Sabotage Cat‘s best mate Riot Dog has a new song dedicated to him. Bastard Delta motorcycle police tried to kill ‘Loukanikos’, but the nature of Monkey is irrepressible!
Things are kicking off in Spain too, while June 30 in the UK looks like it could be fun… tho’ it appears that the moar radical elements what are playing a moar central role in the events in Greece and Spain are largely absent in the UK context.
Meanwhile, in Reykjavik, The Best Party is… The Best.
From the Department of “Oi bro he called you cheap”/”Cunt’s fucked, hold my goon”…
Bogans.
The “only authentically Australian subculture”?
Hmmm.
Maybe.
Or perhaps merely a distinction of taste…
Bogan is Australian (especially teenage) slang for someone who is not `with it’ in terms of behaviour and appearance, someone who is ‘not us’; hence, someone horrible, contemptible.
Some lexicographers have suspected that the term may derive from the Bogan River and district in western New South Wales, but this is far from certain, and it seems more likely to be an unrelated coinage.
The term became widespread after it was used in the late 1980s by the fictitious schoolgirl ‘Kylie Mole’ in the television series The Comedy Company.
In the Daily Telegraph (29 November 1988), in an article headed “Same name a real bogan”, a genuine schoolgirl named Kylie Mole “reckons it really sux’ ” [i.e., finds it horrible] to have the same name as the television character.
In Dolly Magazine, October 1988, “The Dictionary According To Kylie [Mole]” has the following Kyliesque definition: bogan “a person that you just don’t bother with. Someone who wears their socks the wrong way or has the same number of holes in both legs of their stockings. A complete loser”.
Judith Clarke, The Heroic Life of Al Capsella (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1988) p. 127: “Beyond these the landscape changed suddenly. It was still flat, and the houses all the same as one another, but they were poorer houses, small shabby fibro ones with their paint all washed away, their scraggly yards full of dust and weeds and rusting pieces of iron. I was nervous; it looked the kind of place where you might find Bogans hanging about, the kind of place you could get bashed up…. Sure enough, in the yard of a house across the street, I saw a gang of Bogans in tight jeans and long checked shirts, mucking about with a big fancy car, vintage model, complete with brass lamps and running-board. I felt sure they’d ripped it off: for one thing, they were taking off the number plates”.
The earliest evidence we have been able to find for the term is in the surfing magazine Tracks September 1985: “So what if I have a mohawk and wear Dr Martens (boots for all you uninformed bogans)?”
I remember being introduced to the term in 1983 (or maybe it was 1984?) — along with ‘nerd’ (see also ‘geek’) and ‘skeg’; a term not included in the ANU’s dicktionary, but loosely synonymous with the N. American term ‘jock’ and (apparently) meaning either ‘surfer’ or ‘skater’ in the Australian context (the latter in my case).
Anyway, David Nichols‘ written a book all about it. I’ll probably even read it too, one day, after discovering it in a (second-hand) bookshop somewhere (Barwon Booksellers/Book Affair/Books By The Bay/Sainsbury’s Books) or other. In the meantime:
The bogan is a myth, according to Melbourne academic Dr David Nichols, who has written a book setting out all his reasons why…
The book is easy to read despite using elements of sociology, cultural studies and suburban and urban theory. Nichols admits it comes from a Marxist viewpoint, ”in a manner of speaking”. The way he sees it, the stereotyping of different kinds of people and places in Australia as ”bogan” is a dangerous reignition of the class war.
I says:
“There’s class warfare, all right,” Mr. Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
See also : The Antibogan | Things Bogans Like | Books or Bogans?, Tony Martin, The Scrivener’s Fancy, October 21, 2009 | Greg Melleuish, and the rise of the green wowser proves that eating people is wrong …, loon pond, June 17, 2011.
The second part of the Australian Story episode (Conviction) examining Jock Palfreeman‘s case and his father’s efforts to help him obtain justice is screening on ABC1 on Monday, June 20 @ 8pm. The Palfreemans have Buckley’s chance of extracting any concessions from the Bulgarian legal system but will have some opportunity to do so via the EU court system. In which case, the support of an organisation like Get Up! would be useful and youse can add your voice here.
Carbie Warbie — “Rockin’ out with my camera out! The James Brown of Melbourne Music Photography! Rock’N’Roll photographer for the people!” — documents the Melbourne leg of Steve Ignorant‘s The Last Supper Tour (@ The Tote, Collingwood).
Steve Ignorant (Crass) – Punk Is Dead/Do They Owe Us A Living? @ Tote, Collingwood (17th June 2011) from Carbie Warbie on Vimeo.
Steve Ignorant (Crass) – 2 @ Tote, Collingwood (17th June 2011) from Carbie Warbie on Vimeo.
Steve Ignorant (Crass) – 3 @ Tote, Collingwood (17th June 2011) from Carbie Warbie on Vimeo.
Steve Ignorant (Crass) – 4 @ Tote, Collingwood (17th June 2011) from Carbie Warbie on Vimeo.
Steve Ignorant (Crass) – 5 @ Tote, Collingwood (17th June 2011) from Carbie Warbie on Vimeo.
Steve Ignorant (Crass) – 6 @ Tote, Collingwood (17th June 2011) from Carbie Warbie on Vimeo.
Steve Ignorant (Crass) – 7 @ Tote, Collingwood (17th June 2011) from Carbie Warbie on Vimeo.
Steve Ignorant (Crass) – 8 @ Tote, Collingwood (17th June 2011) from Carbie Warbie on Vimeo.
Steve Ignorant (Crass) – 9 @ Tote, Collingwood (17th June 2011) from Carbie Warbie on Vimeo.
Steve Ignorant Interview @ Melbourne Anarchist Club, Northcote (16th June 2011):
Steve Ignorant from Crass Interview #1 @ Melbourne Anarchist Club, Northcote (16th June 2011) from Carbie Warbie on Vimeo.
Steve Ignorant from Crass Interview #2 @ Melbourne Anarchist Club, Northcote (16th June 2011) from Carbie Warbie on Vimeo.
Steve Ignorant from Crass Interview #3 @ Melbourne Anarchist Club, Northcote (16th June 2011) from Carbie Warbie on Vimeo.
Huh.
Earlier this month, Noam Chomsky was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize. Inter alia, this means that he’ll be coming Down Under in November. His first and only previous visit was in January 1995 (which included an address to the Visions of Freedom anarchist conference, later published as ‘Goals and Visions’ in Power & Prospects, to which now Timor Leste government minister Agio Pereira provides a Foreword).
Not surprisingly, the decision to award Chomsky the Peace Prize has its critics, and Chomsky himself has been subjected to all the usual criticisms. Ted Lapkin, a research fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs, accuses Uncle Noam of being ethically perverted and an apologist for genocide, specifically inre Pol Pot’s regime. (See also : Chomsky peace award blasted, Matthew Miller, The Australian, June 3, 2011; Ideologue on a peace pedestal, Stephen Matchett, The Australian, June 3, 2011.) Stuart Rees, Director of The Sydney Peace Foundation, reckons Lapkin’s attack is bollocks.
I tend to agree.
See :
On Chomsky’s apologetics for genocide in Cambodia:
Chomsky on Cambodia (January 10, 2010) | Chomsky on Cambodia (II) (January 19, 2010).
On Chomsky’s ‘anti-Americanism’:
Leonard Zeskind on Noam Chomsky (August 14, 2009) | More on Zeskind… and spotting! (August 15, 2009).
On Chomsky, Chávez, and Capitalist Pigs:
Chomsky as Chávez’s Clown / Chomsky en bufón de Chávez (December 6, 2009) | Chomsky the Capitalist Pig (December 5, 2009).
On the history of Jewish anarchists in the United States and the Yiddish anarchist newspaper Fraye Arbeter Shtime:
See also : Windschuttle makes a fool of himself over Chomsky − again, Ed Lewis, Ozleft, June 4, 2011 | Anarchism: in defense of an ideal, Cornelius, Real Deal Economics, June 3, 2011.
About the Anarchist Melbourne Bookfair
The Anarchist Melbourne Bookfair will be a free event held at Abbotsford Convent from 10am-6pm on Saturday 13th August, 2011. The bookfair will consist of up to 68 stalls of independent book-sellers and activist groups. Alongside the stalls there will be about 24 one-hour workshops running all day on all kinds of anarchist and direct action topics. There will also be a small kids’ space if carers want to self-organise child minding or the kids just want to play indoors.
The Mad Monk claims that the Tories want to embrace direct action — as a means of responding to an environmental crisis he doesn’t believe in. John Faulkner invokes direct democracy as a necessary response to a Labor Party in crisis — but only as a sop to members who are fleeing in large numbers (The Wran speech: the full transcript, June 9, 2011).
A review of the ALP’s performance in the 2010 federal election — conducted by Faulkner, Steve Bracks and Bob Carr — made various recommendations. An editorial in The Sydney Morning Herald laments the fact that these recommendations — like those of previous reviews charting the party’s internal decline — will likely be ignored. The response of factional bosses seems to confirm this: in fairness to Mark Arbib and Kim Carr, they have a point when they dismiss proposals which will erode their dominance. After all, while all ALP members are equal some — including these bright sparks — are more equal than others.
Still:
The average age of ALP members is 50, and the average age of Liberals, at least in Victoria, is more than 60. And, as we report on the Focus page today, the haemorrhage of members has become dire in the Victorian ALP. Of the 13,000 party members last year, 2100 – 16 per cent – did not renew this year. The number whose membership is the result of branch stacking is unknown, but some estimates place it as high as one-third of the total. It is hardly a picture of a party in good health, and astonishing for a party that holds office nationally and, until recently, governed in all states as well.
Yeah well: maybe. But it’s certainly possible for political parties to be both empty of active members and to successfully capture government, The Corrupt Knight’s assemblage of various chancers being a case in point. Further, the ALP will always likely dominate the trade union movement, and in general union leadership is a strictly ‘no ticket, no start’ proposition.
Otherwise, Nick Dyrenfurth and Frank Bongiorno reckon that the Australian Labor Party remains work in progress (The Australian, June 11, 2011):
When the Australian two-party system emerged in 1909, Labor was the party of Australian nationalism; strong on defence and nation-building yet loyal to the British Empire. In 1910 it became the first labour or social democratic party in the world to form a majority government. But World War I proved a rugged testing ground for Labor’s philosophy and machinery, and the party split over conscription for overseas service.
Noticeable by its absence in this account is the commitment which Labor shared with its ‘conservative’ counterparts: the White Australia policy. Joolya shares in this historical amnesia:
The signature values of nations are often defined by the circumstances of their birth.
This is as true for Australia as for other countries.
And for us there’s one value above all others that we identify with as truly our own.
It’s the value that emerged out of the circumstances of Federation, which coincided with the industrial turbulence of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
That value is fairness. Or as we like to put it: ‘the fair go’.
Which is all rather odd, especially given that — as angry White men across the country know — one of the first Acts of Federal Parliament was the Immigration Restriction Act. This Act (together with the Pacific Island Labourers Act 1901) formed the legal cornerstone of the White Australia policy; the Conciliation and Arbitration Act — which in Labor Party mythology has ensured a ‘fair go’ for ‘working families’ for the bulk of the country’s history — was only assented to by Edward VII in 1904. Further, while 100 years ago the Gub’mint couldn’t get rid of the Pacific Islanders quick enough, they now wanna import them — albeit if only for a coupla years…
One of the other problems with Dyrenfurth and Bongiorno’s account is the way in which it credits internal party reform for the (party’s) successes of the late 1960s and mid-1970s, while simultaneously ignoring the fact it was during this period that vital ‘new’ social movements emerged, ones from which the ALP was better able to attract votes, and which transformed Australian society and politics in important, if not necessarily fundamental, ways: a narrative in which, inter alia, ‘working class progressives’, in particular, are written out of history.
See also : The ALP facing extinction? (January 31, 2009) | How Labour Governs, Vere Gordon Childe (1923).
Three years ago, University of Nottingham employee Hicham Yezza got done for ‘terrorism’.
Well, kinda… but not really (see : Free Hicham Yezza!, May 30, 2008). What Yezza actually done was assist a student, Rizwaan Sabir, to access research materials related to Al-Qaeda. Later, British authorities threatened to deport Yezza to Algeria: he eventually ended up doing five months in prison (for other reasons of state; see : Support Hicham Yezza) but is now free to roam.
The legal proceedings against Yezza and Sabir were farcical. Rod Thornton, a lecturer in International Security and Terrorism at the University, pointed out in a paper (‘Radicalisation at universities or radicalisation by universities? How a student’s use of a library book became a ‘major Islamist plot”) that their ‘crime’ “was to have in their possession three documents—all of which were, in fact, available from their own university’s library”.
Several weeks ago, Thornton was suspended from his position, a result of his having also exposed in his paper the involvement of management at the University of Nottingham in the arrests of the two students (see : University of Nottingham suspends professor in major assault on free speech, Robert Stevens, wsws.org, May 25, 2011).
Now:
Confidential documents relating to a “major Islamist plot” have revealed that security staff from a leading university have been filming students on campus as a method of monitoring potential extremists.
More than 200 university documents – along with material from the Met’s counter-terrorism command, Special Branch and the Crown Prosecution Service – detail the controversial techniques being deployed to monitor students.
The documents, published today on the website Unileaks, follows the government’s publication of its Prevent strategy, which is aimed at targeting radicalisation in universities but has sparked concerns that it could fuel Islamophobia.
The dox are available on the Unileaks site here; a letter from loadsa non-Australian pointyheads calling on the University to reinstate Thornton is available here.
As might be expected, the campaign in support of Rod Thornton has completely freaked out University authorities, who’ve now resorted to covertly filming those against.
Also!
Gosh and bother and tish and fiffle!
WHAT: A political fuckwalk
WHEN: Friday, June 25th 2pm-3pm
WHERE: Flinders St Steps -> Bourke St Mall
WHY:
The Victorian Government began a three-year trial, from July 1, 2008, in which police were empowered to issue on-the-spot fines to people aged over 18 for a number of common offences, including indecent language. As a result:
Nearly 800 people were slapped with fines between 2009 and 2010 for using language deemed indecent by police under trial powers about to be made permanent by the Baillieu Government.
Between the 2009 to 2010 financial year just under 4,700 people were fined for offensive behaviour and 793 for indecent language, according to figures released by the Attorney General’s office.
The Baillieu Government will this week enshrine in parliament, on-the-spot fines of about $230 for language deemed to be offensive, indecent and/or threatening.
Attorney General Robert Clark said immediate fines meant the matters could bypass courts and, in turn, free up police time.
Hold your flow. I said, “Tomorrow John” and he said, “I know where your sympathies lie”, and I said, “I couldn’t give a fuck. I have no sympathies any more. You’re all a pack of shits and tomorrow I’m going berserk”. Well he went off his brain and in the end I said to him, I said, “Howard. You’re a cunt. You haven’t got my support, you never will have and I’m not going to rubbish you or the party tomorrow but I feel a lot better having told you you’re a cunt.”
Update (June 30) : The gig has been cancelled. A statement on the withdrawal is below.
Update : Appeal to Jello Biafra: Do not cross our picket line, June 12, 2011: “The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) sent an appeal to Jello Biafra on 7 June 2011, but its receipt was never acknowledged. In light of the public conversation around Biafra’s performance in Tel Aviv, PACBI has decided to publicize its appeal to him to cancel his ill-conceived show.”
Jello Biafra (and the Guantanamo School of Medicine) has decided not to join the BDS campaign and is playing a gig in Tel Aviv on July 2. In response to criticism, he wrote the following letter to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign explaining why the band has decided to play and posted it on the band’s FaceBook page (where it has generated a good deal of debate).
Thank you for your letter. Believe me, the decision to play in Tel Aviv was not taken lightly by me or the band. We have been through weeks of intense ongoing debate and discussions, soul searching and research. We have met with two peace activists, one of whom is Palestinian and lives in Ramallah. Our thoughts at present are these:
1. The more we know about the many sides to this horrible conflict, the more we realize we don’t know.
2. It certainly appears that both the Israeli Left and the Palestinian Left are divided right down the middle as to whether this kind of a boycott is a good idea at all. It is nowhere near as solid or as unified as the boycott against apartheid South Africa.
Setting foot in Israel does not automatically make us supporters of the Netanyahu regime or the policies we all oppose. Quite the opposite, in fact.
3. I agree with [p]eace activists who have said how important it is for someone like me to actually go there and see for myself what is really going on. Then, back home in America, I will be able to speak more knowledgeably from eyewitness experience, at a time when most Americans only get their information from dumbed down, censored corporate McNews.
It was never our intention to play the gig, hang out at the beach, and go home. After the gig I am staying around for several days. Am I going to Palestine too? Absolutely.
We know this issue is so multifaceted and volatile that no matter what I or the band do, someone is going to be upset. Sort of the story of my life, in a way. I hope that by making this trip we can in some small way help bring down that goddamn wall.
For peace and justice,
Jello Biafra.
You may remember the BDS campaign from such moments as the December 2010 decision by Marrickville Council to endorse it and then in April of this year to rescind its decision (on the basis that it ‘cost too much’ to implement).
A few points:
1. Like other conflicts–and campaigns intended in some way to address them–Jello is right to note that the issue is complex.
2. I don’t know if “the Israeli Left and the Palestinian Left are divided right down the middle” on the campaign, but: a list of those who’ve endorsed the campaign is available via the BDS site; assuming a position on the campaign on this basis is problematic; certainly, leading figures in the anti-apartheid movement endorse the campaign.
3. The BDS campaign–especially its ‘Cultural’ component–does not, on my reading, call on artists, musicians and intellectuals not to visit Israel, but rather not to perform there. If correct, Jello remains at liberty to set foot in the country, and to investigate its conditions.
Otherwise, British blogger Bob from Brockley, as well as being a big fan of Uncle Noam, has boatloads of debate on Israel/Palestine, and reckons that “The boycott, divestment, sanctions idea has zero chance of contributing positively to peace or justice in Palestine; its only role is to give liberals an outlet for their moral ejaculations and to engrave in indelible letters the idea that Israel is the last word in evil”.
See also : Anarchists Against the Wall | ‘Israeli anarchism: Statist dilemmas and the dynamics of joint struggle’, Uri Gordon, Anarchist Studies, Vol.15, No.1 (February 2003) [PDF].
