefty London-fleers, Brighton? There are six in High Wycombe, 22 in Cambridge, five in Oxford, three in Chelsea, eight in Cheltenham, 11 in Chichester, two in Henley-on-Thames, seven in Hemel Hempstead and, weirdly, 192 in Surrey.

Is this scary? Well, it looks as if it’s a myth that the BNP fares best in areas of high immigration: according to one report that cross-matched the list with data from the Office for National Statistics, only 5% of BNP members live in areas classified as having high Asian populations, and 2% in areas with big Afro-Caribbean communities. Some 18% of the party’s support comes from traditionally working-class white areas. Twenty-two percent of BNP members may live in deprived parts of England and Wales, but 16% live in the wealthiest.

Professor Roger Eatwell of the University of Bath, who has written extensively on the BNP, sounds a cautionary note: from his first look at the list, he says, “many BNP activists don’t actually appear to be members”. And in any case, “members and activists are not the same as voters”. That’s obviously true, and the list is clearly an incomplete picture of BNP support. But in its fabulous welter of detail, you can almost see some of those who feature on it.

In Surrey, for instance, is a “retired accountant. Fellow of Inst of Chartered Accountants/Management Accountants. MA (Oxon). Hobbies: military history, ethnology/anthropology, carpentry/cabinet-making. Ex-serviceman & TA Capt. Former district councillor. Letter writer”. Somewhere in Middlesex is a “chartered mechanical engineer. MD of high-pressure water pump firm. Hobbies: flying, fullsize & model aircraft. Restoration of ‘O’ & ‘I’ gauge trains. Caravanning, walking”. Can’t you just picture them? Or how about, in Sussex, a “retired antique dealer. Owner: tourist attraction abroad. Former racing driver. Hobbies: competition shooting, sword collector. Author.” Or in Gloucestershire: “Business owner (antiquities). Public speaker. Has two suits of 14th- & 15th-century armour and can joust for rallies.”

There are some common strands. One is the retired (or semi-retired, or nearly-retired) middle-to-upper-middle businessman who would probably never recognise himself (or his wife, who is often a member too) as racist, but who obviously believes, as they say, that the country’s going to the dogs. Very often, their hobbies include “collecting WW2 memorabilia (British)” or “restoring classic vehicles (owns WW2 jeep)”.

Then there’s the ex-servicemen, of whom there are more than 100, former policemen, and Territorial Army. These may be self-employed, perhaps in building, or security. How about: “HM Forces (3 tours NI). Rhodesian Security Forces. Freelance security: Africa/South America/Europe. Hobbies: military history”?

Several proclaim Christian faith: “Retired labourer. Committed evangelical Christian, attends Bible studies/prayer meetings”. Elsewhere is “retired chiropodist. Devout Christian lay preacher (non-conformist churches: Baptist, United Reformed, Presbyterian etc). Scottish country dancing”, and “HND Chemistry. Hobbies: gym training, martial arts. Member of the Assemblies of God Pentecostal Church”.

There are only three listed taxi drivers, but there are plenty of builders and plasterers, IT workers – many eager to help: in Buckinghamshire is a “Classics BA (Hons). IT & PC skills (may be able to donate 2nd-hand PCs)” – and 38 HGV licence-holders. In Scotland, there’s a driving instructor – “(discount for BNP members)”. There is, generally, an obsession with further educational qualifications. Some, you feel, may have lost their way somewhere: “Mental health professional, specialism in mental health law, also retired university lecturer (plant sciences). BSc. Phd”. Others are myth-seekers: “Window cleaner. Former pig farmer. Pagan prison chaplain. Hobbies: growing mistletoe, rune-making (wood)”; “Active Odinist/member of pagan organisations.” A student is “willing to give talks on medieval/dark age subjects” and “interested in … setting up a British pagan group”.

And there are, of course, the serious headbangers: BNP leader Nick Griffin may boast that this list proves his members are not “skinhead oiks”, but there are still martial arts fanatics, people suspended for “inappropriate tattoos” and at least seven email addresses incorporating the number 88, which is neo-Nazi code for HH, or Heil Hitler. Other email addresses are lordhawhaw, saxondelight, darkenedangel and napalmdeath. Someone gives his pastime as “World War II reenactment”.

Eatwell recognises these almost comforting stereotypes as “pretty much spot-on. Among BNP activists, there is certainly an older group. There are also a lot of ex-military people, and former National Front types of a more thuggish, even Nazi persuasion. A recent poll showed fully a third of BNP support to be middle-class, although the really big concentration is C2 – solid, respectable working-class.”

But there’s a worrying new element that doesn’t show up on the list at all, Eatwell warns. “Young people are coming in who had no political commitment before. They don’t see themselves as racist, and they’re not thuggish. They’re there for what they see as moral reasons: maybe because their grandad was let down by the NHS. And remember, by far the biggest issue among BNP voters, besides immigration, is simply pessimism. Pessimism’s rocketing right now. They’re the ones to watch.”

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