The Guevara Convention

Absolutely fantastic news - the Guevara Convention project (initial details were here) is now part reality - with two great tracks to listen to - so learn a little about brother Malcolm X and Harlem...
he was pointing the way...

and then a second track still more sublime...

Listen to both from the downloads area of the Guevara Convention site here or the very bottom of this page, or the side bar of Trinketization.

Bye Bye Howard, TweedleRudd takes his place - eeew/New Leadershrimp.

After 11 long reactionary years, Johnny bye bye Howard's concessions speach in the Austraian 'election' just now on SkyNews included a tribute to the First Australians and his recent 'intervention' - given the blunt racism of that intervention, this was just one final kick in the knees. I am so glad to see him fuck right off. And I don't carehow much the swing was, or if Benelong's revenge is that he loses his seat or just withers away in office. Bye Bye Johnny Bye Bye.

Then I switch to ABC news and to the acceptance speech of the new Prime Minister. How long it takes Mr Rudd to remove the troops from Iraq will be the first test for his promise 'to govern in the National interest'. Then sme platitudes... doesn't sound that prmoising does it: 'A new consensus' needs to be 'forged', a '21st Centry economy' and a 'right balance' between flexibility and fairness in the workplace'. Oh dear - then there was some waffle about 'fair go', 'national defence' and 'work for the nation'.

'To our frineds and allies ... [Rudd] will work with them to face the challenges of the future' - what could that possibly mean? Especially followed by mention of our great friends in the USA straight after. Mate - 'eeew' Leadership or 'new' same old same old'.

Greens don't seem to have done as well as they might have hoped, but Adam Bandt did alright in the impossible ask against Lindsay Tanner in Melbourne. Reason to be cheerful I do suppose - awwww. We will of course be admonished for not being happy happy happy. And that Maxine Medium in Benelong got all the publicity in the UK papers. While communist parties don't seem to get any mention anywhere, of course. The resurgent Left is, um, not yet quite evident...

We've decided the Goverment in Exile Office must remain open for business.

Dangerous times demand courageous voices. Bob Avakian.

The following statement is from Engage! A Committee to Project and Protect the Voice of Bob Avakian…

Dangerous times demand courageous voices.

Bob Avakian is such a voice.

Bob Avakian combines an unsparing critique of the history and current direction of American society with a sweeping view of world history and the potential for humanity. He has brought forth a fresh, relevant and compelling approach to Marxism, deeply analyzing the history of the Communist movement and the socialist revolutions and upholds their achievements. At the same time, he honestly confronts and criticizes what he views as their shortcomings, opening up new paths of inquiry in the process and initiating dialogue with people who hold a wide range of views. He’s addressing the burning problems before society from a unique vantage point, and we consider his revolutionary analysis and solutions to be an important and necessary part of the ferment and discourse required in this society and the world in this dark time. While those of us signing this statement do not necessarily agree with all of his views, we have come away from encounters with Avakian provoked and enriched in our own thinking, and we invite others to hear and engage that voice.
Bob Avakian is also the leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA; as such he not only theorizes about the world, but plays a special role in organizing and leading that change. He’s been called a “long-distance runner in the freedom struggle against imperialism, racism and capitalism” and he draws on deep connections and engagement with people from all walks of life and all corners of the earth. All this informs and animates his work.

Unfortunately, such voices in this country are, and have been, all too frequently the objects of suppression and repression. This repressive edge in American society has been particularly brought to bear against those who advocate revolution and especially those who do so effectively. Surveillance, harassment, suppression, political trials, prison terms, exile and even assassination have been the fates of many revolutionaries throughout U.S. history and many of those measures have, in fact, been visited upon Avakian. The current administration has instituted serious repressive measures like the Patriot Act, instituted the use of preventive detention and isolation of those whom the president deems to be “terrorist”, and has created a climate where, for example, radical or even liberal professors find their reputations and even their livelihoods under assault; all this makes the ability of Bob Avakian to freely function even more of a concern. The statement by the German pastor Martin Niemoller – which begins “first they came for the communists, and I did nothing because I was not a communist” and which goes on to describe how Niemoller did nothing while Hitler peeled away the victims of the Nazi regime one at a time, until there was no one left to defend Niemoller when his time came – sounds with particular resonance today.

Thus, in addition to calling on people to engage with the thoughts of Bob Avakian and bring them into what needs to be a rich and diverse dialogue, we are also serving notice to this government that we intend to defend his right to freely advocate and organize for his views, and to engage broadly with people about those views

engagewbobavakian@yahoo.com
http://www.engagewithbobavakian.org

'Dangerous times demand courageous voices. Bob Avakian is such a voice' has been signed by many - See Here.

Release Jose-Maria Sison!

CoRIM received the following urgent message:

Release Jose-Maria Sison!

The Committee of the Revolutionary
Internationalist Movement learned with anger and
outrage of the arrest in the Netherlands of
Jose-Maria Sison by the Dutch authorities.
Comrade Sison was the founding Chairman of the
Communist Party of the Philippines in 1968 and
has remained a life-long opponent of imperialism
and reaction and leader of the Filipino people's
struggles. It is for these reasons and no other
that comrade Sison has been hounded by successive
reactionary governments in the Philippines. US
imperialism and the European Union have also
tried to stick the "terrorist" label on comrade
Sison, despite the fact that the struggle he has
been associated with in the Philippines is widely
known, even by the reactionary news media, to
have the support of millions of Filipinos from
all walks of life.

The arrest of comrade Sison is not only a major
blow to the struggle of the Filipino people, it
is also an attack on the thousands of
revolutionaries and other political activists
from around the world who have settled in Europe
because of severe political persecution in their
home countries. If the Dutch authorities succeed
in bringing comrade Sison to trial, it will have
ominous, more widespread implications.

The CoRIM, on behalf of the entire Revolutionary
Internationalist Movement, calls upon all
communist, revolutionary and progressive forces
and individuals to raise their voices in protest
to demand that the Dutch authorities release
Jose-Maria Sison, drop all charges, and cease
their political persecution of him.

Committee of the Revolutionary Internationalist
Movement
30 August 2007

What the Fuck is going on in Australia?

I keep getting asked to comment on what is going on in Australia, but my response is a) WHAT is going on in Australia? I mean, when TNT Magazine rang me to comment on whether I thought the British view of Australia was outdated; wanting me, I suspect, to trash the old routines of cork hats and bbqs, in favour of the new sophistication on show at, then upcoming, Australian Film Festival in London, I was non-plussed. Yes, the British view of 'Oz' is outdated - and it varies interestingly according to how alert to racism people are: black friends agree its the new apartheid, white friends want to move there because of Neighbours. But my second response is b) I've been away 14 years, please go read some of the people writing about Australian politics who are there today. There is no excuse for cork hats, crappy movie reruns, or uninterested dismissal. Settler colonialism is rampant, the frontier is being remade. You can read whatever Pilger will come up with in his cult-journalist persona, and that would not necessarily be wrong, but you could more usefully follow the discussions of the people who tread the paths that cult-journos will not even find out about until they have their cheques signed and broadcast slot assured. So, have a look at Ange's stuff here and Ben here where there is at least an attempt to work out what the fuck is going on in Australia.

From the second of the above links, Ben writes, in his third(fourth) instalment on the present 'troubles':

exceptions (iii)

to discipline the colonised
There have been sporadic reports of resistance to the intervention by people in “affected areas”. Some have responded by saying these reports are further efforts to besmirch the image of Indigenous people, while others have viewed the media as suppressing stories of resistance and refusal as part of the corporate media’s agenda to deny the existence or significance of such struggles. It is genuinely hard to get a picture of what people are doing in response, and many of the forms of response and resistance will undoubtedly remain invisible to me and maybe to the intervening authorities. Will any leak in visibility or declare themselves as a rupture of compliance and a smoothly managed takeover?

Other themes I want to develop:

Purpose and form of the the NT intervention : a re-imposition of capitalist social relations - most centrally, in relation to property/ land and wage-labor/work - through government control of consumption (where and on what welfare can be spent), distribution of commodities (control of stores, policing of alcohol), reproduction/welfare (control of services, community organisations etcetera through the new “managers” powers to take over at will any uncooperative organisations), labour (work-for-the-dole in places of extremely high unemployment making the bulk of the population conscriptable into the work of the intervention itself and anything else). Managed through every type of coercion available to the state - dependence on welfare, the use of police, potential of child removal, imposition of forced labour.

Origins of the NT intervention: not out of nowhere in response to any report, but developed over time by elites such as, but not limited to, those supporting and working in the Cape York Institute, promoting quasi-neoliberalising but statist experiments in management of the Indigenous and the neo-lumpen proletariat, to be integrated into general strategies for the reproduction (and expansion) of capitalist social relations. A conservative Third Way, intensive state management combined with the imposition of money-as-command. Moral panic over child abuse as a tactic for imposition integrated into the agenda enough to maybe appear a response.

POSTED BY theoryoftheoffensive ON 08.30.07 @ 4:39 am

1857.org.uk

Here is again the 1857 site, which now carries videos from the Manchester conference which are great - informative discussion of links between 1857 and imperialism today (oil, Iraq [EIC was in Basra from 1863], definition of terrorism, evaluations of Marx as journalist of 1857 etc). There is a good two hours to watch, but its informative and worth the time.

Check here for:

*The Historical Significance of 1857 by Kalpana Wilson (South Asia Solidarity Group. Speach in 1857'
*Nick Robins in 1857's 150 years anniversary in Manchester by 1857 committee
*Q and A 1 in 1857's 150 years anniversary in Manchester by 1857 committee
*Folk Songs of 1857: D. Ajaz, (Author Kaal Bolaindi - folksongs sung today from the 1857 uprising in Kaal Bolaindi - folksongs sung today from the 1857 uprising
*Iraq-East India Co. (1763-Factory established in Basra) to Halliburton by Hani Lazim
*Q and A 2 in 1857's 150 years mnniversary in Manchester by 1857 committee
*Ayesha Siddiqa Speech in 1857's 150 years anniversary in Manchester


Older comments here and article here.

No Borders Gatwick in Sept.

An Invitation To The Gatwick No Border Camp 2007

From 19th to 24th September 07 we will gather at Gatwick Airport for
the first No Border Camp in the UK. This camp will be a chance to work together to try and stop the building of a new detention centre, and togather ideas for how to build up the fight against the system of migration controls.

Gatwick Aiport - The Border Point
Gatwick is a border in the middle of Britain. People arrive hereeveryday. People are forcibly deported from here everyday. It is a place where people are imprisoned for unlimited lengths of time withouttrial, where people are forced to hide underground and be invisible,where people are treated as criminals for the 'crime' of crossing the border.In Britain, the government has recently announced its intention tobuild a new detention centre, near Tinsley House, another detentioncentre at Gatwick airport. This will be another in a long line of barbarous prisons across the world, imprisoning people who migrate.Unless we stop it from being built.Not far from Gatwick there are other border fortifications: theimmigration reporting centre at Croydon, the airline companies who charter deportation flights and the ID Interview centre in Crawley. Anda few miles away are the border posts at Dover and Folkstone, wherefear of detection by the border police forces people to risk theirlives hiding under lorries, or in suffocating containers.
While the physical borders get fortified, governments also tighten upthe internal controls: from international databases to videosurveillance, biometric ID cards to electronic tagging. Just recently,the UK government has announced the introduction of the Sirene System.
This will grant Britain access to the SIS (Schengen InformationSystem), a EU wide police database for refugees and migrants, plannedto be extended to keep protesters from moving around.
A Tactics Laboratory
How does daily life, from the need to work for survival to the welfaresystem, reinforce these borders? How can we fight against the commonacceptance of borders, the idea of an inside and outside? How can we claim freedom of movement as a basic right? How do we assert ourability to decide whether to go or stay, according to our needs anddesires, not the needs of the state or the economy? How can we escapecontrol, and start building a movement powerful enough to challenge the
divisions between people?We need to share knowledge with those who have broken these borders,the hackers who escape control, those who survive without work andmoney, those who fight the detention system , those who question identities, those who have learnt to organise themselves withouthierarchy or divisions.Camp(aign)ing Against BordersThis camp is continuing the tradition of the No Border camps across the world since the late 1990s, and like the camps taking place this yearin the Ukraine in August and on the US/Mexican border in November. Itwill be a space to share information, skills, knowledge andexperiences. A place to plan actions together against the system of borders which divides us.We are aware that the struggles for "no borders" reach far beyond "openborders". Without borders the idea of states will become obsolete,without states the national economies will be history. In a world without borders, nobody will ask for papers anymore.The camp will also be a laboratory of political and practicalself-organisation. The camp will consist only of people's contributionsto this. We are aware of the borders which divide ourselves from each other, be it sex, class, race, nationality, or whatever. The bordercamps are experiments in how to overcome these artificial andseparating identities.
No Borders
No Borders is a network of groups struggling for the freedom of movement for all and an end to all migration controls. We call for aradical movement against the system of control, dividing us intocitizens and non-citizens.We demand the end of the border regime for everyone, including ourselves, to enable us to live another way, without fear, racism andnationalism.
We move, we meet. We talk, we fight. Come camp with us.

< http://noborders.org.uk/>

And an idea for something to bring to the Camp... Let's bring a Uni. See here.
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Sons of Malcolm.

A post by Sukant on "Sons of Malcolm" alerts us to this reminder that Big Brother is not a television sit-com:

Sunday, 10 June 2007
‘OURAIM Magazine on Hamas & Hizbullah’ made illegal in Britain

OURAIM

Organisation to Understand Radical Arab & Islamist Movements

===========================================

‘OURAIM Magazine on Hamas & Hizbullah’ now illegal in Britain

By Sukant Chandan

Sukant.Chandan@gmail.com

Editor of OURAIM publications

09 June 2007

SUMMARY:

- Magazine containing articles, extracts of books from academics and intellectuals and leaders of Hamas and Hizbullah closed down and magazines seized by police on Saturday 09 June under Section 44 Terrorism Act 2000 for displaying the Hamas logo on front cover.

- An attack on the democratic freedom to write, print and distribute information

- Reject criminalisation of independent media and journalistic activity

- The OURAIM Magazine on Hamas and Hizbullah has no direct or indirect organisational link to either organisation, and OURAIM does not support any Islamist movement

- An attack on the development mutual-understanding and respect between British and Arab and Muslim people, specifically Palestinians and Lebanese

- OURAIM stresses the necessity for developing dialogue and understanding as opposed to conflict and hostility

Visit OURAIM here.

Sex Work Writing

Recently, discussions of sex work have been made interesting by activists, and made more urgent by bullshit immigration policies mixed with rabid liberal stupidities, sensationalism, cliche. So, I was reading this book - Bedanabala. Her Life. Her Times by Mahasweta Devi, translated by Sunandini Banerjee (Seagull Books) and was reminded that I need to link with stuff that matters - see below...

Devi writes:

"All I've done is speak of them, the whores of times past. But is that all? Not sought my roots therein? No matter the luxury that smothers me today, my mother lived in a brothel, adopted and reared by the woman who owned it, who owned her, and others like her.
And what of me? My life? To tell of my life I will have to tell of those women, recount their lives from the age of Uttar Veda to the present day. Women whose stories will never be told completely; 'If the sky were a sheet of paper/ If every blade of grass on earth were a pen/ If the seven seas were awash with ink/ if all of that were used up even then/ It would not be enough for their history to be written.'"

Somehow this passage grabs me. Taunts and enchants - to write with such fervor. Fabulous. Let us learn again from such wordings.

And Devi reminds me that a friend called Alex has a friend who also recently started something that deserves a closer look: I quote again:

"Nik found a Anarchist Federation newsletter which had as its front page an article about 'trafficking', that was just pathetic and wrong. As some of you will know mainstream media articles concerning 'sex slaves' appear in the press in London about once a week. The trend for the 'left' is to take up the radical feminist / abolitionist position and recently George Galloway (respect party) has been talking about cleaning up the east end and shutting down strip clubs.
As well the usual raids are still occurring in brothels and many sex workers have been deported. ...on many fronts it feels like we are not winning in the debate -- not from a migrants rights perspective and less still from a sex worker perspective. There are many things that can be done -- and many of them we are already doing.

So what to do when the all seems a little lost? -- start a debate ;) We are hoping to conduct this discussion in a space (libcom) that is supposed to be more radical than many other spaces that are available at the moment - but we will have to see -- nothing like sex work to bring out people's politics about gender and sexuality. Nik has posted a short text on libcom -- and i thought it would be useful to send the link out to people".

So folks - Click here to see Nik's post.

I wrote earlier on Mahasweta Devi here. And on walking the streets here and on writing here

Riotinto in court strife

Of course picking on arms trader Spicer over Bougainville as I have done previously, perhaps overlooks the real gangsters in this scenario - the mining company, pretend 'community friendly', plunderer of Islands, destroyer of worlds - RioTinto Zinc. It was they that ripped the hole in the planet that was the Panguna mine on Bougainville, and their posting of 3.8 Billion in net income during the rise of copper prices this year only reminds us that its the legalised fat cats that sit in head office 6 St James Square London - and shareholders like Queen Lizzie and her nefarious gang - that were the real target of the Bougainville Revolutionary Army uprising and war throughout the 1990s. Austrailian military support and the PNGDF were just the front for the company's interests.

Lawyers seem to be making a decent effort to corner some of the gangsters though. News from the US circuit court offers something to smirk about. Light up your fat-cat stodgies now! May they go the way of Enron. Thanks Vikki John, check Partizans.

"Islanders Win Court Appeal - Reuters August 7 2006.

By Steve James

NEW YORK, Aug 7 (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Monday reinstated a human rights claim brought by Bougainville islanders in Papua New Guinea against international mining giant Rio Tinto Plc (RIO.L: Quote, Profile, Research).
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled the case may be heard in the United States. A U.S. District Court had dismissed the suit, siding with the State Department that the case could not be heard in U.S. courts.
There was no immediate comment from Rio Tinto and a State Department official said it had no comment until it looked into the ruling.
The suit claims that London-based Rio Tinto conspired with the government of Papua New Guinea to quell civil resistance to an environmentally devastating copper mining operation, actions that led to the deaths of thousands.
The State Department argued the case could interfere with the peace process on Bougainville, which is the largest of the North Solomon islands and is part of Papua New Guinea, off the northeast coast of Australia.
The ruling remands the case to U.S. District Court in San Francisco, and says Rio Tinto could be held liable for actions by the PNG government if the company's involvement is proven.
The suit was filed in 2000 and seeks to represent Bougainvilleans exposed to toxins resulting from the Panguna copper mine, people who lost property due to environmental contamination, and people injured or killed during the Bougainville conflict between 1989 and 1999.
Under the Alien Tort Claims Act, foreign nationals can bring suit in the United States against companies that violate international law. Rio Tinto's subsidiary, U.S. Borax Inc., has headquarters in Los Angeles.
The Panguna mine and the political events that erupted since the mine was established are at the core of the case. Between 1969 and 1972, the Australian Colonial Administration leased land on the island to Bougainville Copper Limited (BCL), a subsidiary of Rio Tinto. The suit claims that landowners unsuccessfully resisted intrusion onto their land, and many Bougainvilleans were forced to move or flee the island.
According to the suit, Rio Tinto destroyed villages, razed the rain forest, sliced off a hillside and established the world's largest open-pit mine. The mine excavated 300,000 tons of ore and water every day between 1972 and 1988.
The suit alleges that Rio Tinto improperly dumped waste rock and tailings, emitting chemical and air pollutants. The waste destroyed local fish stock, it alleges.
The Bougainville people -- especially children -- began dying more frequently from upper respiratory infections, asthma and tuberculosis, the suit states.
According to the complaint, in 1990, villagers started an uprising which closed the mine, and in response, Rio Tinto and the Papua New Guinea government brought troops in to reopen it. The complaint alleges that Rio Tinto provided transport for the troops and played a role in instituting a military blockade of the island that lasted for almost 10 years."
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Protest against Condi Rice in Kuala Lumpur - Get Lost adn Get Out

Protest against Condi Rice in Kuala Lumpur


http://parti-sosialis.org/
STOP MEDDLING IN ASEAN AND MIDDLE EAST!CONDI RICE TOLD TO GET LOST AND GET OUT

Kuala Lumpur, 27 July 2006

A small crowd of two hundred people called on US Secretary of State, Condolezza Rice to get lost and condemned the Malaysian Prime Minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi as well as ASEAN foreign ministers for having an audience with Rice.
The crowd led by Coalition Against War Malaysia gathered in front of the KLCC Twin Towers and walked to the KL Convention centre where the 39th. Asean Ministerial meeting was to take place. The Coalition was led by political parties and Non Government Organisation. The gathering today was mainly participated by members of the Parti Socialist Malaysia (PSM), Malaysian Justice Party (PKR) and the Islamic Party PAS. Others present were the Coalition of the Oppressed People – JERIT. Food not Bombs, DEMA and SUARAM. A huge number of media people were present to cover the event.
In a surprising move, the police contacted the organisers in the morning and gave an express permit for the gathering in spite of no parties applying for one.

From the KLCC towers, the group carried their banners and walked to the Convention Centre. The groups then gathered in front of the Convention centres and shouted slogans and gave speeches. A moderate presence of Police blocked the entrance and put up a human barricade. The demonstrators went on shouting slogans. Among the most used phrase was “ Down with US”, “Rice get lost”, “ Stop the War”, “ Down with Zionist Israel” .
A string of speakers gave speeches bombarding the US and its role in the current crisis in Middle East. Among the speaker’s were PSM’s National Chairperson Comrade Nasir Hashim, PAS National Treasurer Hatta Ramli, JERIT Coordinator. Letchimi Devi, SUARAM Executive Director Yap Swee Seng and PKR Vice Youth Chief Shamsul Iskandar.

S.Arutchelvan, the Secretary General of PSM as well as spokesperson for the Coalition Against War Malaysia read the joint statement. The joint statement called on the following
Israel immediately stops its attack on Palestine and Lebanon
The US immediately stops its occupation of Iraq and pull out its troops from Iraq
Israel and the US be held accountable for the crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression and be prosecuted under International law
The United States close down the infamous Guantonomo Bay detention centre
Malaysian government not to negotiate free trade agreement with the US that will further promote its imperialist agenda and economic hegemony at the expense of Malaysians.
Attempts to submit the joint memorandum failed as no one from the ASEAN Secretariat wanted to receive the joint statement in spite of numerous attempts made by the police to contact them. Finally a delegation of five people walked to the staircase of the convention centre accompanied by policemen and placed the joint statement at the stairs of the Convention centre and left the venue.
The gathering today was a small one but was a symbolic gesture that the US is not popular anywhere in the world. The people gathered today were frustrated with the US and even more frustrated for them to be given special audience by ASEAN.

STOP ISRAEL AGGRESSION ON PALESTINE AND LEBONAN !
STOP THE WAR !
US OUT OF IRAQ ! NO TO FTA

double think Australia-PNG etc etc

Here is an amazing article from the Australian newspaper today, also (double think) discussed on Trinketization:



Australia has 'opened PNG door to JI'

By Lloyd Jones in Port Moresby

July 19, 2006

INDONESIAN terrorists have an open door into PNG to target Australians and their mining and energy interests thanks to Canberra's push to slash the size of PNG's military, says the force's former commander.

Retired Major-General Jerry Singirok, who in 1997 defied PNG's government and ousted Sandline mercenaries deployed to crush Bougainville secessionists, said the downsizing of the PNG military from more than 5000 troops to 2000 had crippled it.
Security on the border with the Indonesian province of Papua was already severely compromised with few or no PNG Defence Force (PNGDF) soldiers in place where full companies should patrol, he said.
The Indonesian terrorist group Jemaah Islamiah (JI) posed a huge threat to Australia and PNG when the porous 760km border allowed illegal and suspicious migrants to cross with ease, Maj-Gen Singirok said.
"They would certainly target Australia's major investments in Papua New Guinea.
"As we have seen with the calls by Osama Bin Laden and his cohorts, they group Australia together with America and England as their enemy."
Major resource targets such as the Hides gas project, the proposed gas pipeline to Australia, the Ok Tedi and Porgera gold and copper mines, and oil installations in the Gulf of Papua were potential targets, he said.
"Any terrorist with intention (to do harm) would obviously strike where there's no defence, no security systems in place.
"If they cannot hit Australia on its home soil, they're going to hit Australia where it hurts.
"There's billions of dollars of Australian investment in PNG and there's a relatively significant population of Australians."
The downsizing of the PNGDF, with soldier payouts funded by Australia, was "humiliating" and "a major security blunder" that compromised PNG, Australian and regional security, he said.
Maj-Gen Singirok said Australia constantly accused the PNGDF of being a destabilising factor though the force had never threatened to take over the government.
"My challenge to Australia is it should not see us a destabilising force, it should strengthen us, give us equal training and the same standards as the Australian Defence Force because we can be a major force of deterrence in the region."
An Australian-backed program to destroy around 3000 surplus PNGDF weapons also compromised the force's capability, Maj-Gen Singirok said.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19840036-1702,00.html
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BREAKING NEWS album causes conflict

BREAKING NEWS album causes conflict
BREAKING NEWS !
FUN DA MENTAL NEW ALBUM IN TROUBLE




FUN DA MENTAL'S new album “ALL IS WAR” (the benefits of g-had) has caused the directors of Nation Records to offer their resignations in the event the album is released through Nation Records.
Martin Mills and Andrew Heath (Beggars Banquet Group) both have expressed their concern and fear in the event they are linked to the many provocative and controversial elements of the album.

Aki Nawaz who also is a director but also the main man of Fun Da Mental is troubled by the stance and is considering the options.

”The album is challenging the notion of freedom of speech and creative dissent especially in current times and my background gives me the perfect platform to express the issues from a personnel point of view and not from a mainstream imposed, misguided, patriotic perspective. I have the right equally and without condition as others to expose the hypocrisy and contradictions of democracy, been a Muslim does not mean I have to subservient, loyal or silent to the State or any of its illegal activities against any peoples, anywhere around the world. Fear is not a choice, I welcome it, but to say nothing, whatever the consequences, would be a cowardly act on my behalf ”

MORE INFO- 0207 792 8167

Check the image through a search to see the iraq Ghraib version - doesn;'t show in blogger since blogger is crap.

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"I am a socialist, I will infect you".

I remember someone at a Rally Against Capitalism saying something like this to gales of laughter. Its a quote that, well, remains amusing here under the hand of Hugo Chavez, who is currently visiting London and offering some of us cheap heating oil.

The shivvers are not in the spines of those looking for a warm hearth however. Ha ha ha.

That said, I do want to note that I personally am not someone who wants to be identified as a socialist - my terminal condition is much much worse than that! Look out, I will try to sell you little red books, just like the Panthers did nearly 40 Years ago.

Lal Salaam.
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recomposition of a communist politics

Institute for Conjunctural Research


"The narcissism of renegades?The spectres of recuperation, repetition and imitation have always haunted the various ideologies of resistance, at least those not all too happy to celebrate the joys of ambivalence and the hybrid, those for which resistance is not just the name of a minimal inflection – a torsion, a distance, perhaps even a perversion – in the densely articulated space of hierarchies, partitions and dominations. In order to make a contribution to specifying what resistance may mean today, whether the term is even applicable or operative, what its minimal lineaments may be, I would like to turn to a relatively minor, if, as I hope to argue, symptomatic, episode in the vicissitudes of this concept: the intellectual trajectory that led some figures emerging from the current of French Maoism, first, to formulate an ideology of pure revolt, or absolute resistance, countering the complicities of Marxist-Leninist revolutionary politics vis-à-vis the perennial mechanisms of power and oppression; second, to revise the latter theory of ‘angelic’ or non-dialectical revolt into a tragic theory of morality, separating the resistance exemplified by moral protest and the defence of human rights from any notion of revolt, now considered ‘barbaric’ – thus adopting, despite all protestations to the contrary, the key thesis of the nouvelle philosophie, as instigated and ‘produced’ by Bernard-Henri Lévy, to wit, that there is a bloody thread running straight from Das Kapital to the Gulags, and that it is philosophy’s collusion with mastery and the state that lies behind the ‘totalitarian’ disasters of the 20th century. The aforementioned trajectory is encapsulated in two works arising from the collaboration of Christian Jambet and Guy Lardreau, philosophers schooled at the École Normale at the time of the May events, and militants in the Gauche Prolétarienne, the most visible of the post-68 Maoist organisations, famously supported by Foucault and Sartre against the censorship of its newspaper, La cause du peuple. The GP disbanded in 1974 after its increasingly patent inefficacy on the shop-floor and its last-minute retreat from the option of armed struggle. It would be easy, and perhaps even useful, to reduce the two works in question, L’Ange and Le Monde, to mere effects of an exquisitely Parisian sequence, which led a few children of the elites, ‘the little princes of the University’, as Lacan sardonically noted, into a spectacular but ineffectual, and misinformed, embrace of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, through a period of inevitable disappointment, into an equally overblown and narcissistic exploitation of their personal failures for media effect, and, finally, to the collaboration with the increasingly hegemonic ideology of human rights and humanitarian interventions, still with us today ....".

Shareholders join Rio protest

Shareholders join Rio protest
From: AAP
May 04, 2006

SHAREHOLDERS have joined protesters outside the annual general meeting of mining giant Rio Tinto in Melbourne, concerned about the company's mining practices in Papua New Guinea.
Organised by the Mineral Policy Institute (MPI) and Free West Papua campaign, the protest – outside the Sofitel hotel in busy Collins Street – was against alleged corruption and human rights abuses at the giant Freeport mine in Indonesia's Papua province.
MPI said the Freeport mine was engaging in similar irresponsible conduct to that at the Rio Tinto-owned mine in Bougainville, which led to a 10-year civil war.
It follows the release of a report by the Indonesian Environment Forum which alleged that Rio Tinto was releasing copper tailings from its Freeport mine into a nearby river.
Shareholder John Poppins said he was concerned about the report and was there to support the protest as well as voice his opinion at the AGM.
"I have a growing level of concern as I grow older in the way in which my dividends are earned, and the impacts on the other people, particularly in countries where the law is not as strong as it is here," Mr Poppins said.
Mr Poppins said he was concerned about the report which was released this week by the Indonesian Environment Forum.
"Deeply, yes. It seems in my youth I invested all my savings in the bad guys," he said.
"There are really only two alternatives: you can sell in disgust or you can hold on to the shares and start to question the company."
Some shareholders had given their proxy votes to Papuan and environmental activists, allowing them to attend the meeting.
Herman Wanggai, one of the Papuan asylum seekers recently given visas to stay in Australia, was at the protest and said there was one thing he wanted to ask at the AGM.
"The question I ask is why are we suffering for the rich resources?" Mr Arumisore said.
Moses Havini, who described himself as the international representative for Bougainville, said Rio Tinto should be held accountable for what it was doing to the environment in Papua.
"There seems to be two rules: one for Rio Tinto in other countries; and the other one is in other countries such as Bougainville and Papua New Guinea where it is fine to pump mine tailings directly into the water systems and the sea," Mr Havini said.
Rio Tinto has invested $2.2 billion in the mine.
http://finance.news.com.au/story/0,10166,19022917-31037,00.html
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