I’m excited!
The by-election for the Victorian State Parliament is taking place on July 21 and there are no less than SIXTEEN candidates, including anarchists, Christians, communists, consumer-rights activists and more!
The winner is almost certainly going to be Labor or — less likely — the Greens. Scandalously, the Sex Party have preferenced Labor ahead of the Greens. Then again, the Greens prefer Labor to Sex.
2nd Annual Melbourne Anarchist Bookfair 2012
The second annual Melbourne Anarchist Bookfair is taking place on August 4, 2012 at the Abbotsford Convent in Abbotsford. Entry is free. For more infos see the Bookfair website.
Antisemitism and Anarchy
Antisemitism and Anarchy is a new publication by Dysophia (UK), bringing together a collection of articles that try and unpick some of the debates around the Israel/Palestine conflict, “to make sense of arguments around the meaning of Zionism, what constitutes antisemitism or how to make sense of divisive figures such as Gilad Atzmon. It draws on the anarchist tradition to bring an anti-racist perspective to these difficult questions. While not providing definite answers, these articles have been selected to give anarchists a better overview of all perspectives so that as a movement we can produce more nuanced views that avoid the twin pitfalls of racism and liberalism.”
“Erich Mühsam (1878-1934) was a leading figure in the German anarchist movement. This site will be home to critical English editions of several of his most important works.”
IAS Lexicon pamphlet series
Anarchism? Colonialism? Gender? Power? White supremacy? WTF?
PS. There’s more f*cking Wolves At The Door! Issue #2 (Winter 2012) creature features: ‘Who are the wolves? an introduction’ / an interview with those responsible for the always outrageous Disaccords blog / ‘attacking the institutions of genocide: an anarchist perspective on solidarity with anti-colonial struggles’ / ‘Apocalypse activism: a review of the film END:CIV‘.
I didn’t realise this ’til now but in BREAKING NEWS…
In April an Australian Senator pretended to spend a week as a dole bludger.
LIVING off $17 a day may sound impossible to most people but Greens senator Rachel Siewert will do just this for a week, in an attempt to highlight the struggle people on the dole face.
In this context, Senator Siewert is a bit like Christopher Hitchens: The Drink-Soaked Ex-Troyskite Popinjay For War needed to actually undergo torture in order to understand that water-boarding is not. fun. For her part, Siewert discovered that having a very small income does tend to make life a little. bit. difficult. (NB. The stunt of going on the dole for a week is an old one: I can remember a Democrats Senator doing it once back in the ’80s.)
Of course, the Senator’s week of poverty was intended to help promote the Greens’ campaign to reward shirkers with an additional $50 per week of unearned income. Or to put it another way: to ensure bludgers would continue living under The Poverty Line.
Well, that’s what the policy wonks at the Melbourne Institute tell their fellows anyways. In their latest report (March 2012), the scienticians at the Institute calculate that a single person with no dependents and a weekly income of $470.36 is on the poverty line; the maximum allowable Newstart payment, on the other hand, is $303.10.
On 26 June 2012 the Senate referred the following matter to the Senate Education, Employment and Workplace Relations Committees for inquiry and report.
The adequacy of the allowance payment system for jobseekers and others, the appropriateness of the allowance payment system as a support into work and the impact of the changing nature of the labour market.
No doubt the inquiry will prove to be an exciting development in the struggle for economic justice and social equality.
Of course, the Greens aren’t the only ones who think the unemployed should be punished with poverty for their work-shy ways. Labor too is firmly committed to maintaining a reasonably-sized pool of surplus labour, the useless mouths useful as examplars of what happens to work resistors and those who fail to worship at the feet of The Economy.
Last month, according to The Age, “PRIME Minister Julia Gillard faces a growing push from Labor MPs to raise the dole, with warnings it is so low that people are being forced into poverty and even turning to crime.”
Which — as well as ignoring the existence of the underground economy — I assume is expected to be responded to as though it were some kinda revelation rather than as a perfectly predictable and completely unremarkable fact of life.
Speaking of poverty, KRudd’s wife Therese Rein recently snuck on to Australia’s Rich List. Her rise was dependent on the decline of the welfare state and the privatisation of state employment services. The massive expansion in state subsidies to the charity industry — dominated, naturally, by religious institutions — has also enabled folks like Toby Hall to ascend to the pinnacle of the industry, from which vantage point the former stockbroker likes to lecture the poor on good behaviour.
If so many people weren’t made so rich by the poors, I’d advocate some kinda Final Solution.
See also : Dole bludgers, tax payers and the new right: constructing discourses of welfare in 1970s Australia (Verity Archer) (February 12, 2010).
There’s a rally in support of Julian Assange this weekend.
Where : State Library, Swanston Street, Melbourne
When : Midday, Sunday, July 1
Following his fail in the UK courts, Assange is currently attempting to start a new life as a llama farmer but who knows if he’ll be able to. In any case, a glittering array of local talent will be on hand to entertain and inform the masses, including the bRanes behind Rap News, what Cam and I got to pick on radio some months ago.
Funnily enough, the hip-hop journalists got funny man Noam Chomsky on the show during his last and final visit to Straya; his recent endorsement of an open letter generated some minor controversy in the Twitterverse.
Well, my tiny corner of it anyway.
In any event, the letter — signed by “leftist hero” Chomsky (and a few hundred other less heroic celebrities) apparently implies that rape is not a serious crime.
Or something.
To be honest, I found the Twitter conversation I had about the letter and its meaning a bit confusing.
Moar later.
Maybe.
In bad news for Australian Protectionists, the ‘Australian Protectionist Party’ has confirmed its reputation as the most pathetic party to be formally registered with the state. While boasting over 500 members and five years of political activity, just five people bothered to attend their anti-refugee rally in Sydney on Saturday. At first called in order to demand that the Australian government ‘Torpedo the boats’ carrying asylum seekers to Australia, a week before the rally the organising slogan was amended to ‘Torpedo the government boats policy’. The shift in rhetoric appears to have resulted from pressure applied by the party’s nominal leader Andrew Phillips; the failure of the rally, and the party generally, to have resulted in the resignation of de facto party leader Darrin Hodges (below right).
In good news for the APP and its supporters, no torpedoes were required in order to sink a boatload of asylum seekers just days prior to Saturday’s fail. Judging by the commentary on the now-deleted Facebook Events page for the rally, many champagne corks were popping at the news of the many dozens of men, women and children who appear to have drowned at the scene. In any case, the dumb, drunk and racist antics of the APP are further documented in ‘Episode Two’ of Joe Hildebrand’s Dumb, Drunk and Racist; some further consideration is given to the Australian government’s own role in failing to avert the disaster in Decency all at sea as another boatload sinks, Michael Bachelard, The Age, June 24, 2012.
See also : Anti-Immigration Party to March Against Refugee Welcome Rally, Nicholas Sauer, Tharunka, June 2012.
Yeah well anyway. Nobody reads my blog any more. They’re too busy sailing. (And by ‘nobody’ I mean ‘Evan’ and by ‘sailing’ I mean ‘reading about farming’.) In any case, I’ve been busy trolling the Australian Protectionist Party. Thus far I’ve succeeded in embarrassing the organisers of the shambolic Internets farce (formerly) known as the ‘Torpedo the boats’ rally into running, screaming like girlie men, far, far away from my 1337 skills. It’s even possible that chief organiser and former dildo salesman Darrin Hodges has quit the APP in disgust at lack of party support for his bald-headed efforts to stop Lesbian Seagulls from importing Muslamic Rayguns into the country.
THRASH ‘TIL DEATH BROTHERS AND SISTERS!
Australia
Under pressure from critics, the ‘Australian Protectionist Party’ (APP) yesterday decided to abandon its public call for the mass murder of asylum seekers, declaring that the “previous title of this [Facebook] page “Torpedo the boats” was a sloganised [sic] version of our intent to torpedo the refugee boat policy of the federal government. Obviously, it was not a call to actually torpedo people, and anyone who claims otherwise is either lying or being deliberately obtuse.” Or, alternatively, accurately reporting their antics. The handful of public rallies previously organised by APP have failed to attract anything more than token support, and the party’s reputation is unlikely to have been improved by its latest idiocy.
Bulgaria
I overlooked this at the time of publication but imprisoned anti-fascist Jock Palfreeman was interviewed by Gabriel Hershman for the Sofia Echo in April. Sofia Central Prison is a ‘ridiculous’ institution, says Jock Palfreeman.
Chile
There were protests at a screening of a new film praising former dictator Augusto Pinochet in Santiago on June 10. Among those gathering to pay tribute to the General were a number of neo-Nazis, like other fascists presumably grateful for the protection of a large number of riot police.
Greece
The popular vote for the neo-Nazi ‘Golden Dawn’ has remained steady for the June 17 election, though the party appears to have secured 18 as opposed to 21 seats in the new Greek parliament. The official map of the results may be found here. Attacks on immigrants, some conducted in collaboration with police, will presumably continue if not escalate under whichever new government is formed. Otherwise, appeals by the Greek franchise of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist) — better known as the Spartacists — for a vote for the Greek Stalinists appears not to have moved the Greek masses in their direction, sadly, with KKE’s vote dropping to 4.5% overall.
Ireland
The latest edition of the Irish Anarchist Review (#5, Summer 2012) contains an article ‘Towards an anarchist anti-racism’, written by and for ‘a white anarchist’. Unfortunately, it’s not very useful, though it did draw my attention once again to the intriguing text ‘A few good reasons why white people should not wear ‘Mohawks’ or dreadlocks’ by C.K. Donovan & Q-L. Driskill.
Poland
Brian Whelan has written an interesting article on fascist football hooligans for VICE magazine. “Antifa fear that many members of the police and even mainstream political parties in Poland are sympathetic to the far-right. The problem is at its worst in the small city of Bialystok, near the border with Belarus, where hooligans have fallen under the influence of the neo-Nazi group Blood and Honour and police have failed to control the growing violence.”
United States
The ‘Tinley Park Five’ are a group of five men arrested and charged with attacking a White supremacist gathering in Tinley Park, a suburb of Chicago, in May. One of the alleged victims (Steven Eugene Speers) was also later arrested on child pornography charges and another (Francis John Gilroy, Jnr) for possessing a firearm (Pedophile and Fugitive Arrested at White Nationalist Gathering, ARA, May 21, 2012). Finally, my favourite Hollywood Nazi and fugitive Bill White got arrested last weekend, and looks set to spend another spell behind bars.
Anyway, here’s some Cro-Mags…
Today I was informed by the ‘Australian Protectionist Party’ that The Parrot (aka allegedly corrupt right-wing Sydney shock-jock Alan Jones) had a very special guest on his program, a Yanqui by the name of Richard Lamm. Lamm came to prominence several years ago when he gave a speech denouncing multiculturalism.
Reading of Jones’s recycling of an old meme — one that has been spreading via email and on various racist and right-wing Internet forums for many years now — naturally brought to mind not only Nation of Ulysses but sparked memories of Chopper, and a seminal moment in Australian television history involving Mister Jones and Mister Read.
Which, in turn, brought me to several other videos (one courtesy of MH). These I think further encapsulate Alan’s contribution to public debate in this sunburned country and as such are worthy of further reflection.
Who the fuck’s Huey Lewis?
Australia holds one of the most concentrated corporatised media landscapes in the world, and in the past year we have seen the fruits born of a system that prioritises shareholder return over the needs of the community.
3CR Community Radio exists as a direct counter to corporate media and is a vital source of innovative and independent content. For 36 years 3CR Community Radio has brought you environmental, indigenous, women’s, ethnic, union, music and other community programs that you won’t find anywhere else.
3CR’s annual Radiothon runs from 4 – 17 June. The station is financially supported by our listening community. This year we are trying to raise $210,000 to cover operating costs. Buy your share of the media and invest in independence – make a tax deductible donation online at www.3cr.org.au, phone 03 9419 8377 or send a cheque or money order payable to ‘Community Radio Federation Ltd’ PO Box 1277 Collingwood 3066.
For those who’ve come across the sea
We’ve boundless plains to share
In one of the more bizarre chapters in the annals of local far-right politicking, in late May Darrin Hodges and Nicholas Hunter-Folkes — two of the leading, Sydney-based members of the NSW branch of the ‘Australian Protectionist Party’ — declared on Facebook that they would be attempting to disrupt a gathering of people they described as ‘refugee lovers’ on World Refugee Day (Saturday, June 23). Bad enough, perhaps, that the pair and their handful of supporters might try to spoil an otherwise innocuous party. But Darrin and Nicholas decided to add further insult by declaring that, not only would they oppose attempts to welcome refugees to Australia, they would do so by organising a counter-rally, one which would publicly demand that the Australian government ‘Torpedo the boats’ upon which some asylum seekers have attempted to enter the country.
As well as possibly being contrary to state and federal laws regarding racial and religious vilification, this public demand for the mass murder of numerous men, women and children naturally attracted to the Facebook event page a range of quite sordid discussion regarding the allegedly sub-human characteristics of those seeking asylum in Australia, supplemented by dark mutterings regarding the traitorous elements deemed responsible for allowing some small fraction of refugees to find asylum on our shores. In the name of the APP, Darrin and Nicholas appealed to Facebook users to:
…come out in support of your future, your children’s future and your country and send the message to the refo huggers, Labor and the other socialist s-bend intellectuals, hand-wringers and assorted bed-wetters, that we don’t want their pets in our country:
TORPEDO THE BOATS!
Such brazen appeals to the murderous hatred some sociopaths feel for asylum seekers is rather disturbing if taken seriously, and so I was somewhat surprised to learn that Darrin and Nicholas claimed that the rally had actually been endorsed by their party. Oddly, the party’s official website [http://www.protectionist.net/], which is routinely used to publicise the party and its activities, contains no reference to the event. So I thought it would be wise to put it to the party via another mechanism: Twitter. The first response I received (June 9) denied that the party endorsed the rally:
@slackbastard 1. NOYB 2. Not an official APP event, but as if they mean that. Try torpedoing Gillard’s ridiculous policies.
— Aust. Protectionists (@AustProtParty) June 9, 2012
Perplexed — after all, both claims (the rally has been endorsed by the APP/the rally has not been endorsed by the APP) could not be correct — I again asked Darrin if the ‘Torpedo The Boats’ rally had received his party’s support, adding that I’d received a denial via the party’s Twitter account. Again, Darrin replied in the affirmative. And so I again put it to the party that somebody was lying. The response I received (June 13) again contradicted Darrin, the party denying any official endorsement.
@slackbastard 1. No, we don’t. 2. That’s our business. 3. Andrew Phillips does not tweet.
— Aust. Protectionists (@AustProtParty) June 13, 2012
Apart from having clarified the fact that, while APP National Chairman Andrew Phillips endorses the contents of a Twitter account he does not in fact read, the back-and-forth between the party and its two leading members suggests that the APP is in reality divided on the subject of the mass murder of asylum seekers. Further, that the possibility of anybody taking the party seriously is almost zero while it maintains such a bizarre and frankly psychotic public image. Finally, that while Darrin’s political career first came to the attention of the public via his participation in White supremacist forum Stormfront, it’s fitting that it should end, at least for the time being, in further appeals for political violence. Over six years ago, following the Cronulla riots, Joe Hildebrand (White supremacists casting a black cloud’, The Daily Telegraph, December 20, 2005) wrote:
Via a series of electronic footprints, anti-Nazi campaigner Mat Henderson-Hau has linked [Stormfront user] “Infidel” to Engadine local Darrin Hodges.
Hodges, who runs a website for a sex toy distributor, yesterday admitted to being a member of the racist Australia First Party but denied being a member of any white nationalist groups or a contributor to Stormfront.
His alleged alter ego is not so shy.
“Friends, today was an historic day, the day Australians stood up against state-imposed multiculturalism,” he wrote on the night of the Cronulla riots.
Accompanying his posting is a series of photographs he took at Cronulla that day, including one of a T-shirt emblazoned with the words “wog free zone” and another of a sign offering free sausages to the crowd, with “no tabouli”.
Infidel also speaks of footage he filmed on the day which Henderson-Hau believes was used in a video released over the weekend that glorifies a mob of rioters bashing various non-whites at Cronulla.
Posted on Saturday, it had been downloaded around 400 times by yesterday afternoon.
It follows an earlier video credited to “White Nationalist TV” and dubbed “The Battle For Cronulla”, which was released on the Stormfront website on the night of the riots and has since been downloaded 1700 times.
After several minutes of footage showing skinheads emblazoned with the iron cross and three-bladed swastika taking part in the Cronulla “gathering”, the video finishes with the words “Not white, not welcome in Cronulla”.
If there was any doubt as to what Infidel and his ilk stand for, consider one of his earlier posts on Stormfront in which he states: “I’m more interested in the purer form of fascism… and while I don’t subscribe to the whole ‘worship Hitler’ thing, his comments on multiculturalism and politics in general are still just as relevant today as they were 70-odd years ago.”
See also : Oh, Darrin! (2008 profile on Hodges by English blogger Denise G) | Your Mission Australia, if you choose to accept it, is: Torpedo the Boats! (June 6, 2012).
Further Update (June 13): On Facebook, rally organiser Darrin Hodges claims that the event is officially endorsed by the APP, making its National Chairman, Andrew Phillips, a liar (below).
Update: The APP has denied endorsing Darrin and Nicholas’ protest, as well as the effects of torpedoing boats.
@slackbastard 1. NOYB 2. Not an official APP event, but as if they mean that. Try torpedoing Gillard’s ridiculous policies.
— Aust. Protectionists (@AustProtParty) June 9, 2012
LOL.
Credit where it’s due: the two leading members of the Sydney-based ‘Australian Protectionist Party’ — Darrin Hodges and Nicholas Hunter-Folkes — have seized upon one of the latest controversies surrounding “Smugglers’ Paradise – Australia” and declared that on Saturday, June 23, they’ll be rallying Australians to demand that the government
The dynamic duo’s publicity stunt feeds on the publicity stunt spearheaded by ‘Mission Australia’, which has declared June 23 to be a Day upon which Australians should assemble and declare ‘Welcome to Australia’. Their Mission in this instance is
Cultivating a culture of welcome in Australia. Providing practical opportunities for everyday Aussies to give asylum seekers, refugees and other new arrivals a warm, positive and dignified welcome to Australia. Obtaining millions in government subsidies for tax-exempt religious institutions to micro-discipline the poor…
Formed by disgruntled former Australia First party members, disillusioned Tories and those seeking to emulate the once-successful BNP, the microscopic forces of the APP have two main selling points: hatred of Muslims and hatred of refugees. Included among its recruits (of which, at least on paper, there are over 500) is Joel Buckley. Joel is (or was) a very proud member of the Australian Navy, and would presumably be appointed captain of whichever Acheron-class torpedo boat the Australian government assigns the APP should its campaign succeed. Also certain to be there on The Day is Martin Fletcher, whose re-publication of the video game Muslim Massacre and the board game Cronulla 2230 (as well as Nazi cartoons) was indeed memorable but since supplemented by Darrin Hodge’s Refo Invaders.
Silly games aside, since its establishment in 2007, the APP’s success has been severely limited, partly because of the calibre of their cadre, mostly because xenophobia is an over-saturated market. Thus voting tallies have been feeble and public support minimal. Where the APP have been able to assemble more than a handful of (radically inarticulate) dissidents, it’s been because of a temporary alliance with similarly microscopic groups such as the quasi-mythical ‘Australian Defence League’. In summary, I haven’t been paying much attention to the antics of the APP of late: they’re non-existent in Melbourne, and elsewhere there’s been little activity of real interest to comment on. (Well, until now.) That said, the observations I made about them (and their rivals in AF) back in February still seem accurate, and unless a local mentalist commits an atrocity, I can’t see much changing.
In any event, the Facebook page promoting the mass murder of asylum seekers is Troll City, so as Rambo might say, go for it.
