Israel, Jews, the state, anarchism…

Posted on May 22, 2008 by @ndy

Some of my best friends [are] anti-Semitic
Barry Cohen
The Australian
May 21, 2008

MY favourite definition of an anti-Semite is “a person who hates Jews more than is absolutely necessary”. Susan Chandler, the former Victorian Liberal Party campaign manager who described a colleague as a “greedy f..king Jew”, appears to qualify…

After World War II, and the attempt by the Nazis to destroy European Jewry, there was sympathy and support for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in the mandated territories of Palestine. When the UN voted in November 1947 to create an Arab and a Jewish state, the neighbouring Arab countries attacked the Jewish state.

[See: United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181, November 29, 1947; The 1948 Arab-Israeli War, also known by Israelis as the War of Liberation, and by Palestinians as al Nakba (Arabic: النكبة, “the Catastrophe”) was the first in a series of wars fought between the newly declared State of Israel and its Arab neighbors in the long-running Arab-Israeli conflict. The War, commencing immediately on the termination of the Mandate on 15 May 1948, was fought mostly on the territory of the British Mandate of Palestine, and for a short time also on the Sinai Peninsula, marking an exodus of hundreds of thousands of Arabs from their residency. The 1948 war was concluded with the 1949 Armistice Agreements.]

That Israel survived was first met with disbelief, then awe and finally anger. Those, particularly on the Left, who had wept openly for the murdered millions, started to resent Jews no longer being victims…

As a young boy growing up in the aftermath of World War II, I hoped that anti-Semitism would gradually fade away. Regrettably, that has not been the case. It is alive and well and, it would appear, still common among what was once called polite society.

On Monday, Media Watch ran a story (Saying Goodbye is Hard to Do) on the spiking of an article by Ed O’Loughlin, his final contribution for Fairfax, published by The Age but not The Sydney Morning Herald.

Wars between worlds
Ed O’Loughlin
The Age
May 10, 2008

THE car was still burning when we came upon the scene. A bullet-proof plate from a flak jacket lay near the wreckage, its plastic layers peeled open like the pages of a book. My “fixer” recognised the silver Pajero at once, and he hurried over to a colleague to find out what had happened. When he came back he looked almost puzzled. “It’s Fadel,” he said. “He’s dead!” And he started to weep for his friend.

In fact four were already dead, men and boys, and two more were to die of their wounds a few days later. But 23-year-old Reuters cameraman Fadel Shana was the one who made headlines.

Hundreds of innocent people die in Gaza every year – far more than we bother writing about in the West. But footage from Shana’s camera revealed that he had actually filmed an Israeli tank firing the shell that killed him, as he stood in his clearly marked press flak jacket, by his clearly marked press vehicle.

A second tank shell, fired several minutes after the first, sprayed would-be rescuers with a second cloud of three-centimetre “flechette” steel darts, killing 19-year-old Khalil Dogmoush and injuring several others, including freelance photographer Ashraf Abu Amra.

We didn’t know all of this at the time, as we stood by the wreckage of Shana’s vehicle. All we knew was that a press vehicle had been targeted minutes earlier, that we were standing beside that vehicle, fully exposed to a hillside where Israeli tanks were operating, and that an Israeli drone was whining overhead.

And we knew from long experience that, whatever had happened, the Israeli Defence Force would deny responsibility. This it duly did, claiming that its troops had fired only at armed militants who had attacked them at close range.

I have covered quite a few stories like this over the past 51/2 years, in Gaza and elsewhere. Since the present uprising began in 2000, close to 5000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli action, according to figures from the Israeli rights group B’tselem. Slightly more than 1000 Israelis were killed by Palestinians. In the first three months of this year, 11 Palestinians died for every Israeli civilian.

Eman al-Hams was a 13-year-old schoolgirl who was machine-gunned to death at point blank range by an Israeli officer, who admitted the act on army radio. The officer was subsequently acquitted, promoted and decorated.

Asma al-Mughair, 16, and her brother Ahmed, 13, were both shot in the head on the roof of their home in Rafah, which was in the sights of an Israeli sniper’s nest, only 100 metres away. Seven members of the Ghaliya family were blown to bits while picnicking on a Gaza beach which Israeli artillery was shelling.

But if you Google any of the above names you will quickly learn – from armchair bloggers and Israeli Government spokespeople – that all of these stories are false, elaborate hoaxes concocted by anti-Semitic journalists to smear the state of Israel. Little wonder, then, that Israeli talkback was generally of the opinion that Fadel Shana got what he deserved…

Why was the story not published in the SMH? Ed O’Loughlin told Media Watch that “I was told informally that there were concerns about how the pro-Israel lobby would react to it”; the editor, Alan Oakley, is playing mum.

In addition to concerns over Ed O’Loughlin’s reportage — Michael Danby has denounced his “systematic bias against Israel, which is indeed both intellectually lazy and politically intemperate”, while Tzvi Fleischer maintains that Ed “is obviously a talented journalist who brilliantly distorts facts and substitutes opinions for news” — concern has also recently been expressed by the “pro-Israel lobby” over an address by Antony Lowenstein to a group of students at UNSW (“Uni students face heat over Loewenstein debate”, AJN, May 16, 2008). According to Anthony:

Zionists in Australia believe that continuing to sell the same discredited myths to a young generation will ensure a life-long love for Israel. But a growing number of vocal Jews are publicly questioning Israel’s brutality and rejectionism. The Palestinians deserve an equal hearing in the mainstream press (and the recent tour of Palestinian-American Ali Abunimah proved that this is starting to happen, away from the censorious Jewish community.)

The ongoing success of my work – aimed, incidentally, at a non-Jewish readership, as well as Jews, an audience that the Zionist lobby has no clue how to reach, preferring to pressure editors to block opposing views – indicates that the space here and overseas for critical thoughts is expanding. The tone of this laughable article, that somehow the students and the Zionist lobby must prove their allegiance to the “official” line on Israel/Palestine, is really a sign of weakness.

Since when was open debate frowned upon? The two-state solution is dead. New ideas are required. A serious and informed Jewish establishment would welcome it. Instead, we’re treated to the sorry sight of leaders and newspapers trying to seal the cracks.

I never realised I was so dangerous.

See also : A celebration that ignores the plight of Palestine, The Age, Michael Shaik and Antony Loewenstein, May 8, 2008 | Independent Australian Jewish Voices | Australians For Palestine | Anarchists Against the Wall | Messianic Troublemakers: The Past and Present Jewish Anarchism, Jesse Cohn, Zeek, April 2005 | Funk soul brother Uri Gordon’s blog Anarchy Alive! and his essay Israeli anarchism: Statist dilemmas and the dynamics of joint struggle, Anarchist Studies, 15.1, 2007 (PDF):

I would have liked to end this article on an optimistic note, but as it goes to print the situation in Israel/Palestine is worse than it has ever been. The Israeli government continues to make life hell for the residents of Gaza and the West Bank, and has adopted a policy of knee-jerk rejection towards any and every initiative for renewed negotiations. Among the Israeli public, wide support for the recent war in Lebanon and the lack of outcry at the ministerial appointment of Avigdor Lieberman – a barefaced racist advocating ethnic cleansing and centralisation of power – represent a mood of dazed passivity, fed by economic hardship and the constant revival of dark collective traumas. In such an environment, the efforts of anarchists and the wider left easily seem like a drop in the sea. Even when hundreds mobilise to protest the continued pounding of Gaza or the accelerated building of the segregation barrier, their voices largely fall on deaf ears as the seemingly-unstoppable engines of death churn on. As the nightmare unfolds, all that anarchists and their allies can do is hold on to their visions and continue the thankless work of building the infrastructures of joint struggle, never losing their hope for a breakthrough that will finally bring some solace to this orphaned land.

Sublime:

Ridiculous:

Posted in Anarchism, State / Politics | 17 Comments

Hail the Kilted Yaksmen

Posted on May 22, 2008 by @ndy

From the Department of Your-Taxes-At-Play:

Punk band The Suicide Pilots catches eye of anti-terror cops
The Canadian Press

OTTAWA — All it takes to get noticed by Canada’s top anti-terrorism team is a shocking band name and a provocative logo.

At least, that’s the contention of The Suicide Pilots, a self-described “no-name punk band” based in Ottawa that promotes itself with a cartoon image of an anthropomorphic plane swooping toward the Parliament Buildings.

Access to Information documents released by the band’s lawyer Tuesday show that the RCMP’s Integrated National Security Enforcement Team took a look at the group last year.

It started just after the band popped to brief national notoriety courtesy of its outspoken and politically active drummer, Jeffrey Monaghan.

“If you want an example of bloated police powers, this is it,” lawyer Yavar Hameed said in a news release.

Monaghan was alleged last spring to have leaked the environmental plan of the Conservative government, and was marched in handcuffs by the RCMP out of his contract job at Environment Canada.

He was never charged with anything, but his musical tastes – including a song titled “Harper Youth” – quickly attracted state scrutiny.

“Subject is a self-described anarchist and drummer in a punk band that compares (Prime Minister Stephen) Harper to Hitler,” says an RCMP occurrence report dated two days after Monaghan’s May 9, 2007 arrest.

The band’s myspace page depicts a “9/11 type drawing showing an airplane crashing into the Parliament; there is also anti-Harper songs from the band,” says an assistance request from the national security team to the Tech Crime unit.

The documents show that the force’s integrated cyber analysis team, the commercial crime unit and national security team were all involved.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service was apprised. “Advise CSIS of our findings,” states a timeline for May 29.

The last entry is dated Sept. 8 and is marked “NFAR, CH” – RCMP jargon for No Further Action Required, Cancelled Here.

The band, in a statement, said the investigation is indicative of “Harper’s ‘War on Terror’ gone mad.”

The RCMP declined to comment.

Posted in !nataS, Music, War on Terror | 5 Comments

Michael Warby: Fascism and the Left

Posted on May 21, 2008 by @ndy

Michael Warby’s essay on ‘Fascism and the Left’ (Quadrant, May 2008, Volume LII, Number 5) addresses a long-standing pre-occupation of political ‘conservatives’: how to respond to the accusation ‘Fascist!’. This has found one of its most recent expressions in the form of a book by Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning (Doubleday, 2008).

At first glance, Liberal Fascism sounds like an extended remix of a Tory undergraduate response to the biting remarks of a Leninist cadre: “I know you are, but what am I?”. In a scathing review for The Nation (Conservative Cannibalism, February 21, 2008), Eric Alterman writes that “It’s a rare book, indeed, that can be fairly judged by its cover, but I really do think that a smiley face with a Hitler mustache tells you all you will ever need to know about Liberal Fascism“.

Naturally, the book became a No.1 bestseller.

To his er, credit, Warby’s review tries very hard to take Goldberg’s thesis seriously. “But, a small voice asks, is it true? Is fascism really a “left-wing” movement? Are modern US liberals “nice” fascists, as Goldberg alleges? No, no and no.”

And ah, no.

Actually, the proposition that ‘Fascism’ is a ‘leftist’ ideology is hardly novel. Thus while Alterman notes that “I see from my own ten seconds of Googling that cult leader Lyndon LaRouche beat Goldberg to this argument by five years with an essay titled “How Liberalism Created Fascism,” published by his presidential committee”, 70 years ago the council communist Otto Rühle argued that ‘The Struggle Against Fascism Begins with the Struggle Against Bolshevism’:

Russia must be placed first among the new totalitarian states. It was the first to adopt the new state principle. It went furthest in its application. It was the first to establish a constitutional dictatorship, together with the political and administrative terror system which goes with it. Adopting all the features of the total state, it thus became the model for those other countries which were forced to do away with the democratic state system and to change to dictatorial rule. Russia was the example for fascism.

It’s also worth keeping in mind Bakunin’s words of warning, written in 1866 (and expanded upon in subsequent writings on the intellectual class), regarding the potential impact of the Marxian conception of revolution. Noam Chomsky, in an interview with Robert Borofsky (Intellectuals and the Responsibilities of Public Life, Noam Chomsky interviewed by Robert Borofsky, Public Anthropology, May 27, 2001):

RB: Ivan Illich has talked about “disabling professions” – or really disabling professionals – who systematically disempower others through their claims to expertise. To what degree do you perceive elite experts, and more broadly academics, being a “new class” of apparatchiks who function to reinforce rather than challenge the status quo in America?

NC: That intellectuals, including academics, would become a “new class” of technocrats, claiming the name of science while cooperating with the powerful, was predicted by Bakunin in the early days of the formation of the modern intelligentsia in the 19th century. His expectations were generally confirmed, including his prediction that some would seek to gain state power on the backs of popular revolution, then constructing a “Red bureaucracy” that would be one of the worst tyrannies in history, while others would recognize that power lies elsewhere and would serve as its apologists, becoming mystifiers, “disablers,” and managers while demanding the right to function in “technocratic isolation,” in World Bank lingo.

I would, however, question the implication that there is some novelty in this beyond modalities, which naturally change as institutions change and develop. Isaiah Berlin described the intellectuals of Bakunin’s “Red bureaucracy” as a “secular priesthood,” not unlike the religious priesthood that performed similar functions in earlier times – functions described acidly by Pascal in his bitter rendition of the practices of the Jesuit intellectuals he despised, including their demonstration of “the utility of interpretation,” a device of manufacturing consent based on reinterpretation of sacred texts to serve wealth, power, and privilege. Berlin’s observation is accurate enough, and applies at home as well, and even more harshly for the reasons already mentioned: the apparatchiks and commissars could at least plead fear in extenuation.

In any case, Warby’s principal aim, aside from responding to Goldberg’s argument and to more closely examine the relationship between ‘right’ and ‘left’, is to safeguard the virtue of what he calls ‘Anglo-American conservatism’, and to ensure that the “liberal-conservative alliance” remains a sticky relationship. This makes a great deal of sense considering the role of Quadrant as a forum for the articulation of this ideology in the Australian context (although the alliance risks being permanently ruptured within the parliamentary wing by the eradication of its minority ‘liberal’ faction).

Part of the glue of the liberal-conservative alliance is an overlapping belief that there are real limits to what one can expect politics to do and that it is dangerous to go beyond those limits—on the grounds that the state is potentially dangerous; that political mechanisms are of limited effectiveness; that salvation is entirely a religious matter, not a political one. To accuse people whose politics is grounded in a sense of the limitations of politics as being “fascist” is to show either that you do not understand fascism, or that you do not understand liberal-conservatives, or that you do not care whether there is any truth to your rhetoric.

On this basis, one can view the Thatcher (1979–1990) and Reagan (1981–1989) governments as ‘conservative’, not ‘fascist’, even if they embraced ‘change’ in the name of ‘freedom’: “Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were proponents of change, but proponents who wished to decrease, rather than increase, reliance on political mechanisms in support of a strong commitment to freedom. Merely advocating change does not place you on the Left.”

This is correct, insofar as the changes being proposed and carried out do not concern institutions considered as being fundamental to contemporary capitalist society (‘Western Civilization’). The references to ‘political mechanisms’ and ‘freedom’ can of course be read, in practice, as constituting the dismantling of the welfare state and the “political mechanisms” via which the general population are theoretically able to hold corporate power, and capital generally, to some form of public account. In short, the death of ‘social democracy’.

In Warby’s view, Goldberg has in fact written two books, one silly, one sensible: “The sensible and useful book shows how much fascism (including Nazism) had Left roots and how much more overlap modern progressivism (such as contemporary US liberalism) has with fascism than fascism has with Anglo-American conservatism… The silly and distracting book is the one trying to show US liberalism as largely of the same broad political movement as the various fascisms and therefore a form of fascism and the heir of fascism.”

What’s Left, What’s Right

THE MATTER TURNS on what fascism is and what makes something “of the Left”. Goldberg’s answer is based on fascism as a manifestation of the broad (and Left) movement of politics as a secular religion seeking unity by remaking society. As part of this, Goldberg has ultimately a simple categorisation of politics. Fascism is collectivist (true), the Left is collectivist (true), therefore fascism is of the Left… Goldberg wraps this in a larger argument about politics-as-secular-salvation involving deification of the state being inherently leftist, and a characteristic of fascism, hence fascism is leftist…

How do we define the Left? Being Left involves a commitment to change—that is, a rejection of the past: the more complete the rejection, the more Left you are. It involves a commitment that this change be delivered politically: the more encompassing the use of political mechanisms (and the political mechanisms one is willing to use) the more Left you are. It also involves a commitment to equality: the more complete the commitment to equality, the more Left you are. So a revolutionary socialist engages in a near total rejection of the past, is willing to use any political mechanism, if judged to be effective, to politicise all aspects of society, and is committed to as complete equality as is practicable…

So, can we envisage a collectivism that is not Left? Easily. One that is not based on rejection of the past and does not have equality as its prime public value. That would be fascism, then. So is fascism clearly “right-wing”?

If “Right” is the political opposite of “Left” then to be Right is to have no particular commitment to change—that is, not reject the past: the less you reject the past, the more Right you are. It involves some level of scepticism, or even hostility to political mechanisms: the more sceptical, the more Right you are. It involves rejecting the primacy of equality: the more you reject the primacy of equality, the more Right you are.

So an extreme right-winger wants as little change as possible, is highly sceptical about political mechanisms and is committed to something other than the primacy of equality. The last being the problem with talking about “the Right” since a range of values can be held to be not trumped by equality—such as liberty, authority, order, religion—and in almost any arrangement (such as including serious commitment to equality)…

To be continued…

Posted in Anti-fascism, State / Politics | 6 Comments

MSN/W&CF/DA/CLASS on DSP/SA versus LPF // also ASAP versus ASPN

Posted on May 21, 2008 by @ndy

Local Marxists and former members of the DSP Roberto and Jorge Jorquera provide their analysis of the recent history of the Democratic Socialist Perspective. Both left the DSP in 2006, and went on to form the ‘Marxist Solidarity Network’ (MSN). For a brief period, this became ‘Workers & Community First’ (W&CF) in order to facilitate Jorge’s tilt at a seat in the Victorian state parliament. Following this, the MSN renamed itself ‘Direct Action’ (DA), the name previously given to the DSP’s weekly paper (which in January 1991 retitled itself Green Left Weekly). The title ‘Direct Action’ was itself stolen from a previous publication by the Australian IWW, first published in 1914, suppressed in 1917, resurrected in 1921, recommenced (in Adelaide) in 1928, and again suppressed. Between 1970 and 1990 Direct Action was the publication of the Leninist Socialist Workers Party; the DSP re-branded. The Jorqueras are also involved in CLASS, which is apparently independent of DA. And by CLASS I don’t mean the Coalition of Law Abiding Sporting Shooters, but rather the Centre for Latin America Solidarity and Studies; precisely what the nature of the relationship between CLASS and the Latin American Solidarity Network (LASNET) is I’m unsure. (See also: Mexico-Australia Solidarity Network (MASN)).

What happened to the DSP?
Roberto Jorquera & Jorge Jorquera

A small group of comrades including ourselves left the DSP [Democratic Socialist Perspective] in May 2006. Five months after the 21st Congress and 8 months after the National Committee meeting that established the basis for the factional struggle that ensued.

That National Committee meeting in late 2005 brought to light a small leadership group that had decided to make this debate a fight to the death. Those of us at that meeting who had yet to take sides in the politics of the discussion, were genuinely surprised by the response of these comrades, and were met with informal approaches and discussions which indicated far more passion for the question of party regime than for the politics itself.

Of course, being Marxists we started to look for the material basis of this “power struggle”.

Here we were confronted with what appeared like a struggle for the heart and soul of the DSP and the question in debate seemed oddly tactical in nature. From October 2005 any comrade that expressed a view opposing the majority’s line of continuing with the tactic of Socialist Alliance [SA] was considered an alien force.

At first we were all labelled “demoralised”, seen as leaving revolutionary politics, unhappy with our lives, singled out individually for having some personality issue and so forth. By April 2007 this approach was given a “Marxist” form: all comrades who disagreed with the majority line of persisting with the SA tactic were officially declared a “hostile” force.

Our group, now Direct Action [formerly the Marxist Solidarity Network and, briefly, Workers & Community First], left in May that year and we are still considered a “hostile force”. Never mind that Marxists usually reserve the use of the word “hostile” for class-collaborationist forces or police agents, newer comrades of the DSP are now trained to approach the rest of the far left as if they were all enemies of the class.

Our small Melbourne and Geelong based group was keen to put this behind us and do what we could to develop revolutionary politics in at least a small way and with some example. We even hoped to develop relations with the DSP based on respect and united activity. While some of that has happened, it usually comes back to manouvres aimed at undermining our work.

The main area in which DA has developed a national influence and input has been Latin American solidarity work. This has proven an unfortunate example of how the new DSP works. Any work done outside their framework and sphere of influence is simply labelled “trying to destroy the movement”. Apparently you can only support the Venezuelan revolution if you support the leadership clique of the DSP.

For our part, we continue to work with the DSP and have kept one of our comrades as a national coordinating member of the Australia Venezuela Solidarity Network [AVSN], which the DSP run. Even this does not spare us the treatment as a “hostile force”. Our main work in building the Centre for Latin America Solidarity & Studies [CLASS] is derided as a front and wherever possible undermined. It should be known that we have more non-party and other party activists in CLASS in one city than there are active non-DSP members in the entire national organisation of AVSN.

Back to the main question: How did this happen? What’s the material basis that has lead the new DSP leadership on such a path of destruction?

We have some thoughts but we are certainly not presenting them as answers, rather as “food for thought”.

In 2001, following the rise of activism associated with the “anti-corporate globalisation” movement, the DSP took the lead in forming the SA. For most of the eight original organisations involved, the Alliance was conceived of as a project of left unity, aimed at developing an organisational framework for the potentially larger forces moving leftwards. When these forces did not eventuate, rather than reassess its perspectives the DSP proceeded to force march the Alliance into a party form.

At some point in 2004 this tactical mistake and our failure to account for it precipitated the SA tactic becoming the rallying banner for a group of DSP leaders overly influenced by the discourse of the non-revolutionary left and sharing their frustrations at the period. Supported by a growing economist tendency in the DSP, these leaders sought to wage an internal battle for the heart and soul of the party.

The opportunist and sectarian turn of the DSP was fundamentally the result of the defeats imposed by neoliberalism and in particular the ideological retreat of the “post-communist” era. Throughout the 1990s, most of the international revolutionary left suffered similarly. The majority of revolutionary parties with even the slightest connection to the mass movement confronted opportunist tendencies – bent on avoiding isolation at any cost.

We agree that this is a rather general explanation, still wanting. Other more immediate and particular factors also combined to give this process impetus.

By the mid 1990s the DSP began to lose its way in terms of youth recruitment. Essentially its previous campus growth faltered. Until then the youth work of the DSP had provided the compass for its general direction and the majority of its successes. This problem of youth work was increasingly interwoven with the question of party leadership itself. Protracted decline in the DSP’s youth work combined with the demoralisation and partial retreat of the 80s generation of the DSP into a growing problem in terms of leadership regeneration.

Then along came SA. What began as a genuine attempt to advance left unity, was adopted by an older leadership group in the DSP as a remedy for all, as a secret recipe for escaping isolation, and as a means to at least temporarily ease the demoralisation of a layer of middle cadre.

The SA tactic itself – especially with the departure of all other organised forces and almost all active independents with experience and leadership capacity – also compounded the existing problems the DSP had in terms of educating its members in Marxism; forcing DSP members to spend most of their time in internal organisation and administration. More and more what developed was a culture of privileging “getting things done” over theoretical study; or more accurately, of separating the two. This culture produced a lot of DSP organisers who work in a pragmatic framework and leave their Marxism for bedtime reading. This all gets further exaggerated when the tactic of SA, being the supposed new “framework” for the struggle, turns mass work into a sectarian exercise. Proper movement work is replaced with event organising, where guest speakers are invited to speak alongside SA speakers and this becomes your “mass work”. Where does it all stand now?

Will the DSP continue down this track, moving away from the far left and toward some hoped for breakthrough with no left forces by its side? Losing its experienced cadre slowly out the back-door, and turning new members into apparatchiks rather than revolutionary activists? We sincerely hope not. In the right circumstances the DSP leadership may be forced to reopen these discussions and make some re-assessments. What is clear is that for the foreseeable future, these discussions cannot be had inside the DSP. As unfortunate as the expulsion of the Leninist Party Faction [LPF] is, it presents a real opportunity to renew some of these discussions in an atmosphere of genuine, frank and comradely debate. Yes, among the far left groups we compete for members, we debate our lines and ideas, but surely we can work together on many occasions, surely we can debate without a permanent purpose of undermining each other and surely we can differentiate the general development of Marxist ideas and influence from short term manouvre and gain. We in DA never abandoned the party principle, but given our resources chose to do what we could that would best contribute to the development of revolutionary politics in this country. We will continue to do that, especially in helping build solidarity with Latin American struggles and in all our work in Melbourne and Geelong.

In addition we have already approached the LPF and consider that there is every reason for our organisations to unite and develop a national organisation that can begin a process of re-accumulation of activists around the political perspectives we share and hopefully also help reignite some discussions among the various far left groups and activists.

Another bone of contention between the DSP and the LPF is — rather, was — the Action in Solidarity with Asia and the Pacific (ASAP) website. “ASAP is a network of activists around Australia who are building solidarity with and support for movements for social justice, genuine democratisation and self-determination around the Asia Pacific region”, or ostensibly anyway. In reality, it’s another DSP front group. Or was. Apparently, the site was and is maintained by a member of the LPF. According to one LPF-aligned comrade, “Although ASAP is not formally a part of the DSP, on May 13, as a part of the DSP purge of the LPF, with no consultation with [the site maintainer], members of the DSP, who controlled the password on the server for this site, blocked his access to it”. As a result, “The Action in Solidarity with Asia and the Pacific website has moved and changed its name to the Asia Pacific Solidarity Network (APSN). Please bookmark this site and update your links as the old ASAP website will no longer be maintained.”

Actually, it appears that the old site will in fact be maintained, only not by a member of the LPF, but rather the DSP. In other words, there are now TWO sites dedicated to promoting various forms of solidarity between democratic, leftist and socialist activists in the Asia Pacific region, one that remains under the control of the DSP, the other by member(s) of the purged LPF:

1) Action in Solidarity with Asia and the Pacific (DSP)
2) Asia Pacific Solidarity Network (LPF)

Posted in Trot Guide | Leave a comment

God Hears Pleas of the Innocent

Posted on May 21, 2008 by @ndy

is the title of an album by the greatest band ever, Killdozer (Touch & Go, 1995). By the way…

Jew-hating Doctor Jim Saleam is innocent!* Or so he reckons. He also reckons to have been battling to have his conviction for his role in a shotgun attack upon ANC representative Eddie Funde in 1989 overturned on the basis of an alleged conspiracy by the state to silence him and his then party, National Action. On Stormfront, the world’s leading site for white, racist, Jew-hating crackpots, Jim announces:

May 20, 2008
radnat
Join Date: Oct 2005

Help Sought To Overturn Corrupt Convictions

Readers,

I seek from anyone who posts on this board, or who may view this board, two different items of information. Each is relevant to an application to the NSW Supreme Court (Crimes Act, Section 474) to gain an inquiry into two inter-related convictions won corruptly against me by ASIO / NSW Police Special Branch in 1991:

a. Is there anyone who was associated with, or knows someone who was linked to, the “Crystal Street Skinheads” (ie. Crystal Street, Petersham, in Sydney) in 1988 – 1989?

If so, you may be able to provide in some way, useful information concerning events around a Crown Witness in my trial, Mr. Michael George White.

I advise generally, that despite intimidation from Special Branch to accuse me of involvement in his crime, Mr. White reversed parts of this accusation and altered his testimony continually in court – obviously to obtain my acquittal with white-lie-perjury. Of course, he was unsuccessful. I currently have in my possession a signed confession from Mr. White exonerating me of the offences. I post that document here.

b. I am trying to locate two persons from the former Adelaide National Action who attended the home of Jason Roderick Frost in the Ryde area of Sydney, in March 1989. Whilst there, you would have been shown by Mr. Frost, a (legal) pump action shotgun.

One other person who was with you at the time has provided a Statutory Declaration concerning seeing this gun.

Mr. Frost denied in evidence ever owning or possessing such a gun.

It was Mr. Frost who nominated his actual co-offender in the matter (Mr. White), did a deal with Special Branch to avoid imprisonment if he would also nominate me and another man in his crime and who persisted with his perjury to the end.

Material on the case generally, under the title “Pardon Me: The Anatomy Of An Australian Political Trial”, can be found at:

www . alphalink.com.au~radnat/pardonme/index.html

Confidential contact can be made through this site (via private message) or via e-mail at [email protected]

J. Saleam

The site “J Saleam” refers “Readers” (why am I reminded of ‘Raffles the Gentleman Thug’?)** of white supremacist dribble to, and the material on his case, proceeds in pretty much the same direction as the above. Thus over nine years ago, Herr Doktor — ‘Pardon Me’ — wrote:

This is the first time an Australian has argued on the Internet that criminal convictions won against him, were the fruits of corruption. It is, at the time this document was placed upon the Internet, exactly 10 years since the original crime was committed. The author has served four years prison (May 14 1991 – May 4 1995).

I have no doubt that this case would make an excellent book. It has everything:

Spies, the kidnapping of a defence witness by secret operatives done to the movie script of Mississippi Burning, the mis-use of an informant whose code-name and purpose were analogous to the script of Betrayed, secret Australian Security Intelligence Organisation tape-recordings of the Defence’s trial preparations, the murder of my co-accused recorded as it actually took place courtesy of the same surveillance operation, a drunken, corrupt police officer discredited at the Royal Commission Into The New South Wales Police Service (1994-97) whose obsession to convict the accused created the parameters of the case, fabricated notebooks, wildly contradictory prosecution witnesses, some prosecution evidence which seemed to be re-run of the script in the Ananda Marga and the Hilton Bomb frame-ups, political pressure to win a conviction, a prosecution witness with an effective-indemnity for perjury, a Court Of Criminal Appeal ruling which said that I convicted myself at the Trial by leading certain evidence, facts which just don’t fit – and the crime victim, the Representative to Australia of the African National Congress.

I hope I have your attention.

Certainly. But pardon me if I quibble with Jim’s relentless, fourteen year long struggle for justice: Section 474 of the NSW Crimes Act (1900) has been repealed. Seven years ago. In which case, perhaps Herr Doktor would be better served pursuing legal redress via the Crimes (Appeal and Review) Act 2001? And under the provisions of Section 78?

CRIMES (APPEAL AND REVIEW) ACT 2001 – SECT 78
Applications to Supreme Court

78 Applications to Supreme Court

(1) An application for an inquiry into a conviction or sentence may be made to the Supreme Court by the convicted person or by another person on behalf of the convicted person.

(2) The registrar of the Criminal Division of the Supreme Court must cause a copy of any application made under this section to be given to the Minister.

Dunno. Maybe I’m wrong. Like Jim, I ain’t no lawyer. But the issuing of such a statement regarding events and personalities dating back over twenty years is more than a little odd. Perhaps Jim is merely preparing for his bid for a seat on the local council later this year (September 13)?

Oddly, a ‘Michael George White’ stood as a BNP candidate in Thurrock in 2006.

    * On The Jewish Problem, Stormfront moderator Jackboot wrote:

    Insofar as Stormfront has a policy, or platform, that platform consists of three major planks:

    First, we share a racialist vision for the general prosperity, security, and betterment of our people.

    From that commitment flows our most important message: we name the Jew as the deadliest, if not the only, threat to our existence as a race. Forge this message in titanium…

    TITANIUM Jim…

    TITANIUM.

    ** ‘Raffles, Gentleman Thug’ is a comic strip featured in adult comic Viz featuring a nineteenth-century nobleman given to ‘immense erudition and wanton violence’. The basic premise is a nod towards/ripoff of E. W. Hornung’s ‘Raffles the Thief’ character, the main difference being that this Raffles is very much a 21st century hooligan (despite his use of Victorian language). The strip parodies British yob culture, placing modern day situations in a Victorian/Edwardian setting, including considerable anachronisms, and Raffles himself uses antiquated or formal words in very informal or modern situations.

    For example:

    * ‘Bollocks to this’ becomes ‘Testicles to this’
    * ‘Fuck this shit’ becomes ‘Fornicate this ordure’
    * ‘Kick the little bastard’ becomes ‘Lapidate the little illegitimate’
    * ‘Tits oot for the lads’ (tag line of Viz character ‘Sid the Sexist’) becomes ‘Remove your decollétage from its corsetry for the delectation of the gentlemen present’
    * ‘Fanny magnet’ (when describing his new car) becomes ‘Vaginal lodestone’
    * ‘You big girl’s blouse’ becomes ‘You sizable ladies chemise’…

Finally, an excerpt from Leviathan by John Birmingham about a bunch of violent nutters in the ’80s, aka National Action, including a deserving case who comes to a sticky end:

[National Action] unexpectedly found itself called upon to explain its position. The party’s slack-jawed mouthpiece denied they were in any way racist. [They] didn’t believe in the superiority of one race over another. [They] simply believed that the Anglo-Celtic culture of Australia should not be endangered. As more people noted what they were saying… the party’s internal bulletin, announced that the time had come for taking it to the streets.

Student unions noted an escalating number of bashings of Asian students after dark, both on campus and in the clutch of inner city suburbs around the neo-Nazis’ favourite watering holes. There was a shift not just in the frequency of political violence, but also in its intensity and focus. The targets began to change. The party bulletin [Audacity?] featured a regular [column] in which critics of the party would find their name, phone number and address published with an invitation to the ‘curious and adventurous’ to dish out a little nationalist justice. Journalists such as Gerard Henderson, Andrew Olle and Adele Horin who covered the immigration debate or related topics in an unsatisfactory manner began to receive phone calls and death threats late at night. Academics and unionists found their car tyres slashed and graffiti daubed on their houses. Greenpeace and Community Aid Abroad shops were broken into and looted.

Violent overthrow of the dominant paradigm doesn’t come cheap, however, so in early 1984 the party leadership cooked up a scam to rip off the GIO and raise money to buy all the firebombs, balaclavas and nail-studded clubs they would need to make people understand the righteousness of their cause. A woman who rented a room at [National Action’s] headquarters came home one day to find the place ransacked, her jewellery gone and party fuhrer [James Saleam] shaking his head…

[NA] began working its way down the enemies list, widening their attacks from vulnerable students and the occasional journalist to gays, lesbians, Aboriginal, peace and anti-apartheid groups, academics, liberal congregations such as the Pitt Street Uniting Church, the Anti-discrimination Board, union activists and, somewhat recklessly, a couple of Special Branch cops who had been assigned to their case. Terrorising the wives and families of heavily armed secret police­men was not the Nazis’ first step on the happy staircase to success. After [NA] raided the meeting of a gay migration lobby group the hammer came down.

Having suffered through months of harassment the gays were ready for a fight. Their resistance seemed to unnerve the storm troopers and a handful of hysterical pansies and angry dykes proceeded to bitch slap them out of the room. Special Branch quickly obtained a search warrant and charged over to a house in Petersham used as an alternative headquarters by [NA]. They found a tape recording and photographs of the raid. Most of those who took part were arrested and charged. The cases were heard in Glebe local court and attended by observers from a resistance group called Community Alert Against Racism and Violence.

‘It was unbelievably pathetic,’ said CAARAV’s Betty Hounslow. ‘Shane Rosier, one of their big men, was just this really pathetic bloke in his late forties who was, you know, a bit chubby. He wore these brown trousers that kept riding up the back and an old yukko-looking brown cardigan. They found a lot of weapons in his house… coshs, chains, and studded balls. And his story to the magistrate was that the weapons were part of his collection. He’d always been interested in weapons, he said. His grandfather was a famous gun collector. He and his dad had always wanted to have a gun collection just like old Granddad’s, but they’d never had enough money to collect guns so they had to collect cheaper, working-class weapons. And this was why he had all these things. He said the tape of the raid was left on his doorstep one morning. Like a little abandoned baby.’

The pressure told and the Nazis turned on each other as deeply repressed suspicions and rivalries burst through to the surface. Everybody seemed to accuse everyone else of being police spies and sexual deviants. The final slide into ignoble collapse was marked by the gunshot murder of Wayne ‘Bovver’ Smith in [NA’s] headquarters at Tempe a few years later. It was an almost perfect example of the hapless farce which so often attended the adventures of Sydney’s neo-Nazi elite in the 1980s. Bovver, twenty-five years old and already weighing 108 kilos thanks to the three or four stubbies of beer he’d consume for breakfast each morning, was shot eight times with a sawn-off .22 rifle by Perry Whitehouse, ten years his senior but less than half his size, during a drunken, confused and basically pointless argument. When Whitehouse blew him away, Bovver was wearing a singlet bearing the message: Say No To The New Gun Control Laws.

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

Hitler good, feminism bad / MI5 Nazi Sex Orgy… and er, Quadrant

Posted on May 20, 2008 by @ndy

From Hitler to Windschuttle in three easy steps…

o n e

Nazis assault feminist festival-goers
The Local
May 19, 2008

At least seven people attending a festival promoting feminism [Färnebo Feministfestival] were assaulted on Sunday evening by a group of neo-Nazis in a small Swedish village. One man was left needing hospital treatment after he was attacked with a metal pipe by an unidentified gang in Österfärnebo in east central Sweden. “The men drove around the area in a car, shouting ‘sieg heil’ and doing a Nazi salute,” police investigator Kalju Poltrago told newspaper Upsala Nya Tidning…

t w o

Speaking of poor/filthy rich old Nazis, Max Mosley — son of Oswald Mosley — was recently caught with his lederhosen down and having sex with five prostitutes. Now:

Max Mosley orgy revelation forces M15 agent to quit
Andrew Alderson and Sean Rayment
The Daily Telegraph
May 18, 2008

An MI5 agent has resigned after it emerged his prostitute wife engineered the tabloid sting that exposed Max Mosley, the head of motor racing, as having taken part in a sado-masochistic orgy. The disclosure is deeply embarrassing for Britain’s security service and has forced a review of vetting. The man was a surveillance operative with several years of service. His wife, 38, is believed to have approached the News of the World when she realised that Mr Mosley – a regular client – had booked five prostitutes for a sex session costing £2,500…

In my opinion, both Mosley and the MI5 agent’s wife have behaved very badly, and should be punished.

t h r e e

So should Keith Windschuttle:

Quadrant: It’s okay to be a Nazi if you’re pretty
Kath Wilson
Crikey
May 15, 2008

Quadrant, John HoWARd‘s favourite magazine, is now angling for younger readers. But with the appointment of Keith Windschuttle as editor, the arch-conservative, publicly-funded magazine’s stable of aging Cold Warriors remains, and this month’s issue still fights the good fight against decadence in modern theatre, Robert Manne’s footnotes and Manning Clarke’s supposed anti-Semitism.

The accusations against Clarke are particularly odd, given the characters Quadrant continues to publish. As Michael Danby told Parliament during the Howard era:

    Quadrant magazine, edited by Mr McGuinness… ran an article by [Holocaust denier] Michael [de] Brander [‘Alexander Solzhenitsyn and the West’, March 2005], a former chairman of the neo-Nazi group National [Action] who has been convicted in an Australian court of assaulting a protester with a flagpole.

[Brander also addressed a post-graduate conference organised by the University of Sydney in July 2005; the assault took place at a public protest in Melbourne on March 18, 1995.]

Then Quadrant published Helen Demidenko/Darville/Dale, whose novel The Hand That Signed the Paper was described by Gerard Henderson as “a loathsome book… that would give comfort to anti-Semites.” Dale’s Quadrant memoir didn’t promote anti-Semitism so much as flog the magazine’s favourite whipping-boy, Robert Manne. But alongside yet another smear of Manne, this month’s issue features a bizarre memoir that trumps the spate of right-faction Liberal Party and Young Liberal anti-Jewish slurs.

‘Things Diana Mosley Told Me‘, by historian Philip Ayres, documents his correspondence with the late Lady Diana Mosley, the high-society Mitford sister typically described as “unrepentently Nazi”. Financier of the British Union of Fascists, editor of the far right The European, and a close friend of Hitler who reportedly “took her disgusting, unchanged views to her grave”, Mosley nonetheless fascinated Ayres during his scholarly endeavours. Why? Not simply for his historical research, but because, he explains in Quadrant, Mosley was pretty. “I was curious to know more about her because of her looks… She had been described as “the most beautiful woman in the world”…”

Having read Mosley’s account of her imprisonment after the war broke out, Ayres lamented:

    “They stuck this beautiful woman in a rat-hole… After many months of mistreatment they let this gorgeous girl out… while I understood perfectly well why she was locked up, the conditions as she described them would make most men with balls feel like they wanted to rescue her, especially given her looks. Me anyway. I could dream about a woman like that.”

Evidently stuck in an era where gentlemen prefer gentiles and female beauty is a virtue overriding all sins, Ayres then wrote to the Nazi and Fascist-supporter in 1990. “This was a beautiful woman,” he again explains. Mosley wrote back, asking Ayres to read a book about her and write a review. He obliged, but “I wrote a review and sent it off to Quadrant, then being edited by Robert Manne, but for whatever reason, some perceived lack of didactic intent perhaps, whatever, he didn’t publish it.”

But Windschuttle has now published this version, and Ayres reveals: “Basically, I wanted to write to the woman in the photographs… What made the exercise an experience for me was not so much the information at the end of it … The interest for me was… the way I’d come across this beautiful lady, flipping through a book with its photographs of her when she was young.”

For John HoWARd’s favourite magazine, it’s okay to be a Nazi if you’re pretty. But in today’s Liberal Party realpolitik, perhaps Susan Chandler wasn’t pretty enough — or maybe, unlike Quadrant, modern conservatives understand that in the 21st Century — since the Age of Enlightenment, even — perceived feminine virtues don’t forgive abhorrent views.

I reckon Welf Herfurth (who is definitely not a neo-Nazi, whatever The Jew says) oughta try getting published in Quadrant.

Sirs,

From the same issue of Quadrant (May 2008, Volume LII Number 5), see also Michael Warby, Fascism and the Left.

Posted in !nataS | 5 Comments

Nepalling: Nepal, Prachanda, Lenin, Miaow

Posted on May 19, 2008 by @ndy

    Crack Pot Kin, May 2, 2008: So how is ‘Anarchy’ doing these days…which revolution are you lot leading in the world, must be everyone is too dumb for ANARCHISM?! I notice you didn’t mention Nepal – but reality doesn’t really suit you does it? What a pity that the Nepalese haven’t taken up your ‘First World’ petty bourgeois Anarchism and instead have opted for “Authoritarian, Stalinist, Leninist, blah, blah, blah”.

________________________________________________________________________

Nepal; a nice little earner for the Maoist ruling class – in Lenin’s footsteps
Ret Marut
May 12, 2008

Nepal’s Maoist Party has won around 220 seats in the recent Constituent Assembly (CA) election, about one-third of the total. Though the largest party, they don’t have an overall majority; they have stated their wish to lead a coalition government.

But as the result became clear Maoist leader Prachanda told journalists “I will be declared the acting President of this country very soon…which will be followed by occupying the post of the all powerful President of New Nepal…this is the peoples’ mandate…no force on earth can disobey this mandate” (I am the all-powerful first president of New Nepal: Prachanda, Telegraphnepal.com, April 26, 2008); the man who has long talked of his wish to ‘abolish royal autocracy’ now speaks of his “all powerful” role.

Recent news reports reveal the wages and expenses of the newly elected members of the Assembly. While they spend an indefinite period drawing up a new national Constitution they will be paid – by Nepali standards – enormous wages; each CA member will receive net salaries of 23 thousand one hundred rupees per month [£176/$345/Eur224]. On top of this they’ll get expenses for drinking water, electricity, telephone, rent, newspapers & “miscellaneous”. These expense allowances bring the total income of a CA member to 45 thousand 98 rupees [£345/$674/Eur437] each per month.

The CA President (probably Maoist Party boss Prachanda) will have a monthly salary/expenses income of 60,600 rupees [£463/$905/Eur588] – plus a petrol allowance of 24,500 rupees [£187/$366/Eur237]. The vice president will scrape by on a few thousand less.

So the ruling class, led by the Maoist ‘proletarian vanguard’, feather their nest. These salaries must be compared with the Nepali average wage of just $200 a year [£102/Eur129]; Nepal is the poorest country in Asia. Around 10% of the population takes 50% of the wealth, the bottom 40% takes 10%. 85% of Nepalese people don’t have access to health care. So the monthly income of a CA politician is well over three times the annual national average wage! Jobs within the CA are already being allocated by all the various member parties to their friends and family.

In a public appearance last week Maoist leader Prachanda said “I had the opportunity to play the role of Lenin itself in Nepal” (I am Nepal’s Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Prachanda says, Telegraphnepal.com, May 4, 2008). With his fat salary and perks he is certainly following in Bolshevik footsteps; Lenin travelled in a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce, as did other government officials. “Autocracy’s main enemy, Vladimir Lenin, had no reservations about inheriting the hated old regime’s automobile collection. Lenin used the Tsar’s Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost to drive around town while his colleagues divided up the rest of the collection among them. But two revolutions and a civil war had taken their toll on the cars, and in 1919 [during a time of famine and extreme hardships for the poor] the Council of People’s Commissars had to order 70 more from London” (Aeroflot). Lenin moved into a dacha (country house) previously owned by a millionaire, while much of the other Bolshevik leadership took occupation of the luxurious Lux hotel in Petrograd, dining on preferential food rations. Then and now, for those who inherit the State, its perks and luxuries are clearly irresistable and seen as just reward for their conquest and devotion to power. And so the new Nepalese republic is born – the furniture and faces at the top have been shifted around a little, and that is all.

There’s another interpretation (though less likely) of the reference to Lenin – as a coded pointer towards a historical precedent; that Prachanda’s long-term plan is for the Constituent Assembly in Nepal to share the same fate as it did in Russia. When the Bolsheviks were ready to seize sole power for themselves, a revolutionary guard (led by Anatoli Zhelezniakov, an anarchist sailor) dismissed the CA, dominated as it was by indecisive bourgeois moderate politicians. The Bolsheviks saw its dissolution as a decisive step in the progress from a bourgeois to a proletarian revolution (though the fact that, unlike Nepal’s Maoists, the Bolsheviks did not emerge victorious from the CA elections may have influenced their choices too). The Maoists might, ideally, like to achieve a neat Leninist orthodoxy by replicating this state of affairs, but they know the necessities of ‘realpolitik’. External geo-political pressures and economic realities mean that – for the moment, at least – they need to play the democratic game in order to attract foreign investment, so as to try and build up a sound politico-economic base. A strong and stable State power is always a class relation based on efficient exploitation and its rewards.

________________________________________________________________________

See also : Devil’s Advocate: Prachanda on Indo-Nepal relations, Karan Thapar, CNN-IBN, May 18, 2008:

Karan Thapar: What will you think will be the impact on Indian Maoists by your coming to power in Nepal?

Prachanda: I think a strong message has already gone. After the elections, there was a wave in favour of our policy. After the elections, a Maoist has sent a letter to me congratulating me for this historical victory in elections. I think there will be a serious discussion and debate within the Maoist circles in India and we have already given a message to not only Maoists in India, but to all over the world.

Karan Thapar: Looking at your own experience in Nepal during the last two years and six months in particular, would you advice the Indian Maoists to give up the peoples war, to join mainstream, to use the ballot rather than the bullet as a way of acquiring power?

Prachanda: I think that I cannot directly address them, but our behaviour and our policy and our practices give out the message of the power of ballot.

Karan Thapar: One of the top Maoist leaders in India, Azad in an interview to The Hindu has said that the Nepali Maoists are unlikely to succeed and that the Nepali Maoists will soon realise that they have made a mistake.

Prachanda: Right now, the same person Azad has sent a letter congratulating me and that he thinks it is a very serious victory for the Maoists. I think it is before and after the elections, that he has evaluated it in a different way.

Karan Thapar: Many people think, Comrade Azad, as you call him, is saying two things. He says one thing to you in the letter and praises you and on the other hand, says another thing to the press and sounds sceptical and cynical. Is he double-faced?

Prachanda: Is there a written statement somewhere?

Karan Thapar: Yes, it is in The Hindu on Friday.

Prachanda: I see. I have not gone through that interview and statement.

Karan Thapar: So right now you are not aware that Mr Azad speaks with two voices. He says something to you and something else to the others. Does that worry you or disillusion you?

Prachanda: No, I have to go through that statement in detail. I cannot blame anything on anyone.

Karan Thapar: At the moment you will reserve your judgement.

Prachanda: Yes.

(Interview with Azad: The situation in Nepal and India are completely different, K. Srinivas Reddy, The Hindu, May 17, 2008.)

There are a mountain of Maoist parties in India. They include the Centre of Indian Communists : Communist Party of India (Maoist) : Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Janashakti : Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) (Mahadev Mukherjee) : Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Naxalbari : Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Red Flag : Provisional Central Committee, Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist).

In Australia, Maoist currents experienced some small degree of popularity in the 1960s and ’70s — one, Jim Bacon, even became Premier of Tasmania (albeit much later and after having joined the ALP) — but have been in terminal decline since. Extant groups include the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) and a handful of brave if aging souls on lastsuperpower.net.

For a Maoist perspective on events in Nepal, see Revolution in South Asia: An Internationalist Info Project.

On a completely fucking bizarro note, see the Maoist Internationalist Movement and its declaration of February 15 2008: “The masses have less than three days left to break the encirclement of MIM, and we see them trying, but in case they do not punch through, we have already started preparations for tidying up. There is a new website, “MIM Lite”.” As it happens, it appears that the masses didn’t rally to MIM’s cause, despite their posting this plea on their site. “In the end, it can be as simple as the politics of death threats against MIM. It is not accountable for MIM to allow various political forces to play both sides. People promoting those making death threats against MIM are not MIM’s friends. For this reason MIM is leaving the field to the leaders the so-called masses deserve. The masses did not bail MIM out and re-organize the struggle as requested, and so we are left in a form of intra-bourgeois struggle only, a struggle that might be better taken up in other ways, perhaps as bourgeois politicians or single-issue activists. “MIM Lite” will try to organize where there is still some opportunity.” As is the way of things, ‘MIM Lite’ has also announced its political suicide, set for today!

The Good News for English-speaking Maoists is the continued survival of The Great Leader, Bob Avakian. The World requires radical change: “That demands leadership. And that is where Bob Avakian comes in… He built, and today leads, a revolutionary party, the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA—a party that has mobilized thousands to fight against the system in different ways through the past decades and that has continued to promote revolution and communism. But Bob Avakian is more than that. He is someone who has persisted in confronting the hardest, most excruciating questions before humanity. In so doing, he’s taken the communist understanding of the world and how to change it to a new place. The answers he’s brought forward and the pathways he’s forged demand a serious look—a deep engagement—from everyone concerned about the future of humanity.”

He’s also modest.

Other Maoist (Marxist-Leninist) groups in the United States include the (rival) Freedom Road Socialist Organization and the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, the Party for Socialism and Liberation and Workers World.

In the United Kingdom, Maoist and Marxist-Leninist political formations include the Communist Party of Britain, the Communist Party of Britain Marxist-Leninist, the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist), the New Communist Party of Britain, the Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist) and last — but by absolutely no means necessary least — the Stalin Society.

Posted in State / Politics | 22 Comments

Counago & Spaves & Anarchy & !nataS

Posted on May 19, 2008 by @ndy

1) Counago! Spaves!

counago & spaves is a neat-o blog maintained by people (i assume) with very good taste. it’s also got a link to a rather awesome arty blog too, called who killed bambi?. speaking of expensive trinkets, john hutnyk (sounds troublingly foreign to me) has a blog called trinketization, and on it a post all about rock against racism, which recently celebrated its 30th birthday. jm, on the other hand, is just a working man living in the gentrified inner city of seattle, trying to make ends meet until the revolution. ladies, he’s also single. and a blogger. on marx. and coca-cola.

aaron’s blog has some interesting stuff. so does chuck, despite — or perhaps because — he’s a negative nellie. chuck also links to a new journal called resistance studies; from sweden, of course. the journal of aesthetics and protest has also just published its fifth issue. it’s also got an article by stevphen: who also has a blog… but i already said that.

2) Wewease Bwogger Weport!

“VICTOWIAN Wiberal weader ‘Wed’ Ted Bailwieu has called for the party’s internal report into the blogging scandal to be publicly released, even though this would provide more details of the affair” (Release blogging report: Baillieu, Rick Wallace, The Australian, May 19, 2008). It’s a sensitive issue for the Tories, as not-former PM Peter Costello is soon to vacate his extremely comfortable seat of Higgins, in the heartland of ‘Aussie battler’ territory, Toorak. “Costello is supporting the party’s outgoing state director, Julian Sheezel, if and when the former treasurer decides to quit politics. But Kroger, in the absence of an outstanding candidate emerging, is backing his former employee and ex-Crosby Textor executive Jason Aldworth” (Spoils of failure, Ewin Hannan and Rick Wallace, The Australian, May 17, 2008):

The Higgins contest has become entangled in the Victorian blogging affair, which erupted following the discovery that two Liberal staffers, Simon Morgan and John Osborn, were the authors of a vitriolic anti-Baillieu website set up inside party headquarters.

They were sacked a month ago, but the details were leaked weeks later in what some Liberals insist was a concerted attempt to sabotage Sheezel’s bid for Higgins.

Morgan and Osborn worked on the same floor as Sheezel at the party’s Exhibition Street headquarters and Morgan has been represented as Sheezel’s right-hand man.

Sheezel was forced to deny any knowledge of the rogue website but has copped flak from his detractors, who argue that if he didn’t know about the blog, he is not competent enough to be a federal MP on the path to a ministerial role. “This effectively ends his bid for Higgins,” one says…

Curiously, another yuppie has been forced to fall on his sword over the scandal:

The leaked emails forced a young Liberal member working at the Property Council, Luke Dixon, to resign for suggesting that Baillieu adopt a more business-friendly stance on plans to dredge Melbourne’s shipping channel.

Dixon became the fourth scalp in the scandal. As well as Morgan and Osborn, campaign manager Susan Chandler was forced to quit after Osborn retaliated by releasing an email in which she called a Liberal candidate a “greedy f..king Jew”. It is understood Liberal MPs are now asking Baillieu where he intends to draw the line on internal criticism. “MPs are saying that if private criticism of policy is treachery, how are we going to have a free and frank policy debate?” one MP asks.

The Kroger camp believes Sheezel’s association with the blogging debacle will ensure he doesn’t win the support of preselection delegates in Higgins, who are are appalled by the debacle and the further damage it has caused to the Liberal brand. Kroger’s allies say branch officials in Higgins have this week indicated they won’t support Sheezel…

See also: Menzies’ house divided, Sherrill Nixon and Paul Austin, The Sydney Morning Herald, May 17, 2008: “Accusations of reds, morons and treason have lit a new fire under the Victorian Liberal Party… Baillieu wasn’t the only senior Liberal savaged: the former prime minister Malcolm Fraser was “that epitome of treachery”, the federal MP Petro Georgiou was a “waste of space” and his colleague, the former Howard minister Fran Bailey, was a “stupid fat bitch”.”

Sheer class.

3) Anarchy & !nataS

In Scotland, John “Ginger” Bowden, 51, has done a runner: “A SADISTIC killer who cut up a man with a saw while he was alive is on the run after being allowed to go shopping” (Saw killer John Bowden goes on run from prison, Brian McCartney, Daily Record, May 17, 2008). Oddly, “the decision by the killer — who was given a life sentence in 1982 — to go on the run has puzzled prison insiders, as he was due to go before a parole hearing which could have won him freedom in just a few days”. More oddly, “Bowden’s suitability for parole was reviewed a year ago because of his contact with the group Anarchist Black Cross – who campaign for the abolition of the prison system”.

Speaking of killers, what about Helen Keller? Or should I say Helen Killer? “The story of how Keller was given sight and vision via a pair of high-tech spectacles and employed as a government assassin to protect the president from anarchists” is available as a comic:

[Lit small bomblet casually tossed in the direction of Lumpen.]

And ah, while John “Ginger” Bowden killed someone in real life, and Helen Killer is the fictional portrayal of a superhero dedicated to saving the world from anarchist assassins, in the US, Lauren Weiner is possibly about to go to jail after being convicted of planning acts for which Eric McDavid has just recently been sentenced to twenty years (for planning). “Out of jail since her plea deal on $1.2 million bail and living with her mother near Scotts Corners, the 2004 Fox Lane High School graduate said she feels freer now than she ever did on the road, eating out of trash bins and forsaking roots in the quest for experience. As Weiner said recently during a telephone interview about how she went from a rich Westchester girl to a West Coast radical, she was running away from herself” (Woman, a reformed radical, ready to face sentence, Rob Ryser, The Journal News, May 18, 2008):

The prodigal daughter

In the parable, the child of a wealthy landowner leaves home for a foreign country, gets caught up in riotous living with fickle friends and winds up destitute enough to return home repentant. The wealthy father accepts the youth back unconditionally, even though his mercy scandalizes others.

While Weiner’s supporters – such as her mother, her attorney and the head of a charity in White Plains where Weiner volunteers – say they can’t figure how such a smart, spirited woman got duped into such a dead-end plot, Weiner’s own explanations suggest her situation is similar to the prodigal’s.

“You go through pain, you go through anger, you go through sorrow, depression, confusion, then finally acceptance,” Weiner said. “I have really spent the last 2 1/2 years figuring out who I am, because that was something I never knew.”

Her Web posts while in college in 2005 at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia speak of meeting “inspiring radical folk” who “I have been looking for my entire life.” She writes June 23, 2005, about being prepared to get arrested during a protest of a biotechnology convention in the city. She writes, “I am not welcome” in this social structure…

Lauren Weiner insists that home is now her source of strength, crediting her good spirits to strong people in her family.

While supporters say she has to suffer the cliché of the poor rich girl who got bailed out of trouble by her parents, there is nothing fake about this prodigal’s return home.

“She understands the depths of people’s needs, and those principles were there in her from the very beginning,” Boone said. “They were just lost for a little while.”

See also: “Anna” Goes to Elle (April 24, 2008) | Neigh (February 25, 2008) | Eric McDavid found guilty; ecoterror plot foiled; US citizens and planet breathe easy (September 28, 2007) | “My name is Anna, and I’m an FBI informant.” “Hi Anna!” (September 25, 2007) | FBI confidential informant also said to be provocateur (June 11, 2006)

Finally…

4) Terror on teh Interwebs!

Spanish police arrest five ‘active’ hackers
May 18, 2007

MADRID (AFP) — Spanish police on Saturday announced the arrest of five suspected hackers, including two 16-year-olds, who are accused of attacking government websites in the United States, Asia and Latin America. The youths belonged to “one of the most active groups of hackers on the Internet,” having disabled 21,000 Web pages over a two-year period, a police statement said. “They would substitute the contents of the Web pages attacked with protest messages and included the same anarchist symbols,” it added. Although the group had never met, it is alleged that they organised and coordinated their attacks over the Internet, working in particular with hackers in Latin America. Police did not identify which government sites were targeted, but the online edition of the El Mundo newspaper reported that the Internet sites of NASA and the Venezuelan national telephone company were among the targets. The five were arrested this week in the Spanish cities of Barcelona, Burgos, Malaga and Valencia. The arrests follow a probe launched after the website of the left-wing alliance Izquierda Unida (United Left) was hacked and caricatures of politicians inserted, days ahead of the March 9 Spanish elections. If convicted, they face jail terms of between one and three years.

Posted in !nataS, Anarchism, Media | 4 Comments

Get thee behind me Lenin! Resistance/DSP expels a Melbourne member

Posted on May 18, 2008 by @ndy

The ding-dong battle between the now-rival Leninist groupsucules the DSP (Democratic Socialist Perspective aka Socialist Alliance) and the LPF (Leninist Party Faction) continues, with accusation and counter-accusation flying thick and fast.

Well, kinda.

In reality, once the purged faction finishes getting things off its collective chest — which it has already gone some way to accomplishing — it’s likely both are going to want to proceed on to more constructive endeavours. After all, the Socialist Alliance comb that the two bald men of the DSP and the LPF have been fighting over is obviously not going anywhere, and the doublethink required in order to believe otherwise would tax even the most dedicated and obsequious of party members. Of course, that doesn’t mean SA still can’t serve a useful purpose for the DSP, especially when election time rolls around. Beyond that, however, it’s difficult to see what purpose it serves, as I’m honestly unaware of anyone — anyone at all, with the obvious exception — who regards it as being anything other than a DSP front. (The most recent indication to the contrary came from the Gold Coast.)

Do the above observations make me a do-nothing sectarian right-winger? Damn. I suppose being a self-declared (pseudo-)“anarchist” relieves me of any need to actually attempt to do anything, just shitcan those that do…

In any event, what of the junior burger version of the DSP, aka, Resistance? Well, apparently, the world-historic struggle between the DSP and LPF is having some small repercussions there too, with the launching of an investigation into the troublesome activities of Melbourne branch member James. The findings of the investigation into James’ activities are that he:

1. Discouraged potential recruits from joining Resistance
2. Failed to adequately inform the branch of political work carried out in the name of Resistance
3. Continued public attacks on the DSP
4. Failed to raise political differences in a democratic framework
— and finally —
5. Interfered with the investigating committee

After noting James’ apparent disloyalty, and refusal to place his political work under the direction of Resistance, the investigation concludes that:

4. Based on the evidence considered by the investigating commission it is clear that James is not willing to raise political differences in a comradely internal political debate. This is best illustrated by his public criticisms of the DSP.

5. Moreover the commission believes James to be openly hostile to the DSP. This continues to undermine our work with the DSP and has impacted on our ability to recruit and train new members of Resistance.

6. The investigating commission recommends the disciplinary action of expulsion from Resistance as outlined in Section 6, Rule 7 of the constitution.

7. It is regretful that we recommend this course of action, however the decision is based on recognition of the following facts:

a. James has been a long term member of Resistance for 9 years who understands Resistance’s decision making procedure.
b. That James has continued these activities despite warnings from the leadership.
c. And James has stated an unwillingness to adhere to a collective approach to our work as indicated in his email response to the notice of his formal charging.

Melbourne Branch Executive Report to May 18 NC
Presented by Trent H
Investigation of Charges against Resistance Member James C

Naturally, the investigation committee makes no mention of a fact that James himself appears to believe is central to their investigation: his membership of the LPF. According to James:

The charges are on the most part administrative and petty, and despite best efforts to politically engage with the root issues, I fear that I need to respond to some of their ‘legalese’ to an extent. The charges are on the whole attempts to bureaucratically rather then politically deal with the fact that I have political differences with the Democratic Socialist Perspective (DSP). I resigned from the DSP in 2007 after having been in the Leninist Party Faction (LPF). My expulsion from Resistance comes shortly after the expulsion of LPF comrades… However this is the end of a long road in which the DSP has sought to marginalize those with dissenting views rather then building political consensus and unity. Having marginalised the ISO and the smaller affiliates in Socialist Alliance, the DSP alienated the Non-Aligned Caucus which represented what was left of the independent leaders in Socialist Alliance. Having stuck the boot into any broader Socialist Alliance layers, the DSP turned its focus on the significant minority of DSP members who raised political differences over the DSP’s orientation to the Socialist Alliance. Now having expelled the LPF, the DSP turns on young Resistance members like myself who have raised disagreements publicly.

Resistance has historically served a different function to the DSP. While the DSP is a cadre party consisting of members who agree with the program and constitution of the DSP, Resistance is supposed to be a much looser organisation of people not necessarily convinced of the positions of the DSP. However, having failed to keep me quiet, the DSP youth cadre have sought to enforce administratively norms out of keeping with and unconstitutional in the youth organisation Resistance. Further I have recently been informed that I don’t even have the right to attend my own trial. According to Trent… “as outlined in the constitution you can request an oral submission of your report to the NC. This does not mean you can listen to the investigating commission’s report and the discussion. You will be logged on… when it is time to make your submission, and logged off after you have given it.” Sure there is no formal right for me to hear the report in the constitution, however this is just one more sign of the degeneration of the DSP spilling over into Resistance, in that they are no longer confident enough in their political positions to have me be able to directly respond to my accusers (something even allowed in bourgeois democracy). All that being said, here is my report…

Posted in !nataS, Student movement, Trot Guide | 5 Comments

Move over Paul Whicker! Stand aside Gordon Ramsay! Here’s Geoff Baron!

Posted on May 18, 2008 by @ndy

YES!

He’s back!

Everyone’s favourite potty-mouthed priest returns!

Hallelujah!

Cursing priest back at pulpit
Shannon Deery
Sunday Herald Sun
May 11, 2008

A SENIOR Catholic priest who launched a racist and foul-mouthed tirade at skateboarders is back behind the pulpit. Monsignor Geoff Baron was discovered during the week working at a Caroline Springs Catholic primary school. The revelation came a week after a Melbourne principal requested her pupils’ parents to switch off foul-mouthed TV chef Gordon Ramsay. The disgraced Monsignor was ordered on indefinite leave by Archbishop Denis Hart midway through last year after video footage emerged of him abusing skateboard teenagers outside Melbourne’s St Patrick’s Cathedral. The former dean of the cathedral slipped back into Melbourne three months ago, according to Catholic Church sources, after spending time in Sydney. During the week he was offering mass at Christ the Priest Catholic Primary School in Caroline Springs. It is understood he has also been carrying out pastoral duties, including visiting the elderly and frail. While reluctant to [talk] about the incident, Monsignor Baron said it was good to be back at work. “I’m a Catholic and I’m a happy Catholic with a lot of fulfilling pastoral work to do,” he said…

Typically, Deery’s report avoids mentioning that, in addition to Baron’s racist utterances, he also made a number of rather disturbing sexually-explicit retorts to the devilish little skateboarders who once plagued him: “by all the sperm of these boys that fucked you” was one such remark; “…how’s your arsehole so sore from being fucked by these cunts?” was another. Note that both these remarks were being addressed to teenage boys.

    What got the best reaction?

    Every now and then you did a cartoon you were aware hit the button and you immediately got a good reaction from it. Paul Whicker the Tall Vicar was the first one, in 1981, and after that Johnny Fartpants, and when the Fat Slags were launched, they had the same effect, a considerable initial impact and then they fade away…

See also :

Church & State & That’s Entertainment! | July 28th, 2007
Today’s Sermon: And Jesus said unto His Disciples, “Get off the property! Fuck off!” | July 29th, 2007
Very Reverend Geoffrey confesses: ‘Oh fuck, I must look like a right cunt’ | July 31st, 2007
Priests, Rants, Security… & Tabloids | July 31st, 2007
Very Reverend Geoffrey Baron has been suspended (Sky News) | July 31st, 2007
Intellectuals on Stormfront on Geoff Baron | August 1st, 2007
But wait! There’s f@#$ing more! | August 1st, 2007
Potty-mouthed priest is a global media * | August 2nd, 2007
Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those f@#$ing c%^&s who trespass against us | August 4th, 2007

In other news:

Pressure mounts in Vatican over Catholic church abuse
Garry Linnell
Herald Sun
May 8, 2008

THE Pope is set to make a historic apology to tens of thousands of Australians sexually and physically abused by Catholic priests when he visits Australia in July. Church sources say there is mounting expectation that Pope Benedict will use his trip to express his shame and regret over the church’s abuse scandal — and may also meet victims. The likelihood of an apology increased yesterday when one of the Catholic Church’s most senior figures, the bishop of Maitland-Newcastle, Michael Malone, gave his backing for a papal apology. Bishop Malone said the Pope had set a precedent by apologising to American abuse victims on a recent tour of the US and “I would certainly be supportive” of an Australian apology. It is believed the Vatican will consider the wording of any papal apology in the weeks leading up to Pope Benedict’s arrival in Sydney on July 13 for the World Youth Day festivities. Groups representing Australian victims of church abuse said a papal apology was long overdue. “The scale of abuse in Australia has been far greater than in the US,” said Dr Wayne Chamley, a spokesman for Broken Rites. “There are tens of thousands of victims from Catholic-run institutions who were denied education. They were used as slaves. They were sexually and physically abused. “We don’t believe the Pope has been told the full story about the level of abuse here. “The bishops have not briefed him. If the Catholic church was a private company these bishops wouldn’t have a job…”

In 1996, in response to public criticism, the Catholic Church in Australia produced a document regarding the Church’s response to sexual and other forms of abuse committed by its priesthood. Note that while the original “Toward Healing” document was produced in 1996, a subsequent, revised version was produced in 2000, was amended in May/June 2003, and revised again in September 2007 (PDF). Like any other responsible corporation, the Catholic Church has sought to minimise the financial costs associated with the abuse. Unlike a corporation, it enjoys tax-free status.

13 And they brought to him young children, that he might touch them. And the disciples rebuked them that brought them. 14 Whom when Jesus saw, he was much displeased and saith to them: Suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God. 15 Amen I say to you, whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall not enter into it. 16 And embracing them and laying his hands upon them, he blessed them.

Broken Rites on the “Towards Healing” process:

The Catholic Church’s “Towards Healing” process

As a result of the Broken Rites public exposure of Catholic Church sexual abuse from 1993 onwards, the Australian bishops became alarmed about survivors telephoning Broken Rites. Therefore the church established its own telephone hotline to compete with the Broken Rites number.

In 1996, after the high-profile jailings of Catholic priests and brothers, the Australian bishops published a glossy booklet, entitled Towards Healing, promising justice to survivors. The church established its own procedure for handling sex-abuse complaints, to be administered by a National Committee for Professional Standards (NCPS). It also established a Professional Standards Resource Group (PSRG) in each state to do the actual processing of complaints. This process applies in all of Australia’s thirty-odd Catholic dioceses (except the Melbourne diocese) and also in the hundred-or-so religious orders.

Unfortunately, the Catholic Church’s complaints structure is overwhelmingly “in-house”; it has an obvious shortage of non-Catholic members. It is male-dominated and clergy-dominated. The NCPS typically includes a bishop or two, an influential priest or two, a religious Brother representing male religious orders, and a religious Sister representing female religious orders.

Furthermore, the national committee has been headed for years by a nun who has been simultaneously a board member of the Catholic Church’s insurance company – the company that finances the church’s compensation payouts to victims. This woman’s dual role is a clear conflict of interest.

One drawback of this “in-house” system is that a state PSRG is likely to contain a member (e.g., a priest or a religious brother) who is a colleague of the alleged offender in a case. And there is no member representing (or advocating for) victims.

It is usually worthwhile for victims to report their abuse to the PSRG but it is best to consult Broken Rites first. Broken Rites can inform a survivor about his/her rights and also about how to avoid various pitfalls in the PSRG system.

Broken Rites has a list containing the contact address for the PSRG convenor in each state (or for Melbourne diocese’s separate system). Victims can phone us on 03 9457 4999 — or email us — for further information.

Obtaining compensation from the church

Towards Healing is intended as an in-house alternative to a civil court action. In 1996, Church spokesmen promised that Towards Healing will provide compensation to victims. The NCPS foundation chairman, Bishop Geoffrey Robinson, said the Towards Healing protocol “included just and fair compensation for victims” (Courier Mail, Brisbane, 12 December 1996). The NCPS foundation executive director, Father David Cappo, said “compensation would be ‘on the table’ in meetings with victims and no limit had been set” (Herald Sun, Melbourne, 12 December 1996).

Broken Rites is skeptical about the amounts of compensation that are being paid under the Towards Healing process. These amounts are less than the victim would obtain by suing the church for damages in the civil courts. One reason why the Catholic Church established the Towards Healing process was to limit the church’s liability to pay compensation to victims.

When a diocese or religious order makes a payout to a survivor, the victim signs a Deed of Release, acknowledging that this is a full and final settlement and absolving the diocese or religious order from any further damages claims by this victim. This document does not prevent victim from reporting the crime to the police or from talking to the media. The only stipulation is that the survivor must not reveal the payment.

A separate system regarding Melbourne priests

The Melbourne Catholic diocese has procedures which differ from the rest of Victoria and Australia. The Melbourne diocese does not participate in the Victorian PSRG. The Victorian PSRG is confined to religious orders and the state’s three country dioceses.

In 1996 the Melbourne diocese appointed a senior barrister, Peter O’Callaghan QC, to investigate complaints concerning priests and other personnel who come directly under the control of the Archbishop of Melbourne. Generally this means diocesan priests (that is, priests ministering in parishes) – not religious-order priests (in monasteries etc). Complaints about religious-order priests – or complaints about religious brothers – in Melbourne should go to the Victorian PSRG.

Mr O’Callaghan has the power to recommend that the Melbourne diocese suspend or remove an offender, and he has made this recommendation in some cases but not in others.

In proven cases of abuse, Mr O’Callaghan can refer victims to a Melbourne compensation panel which decides how much should be paid to each victim. This is an ex gratia payment, which is a substitute for a court damages action, and it is a smaller amount than would be awarded by the Supreme Court. Amounts so far paid out in Melbourne range from $10,000 up to a rare maximum of $55,000, with a typical amount being about $30,000. To obtain Melbourne’s ex gratia payments, it is not essential for a victim to engage a solicitor.

The Melbourne diocesan payouts involve victims signing a Deed of Release, acknowledging that this is a full and final settlement and absolving the diocese from any further damages claims, but this does not prevent victims from reporting the crime to the police or from talking to the media.

Broken Rites considers that the Melbourne scheme, under Peter O’Callaghan QC, better than the Towards Healing system that applies in the rest of Australia.

Suing a Catholic diocese or religious order

If a victim is not satisfied with the amount of compensation offered through the Towards Healing process (or through the Melbourne diocese process), he/she can reject the offer and then launch a civil action through solicitors, seeking damages from the particular diocese or religious order which inflicted the offender on the victims. The action must be taken against a specific church agency, such as the Marist Brothers or the Diocese of Woop Woop, not “the Catholic Church” as a whole.

These damages claims are not easy. Generally, the church’s lawyers put up a fierce fight, although many such claims have resulted in an acceptable settlement. If a settlement of this kind is made, it is done “out-of-court” — because the church wants to avoid ending up in court.

These civil actions do not prevent the victims from notifying the police about the crimes. In fact, a successful police prosecution helps the victim immensely because, when the offender pleads guilty (as often happens) or is found guilty by a jury, this means that the victim’s damages claim is strengthened.

See also : Penny-pinching justice, Ean Higgins, The Australian, August 14, 2007: “LIKE many victims of child sexual abuse, James Setches kept the horrific memories bottled up inside for decades. But when his brother, the famous jockey Ray Setches, committed suicide eight years ago, he decided to act.” | Speak no evil, Peter Ellingsen, The Age, May 4 2002: “Eventually charges were laid and in 1999 Baker pleaded guilty to 16 charges of indecent assault of boys, and one of gross indecency. The boys were aged from 10 to 12 years. The assaults spanned a 20-year period, the earliest dating back to 1960. Evidence was heard in the County Court that Baker was transferred from one suburb to another after the archbishop was made aware of allegations against him in 1978. This was not so unusual, the court heard. In the past, it emerged, pedophilic priests were moved around with the full knowledge of the church’s hierarchy. In terms of managing predatory priests, it was not a tactic exclusive to the Melbourne archdiocese, as evidence in US courts in recent months has revealed. The mushrooming US Catholic Church sex scandal prompted Pope John Paul to summon US cardinals to Rome last month for an unprecedented crisis meeting. While specific cases against accused priests work their way through the courts, the key concern for the church’s hierarchy is the groundswell of anger from parishioners convinced that not enough was done to protect their children from recognised predatory priests. As in Boston, where the archdiocese has indulged in a cover-up of sexual abuse of children, Melbourne has shielded some pedophilic priests. As in Boston, Melbourne has allowed priests who had accusations of sex abuse against them to continue working with children. And, as in Boston, Melbourne, at least up to 1996 when Peter O’Callaghan, QC, was appointed as an independent commissioner, did not maintain clear records of abuse claims, or necessarily alert police to abuse allegations involving priests.” | Deliver Us From Evil (Director: Amy Berg; 2007).

I’m gonna make me a big sharp axe
Shining steel tempered in the fire
I’ll chop you down like an old dead tree
Dirty old town
Dirty old town

I met my love by the gas works wall
Dreamed a dream by the old canal
I kissed my girl by the factory wall
Dirty old town
Dirty old town
Dirty old town
Dirty old town

Posted in !nataS, Poetry | 1 Comment