ratbag number 2 final pdf

8/13/2019 Ratbag Number 2 Final PDF

1/12

THE

RATBAGAUSTRALIAs BEST WORST ZINE - PUBLISHED MONTHLY - FREE

IN THIS ISSUE:

The Average Persons Objection to Anarchism The Hopeful Death of the Uranium Mining Industry throughout Australia History - John Boyle O'Reilly - The Dardanup FenianOrganiser of the Catalpa.

RATBAG ZINEScurrilous doggerel, seditious malarkey and informative gonzo journalism since 2013

Want to contribute? Got feedback? Just mad as hell and want to share it? [email protected] #2


2/12

[email protected] Free Monthly Zine Page 2

AUSTRALIAs BEST WORST ZINE - PUBLISHED MONTHLY - FREE

Sick of the poor choice between the barely concealed rightwing Neo-con media juggernaut on one hand or the unashamedlybiased to their viewpoint micro party socialistpropaganda kicking around on the other side of the fence we

have created RATBAG.

The aim of RATBAG is not to sway your thoughts one way or theother, it is to share some though provoking articles that areout there in circulation in the public domain and also tocreate a bit of space for the publishing original alternativecontent.

We wish to be inclusive of all, so please do feel free toemail us your article about what ever is on your mind!Political content is fine but RATBAG is not the organ of anypolitical grouping. Nor will be publish any hate-basedarticles and the like We suggest you call Howard Sattler.

http://www.trevordickinson.com/np.ht

ml
http://www.trevordickinson.com/np.htmlhttp://www.trevordickinson.com/np.htmlhttp://www.trevordickinson.com/np.htmlhttp://www.trevordickinson.com/np.html


3/12


Arguments for and against The Average Persons Objection to Anarchism

The chapter below is from Albert Meltzers article Anarchism: Arguments for and against,

first published in 1996.

Albert was an interesting charater indeed. Meltzer was born in London, and attracted toanarchism at the age of 15. As the Spanish Revolution turned into the 1936 Spanish Civil

War Meltzer became active organising solidarity appeals. He involved himself with

smuggling arms from Hamburg to the CNT in Spain and acted as a contact for the Spanish

anarchist intelligence services in Britain. Albert passed away in 1996.

Here below is just one chapter from Anarchism: Arguments for and against.

Generally speaking, the ordinary people pick up their objection to Anarchism from the

press, which in turn is influenced by what the establishment wants. For many years therewas a press conspiracy of silence against Anarchism, followed in the 1960 by a ruling on

transcribing Anarchism and Marxism, or Anarchism and nationalism, so that the one must

be referred to the other, in order to confuse. This was born out in many exposures in Black

Flag showing where avowed Marxists were in the turbulent Sixties described in the press as

Anarchists while avowed Anarchists were described as Marxists or nationalists.

On some occasions nationalists were called

Anarchists, but usually when the word

Anarchist was being used as if to describe oneself

as an Anarchist, it was to make a confession of

guilt. This, as we have seen, is picked up from the

Liberal-Democratic attitude to Anarchism. But it is

flavoured strongly with the fascist attitude, too.

Because of it, the phrase self-confessed Anarchist

came to be used by the Press to describe a person

who is an Anarchist as opposed to someone who

they have merely labeled Anarchist in order toconfuse.

This has altered somewhat with the commercial

exploitation of Anarchism by commercial

exploitation of music and academic exploitation of

philosophy, giving rise to a middle-class liberal

version of an Anarchist as a liberal-minded

philosopher, a harmless eccentric, a drop out, or a

person wearing fashionably unfashionable clothes.

Albert Meltzer


4/12


As opposed to this increasingly popular misconception, the average person takes the fascist

view of anarchism as picked up in its entirety by police officers and others as genuine,

but tempered with the fact that they do not take it quite seriously. Sometimes they confuse

the word revolutionary, and assume all who protest are thereby Anarchist. This ignorance,

however, is more often displayed by journalists than it is by the general public.

When it comes down to an objection to Anarchism as it is, as distinct from objections to a

mythological Anarchism as imagined or caricatured by the authoritarian Parties or

establishment, or practised by the alternative establishment, there are not many serious

objections from the general public. They may not think it practical of realisation if presented

in a positive way to them, but they usually do so if presented in a negative way i.e.

describing the tyranny of the State. The fact that we could dispense with authoritarian

parties, the worthlessness of politicians, and so on is generally agreed.

The sole main objection is perhaps the feeling that they want to make the best out of life asit is: and they do not feel strong enough to challenge the State or to face the struggle

involved in bringing about a Free Society, or put up with the many vicissitudes (major and

minor) that make up the life of a militant or someone reasonably committed to an ideal.

The temptations are great to conform and to accept the bribes which the capitalist class can

now hold out. Only when the State wants its last ounce of blood do people wake up to the

need for resistance, but then it is too late and also, of course, the State then takes on the

pretence of being the country, in order to be loved instead of hated or disliked.

The Reduction of Anarchism to Marginalisation

By crafty methods, not used against other political theories, it is endeavoured by Statist

propaganda to marginalise Anarchism to nothing.

It is confused by journalists, professors, and subsidised researchers to show that

Anarchists are identical to dropouts, drug-takers, nationalist assassins, New-Age travelers,

political dissidents, militant trade unionists, young rebels, middle-class theorists, dreamers,

plotters, comedians, frustrated reformers, extreme pacifists, murderers, schoolboy rebels,and criminals. Some Anarchists, one supposes, could be any but hardly all of these as

could members of all political persuasions but none could be descriptive of the cause. By

misuse of the word Anarchist, or by added alleged or self-confessed Anarchist; or by

conjoining the word with an obvious contradiction, Anarchism can be marginalised and, by

implication, Statist theories made to seem the norm.

Link to full artcile:http://libcom.org/library/anarchism-arguments-against-albert-meltzer

More on Albert Meltzer:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Meltzer
http://libcom.org/library/anarchism-arguments-against-albert-meltzerhttp://libcom.org/library/anarchism-arguments-against-albert-meltzerhttp://libcom.org/library/anarchism-arguments-against-albert-meltzerhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Meltzerhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Meltzerhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Meltzerhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Meltzerhttp://libcom.org/library/anarchism-arguments-against-albert-meltzer


5/12


John Boyle O'Reilly - The Dardanup Fenian Organiser of the Catalpa.The peak-in-1870 Down South WA town Dardanup has an interesting connection with the Irish

Fenian Movement via the escape of the Irish lad / British soldier / Irish Rebel / convict / freedom

fighter, John Boyle O'Reilly.

John Boyle OReilly was one of 62 Irish Political prisoners among the 279 convicts who arrived atFremantle in 1868. He was a member of the Fenian Movement, an organisation dedicated to

achieving an independent Irish Republic.

Born in at Dowth Castle, County Meath, near Drogheda in Ireland at the onset of the Great Irish

Famine, as the son of a schoolmaster, O'Reilly received a good early education. When he was

about thirteen, his older brother contracted tuberculosis, and O'Reilly took his place as apprentice

at a local newspaper. At the age of fifteen, he moved to Preston, Lancashire to live with his aunt

and uncle, and took up work on a local newspaper.

Life is hard enough now, but it was

brutally tough back in when JOR was a

still a kid. Ireland was still reeling from

the effects of The Famine, where from

1844 to 1853 where out of the

population of over 8 million

approximately 1 million people died and

a million more emigrated from Ireland,causing the island's todays North

Ireland and Ireland) population to fall by

between 20% and 25%.

Certainly in these days there was no hard fought for and won - but now horrifyingly undermined

by the workers who just fortunately happen to be not currently employed themselvesdole. The

exact reason from a switch from the newspaper printing industry to soldiery is unknown, but the

records show that whilst still in England in June 1861 O'Reilly enrolled in the 11th Lancashire Rifle

Volunteers.

Surprisingly for someone who eventually became a Fenian legend, in returning to Ireland in 1863,

presumably as a non-soldier, OReilly againenlisted with the army of the British Colonial Empire

via the 10th Hussars in Dublin. This re-joining the army could be due to some enjoyment of the

camaraderie of the military ranks, which would have had a strong percentage of fellow poor Irish

or for the fact that just ten years after a mass starvation OReilly valued an income with the Brits.

Considering history, there are several precedents of people to become rebels originally being in

allegiance with the enemy they later took on. Arminius, (18/17 BCAD 21) was a chieftain sonofthe Germanic Cherusci held as a form of ransom against an uprising against the Romans, Seeking


6/12


to Romanise the Cherusci, The Romans raised Arminus to be a Knight of the Roman Calvary. When

Arminus returned to Roman occupied Cherusci landsto administer and rule his tribehe

rebelled and led the Germanic tribes to defeat the bigger Roman army in the 09 AD Battle of the

Teutoburg.

Of course, another better known rebel thanks to the

Braveheart movie is the 1309 King of the Scots Robert

the Bruce, who originally accepted the English claim

over Scotand and also paid tribute to the English until

obtaining rule - with net no change of rule of law and

taxes for the peasants of course!

Back to OReilly. Sometime in 1865, whilst serving with

the Hussars in Ireland, O'Reilly joined the Irish

Republican Brotherhood, then commonly known as the"Fenians", a secret society of rebels dedicated to an

armed uprising against British rule. He turned his

energies to recruiting more Fenians within his

regiment, bringing in up to 80 new members. But the

dream was not to be.

Things being what they were at the time, The Establishment had their counter-operatives covertly

well embedded within the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and the whole plot was rumbled way

before any action could even be seriously planned. Convicted of high treason for his part, OReilly

was transported to Perth Colony, spending time in Fremantle Prison before being assigned to a

road building party in the Bunbury Region of Western Australia.

At Bunbury, O'Reilly quickly developed a good relationship with his warder Henry Woodman, and

again, highly surprising for a Fenian legend - was appointed probationary convict constable of Her

Majestys Colonial Forces!As assistant to the warder, he did record and account keeping, ordering

of stores, and other minor administrative duties. Given the hard life of the road gang, was OReilly

again pragmatically out for an easier lifeor was this part of an escape plan?

He was frequently used as a messenger, which required him to travel regularly between the work

camp and the district convict prison in Bunbury. The warder apparently used O'Reilly to maintain

contact with his family, for the prisoner became a regular visitor to the Woodman family home,

and at some point began a romantic liaison with Woodman's daughter Jessie. This ended badly, at

least for O'Reilly; he wrote poetry expressing his agony of mind, and hints at romantic causes.

OReilly must have been severely troubled by this personal crisis on top of previously being

snitched for being a Fenian and then transported to the other side of the world for on the 27December 1868, O'Reilly attempted suicide by cutting the veins of his left armSomething that


7/12


would have been severely against the religious notions of the time (For example, suicidal Irish

convicts imprisoned on the deliberate hell of Norfolk Island drew straws to murder each other ,and

then themselves be hanged as a punishment to avoid spending an eternity in hell for the act of

committing suicide).

However it was not OReillys time - after falling into a faint from loss of blood, he was discovered

by another convict, and his life was saved. Such a dark time in OReillys life may have been the

point of focus on what he really wanted out of life, and a renewal of his Fenian spirit. This is not

known for sure, however that OReillys escaped from his albeit comfortable-yet-tumultuous

bonded servitude is. Over his time in the area, O'Reilly formed a strong friendship with the local

Catholic priest, Father Patrick McCabe. Aware of OReillysstrong Fenian sentiments, and perhaps

also seeking to remove OReilly from the harsh convict and frantic-romanticenvironment which

OReilly had made his attempt, the secretly Fenian Father McCabe offered to arrange for O'Reilly

to escape the colony.

Very soon, in fact just 20 days after OReillys suicide attempt,McCabe's plan was ready for

execution. On 18 February 1869, in the same year that the 14 year old Ned Kelly first did time on

the other side of the network of British colonies in Australia, O'Reilly absconded from his work

party, and met up with a party of Irish settlers. Together they rode to the Collie River where a

rowboat was waiting for them. They rowed out of the Leschenault Inlet into the Indian Ocean, and

north about twelve miles up the coast. O'Reilly hid in the dunes, awaiting the departure from

Bunbury of the American whaling ship Vigilant, which Father McCabe had arranged would take

him on board.

The ship was sighted the next day, and the party rowed out to it, but the captain reneged on the

agreement, and the Vigilant sailed off without acknowledging the people in the rowboat. O'Reilly

had to return to the shore and hide again while his friends tried to make arrangements with

another ship. O'Reilly was able to escape and hide in the then dense peppermint woodland near

Dardanup, with the assistance of McCabe and a multitude of lesser rebels within the local Irish

Catholic community, who were much like the Irish convicts hard pressed by the very CoE WA

Colonial establishmentery.

After two weeks, they succeeded in making a deal with the captain of the American whaler

Gazelle. O'Reilly and his friends met the Gazelle three miles out to sea on 2 March, and he was

taken on board. OReilly eventually made his way to save haven in surprise surprise Boston,

America, where he transformed from an escaped convict to a prominent writer, humanitarian,

lecturer, editor and part-owner of the ratbaggery newspaper The Boston 'Pilot'.

From this base OReilly in turn planned and paid for 6 Fenian political prisoners in their escape

from Fremantle Prison aboard the Catalpa,- which of course, is a whole other story.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Boyle_O'Reilly- For more about OReilly and Catalpa
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Boyle_O'Reillyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Boyle_O'Reillyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Boyle_O'Reilly


8/12


The Hopeful Death of the Uranium Mining Industry throughout AustraliaWith the shift of global party-political and pub-political politics to the right over the last 20

years the business lobby has saturated the media with the notion that any businesseven

the uranium mining business - is good for Australia (Via increased mining royalties) and the

world (via the supply of a cheap source of power to the poor)Australias anti-uranium

mining protesters have been facing off against a range of new kid on the block aspirant

uranium miners.

Above: Chernobyl Liquidatorson Roof Reactor 3 An accident on April 26, 1986 (All dead).

This industry back room lobbying combined - with this unfortunate shift to the right, even

amongst of all groups the ALP of WA (traditionally totally opposed to any mining activity in

WA) has resulted in a range of piss ant uranium miner start upsproliferating in Australia,

all run by the same type of degenerate creeps who seek to poison the world for tens of

thousands of years so they can drive a Jaguar and live in Peppermint Grove of WA or the

North Shore of Sydney until they die. NB. the very first thing Mark McGowan did uponobtaining Party Leadership was to absolutely undemocratically overturn the ALP of WAs

anti uranium stanceAuthor was there.

With Lieberal and the occasion Liebor Governments / Parties now desperate to encourage

these few individuals to pollute the land, poison workers and profit from cancer, one may

think that veteran and newer anti-nuke protestors would be despondent, but in fact quite

the opposite is the case. The head of the snake is beginning to bite the tail. Free market

pressure against the uranium industry has in a way joined with the anti-uranium protestersto drive many of these precocious start-ups to the wall.


9/12


Recently one tadpole of a prospective uranium miner - Marathon Resources -has decided to

totally and forever leave the field of uranium mining due to issues of a lack of a strong

profit possibility, so called unnecessary delays in getting official sanction to pump toxic

mining waste into the water supply - and the dogged resistance of anti-uranium mining

activists!

It is interesting in the face of the disastrous nuclear accident of Fukushima only two years

ago, and in spite of the GFC and the huge WA mining collapse of 2012 that a few foolhardy

nuke miners have chosen to quixotically point towards opening up Western Australian

national parks for tearing up into open cut pits of uranium radiation hell.

Considering that even the Laissez Faire free market philosophy has itself added to the

swathe of anti-uranium activist proof re the unsustainability of the toxic uranium industry,

We need to keep up the decades of anti-uranium mining resistance and push the vile toxicindustry over the edge to oblivion.

http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/business/a/-/national/19948448/explorer-says-

uranium-project-unviable/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster

Lucy E. Parsons, To Tramps, Alarm, October 4, 1884.TO TRAMPS, The Unemployed, the Disinherited, and Miserable.

A word to the 35,000 now tramping the streets of this great city, with hands in pockets,

gazing listlessly about you at the evidence of wealth and pleasure of which you own no part,

not sufficient even to purchase yourself a bit of food with which to appease the pangs of

hunger now knawing at your vitals. It is with you and the hundreds of thousands of others

similarly situated in this great land of plenty, that I wish to have a word.

Have you not worked hard all your life, since you were old enough for your labor to be of use

in the production of wealth? Have you not toiled long, hard and laboriously in producing

wealth? And in all those years of drudgery do you not know you have produced thousand

upon thousands of dollars' worth of wealth, which you did not then, do not now, and unless

you ACT, never will, own any part in?

Do you not know that when you were harnessed to a machine and that machine harnessed

to steam, and thus you toiled your 10, 12 and 16 hours in the 24, that during this time in all

these years you received only enough of your labor product to furnish yourself the bare,
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/business/a/-/national/19948448/explorer-says-uranium-project-unviable/http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/business/a/-/national/19948448/explorer-says-uranium-project-unviable/http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/business/a/-/national/19948448/explorer-says-uranium-project-unviable/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disasterhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disasterhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disasterhttp://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/business/a/-/national/19948448/explorer-says-uranium-project-unviable/http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/business/a/-/national/19948448/explorer-says-uranium-project-unviable/


10/12


coarse necessaries of life, and that when you wished to purchase anything for yourself and

family it always had to be of the cheapest quality? If you wanted to go anywhere you had to

wait until Sunday, so little did you receive for your unremitting toil that you dare not stop

for a moment, as it were? And do you not know that with all your squeezing, pinching and

economizing you never were enabled to keep but a few days ahead of the wolves of want?

And that at last when the caprice of your employer saw fit to create an artificial famine by

limiting production, that the fires in the furnace were extinguished, the iron horse to which

you had been harnessed was stilled; the factory door locked up, you turned upon the

highway a tramp, with hunger in your stomach and rags upon your back?

Yet your employer told you that it was overproduction which made him close up. Who cared

for the bitter tears and heart-pangs of your loving wife and helpless children, when you bid

them a loving "God bless you" and turned upon the tramper's road to seek employment

elsewhere? I say, who cared for those heartaches and pains? You were only a tramp now, tobe execrated and denounced as a "worthless tramp and a vagrant" by that very class who

had been engaged all those years in robbing you and yours. Then can you not see that the

"good boss" or the "bad boss" cuts no figure whatever? that you are the common prey of

both, and that their mission is simply robbery? Can you not see that it is the INDUSTRIAL

SYSTEM and not the "boss" which must be changed?

Now, when all these bright summer and autumn days are going by and you have no

employment, and consequently can save up nothing, and when the winter's blast sweeps

down from the north and all the earth is wrapped in a shroud of ice, hearken not to the

voice of the hyprocrite who will tell you that it was ordained of God that "the poor ye have

always"; or to the arrogant robber who will say to you that you "drank up all your wages

last summer when you had work, and that is the reason why you have nothing now, and the

workhouse or the workyard is too good for you; that you ought to be shot."

And shoot you they will if you present your petitions in too emphatic a manner. So hearken

not to them, but list! Next winter when the cold blasts are creeping through the rents in

your seedy garments, when the frost is biting your feet through the holes in your worn-outshoes, and when all wretchedness seems to have centered in and upon you, when misery

has marked you for her own and life has become a burden and existence a mockery, when

you have walked the streets by day and slept upon hard boards by night, and at last

determine by your own hand to take your life, - for you would rather go out into utter

nothingness than to longer endure an existence which has become such a burden - so,

perchance, you determine to dash yourself into the cold embrace of the lake rather than

longer suffer thus. But halt, before you commit this last tragic act in the drama of your

simple existence.


11/12


Stop! Is there nothing you can do to insure those whom you are about to orphan, against a

like fate? The waves will only dash over you in mockery of your rash act; but stroll you down

the avenues of the rich and look through the magnificent plate windows into their

voluptuous homes, and here you will discover the very identical robbers who have despoiled

you and yours. Then let your tragedy be enacted here!

Awaken them from their wanton sport at your expense! Send forth your petition and let

them read it by the red glare of destruction. Thus when you cast "one long lingering look

behind" you can be assured that you have spoken to these robbers in the only language

which they have ever been able to understand, for they have never yet deigned to notice

any petition from their slaves that they were not compelled to read by the red glare bursting

from the cannon's mouths, or that was not handed to them upon the point of the sword.

You need no organization when you make up your mind to present this kind of petition. In

fact, an organization would be a detriment to you; but each of you hungry tramps who readthese lines, avail yourselves of those little methods of warfare which Science has placed in

the hands of the poor man, and you will become a power in this or any other land.

Learn the use of explosives!

Dedicated to the tramps by Lucy E. Parsons. 1884.

http://courses.washington.edu/spcmu/speeches/lucyparsons.htm
http://courses.washington.edu/spcmu/speeches/lucyparsons.htmhttp://courses.washington.edu/spcmu/speeches/lucyparsons.htmhttp://courses.washington.edu/spcmu/speeches/lucyparsons.htm


12/12


AUSTRALIAs BEST WORST ZINE - PUBLISHED MONTHLY - FREE

ratbag number 2 final pdf

Documents