An Israeli strike killed at least 20 people who had taken refuge inside a UN school in the Gaza Strip yesterday, in the third such attack in a day, medics said. The strike hit near a school run by UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, in the northern town of Jabaliya, they said. The people inside the building had taken refuge from the fighting. Earlier in the day, two people were killed when an artillery shell slammed into a school in the southern town of Khan Yunis and three people were killed in an air strike on a school in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza City, medics said. [AFP]
The civilian death toll in Gaza increased dramatically today, with reports of more than 40 Palestinians killed after missiles exploded outside a UN school where hundreds of people were sheltering from the continuing Israeli offensive. Two Israeli tank shells struck the school in Jabaliya refugee camp, spraying shrapnel on people inside and outside the building, according to news agency reports. The medical director of the hospital in Jabaliya told the Guardian 41 bodies had been brought in so far and more could be on the way. Reuters journalists filmed bodies scattered on the ground amid pools of blood and torn shoes and clothes. A donkey lay on the ground in its own blood…
“I reiterate that we will treat the population [of Gaza] with silk gloves”
– Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
I am not sure that most people understand the meaning of the name “Operation Cast Lead” chosen by Israel for its murderous and criminal attack on Gaza. The name is borrowed from a Hebrew nursery rhyme which was (and may still be) very popular among Israeli children in the 1950s. In this song, a father promises to his child a special Hannukah gift: “a cast lead sevivon.” Sevivon, in Hebrew (A dreidel in Yiddish) is a four-sided spinning top, played with during the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah. Somebody, in the Israeli army, who apparently feels nostalgic about his childhood, decided that if Israeli kids would enjoy a sevivon cast from lead there is no reason why Palestinian children would not appreciate it too. After all Operation Cast Lead is not the first (and unfortunately, will not be the last) of Israel’s cruel war games.
The cynicism embedded in the name, selected for what Ari Shavit, one of Israel’s most celebrated commentators, called “an intelligent, impressive operation,” is symptomatic to the cold, meticulous and calculated cruelty with which this attack was “designed,” “executed” and “marketed” to the world. As the perpetrators themselves proudly boast, Operation Cast Lead is not only a great military victory but also a success story of Israeli hasbara (meaning in Hebrew, explanation, but practically referring to misinformation, spin and lies)…
…but it’s not all bad news!
Gaza assault pushes oil back above $50, January 6, 2009: “Israel’s assault on Gaza and Russia’s escalating gas dispute with Ukraine helped Brent crude hit $51.10 a barrel in London, its highest point since the start of December 2008.”
Personally, I’m not sure what all the fuss is bout. After all, this is the same corporate-sponsored, squinty-eyed little rodent what reckons “To describe the process [of colonisation of Australia] as ‘genocide’ is to use hyperbole that is unsupported by the historical evidence” — to acclaim from all the usual suspects. (Not known for having much of a sense of humour, a certain taste for the absurd is nevertheless revealed in the following: “Quadrant magazine is the leading general intellectual journal of ideas, literature, poetry and historical and political debate published in Australia.”) The article itself is just another in the continuing greenwash of corporate scientific prerogatives — of a kind that the other former Marxist revolutionaries of the Revolutionary Communist Party specialise in.
In The UnAustralian, Mister Windschuttle complains that “Crikey editor Jonathan Green should be aware that his publication’s involvement in the manufacture of this story is unethical. Green should counsel his writers on the meaning of the term beat-up and inform them that when a publication gets a reputation for such practices, it loses its readers in droves,” he said. In response, Crikey editor Jonathon Green said: “Look it was a good story and it’s not my job to save Keith Windschuttle from himself”.’ (Keith Windschuttle admits Quadrant ‘hoax’, Samantha Maiden, The Australian, January 6, 2009).
Quadrant also has the dubious privilege of having published former National Action Fuehrer Michael (de) Brander on ‘Alexander Solzhenitsyn and the West’ in the March 2005 edition.
On Monday, January 5, 2009, law-talking guys acting on behalf of the $1,000,000,000 business The University of Melbourne were able to convince a bloke in a funny wig that property belonging to the University was better off in the hands of the same authorities who had kept it empty for the last three years than it was students requiring emergency housing (Student squatters lose legal fight, Kate Hagan, The Age, January 6, 2009). As a result, men in uniform with guns are expected to descend on the property and to evict the occupants. In a superb act of timing, unimelb’s VC, Glyn Davis — who in addition to a fat salary receives free accommodation on-campus — has released the following worthy statement:
Universities are places for generating ideas and finding real solutions for problems facing society. At its best, education is a conversation across generations about shared concerns.
That is clearly seen in our increasingly climate-change-affected environment, where concern about issues of sustainability – for our world and closer to home, our country, state and city – regularly cross generational divides. How we handle our environments, built and natural, are matters for those who will inherit this planet…
In teaching, we see undergraduate students keen to design or manage the world in which they live, to tackle the changing demands and challenges constantly being thrown up in our built and natural environments.
The lesson currently being taught homeless students: get off my fucking property!
“The University won their case against SHAC in the Supreme Court meaning they can now order the police to evict us when they choose. The University has given us a new deadline to get out 12 midday (Wednesday). We are not leaving and are calling on all our supporters to come to SHAC and help us resist eviction. We do not know if the police will actually be coming on Wednesday afternoon but we are going to hold a mass emergency rally out the front. We are anticipating that a lot of media will be attending. Please pass this message on to your networks. If you want to help defend SHAC against eviction you are welcome to sleep over at SHAC. Please BYO bedding.”
The Student Housing Action Cooperative (SHAC) are a group of students who have formed together to take action on student housing affordability. As well as raising awareness and petitioning universities and government we have recently taken possession of four double story terrace buildings that have been vacant for three years. The property – situated at 272-8 Faraday Street, Carlton – is owned by the University Of Melbourne and we are currently in negotiations with them to have it turned into a student run housing co-operative.
Racists Post Another Murder Video
UCSJ
December 31st, 2008
Someone posted an Internet video of two or three assailants killing a Chinese man, according to a December 24, 2008 report by the Sova Information-Analytical Center. The murder, which police initially insisted was not motivated by racism, took place in a wooded area in the Chelyabinsk region on September 29, 2008. Whoever posted the video added photos of another attack on two men of Asian appearance in another wooded area, along with the claim that it took place on the same day as the murder. It is not clear what measures, if any, local police are taking in response to the murder video, an increasingly popular form of propaganda used by Russian neo-Nazi groups on Youtube and other websites.
In mid-December 2008, a small group of boneheads were sentenced for a string of murders and attempted murders. A Moscow court sentenced seven men to prison for involvement in the murder of 19 non-Slavic migrants in what prosecutors called a series of brutal hate crimes.
The lulz didn’t stop there however, as the previous week:
The severed head of a Tajik man murdered last week in an apparent hate crime was discovered in a dumpster in western Moscow, investigators said Thursday.
In a disturbing twist, an obscure ultranationalist group claimed responsibility for the slaying by e-mailing a photograph of the victim’s detached head to two human rights organizations, the groups said Thursday.
The victim’s head was discovered wrapped in a plastic bag in a dumpster Wednesday on Ulitsa Tolbukhina, near Kuntsevskaya metro station on the Moscow western outskirts, the Investigative Committee said in a statement.
An autopsy confirmed that the head belonged to a 20-year-old native of Tajikistan whose decapitated body was discovered last week near the village of Zhabkino, a few kilometers south of Moscow, the statement said…
A policeman in Athens, 21-year-old Diamantis Matzounis, has apparently been shot while guarding offices belonging to the Greek Ministry of Culture. The Belfast Telegraph reports that the man is dead; another account in The Timessuggests that this report may be exaggerated. According to the BBC, “Greece’s police chief says bullet cases matched the Kalashnikov rifle used in another attack on police in December”. In other words, the shooting is initially being constructed as the latest in an going campaign of left-wing extra-parliamentary violence.
Unidentified gunmen have shot and killed a policeman in the Greek capital, Athens. At least two gunmen opened fire on the 21-year-old officer while he was guarding the Culture Ministry building in the city. The attack is being linked to the recent shooting of a 15-year-old boy by police officers in Athens. The killing sparked almost two weeks of rioting by anarchist groups based in the bohemians [sic] Exarchia area of the city.
Earlier:
On the 23rd of December Konstantina Kuneva, a migrant cleaner and militant union organiser at the Athens Piraeus Electric Railway (ISAP), had sulphuric acid thrown at her face as she was returning home from work. She is still in critical condition. Even if there is no hard evidence for this, people here know the attack against Konstantina was ordered by her employing company, Oikomet SA, a subcontracting company working with ISAP. Since the attack people in solidarity have occupied and hold the headquarters of ISAP in Athens (here is the occupation’s blog). In Thessaloniki, the local Labour Centre (i.e. the mainstream trade union headquarters) has been occupied (their blog). Both occupations have organised a series of demonstrations, solidarity concerts and counter-information actions (occupying, for example, the speaker system of metro stations to read out communiques on the attack)…
Sometimes life surprises
cause you’d never expect it to be that
dangerous disguises
that you never expect to see
some things never change
nothing’s gonna change that
some things you can’t explain
like why we’re all embracing conventional wisdom in a world that’s just so unconventional
made you turn around
but you never expected to see that
that’s what makes that sound
that you never expect to hear
some things never change
some things wanna change that
some things you can’t explain
like why we’re all embracing conventional wisdom in a world that’s just so unconventional
they don’t know they’re wrong
but you know that they never can see that
that’s what makes them strong
that they know that we’ll never see
There is no horror, no cruelty, sacrilege, or perjury, no imposture, no infamous transaction, no cynical robbery, no bold plunder or shabby betrayal that has not been or is not daily being perpetrated by the representatives of the states, under no other pretext than those elastic words, so convenient and yet so terrible: “for reasons of state”. ~ Mikhail Bakunin, Federalism, Socialism, Anti-Theologism, 1867
After six days of Israeli bombardment, aid agencies say that Gazans are facing a humanitarian crisis with air strikes causing severe problems in getting food, medicine and fuel supplies to the besieged civilian population. The assessment, by several international relief organisations, contradicts the statement by the Israeli Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, during a visit to Paris yesterday that “there is no humanitarian crisis in the Strip, and therefore there is no need for a humanitarian truce”. ~ Gazans face ‘humanitarian crisis’ as Israeli raids intensify, Kim Sengupta, The Independent, January 1, 2009
The Israeli government’s Operation Cast Lead, begun on December 27, appears to be largely successful at this stage, with a number of Hamas leaders having been killed and much of the territory’s physical infrastructure reduced to rubble; infrastructure — such as numerous government and other ‘public’ buildings — which would serve as the foundations of a future bantustan under the control of some other political faction such as Fatah. Further, the international response (read: response on the part of foreign governments) has been overwhelmingly positive, while US support remains, as ever, rock-solid. Today, Australian Prime Minister KRUdd “called on Hamas militants to stop firing rockets into southern Israel and has urged both parties to negotiate a ceasefire… [and] is concerned by the conflict and supports efforts by the United Nations to help bring an end to fighting.” Efforts which are subject to a US veto, a right which the US has exercised on many occasions over the last few decades.
The Official Story is that Israel attacked Gaza in response to a rocket attack. In reality, the attack, sensibly enough, was planned for many months.
Sources in the defense establishment said Defense Minister Ehud Barak instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prepare for the operation over six months ago, even as Israel was beginning to negotiate a ceasefire agreement with Hamas. According to the sources, Barak maintained that although the lull would allow Hamas to prepare for a showdown with Israel, the Israeli army needed time to prepare, as well.
Barak gave orders to carry out a comprehensive intelligence-gathering drive which sought to map out Hamas’ security infrastructure, along with that of other militant organizations operating in the Strip.
This intelligence-gathering effort brought back information about permanent bases, weapon silos, training camps, the homes of senior officials and coordinates for other facilities.
The plan of action that was implemented in Operation Cast Lead remained only a blueprint until a month ago, when tensions soared after the IDF carried out an incursion into Gaza during the ceasefire to take out a tunnel which the army said was intended to facilitate an attack by Palestinian militants on IDF troops [November 5, 2008: “A four-month ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza was in jeopardy today after Israeli troops killed six Hamas gunmen in a raid into the territory”].
On November 19, following dozens of Qassam rockets and mortar rounds which exploded on Israeli soil, the plan was brought for Barak’s final approval. Last Thursday, on December 18, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak met at IDF Kiryat headquarters in central Tel Aviv to approve the operation.
However, they decided to put the mission on hold to see whether Hamas would hold its fire after the expiration of the ceasefire. They therefore put off bringing the plan for the cabinet’s approval, but they did inform Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni of the developments.
The response in Australia to this latest chapter in the Middle East peace process has been predictable. Thus on the one hand, the Australian Jewish News reports:
HUNDREDS of people gathered in Melbourne’s centre on Sunday to show solidarity with Israel and to condemn terrorism.
Speakers including Labor MP Michael Danby, Liberal Senator Mitch Fifield and Jewish community representatives made it clear that it is the noted terrorist organisation, Hamas, that has brought about the current violence.
Senator Fifield said: “Israel is under attack. Not from the Palestinian people. Not from the Palestinian Authority. But from Hamas.
“Hamas in Gaza cannot claim to have been resisting an occupier. Let us remember that Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005.
“Despite this, Israel has come under attack on an almost daily basis from rockets fired by terrorists linked to Hamas. More than 3000 rockets in 2008 alone.”
The rally was organised by the Australian Liberal Students’ Federation and supported by the Zionist Council of Victoria. It attracted a 700-strong crowd of young and old supporters of Israel.
Many waved flags, both Israeli and Australian, and almost all were dressed in the blue and white colours of Israel’s flag.
Danby, a long-time public advocate for Israel, told the crowd that the current violence will stop only when Hamas stop firing rockets from Gaza…
Just hours after the first media reports of the launch of the Israeli ground assault on the Gaza Strip, protests in Australia’s major cities of Melbourne and Sydney drew thousands into the streets to condemn the Zionist state and show solidarity with the besieged Palestinian people…
Prior to the bombing and invasion, the AIJAC re-published a brief essay by Jeffrey White, ‘IDF Military Action in Gaza: Options and Implications’ (PolicyWatch, No. 1442, December 18, 2008). “The military plans under consideration probably envision three basic scenarios”: first, the resumption of previous policy; secondly, “a larger but still relatively limited operation, with deeper and longer penetration into the Strip”.
…The third option would be a large, multiple brigade- or division-level operation with equivalent, stepped-up action by other forces, involving deep if not complete penetration of the Strip, with the intention of breaking Hamas’s military power and weakening its grip on Gaza. This could involve prolonged occupation of at least some territory, and extensive efforts to rake out terrorist organizations and their infrastructure. Although the most challenging from a military standpoint, this kind of operation would offer the best prospects for long-term security improvements in southern Israel. Of course, this option would entail the greatest political complications and risks, and could lead to an escalation of military tensions with Hizballah in Lebanon. It would also require a clearly defined exit strategy.
Current discussions in Israel seem to be focusing on larger operations, rather than a return to the status quo prior to the ceasefire.
Hundreds of dead and thousands of injured, sacrificed on the altar of Zionist expansionism and fundamentalism. In Europe, the foreign ministers of every EU country talk about an “exaggerated”, though “legitimate”, reaction on the part of Israel, reversing the true situation with an operation that would make the most cynical illusionist feel proud by making the aggressor, the State of Israel, appear to be the victim.
They continue to pretend that they do not remember that Gaza – one of the most densely-populated regions with around one and a half million inhabitants, about half of whom are children – has been the object of a total embargo for years, an embargo which includes medicines and basic necessities and which is supported by the entire “civilized” western world, imposed by Israel and the West as a result of the Hamas election victory, thanks to the mixed electoral system of majority and proportional representation. Just as they pretend to forget that Hamas was once financed by Israel as a way of countering the PLO.
Despite a 6-month truce, the embargo was not even slightly relaxed and not one of the Western powers even timidly suggested relaxing it. The State of Israel has returned to its strategy of military control over Gaza and the West Bank. All Europe’s useless, hypocritical proclamations of a desire for peace systematically forget to mention that for 60 years Israel has been blithely violating countless UN resolutions and continues to occupy the territory militarily, with Israeli colonies spreading throughout Palestinian land day by day, building walls that segregate entire villages and prevent millions of refugees from returning to their land, uprooting olive groves and killing livestock, day after day humiliating anyone who tries to cross the segregation walls in order to go to work, to hospital or to school.
And not only that: they hide the fact that the truce was broken by the Israeli State on 4th November 2008 when its army killed a 22-year-old Hamas militant.
But aside from the false, hypocritical proclamations of pacifism, what is the reason for this unconditional support for such an aggressive, warmongering State by practically every major Western power?
As far as the USA is concerned, there is no doubt. Apart from the important strategic and territorial alliance that Israel represents for American imperialism in the Middle East, it also has to deal with the powerful US pro-Israel lobby, which is strong enough to bring about an influence on US foreign policy. And what is happening today comes across as a clear warning to the president-elect, Obama.
Europe has partially regained its unity on foreign policy and is probably playing the card of active diplomacy in order to strengthen its role in the Mediterranean and to warn the USA that it cannot act alone in the Mare Nostrum[1] area. But one must not forget arms sales, an area where States are always ready to hide the truth under the blanket of “State secrets” and support the orders of those companies who produce arms and support systems. And these businesses are never biased. They are quite happy to sell arms to opposing parties, as long as they can pay for them. Italy, for example, is one of the biggest arms suppliers to Iran and Lebanon, but has also supplied the Israeli army for years with arms technology through companies like Oto-Melara, Beretta, Borletti and Selenia. And the other countries in Europe do likewise.
Palestine is cynically used as an experimentation ground for deadly new technologies which are increasingly specialising in “urban warfare” and in which every arms company is interested: from US and Israeli companies to English, French, German, Italian, and so on.
So, in this tortured land where men, women and children, crushed by the wargames of the powerful, seem to have no future, new arms are tested, from cluster bombs to impoverished uranium bullets, the effectiveness of UAVs (pilotless aircraft) – able to launch remote controlled missiles – is studied, Achzarit tanks able to withstand landmines are experimented, Namer armoured vehicles with Continental Motors (US) or MTU (German) engines are tested, as is the efficacy of avant-garde systems such as Italian added protection and remote-controlled turrets mounted on Puma armoured vehicles, and Alenia’s futuristic robotic war systems such as Sky-X, the first system in the world able to refuel pilotless aircraft in flight.
All this on the shoulders of a people who have always been used in clashes between States and others, cynically used even in the political clashes between the internal factions of one State, as in the case of Israeli political machinations connected with the electoral struggle both within the governing coalition between the hawkish Kadima, responsible for some of the most extreme acts – like the evacuation of the Strip proposed by the MK Yisrael Hasson – on the one hand and the Labour doves, in favour of a more measured approach, on the other, and between Kadima and the Likud super-hawks, increasingly moving towards ultra hardline positions.
We certainly do not expect the Arab and/or Islamic States to do anything, divided as they are or intent on strengthening their prestige and their influence in the area, even if it comes at the cost of the Palestinian people. Like the case of Iran, that uses the Palestinian tragedy to publicise itself as the only bulwark against the hated American imperialism and set itself up as the emerging power in the region.
But beyond all the international political conjecturing, the situation of the Palestinian population today seems bleak, with few prospects for reaching a solution that can give them a chance for a life with even a minimum of dignity, both from the point of view of social security and from that of guaranteeing respect of the minimum rights of survival.
Today perhaps the only guarantee that the Palestinian people may, as quickly as possible, find even a little respite and peace is that the marauders of all shapes and sizes – physically or ideologically thronging at their borders, or engaging in political speculation inside – reach a new, precarious balance.
The only real prospect for emancipation that we can glimpse in the near future is a growth and spread of the sort of self-organisation that many Palestinian villages practise, encouraged by the solidarity between Palestinian popular committees and initiatives such as Anarchists Against the Wall, involving internationalists from all over the world and anti-Zionist Israelis, who fight the arrogance of the Israeli settler colonists and the army that supports them using prevalently peaceful resistance. And it is not by chance that in these villages another road has been chosen and not the militarism of Hamas.
As class-struggle anarchists and libertarians we will continue to denounce Zionist settler colonialismm as we denounce all forms of imperialism and fundamentalism that oppress the liberty and dignity of every people. We will go on denouncing the fact that huge swathes of the world’s proletariat suffer under the oppression and misery that results from inter-imperialist clashes and the cynical political games of powerful local oligarchs who are in turn used, knowingly or unknowingly, as pawns in the international chessboard of imperialist disputes, marked with the blood of the proletariat.
We will continue to support the struggles and act of solidarity with the Palestinian people, supporting all those embryonic manifestations of self-determination that typify the struggles of whole villages in Palestine, convinced that only if they can free themselves of the malicious influences of all State or para-State oligarchies can the working men and women begin to hope for a more dignified life.
“The French will only be united under the threat of danger. No one can simply bring together a country that has 265 kinds of cheese.” ~ Charles de Gaulle, 1951
The French government fears a wave of extreme left-wing terrorism this year with the possible sabotage of key infrastructure, kidnappings of major business figures or even bomb attacks.
Secret French government reports, seen by the Observer, describe an “elevated threat” from an “international European network … with a strong presence in France” after the radicalisation of “a new generation of activists” in recent years. Senior analysts and experts linked to the government have drawn parallels with the Action Directe group, which carried out 50 or more attacks in the early 1980s. Others cite the example of the Baader-Meinhof gang [aka Red Army F(r)action].
A report by the French domestic intelligence service talks of “a rebirth of the violent extreme left” across Europe that is likely to be aggravated by the effects of the economic crisis. Other secret documents expose alleged links with activists in Italy, Greece, Germany and the UK. “It has been growing for three or four years now and the violence is getting closer and closer to real terrorism,” said Eric Dénécé, director of the French centre of intelligence research and a former Defence Ministry consultant…
[Julien] Coupat has also been accused by investigators of anonymously writing a book, The Coming Insurrection [PDF], published by a little known Paris publishing house in 2007. The book, which has been translated into English and posted on US and UK anarchist websites, was found in the possession of three young activists arrested after detonating a bomb in a field. It contains instructions about sabotaging railways and other means of “destroying the power of the police, seizing local political power by the people, and blocking the economy”. A statement from the publishing house said the author was “a committee from the subversive tendency”…
Nonsense. As everyone who’s anyone knows, The Invisible Committee consists of at least 40 NZ anarchists and also a considerable number of black bloc anarchists from Europe. People from Sweden, Germany and England. These people are like football hooligans who travel the world looking for violence.
Be armed. But do everything possible to make the use of weapons superfluous. Against the army, victory is political.
There’s no such thing as a peaceful insurrection. Weapons are necessary: it’s a question of doing everything possible to make their use superfluous. An insurrection is more just about taking up arms and maintaining an “armed presence,” than it is about entering an armed struggle. Weapons are a constant in revolutionary situations, though their use is infrequent or indecisive, in moments of great reversals: August 10th 1792, March 18th, 1871, October 1917. When power is in the gutter, it’s enough just to trample it underfoot.
From the distance that separates us from them, weapons have taken on a kind of double character of fascination and disgust, that only training in their use can overcome. Authentic pacifism can’t mean refusing weapons, but only refusing to use them. Pacifism without being able to fire bullets is just theorizing on powerlessness. Such a priori pacifism is a kind of preventive disarmament, a pure police operation. In truth the pacifist question is only serious for those who have the ability to fire bullets. And in this case pacifism would be on the contrary a indication of real power, since only from an extremely strong position is one liberated from the need to use the gun.
From a strategic point of view, indirect, asymmetrical action seems the most effective, the most adapted to the era: an occupation army can’t be attacked frontally. For all that, the perspective of going urban guerrilla Iraqi-style, which would get bogged down without the possibility of going on the offense, would be more to be feared than desired. The militarization of civil war is the defeat of insurrection. Though the Reds had their triumph in 1921, the Russian Revolution was already lost.
Two kinds of state reactions must be envisioned. The one of plain hostility, the other more underhanded, democratic. The first being wordless destruction, the second a subtle but implacable hostility: hoping to enlist us. We can be defeated both by dictatorship itself and by being reduced to opposing only dictatorship. Defeat consists as much in losing the war as in losing the choice of which war to wage. Both are possible, though, as was proven in Spain in 1936: the revolutionaries there were doubly defeated, both by fascism and by the republic.
When things get serious, the army will take over the terrain. The way it will commence taking action is less obvious. It would require that the State be resolutely committed to causing a bloodbath, one that at present is no more than a threat, almost like the threat of using the nuclear bomb was a half-century ago. Though it has been wounded for a long while, the beast of the State is still dangerous. It still remains that to go against the army a massive crowd is necessary, invading its ranks and fraternizing with the soldiers. Another March 18th 1871 is necessary. When the army hits the street, that’s an insurrectionary situation. When the army’s gone into action, it’s pushing the issue. Everyone will find himself or herself forced to take a side, and choose between anarchy and the fear of anarchy. An insurrection only triumphs as a political force. Politically it’s not impossible to defeat an army.
:150 years of Libertarian… “This year, 2008, marks the 150th anniversary of the use of the word “libertarian” by anarchists.” How about that eh?
:: There’s a new anarchist-communist (Platformist) organisation in Aotearoa / New Zealand : “The Aotearoa Workers Solidarity Movement (AWSM) is an organisation working towards a classless, stateless society: anarchist-communism. We are made up of revolutionary class-struggle anarchists from across Aotearoa / New Zealand. For now, we are a small organisation with members in Wellington, Christchurch and a few smaller towns across the country…”
The place of anarchism in the foundation and development of the many revolutions in 20th century China is largely unknown or forgotten in China and the world over. Philosophers and organizers of numerous groups under the umbrella of anarchism helped lay the cornerstones for political, social, economic, and cultural struggles in China. Their work culminated in the capture of state power in 1949 by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). From the first decade of the 20th century to the early 1930s, anarchist ideas had much currency among those individuals seeking to construct a modern Chinese nation free from the influence of the flags of the rising sun, Union Jack, Stars and Stripes, and the modern Chinese state.
:::: In modern India, ‘Adivasi’ is a term used to describe the indigenous peoples of that part of the world. Rahul Banerjee believes neither in God nor in Utopia but does believe in maintaining a blog called Anaarkali which examines ‘The saga of Bhil Tribal Adivasi Indigenous People’:
The Bhil tribal adivasi indigenous people have fought fiercely to retain their nature friendly small community based lifestyles. The Bhils’ modern day struggles thus have two sides : anarchistic – anaar and environmental – kali or flower. The Bhil women too are fighting against their own patriarchal oppression in the same way as the famous Anaarkali did.
::::: Sholom (Samuel) Schwartzbard gets a guernsey in a Jewish paper in the US: When France Embraced a Jewish Avenger, Deborah Waroff, The Jewish Daily Forward, October 23, 2008: “Some 81 years ago this month, a person in Warsaw would have enjoyed the odd spectacle of a mob of Jews surrounding France’s Polish embassy, wildly proclaiming the greatness of the French Republic. The occasion: Jews everywhere were celebrating France because, after a sensational eight-day trial (which even made the front page of The New York Times), a jury of 12 petit-bourgeois Parisians had astonishingly acquitted the Ukrainian-born Jewish immigrant and anarchist Sholom Schwartzbard of the charge of murder for shooting to death former Ukrainian president Symon Petliura in the middle of the Latin Quarter, an act the accused fully acknowledged committing.”
:::::: Finally, Josh Lees of Socialist Alternative recounts what happened ‘When anarchism was put to the test’ (Socialist Alternative, No.134, October–November 2008): “The Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky compared the theory of anarchism to an umbrella full of holes: useless precisely when it rains. The truth of this insight was forcibly demonstrated when anarchism failed the test of the Spanish Revolution.”
Lords of Chaos (LOC), a recent book-length examination of the “Satanic” black metal music scene, is less concerned with sound than fury. Authors Michael Moynihan and Didrik Sederlind zero in on Norway, where a tiny clique of black metal musicians torched some churches in 1992. The church burners’ own place of worship was a small Oslo record store called Helvete (Hell). Helvete was run by the godfather of Norwegian black metal, 0ystein Aarseth (“Euronymous”, or “Prince of Death”), who first brought black metal to Norway with his group Mayhem and his Deathlike Silence record label…
“Michael Moynihan is an interesting fellow”, writes Kevin, and so are the other odds and sods associated with various forms of ‘cultural fascism’. Unfortunately, but perhaps unsurprisingly, all seem to share a desire for notoriety which exists in inverse proportion to their talents.
:::::::: From London, Last Hours is a “radical culture web zine and occasional publisher. It aims to explore and promote DIY ideas and ideals, with articles, interviews, comics, columns and reviews.” Also from London: Moore Confessions: Bring on the squat-rock revival (John Moore, The Guardian, December 5, 2008):
Before wealth and fame catapulted me on to the property ladder that poverty and obscurity have since catapulted me off, I lived in squats for several years. These were soon-to-be-demolished flats near Vauxhall, and the legendary Bonnington Square; vibrant communities comprising artists, writers, bands, alternative types, and occasionally people with real jobs. The common perception of acres of feckless hippies, junkies and escaped murderers is only partly true. Many co-squattees may well now read – or write – for the Guardian. My neighbours at the time were members of Wire, the Band of Holy Joy, even the dreaded U2 had a connection to the area. Without the squats of central London, it is unlikely that any of the great antipodean bands – the Birthday Party, the Scientists or the Triffids would have hung around the capital for more than a few days … they weren’t your Earls Court types. The Sex Pistols spent much of their ascendance squatting in Hampstead – a blue plaque is now in the offing. Crass, the only band to really ruffle the establishment, used to play in abandoned buildings and plough any profits back into anarchist organizations. Imagine not being in it for the money? Terrifying.
As is well-known, John Rees of the SWP has been given the arse from its CC, scapegoated for the political wreck that is Respect, Equality, Socialism, Peace, Environmentalism, Community, and Trade Unionism. The Weekly Worker provides a good summary of the situation in ‘All that was once certain now melts’, Weekly Worker, No.750, December 18, 2008 (“As John Rees launches his long awaited war on the central committee, both factions of the SWP leadership are coming under fire from sections of the membership. Peter Manson reports”), while Splintered Sunrise provides some of the best analysis (and laffs): Rees protests his defenestration (December 15, 2008); Molyneux contra Davidson contra Rees contra Harman ad infinitum… (December 18, 2008); and More juice for the mango (December 22, 2008).
Anyway, so what? So John Rees’ letter in defence of his role contains the following passage:
But contrast treatment of the [Organising for Fighting Unions] cheque with another donation made to a united front earlier this year. [Unite Against Fascism] received a £75,000 cheque from the singer Morrissey in the run up to the [Love Music Hate Racism] Carnival. This was never reported to the CC. Morrissey was at that time embroiled in the court case arising from the NME’s accusation that he had made racist remarks during an interview with an NME journalist. The donor of the OFFU cheque got nothing in return for his money~no publicity, no soft-peddling on PFI. But Morrissey did get something for his money~anti-racist credentials during a court case in which he was accused of racism.
Should we have accepted this cheque? We were never given the chance to discuss it. Earlier money for the Carnival from the NME might also be an issue for debate. The NME is published by IPC, a firm with an anti-union record. Moreover it also publishes Nuts and Loaded. The former’s advertising slogan was ‘The best boobs in Britain, get them every week’. Should we have taken the money?
My view is that if the only way of saving the Carnival was to take the money, then we should have done. We are not moralists but Marxists for whom the advance of the struggle sometimes requires difficult compromises. After all, Lenin accepted the help of the German state in the midst of war to return to Russia even though he was accused of being a German spy ever after.
£75,000. £75,000? £75,000! As Rees states, Morrissey was involved in a dispute with the NME at the time; the NME had dropped its sponsorship of the Carnival; and so Morrissey, who hates racism and loves music, stepped in with a big fat cheque in order to save the day. Hooray! Odd that Rees appears to think that the passage of a cheque from Morrissey to LMHR should have been reported to the SWP’s CC, however. I mean, what with LMHR being completely independent of UAF. And UAF being completely independent of the SWP.
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?"
