LL:INFO: How to say NO to the war....
Say no to war light up for peace! Turn on your car lights to stop the war! A simple, international, anti-war campaign that any driver can participate in has begun. If you are opposed to the imminent war with Iraq, turn on your car lights while driving during the day. Send a message to others, and ultimately your government, that you refuse to be part of this aggression. If the powers that be see continuous, highly visible opposition every day, this will act as a brake on their plans for war. Make a statement - turn them on today! Do it until the war is called off! Bus drivers, car drivers, truck drivers, motorbike riders, pushbike riders, and trishaw peddlers are all encouraged! Just as some politicians last year called for people to turn on their lights to remember the 2800 dead from the September 11th attacks in the US, so we are urging people all over the world to turn their car lights on continually during the day to prevent many more dead from a war against Iraq. Dont forget to put a sticker or some coloured tape on your steering wheel or drivers side window. This will remind you to turn off your lights when you stop your car . Please tell 10 people about this campaign over the next few days. Ring your local radio, TV or newspaper about it if you have the time. Contact your local antiwar/peace group and help them build this campaign. Please email this message on immediately to at least 10 people in your address book. Its urgent this message spreads as quickly as it can. Ask your friends and neighbours for their email addresses and send it to them so they can send it on. Please send to other states and countries if possible, as well as email discussion groups and chat rooms. Remember 10x10x10x10x10x10x10x10x10 (only 9 steps) = 1 billion people . Make light overcome darkness! Good luck to you and all your endeavours to stop the war! John Rice NOWAR collective -- -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/ Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Sub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
LL:INFO: Nazi infiltration into the Melbourne music scene.
Nazi infiltration into the punk and metal scene in Melbourne - report on 2002. Introduction. Blood and Honour are a small Nazi organisation, which is based in Melbourne. Their aim is to spread Nazi ideas through music. Throughout 2002, they have held a few gigs to try and achieve this. There are a number of Nazi bands connected to Blood and Honour, for example Fortress, Bailup, and Ravenous. The management of the Birmingham Hotel (on the corner of Smith and Johnston Streets in Fitzroy) has helped them. The Birmingham let them put on two gigs (one of them to celebrate Hitler's birthday). The Birmingham also allowed them to meet there regularly. Due to pressure from us, Blood and Honour seem to be looking for another venue to put on shows. However they also seem to still be meeting at the Birmingham. Our activity. Our aim in 2002 has mainly been trying to get around information about Blood and Honour, and especially to try to get a response from the punk and metal scene. We have asked people in the area to stop supporting the Birmingham Hotel. Successes. One major success is that Blood and Honour have said they're not doing any more gigs at the Birmingham. They announced this on the 'Melbourne Punx Forum' website (although they felt the need to say that it 'wasn't because they were scared'). We wrote to Community Radio 3CR and the Friends of the Earth bookshop. Both 3CR and FOE have offices on Smith Street, would've been seen as targets by Nazis, and put on benefit gigs at the Birmingham. Neither of them wrote back to us, but neither of them have had any more gigs at the Birmingham as far as we know. This has meant that the Birmingham has lost two sources of money, and that Blood and Honour no longer have a central location to put on gigs - although they appear to still be using the Birmingham for meetings. The Melbourne Times. We approached the Melbourne Times, a local paper with a reputation for being slightly 'lefty'. They talked to us about it, but refused to run a story. One of their reasons was that "they talked to a lot of local councilors and social workers and they hadn't heard of Blood and Honour". Blood and Honour operates almost completely within the punk and metal scenes. Common sense would suggest that talking to someone in that scene might be a better idea. It's likely that these local councilors and social workers wouldn't know about *anything* that goes on in that scene. It's a bit like us talking to some metalheads and asking them to name some local councilors - and if they couldn't, deciding the local council mustn't exist. The undertone of their attitude was like "if it doesn't effect councilors or social workers it mustn't be important". One of the local Nazis, Patrick O'sullivan, has recently gone to jail for stabbing someone in North Fitzroy. We told the Melbourne Times this but they treated it as if it was totally unimportant. I got the impression that the Melbourne Times didn't care, because of who the victim was. He was 'just' a skinhead who'd turned away from Nazism. I got the impression that if he'd been a social worker or councilor then it would have been treated differently. In a way the Melbourne Times agreed with the nazis, that this person was of no value or importance, because of who he was. There was a real element of classism or snobbery to it; like if 'those people' want to hurt each other then it's OK, as long as they don't turn on 'us'. The sad thing is, if the Nazis ever kill someone, then the Melbourne Times would probably decide it was now newsworthy, run to us begging for an interview, and run a story about how "someone has to do something". We want to stop the Nazis before they kill someone, and they couldn't care less. The best that can be said about this episode, was that it was our own silly fault. We shouldn't have put that much faith in an institution like the Melbourne Times, and in future we won't. The punk scene. Although a lot of people in the scene have supported us, some people have been very defensive about ties to Nazis. A typical comment on the Melbourne Punx Forum website, was that the Birmingham is the only pub that supports the punk scene. This is completely false. Punk gigs happen at the Arthouse, the Pink Palace, the Tote, and several other places. Someone even said that "the birmy is our pub". This is a ridiculous comment. The Birmingham belongs to the owner of the Birmingham. They're not "supporting the punk scene", they're supporting the idea of them getting money. If the Birmingham management decided there was more money to be made by putting on top 40 bands, that's what would happen. It's likely that if our campaign keeps going, the owner of the Birmingham will just cut off all ties with the punk scene, and the punk scene will find that 'our' pub was their pub all along. Punk is supposed to be partly about 'diy'. Even if there were no venues put
LL:AA: Howard to meet suspected war criminal Henry Kissinger
[ sorry for cross-posting - it's urgent. any mobilisations? please 'reply-to-all' to spread the word quickly! ] http://sydney.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=25333&group=webcast Howard to meet suspected war criminal Henry Kissinger tomorrow - by Nick Montgomery (Melb IMC) 1:30pm Mon Jan 20 '03 article#25333 American statesman and former secretary of state during the Vietnam War, Henry Kissinger, will be visiting Sydney this week in a non-official capacity. Kissinger, an influential foreign policy heavyweight in the American political scene, plans to have an audience with prominent Australian politicians on Monday and Tuesday including the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister. PM John Howard, a long-standing admirer of the 72-year-old Kissinger, will take time out from holidays to meet the 72-year-old policy analyst on Tuesday and is expected to ask advice on the Iraqi face-off. Kissinger remains the most controversial of the former US secretary of states and is either loved or loathed by the international community. Various journalists, academics, and activists have accused Kissinger of carrying out crimes against humanity after commandeering an illegal bombing campaign in Cambodia during the Vietnam war which some have likened to a holocaust, while others, notably rightwing politicians, have praised Kissinger for his endeavourers to end the Indochina conflict which culminated in the shared Nobel Peace Prize of 1973. Kissinger's actions during the Cold war were of important influence on Australia affairs. Most recently, left wing journalist Christopher Hitchens lunched a scathing attack on Kissinger and called for his indictment as a war criminal in mainstream magazine 'Vanity Fair'. http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m/1809_302/69839383/p1/article.jhtml?term=kissinger http://www.eclipse.net/~tgardnet/kiss/hitchens.html In "THE CASE AGAINST HENRY KISSINGER", Hitchens raised questions about the role of Henry Kissinger in giving a green light to the invasion that has left perhaps 200,000 dead in the years since and also brought Australia and Indonesia perilously close to all out conflict on several occasions. The legacy of Kissingers Indo-china policy is still being felt throughout the post cold war years, culminating in a policy of military intervention in East Timor under the Howard Government. The Howard government at this stage would not comment on Kissinger's status as a war criminal nor the criticism of Prime Minister Howard's approach to the Iraqi crisis during the holiday season. A spokesperson for Greens leader Bob Brown who protested with activists in opposition to the offical visit of the chairman of the National People's Congress, Li Peng, (dubbed the butcher of Beijing) to Australia last year, said the Greens would object to Howard's meeting with any suspected war criminal. Pundits are claiming if the PM can organize time to meet with a suspected war criminal during the holiday season then he must make time to debate any decision to join a war with Iraq in parliament. As the anti-war movement grows the labor party, the 'ailing' democratic and the 'rising' green parties have unanimously called for a "conscience vote" in the Australian senate before any decision is made to support either possible American unilateral military action or United Nations sanctioned action. However, any parliamentary debate looks unlikely, after Mr. Howard asserted last month that a parliamentary debate would most probably proceed the deployment of 1,500 Australia troops to fight the oil rich Iraq state. -- -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/ Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Sub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
LL:DDV: IWD movie night - The Hours
Celebrate International Women's Day with Radical Women and the Freedom Socialist Party at a Gala Movie Night THE HOURS Sunday, 2 March, 7.15 pm Upstairs, Westgarth Theatre, 89 High Street, Northcote Based on a Pulitzer-prize winning novel by Michael Cunningham, the film employs as its foundation and inspiration Virginia Woolf's own classic novel, "Mrs Dalloway," with its central character, Clarissa. Set during a single day, yet spanning three different eras, the film focuses in the parallel lives of three women. Nicole Kidman -- wearing a prosthetic nose -- is virtually unrecognisable as English author Virginia Woolf, whose battle with mental illness eventually led to her tragic suicide in 1941. Opening at the moment of her suicide, the film regresses to 1923, and Woolf's life and work as she crafted her most memorable character -- Clarissa Dalloway. In 1950s Californian suburbia, another woman, Laura Brown (played by Julianne Moore), struggles with alienation and depression. Trapped by a clinging young son and an adoring husband, who she does not love, the desperate woman tries to prepare for her husband's birthday but can=B9t stop reading "Mrs Dalloway." Finally, in modern day Manhattan, Clarissa Vaughan (played by Meryl Streep), a lesbian who lives with her lover and daughter, struggles to prepare a party for her ex-husband, who is dying of AIDS. Beautifully overlapping editing sews the women's interwoven stories seamlessly together. This special evening will kick off a four month long $75,000 international fund drive for our two feisty socialist feminist publications -- the "Freedom Socialist" newspaper and the Australian "Freedom Socialist Bulletin." So get the International Women's Day season off to a great start by enjoying a fun night out and helping two publications which the founder of this day of socialist feminist action, Clara Zetkin, would enthusiastically support! Screening followed by a wine and cheese supper in the ornate upstairs foyer. Tickets are $20 solidarity price, $15 regular or $12 concession. For tickets send a cheque, payable to FSP, PO Box 266 West Brunswick Vic 3055. For more information call Alison on 9386-5065 or e-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] Can't make it? We'd welcome your donation to help us reach our $7,500 local goal! .. -- -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/ Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Sub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
LL:INFO: Make your concerns obvious!
It was suggested at today's APC meeting that a good way to make your concerns re the threatening war obvious is to wear a BAND AID pinned to your shirt / dress, along with your purple ribbon - and perhaps write the word "Iraq" on the band aid. People will probably ask you why you are wearing a band aid - giving you the opportunity to explain your concerns, and the fact that the band aid represents the great injury which war will do to masses of people. Australian Peace Committee (South Australian Branch) Inc. 11 South Terrace, Adelaide SA 5000, Australia Ph: (+61-8) or (08) 8332 3461 Fax: (+61-8) or (08) 8364 2291 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web site: www.peacecourier.com .. -- -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/ Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Sub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink