The world today seems absolutely crackers,
With nuclear bombs to blow us all sky high.
There’s fools and idiots sitting on the trigger.
It’s depressing and it’s senseless, and that’s why…
COLLINGWOOD 2.3 3.5 5.6 10.8 (68)
HAWTHORN 2.4 4.7 7.11 9.11 (65)
With tears in his eyes, coach Mick Malthouse celebrated one of his greatest triumphs as Collingwood scored a dramatic three-point win in tonight’s AFL preliminary final at the MCG… and I was there to witness it.
I’m sorry, but ACMA must be firm with you. Say sorry, or else we will be very angry with you… and we will write you a letter, telling you how angry we are.
Seven and Ten reprimanded over ‘terrorist’ gibe.
Tim Dick
The Age
September 21, 2011
Channels Seven and Ten have been reprimanded by the broadcasting regulator for misreporting a confrontation outside court between a Channel Nine cameraman and the father of an accused rioter, in which the cameraman called the father a [f!@#ing] terrorist…
Back in September 2008, Dave The Communist aimed a Dialectical Raygun at my head and challenged me to explain why I was intent on driving down the road marked Apolitical Critique. 17 months later, I decided to start a Facebook page. Currently, my fu is moar powerful than Direct Action and the Socialist Party but trails in the wake of the Socialist Alliance and Socialist Alternative.
0. slackbastard 491 (March 2010: 198) fans
1. Revolutionary Socialist Party (208) members … Direct Action 110 members
2. Socialist Party (Australia) 415 (277) members
3. Socialist Alternative 1,549 (375) fans
4. Socialist Alliance 2,280 (881) fans
Honourable mentions:
4a. Jura Books 706 (341) fans
4b. Barricade Infoshop 1,719 fans
4c. Communist Party of Australia 862 fans
4f. Freedom Socialist Party 103 fans
See also : slackbastard ~versus~ RSP/SA/SAlt/SP (March Update) (March 22, 2010) | slackbastard ~versus~ RSP/SA/SAlt/SP (February 23, 2010).
Yeah well anyway. Max Brenner eh? The demos on the weekend in Melbourne and Sydney attracted small crowds, but I s’pose one point of interest was the involvement of some right-wing loons in the rallies in support of the chain. “Max Brenner is owned by the Strauss Group, which is Israel’s second-largest food and beverage conglomerate. The Strauss Group openly supports the Israeli Defence Force,” a critic said (Shop ‘with Israeli links’ targeted, Gareth Hutchens, The Sydney Morning Herald, September 11, 2011). The same report also notes that in Newtown “the store was defended by about 60 supporters, including members of the Australian Protectionist Party, a far-right nationalist group”.
As indeed it was.
Darrin Hodges — the balding d00d in the middle — now the NSW leader of the APP was once a member of Dr Jim Saleam’s Australia First Party and an active member of the Stormfront website (which nominates The Jew as Public Enemy #1), meaning that Max Brenner has some rather odd allies. Hodges also took part in a fascist ‘black bloc’ in 2007, along with various other denizens of the far right including former German NPD member turned Volksfront Australia organiser Welf Herfurth. On the other hand, the “mad Marxist” Rick Kuhn reckons that “Fighting oppression is not anti-Semitic”, an accusation which — along with eating lentils and tofu — has been levelled at his ‘Socialist Alternative’ party in the past. The author of that piece, Nick Dyrenfurth, was recently engaged in an online battle with blogger Michael Brull, which Brull comments on here. Otherwise, Ben Fordham kicks goals for 2GB on behalf of “normal Aussies” here, while the ‘Australian BDS Campaign for Palestine’ has a blog here.
Go Pies!
ON RECENT EVENTS
Over the past few years squatters in Melbourne have struggled to build an active, dynamic, and supportive community. For us squatting is an act of liberation where we create spaces where rulers cannot define our lives and where we refuse the management of our needs by the state.
Recently a conflict has arisen in the Melbourne squatting community that we feel necessary to issue a collective response to.
In a house in North Coburg that has been squatted for 4 years, 2 people (M & C) who moved in less than a year ago have tried to claim the house as their own and evict the other occupants. This has been done primarily through using the police and M & C’s relationship with the owners to threaten others, and through various other deceitful and manipulative behaviours.
M & C have a history of intimidation and abusive relations with others. They have a history of creating problems in our community. And now they have threatened to call the police on some comrades if they don’t vacate their own home. This is an inexcusable and despicable act. M & C are trying to take advantage of their perceived weakness of our community to dominate spaces for their own selfish needs, while throwing their supposed comrades out on the street.
A ‘mediation process’ was asked for by M & C in response to the situation and turned out to be a complete farce. The “unbiased mediation” was used by M & C to enforce their terms, to keep the evictees out of their own home and to exclude and silence the community gathering in solidarity outside the house.
When M & C outright stated that they will use the intervention of the state, police and the owners to ‘resolve’ the conflict in their favour, the ‘non-violence’ mediators stayed completely silent. It is complete hypocrisy to stay silent, and therefore complicit, when such extreme violence is threatened against others. We recognise that the police and the state are the forces which continually and overwhelmingly impose systemic violence on all of us.
As an assembly of squatters and people in solidarity from around Melbourne, we see M & C’s actions to be an attack not just on a few individuals, but to all of us who identify as squatters or as anarchists. We strongly emphasize the need to raise our voices together in defiance. We are calling out these snitches. We won’t tolerate people in our community or political space who use the threat of legal and police violence to coerce others to bend to their will.
We actively oppose M & C’s attempt to seize control of the house. We collectively express our solidarity to the comrades that M & C have attempted to throw out of the house, and who refuse to be quietly evicted by false “anarchists” and snitches.
– Squatting Solidarity Assembly
See also : Free Jock.
yeah well anyway…
jeff sparrow done wrote some stuff on Max Brenner and Australia’s fascists and it features a ref to my blog.
this piece by peter gelderloos on An Anarchist Solution to Global Warming is pretty cool.
collingwood for the win on saturday.
i really like this song:
Choices choices.
The 2011 Sydney Forum — since the late scratching of the Inverell Forum, now Australia’s #1 annual fascist gathering — will be held in Sydney on October 8/9. The 2011 Ian Stuart Donaldson Memorial Concert — “a younger persons’ music gig” aka the largest annual gathering of neo-Nazi skinheads in Australia — will be held in Melbourne on October 8. The unfortunate clash between the two events, following several years of separate scheduling, may be a result of the simmering tension between the two neo-Nazi skinhead groups Blood & Honour/Southern Cross Hammerskins (B&H/SCHS) and Volksfront Australia (VF).
VF leader Welf Herfurth is Sydney Forum MC and Chris Smith (VF, Creatard* and blogger) another of its more enthusiastic and prominent organisers. According to a former B&H/SCHS supporter, VF’s rivals in B&H/SCHS have given VF permission to operate in NSW but in no other states, while close relations between VF and the scattered remnants of ‘Combat 18’ has done little to endear the Sydney-based cousin to the national body. Fortunately, the rivalry between the two tendencies has not reached the stage it has in the United States (the birthplace of both the Hammerskins and Volksfront), where members of the two groups have been known to clash violently with one another.
As for the Forum itself, thus far it features Melbourne-based Australia First organiser Alex Norwick on why the ‘Australianist Ethos Is The Most Contemporary Manifestation Of The Eternal Indo-European Idea’, Benedikt Osváth on ‘Persecution against artistic freedom’ and Dr Jim will be talking about how important it is for people like him to write the history of the far right.
While Norwick’s speech sounds like a load of old balls, the Benedikt Osváth case AS SEEN ON THE BOLT REPORT! is actually quite interesting, the artist apparently violating Aboriginal lore by creating Wanjina Watchers in the Whispering Stone (see : The Wandjina case demonstrates the lack of protection for Indigenous culture, Robyn Ayres, ART+law, September 2010). Curiously, Osváth & Co have gained the support of another ‘controversial’ artist named Sergio Redegalli, whose ‘ban the burqa’ mural in Newtown was recently redecorated in support of Osváth.
With regards the ISD gig, there’s not a great deal to add. It’s expected to * Melbourne-based nazis Deaths Head, Ravenous and new kids on the block Waffenbruder, while a bunch of boofheads from Brisbane called Open Season will also be jackbooting on stage, the stage itself likely to be located in some scout hall or other in the outer ‘burbs.
Business as usual, in other words.
See also : A Brief History Of Neo-Nazi Music In Australia (December 2, 2010) | 2010 Sydney Forum.
LOL.
The EDL held a small, largely static demo in London on September 3, prevented from marching through Tower Hamlets by several thousand police. Something like 1,000 or so patriots attended, considerably less than the many thousands the EDL claimed would assemble [see Socialist Worker on “the brilliant victory in east London today”].
EDL leader Tommy Robinson/Stephen Yaxley-Lennon dressed as a rabbi for the occasion, declaring that breaking his bail conditions (again) was a small price to pay to stop the Muslamics from taking over. FACT! Yaxley-Lennon’s stunt was not appreciated by all of those present, with some allegedly greeting his fashionable pose with Nazi salutes.
Ah well.
In Melbourne and Sydney on Friday September 9 and Saturday September 10 Yaxley-Lennon’s followers Down Under will be rallying against rallies against Israeli chocolate shop Max Brenner. The counter-rallies have gained the support of the ADL, APDM, APP and Southern Cross Soldiers. Below SCS Shermon Burgess explains why patriots should eat Max Brenner. Or something.
It’s Cronulla times 50!
