…shake of the balaclava to Colm, Scott and Augusto…
A
Originally broadcast in 2008, and winner of a Walkley Award for ‘Radio Feature, Documentary or Broadcast Special’, I only just listened to Colm McNaughton’s Awakening from History. It’s a truly extraordinary piece.
Colm McNaughton is a thirty-something Irish Australian, who spent some of his childhood in a Catholic family in Northern Ireland. He returns at the height of the highly charged ‘marching season’ to find out how realistic the peace and reconciliation movement is. He meets and records some heavy characters from both sides of the sectarian divide and confronts the way violence brought trauma into his own life. A tough story which has room for just enough optimism in the midst of the fatalism that still infects the ‘Irish Question’.
Of related interest: Racism and fascist violence in Northern Ireland PLUS (June 18, 2009) | The Invention of the White Race (May 29, 2009) | The assault on American Indian tribal relationships… (May 31, 2009) | British Soldiers Go On Home (August 2, 2007) | Theodore W. Allen, The Invention of the White Race, Volume One: ‘Racial Oppression and Social Control’, Verso, 1994, pp.36–38.
Five Minutes of Heaven (2009).
B
Letter from the RNC 8 – January 2010
January 26, 2010
Dear friends, families and supporters,
The last time that we wrote, we were only weeks beyond the 2008 RNC, and still figuring out how to navigate our case with a sense of collectivity and integrity. Now, more than a year after the fact, we find ourselves in a sort of limbo. Day to day, we don’t feel the intensity of repression that we did in the weeks surrounding the RNC, yet the trial looms somewhere in the distance and we’re not really free to move on. We return to court on February 2nd, and may come out of the hearing with a trial date certain. While it’s hard to remain upbeat about the prospect, we hope to make the final push towards trial energizing for ourselves and our supporters alike, and we feel certain that a strong show of court solidarity will make a huge difference in the outcome of our case…
C
Desinformémonos is a new (to me) journal and ‘A project of Zapatista Autonomy’. The October edition is available in English too (PDF). For moaron Mexican rad.pol, see : Angry White Kid; also John Ross, The Mexican Revolution at 100: Mexico Welcomes 2010 With Bombs and Riots, Counterpunch, January 11, 2010.
bonus antifa (musical) notes!
An Auschwitz Survivor and Her New Rap Band
Charles Hawley
Spiegel
January 26, 2010
Esther Bejarano, one of the last surviving members of the Auschwitz women’s orchestra, has made music her whole life. Now, she has joined forces with a hip hop band to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive…
See also : Microphone Mafia | La Resistance | Turn It Down…
Bystreet | Distemper | Razor Bois | What We Feel | [For Comrade Justo: Breaking to Top] | Scabs. In Melbourne we have scabs.
And remember Kids…
“from both sides of the sectarian divide”
Fail!
…and after actually having listened to it?