Bloggy February

Posted on February 4, 2008 by @ndy

Neo-Nazis? Shut up already!

Here’s some non-neo-Nazi related blogs:

1) Andrew Norton : is a barking mad reactionary, or in his words, ‘Carlton’s lone classic liberal’. A little dull, occasionally worthy, but about the most coherent bloggy defence of privilege I’ve found.

2) Austrolabe: Australian Muslims : a blog containing writings by a number of local Muslims on current affairs, politics and life in general. And in general, it’s an interesting and well-written read.

3) Barista : a relatively long-standing and again very well-written blog run by David Tiley, an Australian film writer from Melbourne. His thoughts on the recent death of Pip Starr are of particular interest.

4) BibliOdyssey : a popular blog what contains huge numbers of prints reproduced form historical texts ‘n’ that. Today’s text: “‘Mausoleum Potentissimorum ac Gloriosissimorum Regni Apostolici Regum et Primorum Militantis Ungariae Ducum’ (Mausoleum of the Most Powerful Kings and Dukes of Hungary) by Ferenc Nádasdy, 1664. The book appears to cover the rulers of Hungary from the tenth century up until the time of publication… Just by the by, the author happens to be the son of the infamous mass murderer, Elizabeth Báthory.”

5) Blogger on the Cast Iron Balcony : “A blog by an opinionated mother of two, which might lie idle for a while sometimes. The blog, that is.” Ho ho ho. Another blog on the sprawling media empire that is Sam’s media2.org, this Blogger appears to be a Feminist of some kind — possibly even a Communist — and should naturally be approached with extreme caution.

6) Cyclic Defrost Magazine (The Blog) : “Just when I thought I was out… they pull me back in”, said Michael Corleone, which pretty sums up my recurring bouts with music and music journalism. I don’t know how much great music I’ve read about and never heard — sometimes I just like to look at all them pretty pictures. I’m also constantly promised new horizons in sound, but usually musicians just take an existing product and put a clock on it or something… This blog focusses on “interesting” music.

7) Television Advert’s at Duncan’s TV Ad Land : the art form of extremely-late capitalism. Submit.

EIGHT) where’s the beef? : two vegetarians eat. Food. In Melbourne. A recent discovery, looks neat.

9) Nourish Me : Ha! Another vegetarian food blog. Pornilicious. Speaking of which, it’s time for a musical interlude, and what better way to introduce one than by way of Poison Idea* with their #1 hit single ‘Punish Me’:

10) Roughtheory.org : “Roughtheory.org originated as an informal space for communicating with researchers in a collaborative project on local governance and community planning in Melbourne’s northern fringe” but don’t let that put you off. Sample sentence: “Sinthome from Larval Subjects has a very nice post up today, reviewing and improvising around Kenneth Burke’s A Grammar of Motives.” If I were a philosophical Geraldine Doogue I’d smile and say “Fascinating!”.

11) Talking Squid : A token effort on my part to imply knowledge of other scientisitical things than Marxism! Science of Revolution.

12) radio waves from space : or: The Machine That Goes “Ping!” is all grown up and releasing musick.

    * “ARA, SHARP and members of the punk music community, including members of CHD, began to drive the boneheads out of the clubs and the culture. Bands that had huge local followings, such as Poison Idea or Sweaty Nipples, stopped concerts to speak against boneheads and vowed not to play if they congregated at their shows. Some bands changed their names, such as Wehrmacht or took on confrontational anti-racist names, such as Crackerbash…” ~ Anti-fascist organizing in Portland 1988-1993, Little Beirut, Winter/Spring 2004… Bah! Nazi schmazi.

Posted in Media | 15 Comments

Lech Walesa has a lot to answer for

Posted on February 4, 2008 by @ndy

Bah humbug!

In terrible news for trainspotters, there’s been a reconsolidation on the Trotskyist left in Australia: the International Socialist Organisation (ISO), the Socialist Action Group (SAG) and Solidarity have agreed to join together in a new Party, imaginatively titled ‘Solidarity’ (in gross violation of The Art & Science of Socialist Party Building; see HOW TO FORM YOUR OWN [SOCIALIST] POLITICAL PARTY: A BEGINNER’S GUIDE).

Boo!

Here’s Bob the Bookseller (and Revolutionary Firebrand) with more:

Three groups in the International Socialists tradition, the International Socialist Organisation, Solidarity (a group consisting [of] some people who split from the ISO and Socialist Alternative a few years ago [2004]) and the Brisbane-based Socialist Action Group, which split from Socialist Alternative a few years ago [2004], unified at a conference on the weekend of February 2-3.

The united organisation will be known as Solidarity.

I’m reliably informed that the conference proceeded in a serious way with little acrimony.

This reduces the number of IS-tradition groups in Australia to two: Solidarity and the extremely propagandist Socialist Alternative.

The general framework of the common orientation, which was the consensus of the conference, is based on electoral support for the Greens and then Labor under the preferential system and a broader united front tactic towards the ranks of the Greens, the trade unions and the Labor Party.

Boo! I says, Boo! I also asks myself, what does it mean? Primarily, that Socialist Alternative will now face some added competition, especially in Sydney and Brisbane (if not Melbourne, where the University of Melbourne remains a SAlt stronghold).

But for how much longer?

    RIP : Marxist Workers’ Group / Socialist Workers’ Action Group (1972–1975) | International Socialists (1975–1990) | Socialist Action (1985–1990) | Socialist Action Group (2004–2008) | Solidarity (2004–2008)
Posted in Student movement, Trot Guide | 26 Comments

Yeah. Right.

Posted on February 4, 2008 by @ndy

Megalo Megalo Megalo!

In Athens, CrazyGreekAnarchists have been fighting neo-Nazis and the police who protect them (and even provide them with sticks). Early reports suggest that two antifa were stabbed by neo-Nazis and as a result have been hospitalised but are otherwise in a stable condition.

Anarchists, far-rightists clash in Athens
Reuters
February 2, 2008

Police fired tear gas today when rival far-right and anarchist demonstrators clashed in central Athens, sending shoppers rushing into stores for safety. A scheduled march by about 60 members of Greece’s far-right Golden Dawn [Chrysi Avyi / Χρυσή Αυγή] group was met by anarchists, leading to a series of skirmishes that spread through the city’s back streets. “About 400 anarchists barricaded themselves along the main street throwing rocks and petrol bombs,” a police officer at the scene said. “Two policemen and two anarchists have been slightly hurt, but there are no serious injuries.” Police cordoned off the city centre as the groups clashed and lit fires, causing huge traffic jams. Golden Dawn, an extreme right-wing group with links to European neo-Nazis, was commemorating the date in 1996 when Greece and Turkey almost went to war over an uninhabited island in the Aegean known as Imia in Greek and Kardak in Turkish. “The situation has calmed down, but we are still on alert for any escalation,” the police officer said.

[Clashes between extreme rightists, leftists in Athens injure 3 people, The Associated Press, International Herald Tribune, February 2, 2008 | Athens Indymedia has an account in English here. Accounts in Greek + photos + video here.]

Meanwhile, in the UK, while Paul Morozzo, an anarchist involved in anti-capitalist protests in the 1990s [for example], said last year: “There is a sustained attempt to undermine and crush progressive environmental movements in the country, through intimidation and surveillance, through using terrorism laws to hold and threaten people, and through increasing use of civil injunctions to limit people’s ability to move around” the Daily Star notes that the Golden Dawn of the BNP is beginning to resemble a Twilight of the Griffins: ‘THE British National Party is on the verge of collapse after party rebels branded leader Nick Griffin “a paranoid dictator”’ writes Dominik Lemanski (B.N.P. Split as Rebels Hit Out, February 3, 2008).

Locally, Australia First, the Antipodean version of the BNP, has got some more ink, albeit not of the most flattering kind:

Rise of far right risks fuelling racist fire
Annabel Stafford
The Age
February 2, 2008

The gathering in the backyard-cum-carport in Sydney’s south resembles a clandestine party organised by blokes who find it hard to get a girlfriend.

Despite the baking hot afternoon sun, many wear black T-shirts, boots and leather vests. A rack in the corner of the yard is selling other T-shirts. Their messages: Speak English or Die and Skippy’s Rule OK.

A thrash metal band has set up in the carport and party-goers slam their heads in time with the drums. “Prepare for war,” the singer yells, “leave our shores.” This is Australia Day, Australia First style.

There are only about 25 people here and that includes the members of two metal bands that have come to perform. And not everyone admits to being a member of Australia First. Still, the party claims its way of thinking is spreading in Sydney.

That night, according to spokesman Jim Saleam, the bands would play at a private Australia Day function in the Sutherland Shire – site of the 2005 Cronulla riots – at which the party would try to recruit young supporters ahead of its planned bid for seats on several NSW councils and registration as a federal political party.

The press archives are littered with similar claims of rising influence from Australia First and its predecessor, National Action – notorious for its involvement in a series of violent incidents. And there have been previous and unsuccessful election bids.

But the Cronulla riots, racist activity surrounding plans to build an Islamic school in the Sydney suburb of Camden, and the fake leaflet affair – involving the husband of former Liberal MP Jackie [If you read it you’d be laughing] Kelly – apparently designed to capitalise on anti-Islamic fears in the electorate of Lindsay, have some worried that this time Australia First could be right.

Mr Saleam describes Australia First as nationalist, anti-immigration, anti-trade and anti-multiculturalism.

After a few Australia Day drinks, the membership begins to expand on these themes.

Terry, a 69-year-old from the Sydney suburb of Mount Druitt, admits he likes to see people like himself when he walks down the street, which he says is “only natural” given our bodily germs form “a defence system against foreigners”.

Terry’s theory on cross-cultural marriage is similarly original: we only marry outside our racial group in a sub-conscious attempt to punish our mothers or fathers.

Mike, “about 54”, from Bexley, says he backs an end to migration because “people from the Third World don’t know how to live in a civilised world”. They mug people on their way to the corner shop, Mike says, confiding that he has “been confronted about three or four times by people of Middle Eastern appearance” because “I like to wear military dress”. He is, incidentally, also wearing a T-shirt declaring No Camel Jockey races on the Beach. It has a picture of a man on a camel and a line through it.

Mike admits he was not actually assaulted, but says that’s what his assailants “wanted to do” after he informed them of his previous service in the military. Actually, he was in the reserves for a time back in the 1970s and “I come from a military family that I’m very proud of”.

“Fantasy” is how Bruce Baird, the former federal MP for the electorate which covers the Sutherland Shire, describes Australia First’s belief in its growing influence. “I think (the idea) that they’re making any progress at all is illusory.”

Mr Baird says the racism that came to a head at Cronulla “has been defused and addressed” and that Australia First’s chances of winning a seat on the Sutherland Shire council are zilch.

Michael Kennedy, a former detective and now lecturer in police studies at the University of Western Sydney, is not so sure.

Parties like Australia First will always “appeal to a certain percentage of the community”, he says, but now there was a “growing base of people” in NSW who were susceptible to nationalist ideas because of disillusionment with the state’s mainstream political parties and the crumbling health and transport systems.

Australia First could well win a seat on a council, Mr Kennedy says, but the party’s real danger lies in its ability to “fuel the racist fire”.

In any case, Mr Saleam says his party views elections as “only part . . . of what we do”. It is also interested in “inculcating attitudes and extending . . . the idea of cultural defence” and in more confrontationist politics of the type employed by National Action before its demise.

But, he says, “you need to be much more careful of confrontation now because of the nature of the laws”. Mr Saleam was in jail in the early ’90s for being an accessory to a gun attack on the residence of an African National Congress representative.

“If you use confrontation, you have to use it in a much more precise and scientific way otherwise you’ll simply be arrested,” he says – and then tries to usher The Age out of the party, so that he can brief the band members and others heading down to Cronulla on how to avoid arrest that night.

Which might not be necessary. Lead singer of the band Machete, known as Ryan, doesn’t appear to be planning much in the way of “cultural defence”: “We heard there was a gig going on, we had nothing better to do so we come up here and just figured, what the hell, let’s . . . play some metal.”

Finally, (Sir) Ian Kershaw has some reflections on ‘How Democracy Produced a Monster’ (The New York Times, February 3, 2008).

Posted in !nataS, Anarchism, Anti-fascism | 2 Comments

Google hearts Scientology?

Posted on February 2, 2008 by @ndy

Bloody hell.

As noted previously both by myself and numerous others, Blogger / Google is hugely reluctant to take any action against neo-Nazi blogs. At most, Blogger admin will slap a ‘Warning!’ sticker on the front and allow the fascist dingbats to continue on their way. But criticise Scientology? Well that’s apparently a very different story. Thus the following blog: —

http://hgrjt-heat-surge-msovi.blogspot.com/

— which apparently made some criticisms of the Church / Cult, has been pulled for violating TOS. As a result, “This blog is in violation of Blogger’s Terms of Service and is open to authors only”.

Weird scenes.

Posted in !nataS | 13 Comments

Would the real anarchists / Trotskyists… (Et cetera)

Posted on February 1, 2008 by @ndy

From the Department of Where Are They Now?

‘K so, a few days ago the newly-appointed boss of Australia’s Worst Union (AWU) was profiled in the local rag. And according to it, Paul Howes is a former Trotskyist. Actually, the story is a gold mine for leftist trainspotters…

Nuclear no nightmare, says unionism’s new face
The Age
January 30, 2008

At 26, former Trotskyist Paul Howes is now a leading figure in Australia’s labour movement, writes Tony Wright.

PAUL Howes was barely into his teens when France’s insistence on testing nuclear devices in the Pacific propelled him into the world of far-left demonstrators. He joined Resistance and the Democratic Socialist Party, which meant, effectively, that he was a Trotskyist.

A bit over a decade later, he represents 130,000 mainly blue-collar Australian workers, and he has journeyed a long way from the left and from any ideological objection to the nuclear industry.

These days he insists Australia has to have cheap energy to ensure it maintains a manufacturing industry and advocates a bipartisan debate on whether Australia should embrace nuclear power. “No one with any credibility disputes climate change,” he says.

“If we are going to be a country that makes things — and we have to be — then we need power, we need power that doesn’t produce excessive greenhouse gases, and so we have to look at nuclear power.

“I don’t know if nuclear is the answer, but we have to talk about it sensibly.”

Mr Howes, at age 26, is the new national secretary of the Australian Workers Union.

In a few short months, he has replaced Bill Shorten as the chief of the nation’s biggest and most powerful blue-collar union, moved the union’s headquarters from Melbourne to Sydney and has hardly paused for breath in his passion to persuade anyone who will listen that Australia has to continue to manufacture goods from the minerals it hauls out of the earth.

A strong and innovative manufacturing sector, he says, is the key to Australia’s continuing prosperity.

Many in the industrial movement were sceptical about the idea of a baby-faced member of generation Y taking over the nation’s oldest union, established in Ballarat in 1886.

But Mr Howes had already packed a lot into his young life. He left an unhappy home in the Blue Mountains for no fixed address in Sydney three months before he turned 15, bought a couple of copies of Green Left Weekly and began mixing with the radical fringes of the left while working as an insurance clerk.

At 16, he found himself at the World Festival for Youth and Students in Cuba, where he fell out of love with the communist ideal.

“I decided that if I wanted to change the world, I didn’t want it to be like Cuba,” he says. He suddenly discovered he wasn’t a socialist after all, but a believer in a capitalist democratic system with a bent towards social justice.

Soon he was a researcher at the NSW Labor Council, then transferred to the AWU as an organiser. It wasn’t long before Bill Shorten recognised the young man’s talents, and over the past couple of years he has been on the fast track.

Yet Mr Howes never managed to finish high school.

“My single greatest regret of my life is I never finished my education,” he says. “I still plan to do so. It’s so important that we foster a culture that recognises that education is important to every single individual and to the nation’s wellbeing.”

Education or not, he was recently invited to the University of California, San Diego, and Stanford University to take part in the Australia[n]-America Leadership Dialogue, where he took time out to support striking Hollywood writers.

Mr Howes will speak at the National Press Club in Canberra today.

In the mid-90s, Paul was indeed busy organising fellow high school students at Blaxland High, and talking up Resistance’s efforts to recruit them, first via the ‘Students Against the Cuts’, then the ‘United Secondary Students Union’ (1996–1997). At the time, Paul and a comrade wrote an enthusiastic assessment of the 14th World Festival of Youth and Students in Havana, concluding that “The closing session was an electric event, with chants and songs culminating in a spontaneous march by some delegates around the track of the Pan-American Stadium. It was a fitting finale to an event that proved that international solidarity is alive and well, and that reaffirmed that imperialism and neo-liberalism require coordinated action by anti-imperialist movements around the world.” In other words, not only has Paul come full circle on the issue of nuclear power, he’s also had a profound change of ‘heart’ on the role of the US in world affairs. The AALD, it will be remembered, sponsored the tour last year of Dick Cheney.

At this time, Paul was also the subject of an interview concerning the DSP’s 1996 Federal election campaign:

Politicians and parliament: young people want change (GLW, #220, February 21, 1996)

Resistance is campaigning for the Democratic Socialists in the federal elections. NATASHA SIMONS interviewed three Resistance members about the campaign. Paul Howes is a 14-year-old student at Blaxland High in Sydney’s West. He joined Resistance last July through the campaign against nuclear testing.

Why did you join Resistance?

I joined because I wanted to make a difference in society, not just sit around and complain about social injustice, but actually get out there and campaign. I was also involved in the campaign against nuclear testing. I thought capitalism really stuffed up people’s minds and I wanted to tell other kids about that and about socialism. When I joined, I was still a member of the Labor Party, but I was really disillusioned with them.

Why did you leave the Labor Party?

I joined the ALP because I thought I could change Labor and make it a real workers’ party. But after a while I realised that Labor had gone so far right it was too late to change it. Even the left faction of Labor thought I was too radical. Another reason I left was the hierarchy and the lack of grassroots input.

Ho ho ho.

Since then, Howes has of course rejoined the ALP, and at some point in the probably not-too-distant future, is likely to rejoin his former boss Bill Shorten in Federal Parliament (should he so choose). The Democratic Socialists, on the other hand, has now become the Socialist Alliance. One thing that hasn’t changed is the unpopularity of its candidates.

In his capacity as a teenage Trotskyist, Howes also had occasion to interact with the “Left” on University campuses. Thus:

SYDNEY — The National Union of Students NSW state conference at the University of Sydney on November 23 heard reports from the outgoing elected office bearers, elect[ed] new officers for 1997 and amended the NUS State Policy and Regulations document… Paul Howes from USSU addressed the conference and was heckled and jeered by Unity. The motion [“for financial and joint political support from NUS for USSU” — that is, $ for Resistance/DSP] was vehemently opposed by Van Badham, a member of NAL from Wollongong, who dismissed USSU because it didn’t have a constitution. Marcus Greville from Resistance commented, “The argument used against the motion to support USSU was grasping at straws. How can you be seriously interested in fighting for the rights of students against the Liberal government’s attacks, and in the same breath deny high school students the support they need to campaign?”

Whatever. Of the other figures mentioned, Marcus G later achieved a small degree of notoriety for blaming the Arterial Bloc and Mutiny for the carnage which erupted on the streets of Melbourne as part of the bloody, ultra-violent struggles surrounding the G20 meeting in November 2006 (JOSIE TAYLOR: Who were the people responsible for that violence? // MARCUS GREVILLE: The names of the groups are Arterial Bloc and a group called Mutiny. Above and beyond that, we don’t have any information, because they organised externally to us”.) Van Badham, on the other hand, now scribbles for the theatre. Further, according to Wikipedia anyways, “By 1998, Badham was an avowed anarchist and President of the New South Wales branch of the National Union of Students, caucusing with the radical group known as the Non Aligned Left”.

Two things. One, I can remember reading about the, ah, anarchist coup in NSW student politics at the time. And thinking “Who the fcuk?”, “What the fcuk?”, and “The fucking Irish know more about anarchist politics in Australia than I do?”

‘Anarchist Students Win in Australian NUS Election’, Workers’ Solidarity Movement, No.47, Spring 1996:

Reports from Australia indicate that an anarchist-influenced student initiative, called the Non-Aligned Left (NAL), has been elected to almost all the regional National Union of Students (NUS) officerships and is the largest faction on the national officerships. The NUS represents some 450,000 students. It is the first time the Australian Labour Party has lost control of any state NUS branch and the first time non-Labour [Party] factions have had a majority of the national executive. According to NAL activist, Marcus Westbury, the NAL has existed only for two years. They have grown from a handful of delegates to the second largest NUS faction primarily because of their commitment to participatory decision making, a non-hierarchical structure, and their non-binding nature.

Surprisingly — and this is thing number two — the ‘anarchist’ intervention in NUS didn’t last. Nor did NAL, for that matter, which later morphed into the NBL (which has since been supplanted by the Grassroots Left). Note that such shenanigans took place just as a new Federal, Tory Government was ushered in. Further, that with its dispatch late last year, the low-wattage light bulb on the shared student household on the hill has been re-lit (Students in shift on union funding, Sarah Elks, The Australian, January 14, 2008: “THE nation’s peak student body will urge the Rudd Government to scrap controversial voluntary student unionism laws…”).

Other former NAL *s include Kerry Nettle and Jamie Parker. Both Nettle and Parker found a place in the Greens; Nettle in the Australian Senate, Parker on Leichhardt Council. Marcus Westbury, on the other hand, now opines on The Yartz for the ABC.

Finally, Howes is hardly the first former revolutionary to become a trade union bureaucrat or a politician. The Right Honourable Michael ‘I did not have sex with that woman’ Costa is another former Trotskyist and member of both the Socialist Workers’ Party (now the DSP) and Australia’s Worst Union. Oh, and like Howes, a very keen supporter of capitalist development: Nuclear power? Good! Environmentalist? Bad! (Note further that John Laws has never seen a prostitute and that neither Bob Carr nor Paul Keating are queer.) Costa is also a trainspotter, and revealed as much when he addressed fellow Senator Lee Rhiannon (May 12, 2004):

The Hon. MICHAEL COSTA: I am very happy to elucidate my answer. My first experience with the notion of quelling was, I think, at Kronstadt during the Russian Revolution when Trotsky took a brigade of the Red Army and crushed the anarchists. In my previous manifestation as a young Trotskyite I supported his decision in an historical sense. I have had time to reflect on the mistake of supporting that decision, but every time Ms Lee Rhiannon speaks I tend to think that Trotsky may have been right about suppressing anarchists because they do not add to the parliamentary process or the complexities of managing government. I certainly would advocate it for the Greens. Ms Lee Rhiannon can take some comfort in the fact that she had the ultimate victory when Stalin managed to get a pickaxe in the back of Trotsky’s head.

Well, the front of his head, apparently, but you get the point. (Ho ho ho.)

“But @ndy”, you might say, “Who are YOU to criticise?”. To which I can only reply:

    “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
Posted in Anarchism, Art, History, Student movement, Trot Guide | 60 Comments

[For Dion] Hate Crimes on Rise in Russia // Big Ups from Down Under

Posted on January 31, 2008 by @ndy

A month ago Doug Smith, vocalist with local band Bulldog Spirit, declared on a local music forum that the boycott of a local pub, The Birmingham Hotel — called on the basis of its providing a venue for local neo-Nazis — had been a dismal failure. Further, he published what he claimed to be my work address. In response, I joined the forum, disputed his claim that the boycott was a failure, corrected his mistaken belief about my workplace, and further asked him what his motive was in publishing such information. For obvious reasons, Doug never answered my question, but a host of his friends subsequently engaged in a barrage of deranged abuse (‘Mark’ said “I promise you I will beat the fucking shit out of you and then make a black man take a shit in your face”; “im… going to bash you, fukn gooknigger scum” et cetera) — and otherwise demonstrated a remarkable capacity for thoughtful reflection on a serious matter.

Since then my account has been disabled.

Dion, who was one of those who disputed my argument regarding the utility of the boycott (and in fact declared that I was a piece of human garbage for promoting one), also declared that I didn’t know what I was talking about when I claimed that the neo-Nazi movement was on the rise in Russia.

The following article is therefore especially for Dion.

Hate Crimes on Rise in Russia
Bagila Bukharbayeva
January 30, 2008

MOSCOW (AP) — Hate crimes in Russia have grown increasingly brutal and deadly but authorities do little to combat xenophobia, one of the country’s leading rights groups said Tuesday.

Last year, 67 people were killed and more than 550 injured across Russia in ethnically motivated attacks, a 13 percent increase on the previous year, according to the annual report by Russia’s SOVA rights center, which monitors hate crimes.

“Neo-Nazis are out not to beat up (their victims), but to kill,” SOVA’s deputy director Galina Kozhevnikova said at a news conference. There is “an obvious steady rise in racially motivated violence” and the attacks are becoming more brutal, she added.

Nationalist and neo-Nazi groups mushroomed after the 1991 Soviet collapse as a dramatic economic decline spread social frustration, particularly among youth. Xenophobia has grown alongside a massive inflow of workers from impoverished ex-Soviet republics in the Caucasus and Central Asia.

Students from Africa, visitors from Asian countries, Jews and Russian anti-Nazi activists have become frequent victims of attacks by Russian nationalists in recent years.

Rights activists say authorities have done little to combat xenophobia. Many apparent hate crimes are treated as simple hooliganism, which carries a far milder punishment. Some activists say the extreme nationalist sentiments are an outgrowth of the Kremlin’s attempts to rebuild a strong state.

Kozhevnikova said that in 2007, Russian courts delivered only 24 convictions related to hate crimes.

In one positive sign however, the report said in 2007 authorities prosecuted leaders of several regional nationalist organizations for spreading xenophobic materials.

Kozhevnikova said authorities turn a blind eye to the ultranationalists’ actions, including public marches, “as long as they abide by certain rules: do not criticize authorities, show loyalty and stick to city outskirts.”

While pro-democracy opposition groups are denied permission to hold rallies in Moscow, authorities allowed about 5,000 nationalists to march in the capital in November, raising their right hands in a Nazi salute and chanting “white power!”

“The most worrying trend is that pro-Kremlin organizations are beginning to actively use the methods of ultra-right groups,” Kozhevnikova said.

She said the best known pro-Kremlin youth group, Nashi, used ethnic and racist slogans, such as “We won’t let migrants rule (Russia),” in the run up to December parliamentary elections.

Nashi spokeswoman Kristina Potupchik denied that her organization uses racist slogans, saying in fact that part of Nashi’s agenda was to fight xenophobia.

The government did not immediately comment on the SOVA report. Maxim Karyakin, a duty officer for the Prosecutor General’s office, said the office had not seen the report though prosecutors were invited to the news conference.

In the past, President Vladimir Putin has publicly condemned the rise of hate crime, xenophobia and neo-Nazism and called on prosecutors to do more to fight extremism.

Locally, white supremacists belonging to the Australia First Party — most recently embroiled in controversy over the predilection of a Queensland leader’s expressed appreciation for being “pulled off by a very fit and athletic male who keeps himself in absolutely wonderful physical condition” — have had a party in Cronulla, site of the “White civil uprising” of December 2005 in which dozens of random strangers were attacked for not being White.

Anti-migrant party seeks support near Cronulla
Annabel Stafford
The Age
January 29, 2008

A political party that wants to end immigration and multiculturalism used the Australia Day long weekend in a bid to recruit new members in the Sydney suburbs surrounding Cronulla, site of the city’s 2005 race riots.

The anti-immigration Australia First party helped organise the event in the Sutherland Shire – which covers Cronulla Beach – on Saturday evening, according to spokesman Jim Saleam.

He said the event was used to try to attract supporters among young people who were still angry over what they saw as their mistreatment in the wake of the 2005 riots.

Australia First refers to the riots on Cronulla Beach – during which people of Middle Eastern appearance were verbally and physically attacked – as a “civil uprising” and likens it to the Eureka Stockade.

It wants to win a seat on the Sutherland Shire Council to fight the use of public funds to promote tolerance and multiculturalism – promotional activities that Dr Saleam calls “propaganda”.

It is also planning activities, including distributing leaflets, in the semi-rural area of Camden, where there has been community tension over plans to build an Islamic school.

The leaflets would warn that the planned school was the first step in “Islamifying Camden” and an attempt to “undermine Australian values”.

Dr Saleam described Saturday night’s party in the Sutherland Shire as “a happy, successful event”.

Thrash metal bands including the outfit Machete – which warmed up with its tune Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi at a pre-concert Australia First meeting on Saturday – played at the event, Dr Saleam said.

Invitations to the event were issued via text message, Dr Saleam said, in an apparent bid to keep police and the media away.

In 2005, text messages were used to call people down to Cronulla Beach to take part in the riot.

Although there were no incidents in Cronulla on Saturday, during a visit to the Sutherland Shire The Age was shown a separate text message purporting to come from anti-migrant sources that called for “fellow Australians . . . to protect the (Sutherland) shire” and “keep gods country wog free”.

The message – passed to The Age by a Sydney resident of Turkish background who did not wish to be identified – said no “wogs” should be allowed past the bridge that separates the Sutherland Shire from other Sydney suburbs.

Note that the band Machete is originally from Canberra, they formed in 2004 from ex-SoulCrusher members Sam (bass), Garth (gits) Darren (drums) and in 2005 they recruited Brendan (ex-Deviant Plan) on vox. Judging by the fact that they’re playing gigs for Australia First, they’re career hasn’t exactly been a screaming success, and it appears unlikely that the boys will be giving up their day jobs anytime soon…

And finally, speaking of neo-Nazis and muzak, there is, of course, an ongoing boycott of The Birmingham Hotel, the venue for a number of neo-Nazi gigs in Melbourne over the course of the last ten years, and — prior to 2007 — the regular venue for the annual Ian Stuart Donaldson memorial gig. Who was Ian Stuart? According to some foreign agitators:

1) …if ian stuart was around today… people like you wouldn’t be talking you would be all scared of him and his master race.

2) @ndy. Your use value is connected to the late great Ian Stuart because people like you fail to see the greatness of people like Ian Stuart. If more people had listened to his voice whilst he was still alive, maybe England wouldn’t be the multi racial shithole that it has become. People with opinions like yours ruin countries. White Pride Worldwide.

3) hail ian stuart heroes never die 14/88

4) Ian and skrewdriver were … people who care about the white race you shitheads seig heil

5) THE MOST INFLUEN[T]IAL MAN OF THE WHITE RACE DIED AND YOU SLAG HIM AND THE FAR RIGHT OFF. “BONEHEAD” EXCUSE ME BUT WHEN CIVIL WAR BREAKS OUT I WILL NOT BE FIGHTING FOR YOU. WHITE PRIDE WORLD WIDE[!!!!] HEIL!!!!

6) i say fuck all of you white nigger lover losers niggers should be all sent back to africa niggers wont work niggers and spics and all non white races will be the downfall to this country so if your a nigger lover or a nigger fuck you and burn in hell

Well OK, strictly speaking 6) isn’t about Ian, but I think it’s kinda indicative of the kinda people who are his fans, as well as the kinda people Gary (The Birmy’s proprietor) happily allowed use of his venue for the last 10 years or so. And, of course, also illustrative of the reasons why his business should not be supported. Speaking of which, on Saturday February 9, The Beefeaters, Bulldog Spirit, Napalm Hearts and The Worst are playing @ The Birmy. On Saturday February 2, The Beefeaters will be playing @ The Tote with Mister Coffee, Wazska, Chris Royal & The Dukes, The Resignators, Final Warning and Tabasco Junkies: Final Warning and The Resignators support the boycott; The Beefeaters, unfortunately, do not.

Posted in Anti-fascism, Collingwood, Music | 23 Comments

Stalin! FARK! Avakian! Mao! Rage! Muzak!

Posted on January 30, 2008 by @ndy

Uncle Joe was quite a guy, and it’s little wonder that he continues to inspire Youth — especially as gaiety was the most outstanding feature of the Soviet Union. Of course, I trust no one, not even myself. Further, gratitude is a sickness suffered by dogs. And unfortunately, history shows that there are no invincible armies, while education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed. Put simply, everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach. Speaking of which, the Stalinist League of Australia has reached the shores of Fark, and is there striking Terror into the assembled ranks of nerds, goths, fat people, oldies, geeks and capitalists. This will no doubt gladden the heart of the League (latterly also known as the Soviet Left Faction). As for me, I believe in one thing only, the power of human will.

Another believer in human will is Bob Avakian, the reclusive leader of the largest Maoist sect in the U$A, the Revolutionary Communist Party. He’s been profiled in The Boston Globe by a capitalist running-dog named Mark Oppenheimer (Free Bob Avakian!, January 28, 2008):

IT WAS HARD to miss, splashed recently across a full page of The New York Review of Books: an advertisement featuring the boldface words, “Dangerous times demand courageous voices. Bob Avakian is such a voice.”

Wrapped around those words, Talmud-page-style, were, to the left, a short essay about the importance of Avakian’s “compelling approach to Marxism” and, to the right, a list of dozens of signatories, including academic superstars like Cornel West, performers like Rickie Lee Jones and Chuck D., and activists like Cindy Sheehan.

Some of the signatories were regulars on left-wing petitions, but even for people often associated with radical causes, signing a pro-Avakian ad seemed bizarre. Did they not know what he stands for – or did they just not care?

Avakian is the chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, a tiny Maoist organization whose most visible activity is running several branches of a store called Revolution Books. (There’s a branch on Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge.) Through the bookstores, the party’s website and newspaper, and his prolific pamphleteering, Avakian has advanced his views: Mao Zedong’s China was “wondrous,” according to Avakian’s autobiography, and, despite the show trials, mass purges, and other acts of tyranny that Avakian acknowledges, Joseph Stalin had “an overall positive historical role.”

[Et cetera. As an aside, see also Scott McLemee‘s brilliant blog. On Avakian, RCP, Nightmares of History and The World Can’t Wait, see The World Can’t Wake.]

Locally, the remnants of the Maoists Down Under are assembled at the little red website Last Superpower. From there they lob ideological grenades at what they term the fake Left. In their own words: “This site was established by leftwingers who support the war in Iraq. We called it “Last Superpower” because we believe that US imperialism is weaker than it has ever been before and is no longer the almighty superpower it makes itself out to be. This is a place for people who want to discuss what it really means to be progressive and left-wing in the 21st century – and where we can go from here.”

The real Left, on the other hand, consists of (other) private school boys turned revolutionaries turned functionaries. Like, say, Jim Bacon. Thus, on the one hand:

Vale comrade Jim Bacon
The Age
Albert Langer, Michael Hyde* and Kerry Miller
July 2, 2004

Jim Bacon was not just a student activist at Monash University. He was a leader of the Young Communist League and the Worker Student Alliance, and remained a revolutionary when he moved on to the labour movement. He was a disciplined Marxist-Leninist until he withdrew honourably from the Red Eureka Movement in the late 1970s.

Like many others, he was no theoretician, and his commitment to revolutionary communism waned during the decades between high tides. But Jim never repudiated his original stand and remained on the side of the oppressed against oppressors…

[*See also Sushi Das, ‘ASIO files full of Hyde and seek’, The Age, September 23, 2005: “FOR years he thought he was just being paranoid. Now he knows the truth. A few months ago, after a freedom-of-information request, author Michael Hyde finally got all 13 files ASIO had kept on him between 1967 and 1974.”]

While on the other:

The selling-out of Tasmania
The Age
Richard Flanagan
July 22, 2004

Among the many bewildering responses to former Tasmanian premier Jim Bacon’s passing, few came more bizarre than that of Albert Langer and his colleagues (“Vale comrade Jim Bacon”, on this page on July 2) presenting Bacon as ever “on the side of the oppressed against the oppressors”. Unfortunately, history tells a less uplifting tale.

Under Bacon, Tasmania was given away to the rich at the expense of the poor… clearfelling of globally unique native forest accelerated… forests disappeared, rivers began drying up, thousands of protected native animals were killed with 1080, and Gunns shares increased in value by more than 700 per cent.

Then there is Bacon’s record on democracy. In 1997 Bacon drove the deal with the Liberals under which Tasmania’s highly democratic electoral system was fundamentally altered to reduce minority representation, which had resulted in the Greens twice having the balance of power. The result was an enfeebled parliament.

Bacon had no tolerance of dissenting opinions, making no secret of his fury with those who differed from his point of view, no matter how small the difference.

Hailed as a champion of the arts, Bacon famously attacked Tasmanian artists and writers who spoke out against his policies as “cultural fascists” (a term coined by Stalin), signalling clearly to his bureaucracy who was and wasn’t going to be part of Bacon’s much-trumpeted New Tasmania.

[…]

None of this, though, was to interfere with the myth of the great leader being woven around the man whose nickname was the Emperor. Jim Bacon began as a Maoist and ended up a mini-Mao, his funeral replete with oversize imagery, overwrought testimonies and apparatchiki falling over each other to prostrate themselves…

Fucking Maoists. On which point: Rage Against the Machine done gone toured Australia, spreading the revolutionary Gospel and pocketing approximately $3 million in the process. Huh! / Yeah, we’re comin’ back then with another bombtrack / Think ya know what it’s all about / Huh! / Hey yo, so check this out / Yeah! / Know your enemy! / Come on!

THE Big Day Out series of youth concerts is a massive event—more than 40 bands are appearing on one of seven stages in each of the six cities (Sydney, Gold Coast, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth and Auckland) hosting the event—and organisers will earn roughly $30m in ticket sales alone. But the event is just as important for the sponsors, as they are able to interact with their customers while they are having fun, and their brands are associated with something all concert-goers love—music.

Concert festivals are growing in popularity, with more than a dozen being held around the country. Livid, Splendour in the Grass, Good Vibrations and Field Day are just some that have emerged in the past few years. But it was the Big Day Out that set the standard and now, 12 [sic] years after its first event, sponsors are lining up to get on board.

According to Adam Zammit, principal of Peer Group Media, which has the commercial rights to several festivals including the Big Day Out, about 55% of the crowd is aged between 18–24, 30% is aged 25–32 and 15% is aged 16–18. “This group is hard to reach and there are not a lot of events like this,” Zammit says. [Marketers have] so much desire for brands to get down and dirty and often their only chance to do this is in the retail environment. “The beauty of these experiences is that they are interactive and [can’t be replicated] elsewhere. It is also unusual because the brands are giving something back. “It is at the beginning of the year so [attendees] return to school and uni talking about the event and are generally seen as opinion leaders by their peers,” Zammit says.

Whether they want to supply refreshing water, a place to chill out or the opportunity to go backstage, sponsors are spending up big to interact with this hard-to-reach youth demographic. Morph Monitors account manager Lauren Prince says when targeting this extremely mobile, highly independent decision-making generation, licensing is becoming critical. “Marketers are borrowing the equity of a license—it’s what gets these consumers to look at their brands,” Prince says…

Eat the shit up kids!

See also : U2’s Manager Calls For Mandatory Disconnects For Music Downloaders, Slashdot, January 29, 2008 | Silicon Valley’s hippy values ‘killing music industry’, Owen Gibson, The Guardian, January 29, 2008 | Axis of Justice

Posted in Media, Music, Trot Guide | 17 Comments

History and its costs

Posted on January 30, 2008 by @ndy
    one

BRUSSELS (EJP) — European Jewish Congress President, Moshe Kantor, has warned against the rising number of neo-Nazis in Europe. Speaking at a special commemoration organized Monday evening in the European Parliament’s Yehudi Menuhin Hall on the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Kantor said: “There are more neo-Nazis than Jews today in Europe.” Kantor, who lost half of his family in the Shoah or Holocaust in Ukraine, deplored the “trivialization” of the neo-Nazi phenomenon and warned that “lessons of history have not been learned.” “We should not allow things to be repeated,” he added, in the presence of the president of the European Parliament, Hans-Gert Poettering…

    two

A Short History of the Car Bomb — September is a dangerous month in New York city. The horror of our times started on September 20, 1920 when an Italian anarchist called Mario Buda packed a horse and cart with a hundred pounds of dynamite and drove it down Wall Street. At mid-day a massive explosion killed more than thirty and maimed many more. It was the first act of public terror using a wheeled vehicle. With the help of author Mike Davis, Tony MacGregor investigates a century of car bombing. The feature traces the story of how various individuals and groups have used the ‘informal’ weapon of war over the past century. [Radio National, 2pm, Saturday, February 2, 2008]

    three

‘AWAKENING FROM HISTORY?’ INTERGENERATIONAL TRAUMA IN THE NORTH OF IRELAND — A radio documentary produced by Colm McNaughton about intergenerational trauma in the North of Ireland will be broadcast on Radio National as part of the Radio Eye segment on Saturday, February 16, at 2pm and is to be repeated on Wednesday, February 20, at 1pm. Dr. McNaughton will also be making a presentation about intergenerational trauma in an Irish Studies seminar which will be held at Newman College, Swanston Street, Melbourne University at 6pm on Tuesday, February 19. For more information ring 0432 504 531.

    four

The GalGael Peoples of Scotland (Alastair McIntosh, 1997) : How do we overcome that anomie of which Durkheim wrote a century ago – that sense of placelessness, emptiness, rootlessness and meaninglessness which colonisation and the neo-colonialism of advanced industrial society has bequested? This question is daily forced in the face of Europe’s poor. And it has emerged in Scotland at the cutting edge of action for social and ecological justice. At its heart is the nature of identity and belonging in communities that are no longer tribal and pre-industrial, but multi-ethnic and postmodern.

    Child go break off from the herd
    go beyond the lowlands
    leave the valley of shed antlers
    the elders are sick
    it is your time now
Posted in History | Leave a comment

Frank Ellis

Posted on January 30, 2008 by @ndy

From the Department of Extremely-Late-Breaking News:

A short while ago, in an attempt at breaking the Guinness World Record for ‘Number of Missing Premises in a Completely Batshit Political Argument’, a Yanqui fascist claimed on my blog that “the anarchists disagree with [“allowing so much community freedom to exist in an anarchist society”] to the point of calling for my murder lest other people should decide how they want to live for themselves. In that sense they adhere strictly to the Frankfurt school of Marxism on social issues”. So: Frankfurt School = Bad. Why Frankfurt School = Bad? Frankfurt School = Marxist. Marxist = Bad. Marxist want destroy Western Civilization. Frankfurt School use:

Political Correctness… Multiculturalism… Militant feminism… Campus speech codes… Affirmative action… “Tolerance and Diversity”… Sensitivity Training… Assisted Suicide… Selectively Applied “Hate Crime” Laws… [Et cetera] The roots of this phenomenon can be traced to a little known movement transplanted from 1930’s Germany to the United States called the Frankfurt School. The principle advocates were Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer and Walter Benjamin.

Well, that’s what an American reactionary reckons anyway. Reading Darrin Hodges’ blog (rarely a pleasant experience), I discovered a link to this gem: ‘Multiculturalism and Marxism: An Englishman Looks at the Soviet Origins of Political Correctness’ by Frank Ellis. (Originally published in Vol 10, No. 11 (November 1999) of Jared Taylor‘s American Renaissance zine.) Ellis casts his net a lot wider; the culprit is not just Marxists of teh Frankfurt School, but (Soviet) Marxism: “Today’s “political correctness” is the direct descendent [sic] of Communist terror and brainwashing”. And so on and so forth. But who is Frank Ellis?

The endnote to his essay on Marx the Multiculturalist reveals that “Frank Ellis is professor of Russian at the University of Leeds in England”. Curious, I Googled ‘Frank Ellis’ and discovered that, as well as being very worried about the menace of Marxist-inspired multiculturalism, Frank was the subject of disciplinary proceedings at Leeds University before he retired. According to the BBC, “A Leeds University lecturer, Frank Ellis, took early retirement this year before a disciplinary hearing over his comments that there was evidence to suggest white people had higher IQ levels than black people”. (The article itself was titled ‘Time to Face the Truth about Multiculturalism’.)

Earlier (July 12, 2006) the BBC reported:

A lecturer at the centre of a race row has retired early from his post at Leeds University. Dr Frank Ellis sparked protests from students after he said that, on average, black people are less intelligent than white people. He was suspended earlier this year while the university began disciplinary proceedings against him. More than 500 students signed a petition asking for the Russian Studies lecturer to be sacked. In a statement, the university said Dr Ellis left on 30 June…

Tutor defends ‘racist’ stance (March 8, 2006):

The Leeds University academic at the centre of a racism row has defended his view that black people have a lower average IQ than white people. Dr Frank Ellis, a Russian tutor, says data stretching back 100 years points to a “persistent deviation” in the average IQ of black and white people. More than 500 students have signed a petition calling for him to be sacked. Leeds University said his views were “abhorrent” but there was no evidence he had discriminated against students…

Students stage demo against tutor (March 16, 2006):

Students from the University of Leeds have demonstrated against a lecturer who claims black people have a genetically lower IQ than white people. Dr Frank Ellis, a Russian tutor, said data stretching back 100 years pointed to a “persistent deviation” in the average IQ of black and white people. The Students’ Union claim Dr Ellis has breeched requirements for staff to promote equality and want him sacked. More than 200 students gathered at the city campus to make their views known. Dr Ellis has expressed support for the Bell Curve theory, examined in a book by Richard Hernnstein and Charles Murray, which concludes that ethnicity can play a part in IQ levels…

Racism row lecturer is suspended (March 23, 2006):

Dr Frank Ellis was suspended from his post as a lecturer at Leeds University pending disciplinary procedures. The university emphasised that the suspension was not itself a penalty but said it had been deemed appropriate given “the seriousness of the issues”. The lecturer in Russian and Slavonic Studies told a student newspaper there was a “persistent gap” in IQ levels. More than 500 students signed a petition calling for him to be sacked. Many of them later demonstrated in Leeds against his views. Leeds University had previously said that those views were “abhorrent” but there was no evidence he had discriminated against students…

The Frank Ellis saga has obvious parallels in Australia with that of former Macquarie University academic Andrew Fraser, not only in terms of both having adopted ‘controversial’ positions on the relationship between race and intelligence, on the one hand, and race and criminality, on the other, but in terms of their sharing a political perspective with US-based racialists at the quasi-respectable end of the white supremacist spectrum. Notably, such rhetoric, especially in the hands of populist politicians, can be used to great effect. One recent example is that of former Tory Minister Kevin Andrews, who justified his decision to halt the refugee intake from Africa on the grounds that they was more likely to be criminals. Well, maybe ‘not-so-great’ effect, as November’s election result suggests…

Some further discussion of the subject of academic freedom in the UK is centred around a mob called Academics for Academic Freedom. Note that there is no Constitutionally-protected right to ‘free speech’ in Australia.

See also : Campus Watch | Defend our universities! [sic] | ‘The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America’, David Horowitz, FrontPageMagazine.com, February 10, 2006

Posted in Anti-fascism, State / Politics, Student movement | 1 Comment

Suharto: Another life cut tragically short

Posted on January 28, 2008 by @ndy
    times 22.12.65 reporting bb dayorder doubleplusungood refs unpersons rewrite fullwise upsub antefiling

From the Department of Crime Doesn’t Pay comes the sad news [AP, January 26/7] that former Indonesian President Suharto (1965–1998) has died at the tender age of 86, after a lifetime of service to the poor of Indonesia:

…Suharto took power in 1965, with Washington’s strong support and assistance. Army-led massacres wiped out the PKI [Partai Komunis Indonesia/Communist Party of Indonesia] and devastated its mass base in “one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century,” comparable to the atrocities of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, the CIA reported, judging “the Indonesian coup” to be “certainly one of the most significant events of the 20th century”. Perhaps half a million or more were killed within a few months.

The events were greeted [by] undisguised euphoria. The New York Times described the “staggering mass slaughter” as “a gleam of light in Asia,” praising Washington for keeping its own role quiet so as not to embarrass the “Indonesian moderates” who were cleansing their society, then rewarding them with generous aid. Time praised the “quietly determined” leader Suharto with his “scrupulously constitutional” procedures “based on law, not on mere power” as he presided over a “boiling bloodbath” that was “the West’s best news for years in Asia”.

The reaction was near uniform. The World Bank restored Indonesia to favour. Western governments and corporations flocked to Suharto’s “paradise for investors,” impeded only by the rapacity of the ruling family. For more than 20 years, Suharto was hailed as a “moderate” who is “at heart benign” (The Economist) as he compiled a record of slaughter, terror, and corruption that has few counterparts in postwar history.

Suharto is also hailed for his economic achievements. An Australian specialist who participated in economic modeling in Indonesia dismisses the standard figures as “seriously inaccurate”: the regularly reported 7% growth rate, for example, was invented on government orders, overruling the assessment of the economists. He confirms that economic growth took place, thanks to Indonesia’s oil reserves and the green revolution, “the benefits of which even the massive inefficiency of the system of corruption could not entirely erode.” The benefits were enhanced by extraction of other resources and the supply of super-cheap labour, kept that way by the labour standards that impress Washington. Much of the rest is “a mirage,” as was quickly revealed when “foreign investors stampeded.”

The estimated $80 billion private debt is held by at most a few hundred individuals, Indonesian economists estimate, perhaps as few as fifty. The wealth of the Suharto family is estimated at roughly the scale of the IMF rescue package. The estimates suggest simple ways to overcome the “financial crisis,” but these are not on the agenda. The costs are to be borne primarily by 200 million Indonesians who borrowed nothing, along with Western taxpayers, in accord with the rules of “really existing capitalism”… ~ Noam Chomsky, ‘Indonesia, master card in Washington’s hand’, Le Monde Diplomatique, June 1998

Oddly, The Newspaper of Record has not greeted Suharto’s tragic death in quite the same awed tones as it did his assumption of power in 1965. According to this year’s version, his “32-year dictatorship was one of the most brutal and corrupt of the 20th century”, characterised by “pervasive and large-scale corruption; repressive, militarized rule; and a convulsion of mass bloodletting when he seized power in the late 1960s that took at least 500,000 lives”.

Huh? What happened to the gleam of light?

Time:

Stability had been Suharto’s gift to his country. He had come to power at the head of a junta of generals in 1965, overthrowing the country’s flamboyant and charismatic first president, Sukarno, whose friendship with Beijing and predeliction for Communists in the government had brought the country to the brink of economic collapse and civil war. Ensconced in power, Suharto proceeded to purge the country of Communism and anyone suspected of Communist sympathy. No one knows how many died. One estimate has it at 500,000 — among them many Indonesians of Chinese descent. The Communist Party was outlawed and Indonesian citizens banned from having Chinese names…

Wha-? Surely, if Suharto’s coup and the subsequent mass murder was the West’s best news for years in Asia, the death of one of its key architects merits some more extensive acknowledgment? Locally, The Patron Saint of Adelaide Private School Boys, Alexander Downer, has perhaps come closest to recognising Soharto’s many virtues (in both theory and practice):

“He was a man who despite his human rights record in Indonesia, which was less than desirable, he was committed to a good relationship with Australia and understood the importance of Australia to Indonesia,” Mr Downer told AAP from his home in the Adelaide Hills.

“I always appreciated that and he was always very civil in my dealings with him and very responsive to building a relationship between Australia and Indonesia.

“He had a very good vision for building a strong South-East Asian community and a positive view about Australia being part of that.”

Speaking of which, Eighties’ music has become synonymous with Disco, Pop, and New Wave. But when I think Eighties, I think Crucifucks. I wanna take the President / Chop off his head / And mail it to them in a garbage bag / Hinkley had a vision / Hinkley had a vision…

    As soon as Winston had dealt with each of the messages, he clipped his speakwritten corrections to the appropriate copy of the Times and pushed them into the pneumatic tube. Then, with a movement which was as nearly as possible unconscious, he crumpled up the original message and any notes that he himself had made, and dropped them into the memory hole to be devoured by the flames.
Posted in !nataS, State / Politics | 14 Comments