A pained reaction to a wanker

Posted on January 28, 2007 by @ndy
    Of any two options, choose the third.

    If God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish Him.

Some bloke called Jef was in Melbourne last November to attend the 2006 Australian Skeptics Convention. When not confronted by the quizzical stares of other convention-goers, Jef imagined attempting to have A Socratic dialogue with an anarchist (November 22, 2006). Sharp as a razor, Jef notes that as well as his own skeptical self “Many others were in Melbourne as well. All were there for a good time — especially the anarchists engaging in running skirmishes with the police”. In a back-handed compliment to the organisers of the Skeptics Convention, “The anarchists were having a great time” reckons Jef, as “they appeared to be angry, and the press described them as such, but they were only feigning anger while experiencing joy”. Odd that a skeptic should also be a mind-reader, but stranger things have happened (I guess). As a stick-in-the-mud, Jef “decided to spoil a young woman anarchist’s fun by expressing sincere interest in their agenda.”

Ho ho ho.

Jef: I see you want to abolish capitalism.
She: Yes.
Jef: I’m very interested and perhaps I might join your group — but I need to know more about your program. How do you propose to abolish capitalism?
She: By revolution.
Jef: That’s interesting, how will you organise yourselves to bring about such a revolution?
She: Well, when we have enough like-minded people, we can organise ourselves to subvert capitalist institutions by undermining them from within.

He: Rudi Dutschke‘s brain-child, The Long March Through The Institutions, as well as being a) a favourite hobby-horse of right-wing critics of socialistical gub’mint and b) largely discredited, is a distinctly un-anarchist proposition… Unless, perhaps, the ‘fun-filled young woman anarchist’ who is the unfortunate subject of Jef’s peculiar line of questioning is in some way referring to the notion of prefigurative politics.

As for the concept of The Long March, according to George Katsiaficas:

Entering the Bundestag as a committed but loyal opposition corresponded to a strategy dubbed the “long march through the institutions” in the 1960s by Rudi Dutschke [1940–1979]. According to this idea, when possible, a revolutionary movement should introduce its values and ideas within established political forms, thereby reaching millions of people and setting in motion new possibilities for change. The continuing process of reforms unleashed by this strategy is supposed to encourage popular participation and to raise consciousness and expectations. If the existing institutions can be shown to be incapable of creating, in this case, an ecologically viable society, then many people might be persuaded of the need for a whole new system with reasonable economic and political policies (or at least of the need to vote Green).

It should be noted that socialist student leader Rudi’s grand strategy for radically transforming German society developed after an assassination attempt, outside his apartment on April 11, 1968, by a RiGhT-wInG-nUt: a house-painter named Josef Bachmann. Bachmann called Dutschke a “filthy communist swine” before shooting him three times, and was supposedly inspired by reading Deutsche National Zeitung, a neo-Nazi periodical, “a cutting from which is later found on his person, proclaiming ‘Stop Dutschke Now!’.” (Note further, that “After the attempted assassination in 1968, Rudi and his family went to the United Kingdom in the hope that he could recuperate there. He was accepted at Cambridge University to finish his degree in 1969, but in 1971 the Tory government under Edward Heath expelled him and his family as an “undesirable alien” who had engaged in ‘subversive activity’.”)

An emotional meeting is held at the Technical University and the blame laid to rest on the shoulders of the right-wing Springer press. From the university the students march on the Springer building in Kochstr. chanting ‘Springer out of Berlin! Bild fired the gun too!’

Ulrike Meinhof, who’s at the SDS centre, drives her konkret colleague [Stefan] Aust [now editor-in-chief of Der Spiegel] to the Springer compound. When they arrive at the compound gates a student comes up to them and says more cars are needed to stop the Springer trucks getting out. Ulrike isn’t too keen on her car being part of a barricade, but Aust tells her to park it on the pavement, so it will still be part of the barricade but won’t block the road. However, the police still make sure the trucks get through and Meinhof is one of those charged with using force. Aust then comes to Ulrike’s assistance once again by managing to prove that her car wasn’t causing an obstruction.

During the Springer siege molotovs used to set trucks alight are supplied by one Peter Urbach, who is later revealed to be an agent-provocateur in the employ of the government. In the same weekend a student and a press photographer are killed in vicious street-fighting in Munich; and Bommi Baumann is arrested for slashing tyres and sentenced to nine months imprisonment. The Meinhof column in the May konkret is entitled ‘From Protest to Resistance’.

— televisionaries: the red army faction story : 1963-1993 (tom vague, 1994)

Speaking of Bommi, here are his thoughts on Rudi:

At the time of the attempt on Rudi, I was completely immersed in the political scene and saw myself as a political activist, very consciously, and considered revolution an alternative…

At Easter, I had known Rudi from SDS and just about everywhere. Rudi was different from the students. I was often with him at the university cafeteria, where we’d sit around at a table — it was cheaper than anywhere else — and shoot the breeze, or later, watch his child. I always had a good relationship with Rudi. He was a really amazing guy.

Rudi’s talks were always pretty abstract, and not everyone understood him — at least, I didn’t — but if you just talked to him, he was a perfectly normal human being, natural, just like everyone else; and really, that’s the most important thing. But he had the power — you could see it right away: that man was no bookworm or rhetoric spouter, he was really on top of his thing. If you saw him upstairs in the SDS office, in his apartment, he always cleaned up and took care of things. With that guy, you knew he wouldn’t lie to you.

That’s an important thing, too: it’s why a lot of workers didn’t get involved with the student movement. Instinctively you can see that that’s actually the guy at the top you’re always having trouble with. It’s that healthy mistrust. And that mistrust is still rooted — it’s actually the last bit of class consciousness that’s still intact in the workers. That they didn’t get involved in the student thing, in this APO [extra-parliamentary] number, is really a question of class consciousness.

The German working class has been sold out by everybody, be they socialists or mad Hitler. Everyone came and just shit on them, all the way through, from red to black, from Communists to Nazis. It just didn’t happen like this in any country like it did in Germany, so there’s good reason why they’re not getting involved anymore.

But with Rudi, a guy like that, you noticed right away, he’s all right, he’ll go through fire with you. He won’t just split when things get heavy. With the other students, I checked the thing out for myself, emotionally: ‘how will he act in another situation?’

Today when I think about how I saw people, emotionally or instinctively, everything is verified. There was a certain kind of arrogance with many of these students. So the mistrust was justified. I just listened at first, and checked it out, because first of all, I had to think myself into these things, into these processes. I never had much to say there.

— Bommi Baumann, Wie Alles Anfing [How it all began], translated by Helene Ellenbogen and Wayne Parker, Pulp Press, Munich / Vancouver, 1975 / 1977.

Where were we? Oh yeah…

Jef: It seems to me that you are on dangerous ground here. Once you start organising yourselves then you will need leaders, processes for makng decisions, allocation of roles by a central authority, punishment of those who don’t accept that central authority… won’t your organisation turn into a sort of proto-state within a state?
She: We can avoid that by keeping to a collectivist agenda.

He: Obviously, for Jef, organisation implies hierarchy: organisation, by very definition, requires hierarchy.

Anarchists, among others, disagree. In addition, anarchists maintain that non-hierarchical relationships should be generalised. In other words, anarchists wish to create an-archy: a society without rulers (or, by definition, a class of ruled subjects).

At least, such is one ideological expression of a movement ‘of movements’ which has its roots in nineteenth century Europe, one which Jef sees — or thinks he sees — in action at G20. The idea that anarchists have somehow failed to consider the considerable obstacles practical questions of social organisation place on this particular road to freedom is false. Moreover, anarchist thought is historical and materialist; but not in the same sense as Marxism or other doctrines are. Historical in the sense that it is informed by (and has helped to shape) the history of human society; and materialist in the sense that… well, Wetzel describes a kind of “minimal materialism” thusly:

…the idea that class structure, based on power relations between groups of people in social production, is the most fundamental or basic structuring in society. The class structure is the basic structure of control over social production, the basic economic structure, according to minimal materialism. This structure is supposed to be the background against which everything else about society is to be explained or understood…

As KJ Kenafick, in Marxism, Freedom And The State (“Dedicated to the memory of JW (Chummy) Fleming who, for nearly sixty years upheld the cause of freedom at the Yarra Bank Open Air Forum, Melbourne, Australia”; Freedom Press, London, 1984 [1950]) wrote:

It is obvious of course that Marxism and Bakuninism despite these differences have much in common and Bakunin himself has not failed to point this out in the pages that follow. Both systems were founded on the idea of Historical Materialism, both accepted the class struggle, both were Socialist in the sense of being opposed to private property in the means of production. They differed in that Bakuninism refused to accept the State under any circumstances whatever, that it rejected Party politics or Parliamentary action, and that it was founded on the principle of liberty as against that of authority: and indeed, it is this spirit of liberty (not Individualism) that distinguishes Bakunin, and in the light of which his criticisms of Marx and Marxism must be read. He had the true instinct that no man can be really emancipated except by himself.

And speaking of men with sound political instincts:

Jef: I may still be interested in joining your group. Assuming you are successful, and as you start to develop into a proto-state, I can form a core group of real anarchists dedicated to overturning your pseudo-anarchist but actually fascist proto-state. Of course, I must be ever-watchful that a more radical subversive group doesn’t develop within my group in order to overthrow us.
She: That’s bullshit, you’re just stirring.

He: That is bullshit. But Jef’s just taking his own daft argument to its logical extreme. (And by doing so, probably owing more to Aristotle than to Plato.) Strictly speaking, it makes sense if one accepts his initial proposition, and firm but irrational belief that Organisation is Man’s (/A Young Woman Anarchist‘s) Original Sin. Jef’s stirring, but it’s a very old pot.

Finally, to pretend to be able to speak about anarchism without being able at the same time to recognise one of its central political strategies — the rejection of state power — suggests little, if any, serious analysis. But then, we already knew that — making Jef not only an ignorant fool, but a painful one at that.

Jef: No I’m not, honestly… just one last question, are those Nike trainers you’re wearing? Hey everybody, look, she’s wearing Nike trainers, she’s a capitalist stooge and maybe a police plant… look out, she’s got a camera, she’s taking pictures of us… come and see the violence inherent in the system… come and see the violence inherent in the system… I’m being repressed!

He: Whatever mate. By the way, nice cardigan.

Jef: Of course, this isn’t really a Socratic dialogue. Socrates allowed his respondents to develop extended responses to his finely judged questions. As they responded to Socrates they developed insights into the anomalies in their position, and their perceptions inexorably moved towards more truthiness. All I did was amuse myself, and the cretin I was talking to was incapable of insight.

Of course, this isn’t really a skeptic: more of a pompous arsehole, really. And Socrates’ dialogues — to be precise, Plato’s imaginative reconstructions of Socrates’ philosophy via the use of Socratic discourse — probably functioned more simply in order to demonstrate what a clever-toga he was.

Posted in !nataS, Anarchism | 2 Comments

Have A Slack Invasion Day… You Bastards

Posted on January 26, 2007 by @ndy

Koalas sleep for approximately 18 hours out of 24.

Posted in Uncategorized | 11 Comments

When Does Green Rage Become…

Posted on January 25, 2007 by @ndy

…ECO-TERRORISM?

… “Terrorism is terrorism — no matter the motive,” FBI director Robert Mueller said in January 2006, after the Bush administration announced indictments in an investigation it calls Operation Backfire. “The FBI is committed to protecting Americans from all crime and all terrorism, including acts of domestic terrorism on behalf of animal rights or the environment.”

Many were appalled. How could anyone possibly use that singularly loaded word to describe these acts? Where is the moral equivalence between burning an SUV in the dead of night (and doing as much as you can, given the nature of the business at hand, to see that no one gets hurt) and ramming a 767 into a skyscraper? When Eugene’s daily newspaper, the Register-Guard, used the word eco-terrorism to describe the investigation, at least one reader took its editors to task, writing that the paper “appears to confuse arson occurring within the context of a nonviolent campaign with terrorism.” The paper opted for the softer-sounding eco-sabotage thereafter …

— ‘When Does Green Rage Become Ecoterrorism?’, Matt Rasmussen, Orion Magazine, January 25, 2007: “Are radical environmentalists wackos, terrorists, or prophets warning against environmental catastrophe?”

Further Questions :

1) How many roads must a man walk down… before you call him a man?
2) Who will decide who comes to this country… and the circumstances under which they come?
3) If six turned out to be nine… would you mind?
4) If all the hippies cut off all their hair… would you care?
5) The average arson sentence in Oregon in 2001 was just under six years, rapists averaged 10 years and murderers 14 years.

… Jeffrey “Free” Luers is a skinny kid from suburban Los Angeles who is serving his [seventh] year in prison. In 2000, when he was twenty-one, Luers and an accomplice were arrested for setting fire to three SUVs in the middle of the night at a car lot near the University of Oregon (a separate action from those included in the Operation Backfire indictment). A Eugene judge sentenced Luers, who refused all of the government’s plea bargain offers, to nearly twenty-three years in prison. The authorities say they made an example of Luers to forestall further crimes; activists say they made a martyr of him. Luers remains unrepentant. In a recent message to his supporters, he said, “I got careless, I got sloppy. I slipped up. I got caught.” …

[Answers : 1) Dunno. But join John and Ken as they explore whether men and women are really from different planets after all. 2) Hmmm, yes: who decides? 3) TBA. 4) TBA. 5) Smash the state.]

    Today is my six year anniversary. I almost didn’t notice to tell you the truth. It isn’t just because one day blends into another in here. Right now I just don’t really care that much that I’m in prison. I know how that sounds but that’s brutally honest. I got careless, I got sloppy. I slipped up. I got caught.

    But, over the years something happened. I got stronger. I got louder. I became more powerful than the state ever wanted me to be. You see, I was supposed to be a message to you all out there that would dare resist. But not enough people listened. Some kept fighting back. They kept liberating animals. They kept burning things down.

    Now the state wants to send a more powerful message. They sent in agents and infiltrators. They bought off activists and turned others into traitors with threats. The message is simple: the government sees this movement as a threat. And they are telling you that if you challenge them they will try and lock you away for life. It’s a powerful message. It’s down right intimidating, to be honest.

    But, this last weekend (June 9-11) another message was sent by 43 cities around the world. That message was very clear: we will not disappear. Yeah, some of us are going to end up in prison. That’s a fact. Some of the weaker individuals might break under that threat. That’s a fact, too. And that is intimidating. Why sugarcoat it?

    However, when an international solidarity event, in which 43 cities participate, can be organized from a maximum security prison… That’s not just intimidating. That’s a threat.

    There’s no denying the authorities have a lot of power. But so do we and we have to recognize that. We have to harness that energy. Every time we are pushed we must push back twice as hard. Thank you for not being silent. Thank you for standing up for the “green scare” victims, the earth liberation prisoners and for me. I am so grateful, so very grateful I can’t wait to read and hear about all the events. We have shown that we are united, that we can and will support our prisoners.

    Now let us show our might. They have heard your words. Make them feel your actions. The earth, the animals, the future, our children, your freedom, the people of Iraq, your very own community needs you to fight back. You are all we have. Your resistance is our only weapon, our only defense. You are the only protection we have left.

    PLEASE do EVERYTHING you can to help.

    — Prison dispatch from Jeff “Free” Luers (June 16, 2006)

    Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?

    Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price — we think the price is worth it.

    — 60 Minutes (May 12, 1996)

Posted in State / Politics, War on Terror | Leave a comment

Greek anarchists running Monkey marathon

Posted on January 25, 2007 by @ndy

In the world before Monkey, primal chaos reigned. Heaven sought order, but the phoenix can fly only when its feathers are grown. The four worlds formed again and yet again, as endless aeons wheeled and passed. Time and the pure essences of Heaven all worked upon a certain rock, old as creation. It became magically fertile. The first egg was named “Thought”. Tathagata Buddha, the Father Buddha, said, “With our thoughts, we make the world”. Elemental forces caused the egg to hatch. From it came a stone monkey…

The nature of Monkey was… irrepressible!

Persistent anarchist attacks in Greece force new police attention
[AP]
International Herald Tribune
January 22, 2007

ATHENS, Greece: Greek law enforcement leaders, alarmed by renewed [sic] outbreaks of anarchist violence, met Monday seeking ways to end increasingly frequent firebombings and vandalism in the country’s two largest cities.

The country’s police chief met with the head of the Supreme Court after a prosecutor last Friday ordered an investigation into the violence and why police had failed to make any arrests.

The meeting followed further attacks in Thessaloniki, with assailants early Monday throwing firebombs at a bank and outside a university building. Nobody was hurt…

[Such attacks have been an almost daily occurrence in Greece for f’n years: January 3, 2006: a diplomatic car is set on fire in Mets, Athens; branches of governing party ND in Kipseli, Athens, set on fire; two cars owned by the Mayor of Therisos Canon, Crete, are set on fire; January 4: branch offices of Apsis Bank in Athens are set on fire; branches of ND in Exarchia, Athens, molotoved; police CCTV box in Zogafrou, Athens set on fire; January 9: branch offices of National Bank in Varkiza, Athens, set on fire; January 14: branch offices of National Bank are again set on fire, this time in Thessaloniki; January 26: Branch offices of PASOK set on fire in N. Smirni, Athens… etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Source: @ News, No.34, January–June 2006.]

The sight of youths on foot, their faces obscured by masks, prowling the streets in unruly packs and wreaking nightly havoc is menacing but also familiar. Stylish anarchists have been around in Athens and Thessaloniki for more than 20 years and now have reappeared with a vengeance.

Thanos Veremis, head of the national council for education, an advisory body, said these individuals were taking advantage of anti-government protests to cause trouble.

“(It’s) a predictable reaction of the minority that would rather not see any changes,” he said in an interview.

The extremists “have nothing to do with university, but fall in with the demonstrations and usually make the entire affair more dramatic, at the expense of shopkeepers and policemen.”

Two anarchists [Tarasio Zadorozni and Gerasimos Kiriakopulos] awaiting trial in prison near Athens have been on hunger strike for more than a month over allegedly forced police confessions last May. Last fall, a Cypriot student in Thessaloniki was hospitalized after a police beating that was shown on national television…

Ooops.

Posted in Anarchism, State / Politics, War on Terror | 2 Comments

“We shot them under Article 301.”

Posted on January 25, 2007 by @ndy

An Armenian/Turkish journalist and ‘person of interest’ to Turkish authorities, Hrant Dink, had his funeral a few days ago, after having been murdered by a Young Turk. More than 50,000 people filled the streets of Istanbul in mourning (Turks and Armenians mourn journalist in rare show of unity, Sebnem Arsu and Susanne Fowler, International Herald Tribune, January 23, 2007):

…Dink’s weeping daughter, Sera, carried a picture of her father as onlookers tossed flowers and applauded in tribute. At one point, the entourage passed a billboard several stories tall advertising blue jeans with the headline “Make History”.

Many mourners held red carnations distributed by the local mayor’s office or waved black and white placards reading, “We are all Hrant Dink” in Turkish on one side and in Armenian on the other.

Still other signs read “Murder 301”, a reference to the Turkish law under which scores of writers and intellectuals, including Dink and the Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk, have been prosecuted in lawsuits filed by [Turkish] nationalists.

Many of Dink’s friends and colleagues hold the government responsible to a degree for Dink’s death because it allowed nationalist groups to sue him, forcing him to stand trial where he was convicted on the charge of insulting Turkishness, and earning notoriety among [Turkish] nationalists…

Dink is not known to have collaborated with Turkish police in their efforts to apprehend anti-Summit protesters, but investigations are continuing. Other investigations have revealed that, late last year, four Turks were prosecuted under ‘Murder 301’ laws for publishing a Turkish translation of the book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. Publisher Fatih Tas said that “he had some 26 cases opened against him. A previous case for publishing another book by Chomsky in Turkish was dropped after the author flew to Turkey to attend the trial.” As with the prior trial in 2002, the publishers were acquitted.

Well, the title is actually borrowed from a book by Walter Lippmann, written back around 1921, in which he described what he called “the manufacture of consent” as “a revolution” in “the practice of democracy”. What it amounts to is a technique of control. And he said this was useful and necessary because “the common interests” — the general concerns of all people — “elude” the public. The public just isn’t up to dealing with them. And they have to be the domain of what he called a “specialized class”…

But when the State loses the bludgeon, when you can’t control people by force and when the voice of the people can be heard, you have this problem. It may make people so curious and so arrogant that they don’t have the humility to submit to a civil rule [Clement Walker, 1661] and therefore you have to control what people think.

And the standard way to do this is to resort to what in more honest days used to be called propaganda. Manufacture of consent. Creation of necessary illusions. Various ways of either marginalizing the general public or reducing them to apathy in some fashion…

Ross Reynolds : You write in Manufacturing Consent that it’s the primary function of the mass media in the United States to mobilize public support for the special interests that dominate the government and the private sector. What are those interests?

Chomsky : Well, if you want to understand the way any society works, ours or any other, the first place to look is who is in a position to make the decisions that determine the way the society functions…

Societies differ, but in ours, the major decisions over what happens in the society — decisions over investment and production and distribution and so on — are in the hands of a relatively concentrated network of major corporations and conglomerates and investment firms. They are also the ones who staff the major executive positions in the government. They’re the ones who own the media and they’re the ones who have to be in a position to make the decisions. They have an overwhelmingly dominant role in the way life happens. You know, what’s done in the society. Within the economic system, by law and in principle, they dominate. The control over resources and the need to satisfy their interests imposes very sharp constraints on the political system and on the ideological system…

David Barsamian : When we talk about manufacturing of consent, whose consent is being manufactured?

Chomsky : To start with, there are two different groups, we can get into more detail, but at the first level of approximation, there’s two targets for propaganda. One is what’s sometimes called the political class. There’s maybe twenty percent of the population which is relatively educated, more or less articulate, plays some kind of role in decision-making. They’re supposed to sort of participate in social life — either as managers, or cultural managers like teachers and writers and so on. They’re supposed to vote, they’re supposed to play some role in the way economic and political and cultural life goes on. Now their consent is crucial. So that’s one group that has to be deeply indoctrinated. Then there’s maybe eighty percent of the population whose main function is to follow orders and not think, and not to pay attention to anything — and they’re the ones who usually pay the costs.

In other news, Perth-based uranium mining company Paladin “plans to increase its production profile to 7.5 million pounds per annum by late 2008 after it brings its second project, Kayelekera, in Malawi, online. Paladin also holds a swag of assets in Australia. In 2003, Paladin shares were trading at about one cent.” Paladin also plans to keep pesky journalists away from Kayekelara.

With the full co-operation of local police, naturally.

Posted in Media, State / Politics | Leave a comment

Vegan punk A Matter of Record

Posted on January 24, 2007 by @ndy

‘Cos it’s in The New York Times:

Strict Vegan Ethics, Frosted With Hedonism
Julia Moskin
January 24, 2007

ISA CHANDRA MOSKOWITZ, a vegan chef, does not particularly like to talk about tofu. Ditto seitan, tempeh and nutritional yeast.

“I think vegan cooks need to learn to cook vegetables first,” she said last week during a cupcake-baking marathon. “Then maybe they can be allowed to move on to meat substitutes.”

Ms. Moskowitz, 34, was born in Coney Island Hospital, lives in Brooklyn, and is a typically impatient and opinionated New Yorker. She can’t stand how slowly most cooks peel garlic, makes relentless fun of Rachael Ray and rolls her eyes at the mention of California hippies.

But as a vegan and a follower of punk music since age 14, she is also part of a culinary movement that helped turn the chaotic energy of punk culture of the 1970s and 1980s into a progressive political force.

“Punk taught me to question everything,” Ms. Moskowitz said. “Of course, in my case that means questioning how to make a Hostess cupcake without eggs, butter or cream.”

…

At 16, Ms. Moskowitz dropped out of the High School of Music and Art in New York to follow bands, live in squats in the East Village and cook for social justice.

“I learned knife skills by cooking for Food not Bombs,” she said, referring to the activist group that protests corporate and government food policy. “But I also learned to love Julia Child and Martha Stewart. Vegan food can and must be pretty,” she said, pounding a fist on the butcher-block counter.

Ms. Moskowitz’s kitchen, like punk music itself, has a strong do-it-yourself aesthetic. Her husband, a carpenter, builds more shelves when the ingredients threaten to take over, the oven needs frequent coaxing to get up to temperature, and if Fizzle the cat wants to sit on top of the refrigerator, the cupcakes must move over and make room…

Right on.

Posted in Anarchism, Cats, Media, Music | Leave a comment

REVEALED! Foreign provocateurs have long history of causing trouble

Posted on January 23, 2007 by @ndy

Paris’ dangerous classes and their “hobbies” now open for further bourgeois inspection and titillation:

Paris’ ‘dangerous classes’ and their hobbies
Paris: The Secret History, Andrew Hussey, Bloomsbury, 2007
Philadelphia Inquirer
(Reviewed by Liz Lopatto)
January 21, 2007

The French call them the classes dangereuses and, according to Andrew Hussey’s Paris: The Secret History, their hobbies include art, murder, philosophy, starving, literature, whoring, drinking, rioting, and revolution.

It is hard to go wrong with such subjects, and Paris is a tremendously entertaining read, despite the clunky subtitle. Not much in Paris is actually secret – rather, it is the history of the historically underrepresented “dangerous classes,” the poor, mostly. Hussey spends little time with the Parisian government (unless someone is aiming to overthrow it) and upper classes, so it is best to think of Paris as a supplement to an “official” history rather than the final word. The book is clearly a labor of love, and its light tone makes it a quick read.

Certain hobbies of the French that seem inexplicable to Americans (student riots, nearly legal whoring, dying in ill-advised wars, drinking at all hours) actually have long, proud histories. [Amazing: ignorant Americans.] Even if the reader suspects that getting drunk and starting a riot is not the best use of one’s leisure time, finding out that such riots have a history of nearly a millennium (the first was in 1229) makes the recent student strikes more understandable. As Hussey notes in his introduction, subtitled ‘Autopsy of an Old Whore’, “it is no accident that the word ‘Parisian’ has long been synonymous with the word ‘agitator’.” Indeed…

Hussey has also authored a biography of Guy Debord. According to Ken Knabb, “Andrew Hussey’s The Game of War: The Life and Death of Guy Debord (Jonathan Cape, 2001) is riddled with factual errors. The author’s crude interpretations of Debord’s supposed personal motives are derived primarily from hostile sources and reflect a very superficial understanding of Debord’s project and perspectives.” This doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.

See also : Review by Alan Riding, International Herald Tribune, December 26, 2006; World capital of revolution, Review by Carole Angier, Daily Telegraph, August 13, 2006; Review by Tim Martin, The Independent, July 16, 2006; City of Light’s Dark Side, Review by Donald Morrison, Time, July 9, 2006; Ian Pindar, The hidden city, “Ian Pindar enjoys Andrew Hussey’s tour of the erogenous zones of Paris”, The Guardian, July 8, 2006; Blood red – always ? la mode, Review by Peter Ackroyd, The Times, [?]; The Bonnot Gang, Richard Parry, Rebel Press, London, 1987.

In other news, a fatuous review of several new books on ‘punk’ displays the incomprehension typical of (other) cultural mediocrities: Punk wasn’t supposed to be for posterity, “Thirty years after God Save the Queen, the rock genre’s influence has outlasted its own predictions. But why, asks Robert Sandall, do we think it all began in Britain?”, The Australian, January 23, 2007.

‘We’ don’t, Chucky. In September 1976, The Saints independently recorded and distributed copies of their debut single “(I’m) Stranded”; the first ‘punk rock’ act to do so. And they came from Brisbane, not Birmingham, the single being recorded at Windows Studios and released on the band’s own Fatal Records. (Oh c’mon!)

Further, says Sandall, punk had a:

…self-proclaimed leader, Malcolm McLaren, a former art student who ran a fetishistic clothes shop on the King’s Road with his girlfriend, designer Vivienne Westwood. Having recruited a practically tone-deaf Johnny “Rotten” Lydon to sing with the Sex Pistols, “because this was the best selling point”, McLaren understood punk for what it was: an innovative approach to marketing. “If people bought the records for the music, this thing would have died a death long ago,” he once said.

And if his vaunted situationist rhetoric, culled from a French anarchist sect, flew way over the heads of most of the audience, there were lots of other cultural elements in the punk package that had a strong local appeal, and in some cases still do…

Fuck some people are stupid.

(Sandall’s scribblings were originally published as Seeing the Future, in The Times, January 14, 2007.)

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G20: Two more arrests

Posted on January 23, 2007 by @ndy

The Age reports that two of their Most Wanted have today joined with two other individuals arrested last week at Melbourne Magistrates Court, all four being bailed to re-appear on May 11; the date which most of those so far charged appear to have been allocated to have their day in court. Please note that the left should offer no comfort to these crazies, and we should do whatever we can to isolate them. They are wreckers. If they grow in Australia it will simply make it harder to build future protests and movements. The Age, Herald Sun, Crimestoppers, Operation Salver and the Victoria Police in general are therefore to be congratulated on bringing the anarchist crazies involved in the ultra-violence (and in no serious sense part of the demo) to justice. However, it should be noted that at least 40 New Zealand anarchists remain at large, as well as a considerable number of anarchists from Europe — England, Germany and Sweden in particular — and interstate. For the sake of building a revolutionary organisation that can participate in mass struggles, draw lessons from past victories and defeats and convince the working class of the way forward to socialism, further arrests of these apolitical hooligans is therefore absolutely crucial: we need to take a clear and unambiguous stand against these provocateurs.

Workers and bosses have fundamentally counterposed interests; we must take sides.

Two charged over G20 protests
Julia Medew
The Age
January 23, 2007

Three men and a woman involved in violent protests at the G20 meeting in Melbourne last November have appeared in court charged with affray and rioting.

The fresh charges come just days after police released 28 pictures of “people of interest” in their hunt to identify those suspected of attacking police and damaging property.

Police sifted through 10,000 still pictures and 3,500 hours of footage, including some from media organisations and the public, to compile the list.

Today two of the people pictured on the list, John Finlayson and David Nguyen, appeared at Melbourne Magistrates Court charged with offences over their involvement in the protests.

Sergeant Brent Scurry from the Salver taskforce said Finlayson, 36, of West Brunswick [previously reported as being 25], who is facing six charges including reckless conduct for throwing bins and bottles at police and intentionally damaging a police brawler van, turned himself into police after his picture was published last Friday.

“He walked into the Brunswick police station last week and said ‘I’m your guy’,” Sergeant Scurry said today.

David Nguyen, 22, of Coburg, whose picture was also released by police last week, appeared at the same court today charged with five offences including affray and reckless conduct for throwing a bottle [which must have been absolutely massive by the sounds of it] at approximately 12 members of Victoria Police.

Two other co-accused, Sina Brown-Davis, 39, of Caulfield North, and Eric Palsis, 37, of Carlton, also appeared at Melbourne Magistrates Court today charged over the protest.

Palsis faces seven charges including reckless conduct for throwing a metal pole at police and escaping from police custody.

Brown Davis is charged with four offences including possessing a prohibited weapon, namely a tonfa — a side-handled baton used in martial arts — and intentionally damaging a police brawler van.

Magistrate Duncan Reynolds extended bail for all four to appear in court again on May 11.

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G20: Arrest #28? // Josh Wolf

Posted on January 23, 2007 by @ndy

Apparently, this is arrest #28: buggered if I know how police have come up with that figure but. In any case, congratulations to the relevant employees at The Age and the Herald Sun on this, another small victory in the life-or-death struggle against the forces that daily conspire to destroy our Marvellous city and rend small babies limb from limb.

Or something.

On the subject of media collaboration with state law enforcement, you can read ‘A day in the life’ of a real journalist named Josh Wolf — imprisoned for refusing to provide police with his footage of an anti-G8 protest in San Francisco in July, 2005 — below. In 2006, The Society of Professional Journalists awarded Josh a Journalist of the Year award “for upholding the principles of a free and independent press.” Note that, as of January 19, 2007, the US state has awarded Josh with a lengthy prison sentence for the same crime, having already been in jail for over 150 days for Grand Jury contempt. In March, Josh will become the longest-serving journalist to be incarcerated in US history. Extensive Australian media reportage of Josh’s case may be found here.

Meanwhile:

Another man charged over G20 violence
[AAP]
The Age
January 22, 2007

Police have charged another man over Melbourne’s G20 riots, taking the number charged to 28.

The 25-year-old man from West Brunswick, in the city’s inner-north, was interviewed and charged on Monday, according to a police statement.

He will appear in the Melbourne Magistrates Court on Tuesday to answer charges of riot, affray, conduct endangering a person and criminal damage.

Victoria Police’s Operation Salver has been working to find those involved in the violent street protests centred on the G20 summit, which was staged in Melbourne in November.

The summit was a meeting of finance ministers and reserve bank governors from across the globe.

Josh Wolf: Journalist With Integrity

Sarah Phelan of the San Francisco Bay Guardian writes (December 19, 2006):

San Francisco freelance journalist Josh Wolf has spent [over] four months in prison for refusing to surrender outtakes of videos he took at an anarchist protest turned violent. Recently, Wolf wrote a letter describing his typical day inside, which should be of interest to Oakland freelance journalist Sarah Olson and Honolulu Star-Bulletin journalist Gregg Kakesako, since they both just received subpoenas demanding testimony about quotes they attributed to 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, who faces a court-martial after denouncing the war in Iraq and refusing to deploy with his unit. Wolf’s letter should also be a source of useful tips for San Francisco Chronicle reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, who face up to 18 months inside for refusing to reveal the source of closed-door grand jury testimony by Barry Bonds and other athletes about drug use. For a transcript of the letter, keep reading…

A Day in the Life of Inmate #98005-111 AKA Josh Wolf

At 5:30 AM each morning, I awake to the sound of the morning guard walking down the corridor and unlocking each cell. Breakfast is available for the next few minutes, if one manages to swiftly wake up and wander into the dayroom. More often than not, I elect to stay in bed—I’m eating too much in here anyhow, and lunch is usually served before noon. On the days that I do get up in time, we are usually served what amounts to a deluxe continental breakfast featuring some combination of the following: cold cereal, some sort of cake, hard boiled eggs, yogurt and a piece of fruit.

By 6 AM, I am almost fully awake and listening to Democracy Now! on KPFA. At 6:30 AM, the guard once again locks down our cell while the orderlies clean the unit; these prisoners mop the floors, wash the windows and clean the showers five days a week. After Democracy Now!, I usually listen to KPFA Morning Show and it is these two programs which allow me to stay current with the news. I do have a subscription to the Chronicle, but by the time the paper arrives it borders on being a historic document.

Sometime between 8 and 9 AM, the guard unlocks the door to our cell again and the counselor performs his inspection to make sure that all our personal property is stowed away in our footlockers and our beds are made. If our room fails to pass the inspection then we are liable to remain locked in our rooms until lunch.

On weekdays, we are usually taken out for Rec at some point in the morning. The Rec yard is a small slag of concrete with a basketball court and a pull-up bar; there is also a volleyball net. Only half the unit is taken out each day and we alternate between playing basketball and volleyball. Some of the guys work out and others walk or jog around the yard. Rec lasts for one hour and is our only real opportunity to breathe fresh air.

We are usually served lunch sometime shortly after Rec. Lunch consists of a green salad, the occasional potato salad, some sort of hot sandwich on most days, and cookies are frequently part of the meal as well.

After lunch, we are permitted to hang out in the day room or our cells until 2:45 PM, when we are locked down for count. During this time, I usually find myself conversing with friends or watching television. Sometimes we get a game of Scrabble going and at other times I choose to spend most of my time sitting on my bed reading.

The count is usually cleared shortly after 3 PM at which time we are released from our cells and mail is delivered. I spend some time musing over my mail and by 4 PM we are frequently being served dinner.

At 5 PM, I meet up with my work out crew and we generally exercise for about 45 minutes to an hour. Although there are no weights available in the detention center, we are able to exercise most of the major muscle groups through a combination of improvisation and the use of our own body weight. After working out, I generally prepare some sort of high-protein snack and shower.

Although I occasionally watch a bit of television during the evening, I try to devote the last hour or two before lockdown to responding to the correspondence I have received. Just before 8:45 PM, I go into the guard’s office and deliver whatever letters I have finished writing, and then fill up my mug with water from the drinking fountain. By that time, the guard has usually announced lockdown and we all scamper back to our cells where we wait out the rest of the night.

After being locked down at 8:45 PM, I usually talk to my cellie for a bit, get ready for bed and oftentimes respond to another letter or two. It is during this time that I usually write my daily entry in my journal.

At 10 PM, the station I listen to while I write switches to a talk-format and I usually start reading one of my books. The library in the detention center is pretty abysmal: three book carts stuffed with stale paperbacks–but fortunately I’ve had a plethora of books sent in to me from dozens of supporters. The entire time I’ve been here, I’ve always had an enticing book to dive into and the opportunity to loan out books to many of my fellow prisoners.

After reading for a couple of hours, I find myself falling sleep sometime around midnight. A few hours later, I find myself awake and living out the same story again and again.

See also : A reporter stands up to the army, Sarah Phelan, San Francisco Bay Guardian, January 9, 2007: “Sarah Olson fights a subpoena to testify against an antiwar soldier — and faces felony charges”; Journalist or not, he’s no criminal, Chris Peck, The Commercial Appeal, January 21, 2007

    “Although my plight has garnered some attention from the media, some people have been left to wonder why the story has been neglected by much of the mainstream press. The simple answer is that I am the canary in the coal mine that they are afraid to acknowledge.

    Canaries were used in mine shafts to act as early warnings that the environment had become poisonous – if the bird dies then the miners knew they would be next if they didn’t do something to remedy the situation.

    As an independent journalist and videoblogger, I am more vulnerable than my corporate equivalent. As an individual who focuses on civil dissent, this is doubly so. By throwing me in jail and asserting my rights as part of the free and independent press guaranteed in the Constitution, I should serve as a warning sign of things to come. It should trigger alarms to journalists far and wide; to some extent it has.

    At the same time, the mainstream media has not exactly embraced the so-called “citizen journalist” movement with open arms; some are afraid their careers may become obsolete. It may be a result of this defensive attitude that many news outlets have turned a blind eye to my situation – after all, I’m not employed by a multinational media conglomerate, so how can I be a “real journalist”? But like that canary, my situation is only a precursor to what is likely in store for the future…”

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REVEALED! HoWARd’s message to ‘Start A Fire Anti-Ministeries’

Posted on January 22, 2007 by @ndy

The black cat’s out of the bag:

    Hello there comrades.

    I am delighted to send my good wishes to everyone attending the 2008 Melbourne Anarchist & Autonomist Conference. Today is, of course, May Day.

    It’s a time when we celebrate our hard-won freedoms to destroy economic and social privilege as the unruly subjects of an illegitimate, racist and colonialist state — so blessed with an abundance of natural beauty.

    It’s also a time to reaffirm our commitment to shared values of direct action, mutual aid, self-managed struggle and our abiding fight against our enemy, Authority. Anarchism has been an enormous force for good and has done more than anything else to shape the lives, not only of millions of workers, but the character of contemporary global resistances to capitalism, patriarchy and the state.

    I congratulate the Melbourne Anarchist Club for bringing anti-authoritarian revolutionaries from many tendencies together for this celebration and I wish you all a riotous May Day.

    Your rejection of all forms of nationalism is deeply appreciated.

A Government spokesperson said Mr HoWARd did not regret providing the message.

“The Prime Minister provides messages for a wide array of groups,” the spokesperson said. “The Prime Minister does not regret providing the message. The contents of the message are entirely unexceptionable.”

[For anarchafairy]

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