I am disappoint that you’ve neglected to inform your readers about the preparations for the Centenary celebration of the Great Leader Kim Il-sung, otherwise known as the Year of the Sun.
The workers’ utopia has even cut daily rations from 400 to 150 grams of rice to stock-up for this cornucopia of communism…
I am disappoint.
I apologise.
This is unthinkable without the Juche idea.
The tasks before the committees to glorify 2012 as a year to go down in history along with the august name of Kim Il-sung are many.
It is with great pleasure that Slackbastard-DPRK Association for Friendship and Culture announces that a proposal to commemorate in splendor the centenary of birth of the President as the great auspicious event of humankind has been officially adopted at its meeting yesterday.
A letter to Kim Jong-il and a small kitten were also adopted at the meeting.
The Slackbastard blog and its followers are now pushing ahead with the building of Centenary celebration of the Great Leader Kim Il-sung, otherwise known as Year of the Sun, true to the leadership of Kim Jong-il.
We will single-mindedly unite around the headquarters of the revolution, cherishing the immutable truth that we will always emerge victorious thanks to Kim Jong-il, peerless Songun brilliant commander, and firmly defend the best Korean-style Australian socialism centered on the popular masses, they declared.
For the record, the politicians responsible for passing the Bill are brilliant men who have come up with many well-thought-out, practical ideas, and are ensuring the political future of this country.
Oh, and their personal hygiene is beyond reproach.
ASIO gets its new powers — and no one will tell us why
Bernard Keane
Crikey
July 5, 2011
Well, we never found out why, and now we’ll never know. Last night, the bill to significantly expand ASIO’s powers to spy on Australians sailed through the Senate with the support of Labor and the Coalition.
Just when we needed a bit of that mindless negativity for which the Abbott-era Coalition has become famous, they fell into line with Labor. The Greens, in the form of Scott Ludlam, were the only ones asking questions.
And the key question remains unanswered: what exactly is it that ASIO cannot currently do that it could do under the bill’s amendments to the circumstances in which it can gather foreign intelligence?
An official of the responsible department, Attorney-General’s, struggled to answer that question at the brief committee hearings the bill received a fortnight ago as part of the unseemly rush to get it through Parliament. He claimed activities associated with weapons proliferation was an example, only to be brought up short by a Labor senator who noted that was already covered under ASIO’s power in relation to Australia’s security.
Afterward, Attorney-General’s produced a bizarre third submission [PDF] to the committee claiming illegal fishing was an example of an activity currently outside the scope of ASIO’s powers.
The real answer of course has always been in plain sight: the amendment is designed to enable ASIO to spy on people involved with WikiLeaks, which currently falls outside the definitions of foreign states, people connected with a foreign state or foreign political organisations. The amendment is informally known within Attorney-General’s as “the WikiLeaks amendment”.
But the Department’s official line is that it has nothing to do with WikiLeaks and was developed long before WikiLeaks began releasing diplomatic cables.
So Ludlam returned to the issue last night, asking the Government’s duty minister — the minister or Parliamentary Secretary rostered on to carry legislation through the chamber — repeatedly to explain what it was that ASIO couldn’t investigate that it could under the amendments.
In such circumstances, a duty minister is supported by Departmental officials and, usually, an adviser from the office of the portfolio minister, who sit in the “adviser’s box”, the desks tucked up at the very end of the chamber on both sides. When you go into the adviser’s box, you should be fully across the legislation in question and have a full array of Q&A-type briefs for the duty minister to read from, addressing every single possible question that could be asked. You need to be ready to spring a response out to the minister in a matter of seconds.
As it was, given Ludlam had already identified his concerns at the inquiry hearing, it should have been straightforward to furnish the duty minister with some clear responses.
Instead, officials put in a shocker, and left David Feeney, in particular, looking silly as they served up wholly inappropriate material that frequently had nothing to do with what Ludlam had asked. It led to this brilliant moment from Feeney in response to a further demand by Ludlam that the Government explain what the bill would permit ASIO to do that it couldn’t currently do:
Two points, Senator. The first is that ASIO’s mandate, if you will — and that is my word — is set out in the section I am looking at here, which is where ‘security’ is defined. It is part I, section 4. There we see the definition of security: “”security” means:” and then it is set out in paragraphs (a), (aa) and (b). I think we see there a codification of some of the issues that you are looking for. I guess that when one contemplates the Cold War one is contemplating an environment that is dramatically transformed today. We are obviously not today working in an environment where there is something of a global contest between two clearly discernible ideologies and constellations of nation states. What we are looking at today is, firstly, a multipolar international environment where non-state actors are particularly relevant and, secondly, an environment which has been transformed by technology. So the sorts of materials you were talking about and the sorts of tools that are required to monitor the movement of those materials, I think, have greatly changed, and as legislators we need to make sure that that is something we remain abreast of.
As Ludlam later said, it was rather like Feeney was pouring a bag of cement into Hansard.
This wasn’t Feeney’s fault, but that of the officials nearby who clearly hadn’t prepared a proper answer even to questions that knew were coming, let alone providing a minister from outside the portfolio with a clear grasp of the rationale for the bill.
George Brandis briefly joined the debate, and demonstrated a far more coherent grasp of what was going on than Feeney, but that’s only to be expected from the shadow minister. Brandis was there to report that the Coalition would be joining Labor in blocking the Greens’ amendments and passing the bill, but he felt sufficiently galled by Ludlam’s efforts to question the bill to plead that he, too, was concerned about encroachments on civil liberty and he, too, was sceptical about calls to increase the powers of intelligence agencies.
But as with his failure to object to the Howard Government’s systematic assaults on civil liberties in the name of counter-terrorism, plainly Brandis wasn’t concerned quite enough — not even to participate in the committee inquiry into the bill. He left it all to the now-departed Russell Trood.
The Greens amendments to restrict the effect of the expansion of ASIO’s powers were defeated 34-9. As the numbers suggest, a large number of senators couldn’t be bothered turning up to vote.
Still, at least ASIO can now spy on Julian Assange and Attorney-General’s bureaucrats can stop making up stuff about illegal fishing as a cover story.
Last Friday (July 1) a group of 150 or so people staged a rally outside of a Melbourne branch of the Israeli-owned chocolate shop Max Brenner. The rally was organised by the ‘Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid’ in support of the ‘Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions’ (BDS) campaign against ‘Israeli Apartheid’.
Police arrested 19 protesters [video] who have been charged with a variety of offences including trespass, besetting, resisting arrest, and behaving in a riotous manner. 16 will be required to front the Magistrates Court on September 5.
A previous protest outside of a Max Brenner outlet in Sydney in June (at which two protesters were arrested) prompted the newly-elected NSW MLC Walt Secord to demand police take action to protect businesses being targeted by the campaign:
“With the BDS gaining support, the NSW Government and the Police Minister must ensure that companies with an Israeli connection are protected and are not unfairly targeted,” Secord said. “BDS is part of a worldwide attempt to isolate Israel, to boycott Israeli products, creativity, programs and culture. It has reached Australia and that is of concern. I vehemently oppose the BDS campaign.”
Local Melbourne MP Michael Danby has condemned the protesters as “prejudiced fanatics”; blogger Gavin Atkins reckons Max Brenner chocolate: tastes like freedom. Neither are likely to attend a public meeting organised for Tuesday, July 5 @ 6:30pm @ Trades Hall to defend those arrested and to assert the right to protest.
Update : This appears to be Big News over in Kiwi and revelations of Fogerty’s political lineage has apparently resulted in former Waitakere Mayor Bob Harvey withdrawing from the Vote for Change campaign: Bob Harvey resigns from anti-MMP group, Hayden Donnell, The New Zealand Herald, July 4, 2011.
Alex Fogerty is a Kiwi with a history of involvement in the racist far right. (Among other things, he was responsible for admin on the nutzi website ‘Australian New Nation’ (ANN)–the frontpage of which currently features propaganda vids by Carl D. Thompson (‘Australia Calling’) and Trevor Lewis (‘The Voice’).)
Vote for Change is a NEW! campaign that wants to reform the Kiwi electoral system (ahead of a referendum).
Until today, Alex was one of the faces of ‘Vote for Change’.
Vote for Change is investigating allegations made about a member of its organisation. The allegations of Mr Fogerty’s previous membership of a white supremacist group appear to be true and he will be asked to resign his membership immediately, or have his membership revoked if he chooses not to resign.
Many political organisations some members have pasts [?] that are not entirely to their credit, or the credit of the organisation they belong to. In the 2008 election Labour lost high ranking list candidate Stephen Ching and National lost New Plymouth candidate Clem Coxhead, who was replaced by Jonathan Young ten weeks from the election. Both men left their roles with the respective parties because of issues with their past that their parties did not know about.
Vote for Change has found itself in a similar position as both Labour and National did in 2008. We would like to thank Martyn Bradbury for drawing this to our attention so that it could be rectified immediately.
Vote for Change will not be commenting on this unfortunate matter further.
Martyn Bradbury covers the story on the TUMEKE! blog here.
From the Department of This is What Democracy Looks Like:
Trouble at mill.
A couple of days ago the Greek Parliament passed–by 155 votes to 138–a new wave of austerity measures intended to further bleed the Greek masses dry.
Now an additional €28 billion is to be saved by 2015. This represents 12 percent of the gross domestic product of this country of 11 million people. In Germany, equivalent cuts would amount to €300 billion, and in the US to $1.7 trillion. A further €50 billion will be raised through the privatisation of state enterprises.
The new program will lead to 150,000 job cuts in public services, reductions in social spending and health care, together with huge tax increases for median incomes. The Value Added Tax for pubs and restaurants will be increased from 13 to 23 percent. In Greece, where the economy relies heavily on such small businesses, this will mean ruin for thousands, and will deepen the recession.
Even Wolfgang Münchau, a leading columnist for the Financial Times and, until now, an advocate of austerity has come to the conclusion that such austerity measures are “financially reckless and politically irresponsible.” “The program, as it stands, is politically, morally and economically hard to justify,” he writes.
Nevertheless the European Union has exerted enormous pressure on the Greek parliament to adopt the program. Economic Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn threatened the Greek state with bankruptcy if the austerity package was rejected. “The only way to avoid immediate default is for parliament to endorse the revised economic program,” he said in a statement. “They must be approved if the next tranche of financial assistance is to be released. To those who speculate about other options, let me say this clearly: there is no Plan B to avoid default.”
In response to popular protest, the Greek state and police–in collusion with Greek fascists–have unleashed some fairly savage repression, including the use of asphyxiating gases. So savage, in fact, that Amnesty International has felt compelled to release a statement condemning the crackdown (h/t : Sina).
The events in Greece may well be a foretaste of things to come elsewhere in Europe, as the rollback in social reforms in response to the Global Financial Crisis™ continues. “…the workers of Greece will be on the streets… Workers in Ireland, Portugal, Spain and further afield will be watching them, willing them on and waiting for the day when we too will have to take to the streets to fight peripheralisation itself. Let’s see who swerves first.”
From the Greek Streets is an excellent sauce of infos on the ongoing struggles against the austerity measures and the Greek state. Athens Indymedia also provides ongoing coverage.
Some @s in Sydney done published a new zine in May. It’s called The Wolves At the Door. The first # contains articles on “The relationship between social movements and anarchist spaces” (Anarchists Lost in Space), “On the gap between how we talk about politics with each other and how we talk to other people” (Cake or Death), one by a Libyan anarchist against Western intervention” (Signs of the Defeat of the Libyan Revolution), an interview with the Mutiny zine collective, a review of the Anarchist Summer School, two statements responding to recent events in Greece and another article on why we gotta “identify and expel liberal ideology from revolutionary practice”.
Earlier this year, ‘English Defence League’ leader and tanning salon owner Stephen Yaxley-Lennon appointed fellow whinging Pom Martin Brennan leader of the ‘Australian Defence League’. Following his appointment, Brennan organised an anti-Muslim rally at Federation Square in Melbourne in May (20–30 locals joined Brennan for about an hour or so before being told to bugger off and stop making dickheads of themselves by a larger group of counter-protesters). Since then, Brennan has been engaged in a ding-dong online battle over Australia’s future with arch-nemesis and fellow mentalist Ibrahim Siddiq-Conlon of “Shariah4Australia” fame.
Now, sadly, Brennan faces an internal revolt by admins of the group’s Facebook page who have unanimously decided (all 12 of them) to un-elect Brennan as leader. According to the admins, Brennan is guilty of inciting racial violence and generally acting like a wanker (or ‘tosser’ in Martin’s dialect).
In the absence of any formal organisational structure, what this means in practice is anybody’s guess, but it comes just a month before the group’s much-hyped rally in Sydney on July 30 and days after trollumnist Miranda Devine gave the group a fillip in her column. The admins allege that Brennan has reacted badly to his dethroning, sending threatening messages to those responsible including sending their names and addresses to the Muslamic enimy. As well as claiming to have the support of another foreigner (Roberta Moore of the EDL’s Jewish Division), Brennan himself claims that “the aussie admins just don’t like an Englishman running the defence league because we bring it to the muzzies, English style”, adding that “the difference between us English and you aussies [is] we know how to fight hard and you lot don’t”. A former Colour Sergeant in the British Army who served in Afghanistan, Brennan presumably knows what he’s talking about.
Speaking of violence, Brennan’s boss is currently facing charges for assault.
The consistent thread running through all our previous conferences has been that continued neoliberal reform can further enrich elites while a strong law-and-order agenda and a supine labour movement provides limited opportunities for popular resistance. The format has established itself as the Stolenwealth‘s premiere economic and social public policy conference, providing a unique forum bringing together leading politicians, bureaucrats, academics, non-government organisation representatives and other rich men dwelling at peace within their habitations.
Sessions
Issues explored by the two-day conference will include managing super-profits, privatising the costs of the education industry, perpetuating euphemisms such as ‘social disadvantage’ amid sharply rising class demarcations, policing demands for climate change action and energy security, tackling work resistance, population and border control, tax breaks for the corporate sector, water monopolies, exploiting women in the workforce, Internet censorship, privatising the health/illness industries, securing a financial system in crisis and political repression in a capitalist economy. See the Conference Program for more details.
Presenters
All the usual suspects — Swan, Abbott, Ferguson, Morrison, Turnbull, Robb — are being assembled to ensure that this is the premiere such event in 2011.
Jock Palfreeman is a young Australian currently serving a 20-year prison term for murder in Sofia, Bulgaria. Convicted in December 2009, Jock maintains his innocence.
Two documentaries have been produced on Jock’s case. The first, ‘One Night in Sofia’, was broadcast on ABC’s Foreign Correspondent in June 2009 [video]; the latest, ‘Conviction’, has just been broadcast on ABC’s Australian Story [Part One | Part Two]. The producer in both cases was Belinda Hawkins, who is also writing a book on Jock’s case.
You can obtain more infos on Jock’s case @ the Free Jock website. Currently, a petition is under way on the Get Up! website in support of Jock.
Two Greek anarchists are making molotov cocktails. One says to the other: "So who will we throw these at then?" The other replies: "What are you, some kind of fucking intellectual?"
