G20 protest - a success: Statement from Melbourne Stop the War Coalition : Melbourne Indymedia

G20 protest - a success
Melbourne Stop the War coalition statement

For Melbourne Stop the War Coalition, the G20 summit meeting was an important opportunity to mount a protest at which public opposition to the war in Iraq and Afghanistan could be expressed.

This is because the gathering to discuss how to improve the profits margins of the world's richest economies was bringing together some of the biggest war criminals in the world today including Paul Wolfowitz, president of the World Bank, and Gordon Brown, UK Chancellor of the Exchequer.

The G20 leaders agree on and promote neo-liberal and militaristic policies to increase their wealth and power. These people are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people in the killing fields of Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as millions of others across the globe who die needlessly from starvation, human-induced climate disasters and preventable diseases.

Since the G20 collective didn't have plans for a mass rally and march during the summit, the Stop the War Coalition initiated a discussion with them about organising one with a focus on ending the war in the Middle East, ending the war on workers and ending the war on the environment. While there were differences in approach, it was agreed to incorporate the political focus suggested by Melbourne Stop the War.

It struck a chord: the turn-out of 3000 is proof. The G20 collective's Carnival against Capitalism was only going to appeal to a narrower layer - people who defined themselves as anti-capitalists. We felt that the opportunity to mount a serious rally that could bring out masses of people who are against the wars in the Middle East and against the war criminals was too important to waste. And given that the blockade tactic, that was effective at S11 in 2001, was not going to work this time, we argued that the mass rally should march to the G20 summit site.

The mood was peaceful, but angry and determined The speeches were very political, and covered the range of issues that people feel passionately about today.

There was nothing stopping the 3000 people from confronting police with direct actions or trying to get over the barricades. The fact that the vast majority didn't is an indication that most people felt that this form of direct action was not a useful tactic, in this particular instance, to get our message across.

The misguided and counterproductive actions at this protest of a small group of people, centred around the "arterial block'', found no resonance among the 3000 protesters. But it played into the hands of the corporate media, putting an otherworldly spin on what was actually very successful political protest. We also don't think that in current Australian political context wearing masks at protests is either necessary nor useful.

The actions of a tiny minority have subsequently made it easier for the police to escalate their harassment of progressive activists. The very next day, police attacked a peaceful protest at the museum, seriously injuring a woman. They are also carrying out arbitrary arrests and witch hunts of activists.

Stop the War Coalition condemns police violence and harassment, and the media witch hunts stemming from the G20 protests. But we do not agree that the tactics that the ``arterial bloc'' decided on helped to make the protest a success. This is not just because of the media focus on them exclusively. It is because most protesters expected to be taking part in a peaceful protest.

The need to be public about our opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is as urgent as ever, especially now that Bush, Blair and Howard are increasingly being exposed as war criminals

Increasing the strength of the anti-war movement to the point where it manages to win its main demand, that the troops be pulled out, relies on the correct tactics to involve greater and greater numbers of people: those actions in which huge numbers of people feel that they have a voice, and it is being heard, are the most successful.

END

Talisman Sabre 2007
by dimity.hawkins@mapw.org.au Friday November 24, 2006 at 03:49 PM
May/June 2007

Election's illusory moment of power is almost over...so come on back to the anti-war movement and vote with your feet and in direct actions.

Next May/June will see Australia host the largest military exercises
we've ever had in peacetime. Talisman Sabre 07.

Twelve thousand Australian soldiers and nearly l4,000 US troops and
sailors will take place in bombarding our shores and fragile landscape,
storming our beaches, gunning down 'terrorists' in the newly built
urban guerilla warfare training centre, testing their latest laser
guided missiles and 'smart' bombs in some of the most pristine
wilderness I've ever seen on this planet - and in 30years of making
films, I've seen a lot of this planet.

Idyllic Shoalwater Bay near Rockhampton will cop it all - live aerial
bombing, ship to shore naval firings, underwater depth charges exploded
in areas where turtles and dugong breed, nuclear subs using high level
sonar frequency which zaps the hearing of sea life and mammals, nuclear
aircraft carriers inside the so-called Great Barrier Reef marine
national park (!), land based artillery firings blasting the hell out of
areas where the most amazing biodiversity in Australia is to be found.
(Shoalwater Bay covers 740,000 hectacres and is almost unique in our
climatic landscape because it is a cross over point for tropical, sub
tropical and temperate zones giving rise to an amazing variety of many
species of flora and wildlife, birds,sea creatures etc).

Anyone who has seen Al Gore's film has to ask why are we allowing such
madness to take place and wanton misuse of resources to further add to
the huge level of CO2 put up into the atmosphere in exercises such as
these at a time when we all should be combining forces in the War for
Our Survival.

These live munitions actions at Shoalwater Bay will run simultaneously
with US bombing runs by Stealth, B1 and B52 bombers (just one B52 bomber carries 30 tonnes of bombs -needs three semi trailers to load it up with its bombload...) from Guam to drop their live payload from 5 kilometres
high on Delamare bombing range near Katherine NT and live fire exercises
involving many Abrams tanks rumbling across the landscape at Bradshaw
tank range (surrounded by Bradshaw national park south of Darwin, target
practising on country against the wishes of the senior Aboriginal
elders, custodians of that country...).

These military exercises and their coordination in both states will be
beamed live via satellite from tiny cameras on the tanks, bombers,
landing craft, army commanders's lapels etc to the coordinating War
Room at Newcastle where the US and Australian generals will call the
shots of what is fired next. Son of Star Wars has arrived in Australia!

I don't know how you feel about that, but I am still disgusted that
Australia supports the US so sycophantically in this bullshit War on
Terror. Our unholy crusade at the latest count had 653,000 innocent
people in Iraq killed-even if its half this number comprehensively and
methodically counted number, its still a national and immoral disgrace
that we have lent our name and support to such a huge number of innocent
people murdered in our nation's name.

Next year's Talisman Sabre exercises are a con for blatant continuing
militarism of a similar vein post Afghanistan and Iraq. We are now about
to pollute our own most pristine areas, far away from the centres of
population by letting the US military test their latest weapons here.

There are big plans by British Aerospace and the other arms
manufacturers to quietly turn the depressed Rockhampton area into a big
arms manufacturing industrial estate. So not only will we export our
soldiers who are the best there is to adventurist wars overseas, we are
about to see an explosion in Australia manufacturing and exporting
weapons of war.

Not particularly drawn to military phrases, we have to 'draw a line in
the sand' and say when 'enough is enough'. Its time my friends, to
stop this madness and our complicity in it.

With a view to oppose these exercises, a group of people from around
Australia with peace activist credentials had a phone link up yesterday
and spoke for an hour about our willingness to combine forces and oppose
these exercises. We will link with activist residents of Shoalwater Bay
(Yeppoon and Byfield) that we made contact with last year during
Talisman Sabre 2005.

We plan to put on a big concert at Yeppoon and have people come from all
over Australia to take part in that concert and choose, if they wish, to
be part of non violent actions to oppose the war and Australia's
involvement in such wars.

Through my contact with musicians like Paul Kelly, Midnight Oil (friends
from University days), John Butler, Deborah Conway, Robyn Archer, Kev
Carmody and actors Judy Davis, Geoffrey Rush, Sam Neill, Bryan Brown, we
intend to put on a big concert which will spill into the evening with
relevant films and speakers to raise awareness of just what Australia
has signed up for with this new secret treaty then Defence Minister
Robert Hill and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer signed with Rumsfeld
and Powell back in July 2004. It is that secret treaty which is allowing
the Americans to come here and do what they want -without so much as an
environmental impact study being done before or after the exercises.

We need people in communities right along the eastern seaboard to be
actively involved in this campaign to build awareness amongst your local
communities and to take on the role of being local coordinators as the
campaign builds over the next six months, to help with the logistics of
organising people to come by bus, peace train, cars, planes to be there
in June for that concert and weekend leading into week of actions.

Some people with work or other commitments will only be able to come for a few days, perhaps the weekend. No matter. We have to send a BIG message to the rest of our apathetic and many indifferent Australians and the government that this is not on any more.

Please look at this website and subscribe to it to keep generally
informed of what is happening, how to link up people in your local
community if you want to help make this peace convergence a BIG event.

http://www.peaceconvergence.com

If you would like to be part of the actual organising (that's why I'm
emailing you now in the hope thereof...) please email Dimity Hawkins
from MAPW (Medical Association for the Prevention of War)
dimity.hawkins@mapw.org.au

and ask her to put you on the list for organising. That way you will be
told when the next national phone link up is happening and other
important info to let folks in your respective communities know over the
coming months as we seek to build awareness and a 'buzz' about being
at the Talisman Sabre peace concert etc. But we want people who will DO,
not just talk about it.

Okay, thanks for reading this and taking it on board hopefully in a world
where we all have incredible demands on our time and stress,

yours sincerely,
David Bradbury

how many different whinginihn trot groups do we have to listen to (all be it under the banner of different fronts) desperately try to prop up the pathetic electoral endeavours

I think this is a little too harsh on the AB and that is as much to do with the panic in Authoritarian 'socialist' circles as they feel their last feeble power and influence slipping away.

The three largest left fascist outfits in Au right now are all busy running for the perks of national socialist office!

Of course they are going to kick up a stink about anything even vaguely resembling the social revolution that they've turned their backs on. The sorrow and the pity is that they started a stanpede. The burlesque and the comedy comes from masked individuals condemning masked tactics!

And you want to be taken seriously by the vast democratic and libertarian socialist left!

I don't think so - what we are all hearing so loud is not just the usual jingo/media goon squad chorus - its the death rattle of red fascist influence here.
Thats the secret good news story of this watershed demo.
Oh and now might be a good chance to revive an old idea of mine. In light of the constant Blue bloc violence by anonymous police hooligans that the community demand that all police on demo duties all wear large fluro, individually numbered uniforms. Sewn on numbers.
With todays ubiquitous camera society these complusory uniforms could easily save lives.
Long live the AB and down with the fascist corrupt police state - pr

The consensus for posting here has long been in favour of psuedonyms or masks.
So when is that going to change?
For me the free society is defined by the face mask - if yr free to wear one then its probably a more-free society in at least one respect.
The case for comment rego here probably boils down to yet more work for our overloaded techies... but that is a seperate issue from taking sensible precautions in todays murderous streets.
The case for rego - or unmasking - here comes down to whether we allow this site to degenerate into chaos... or we take charge of traffic in favour of generally reliable sources.
The natural selection of good ideas will soon sort out the blogs from the IMCs ...and so far it looks to me like the blogs are winning. Being too far based on the dinosaur media lent MIM a certain gravitas in the past...but now it just looks silly.
MIM has delusions of granduer if it thinks it can survive the attack of the killer blogtomatos in its present state.
Sometimes things have to change in order to stay the same MIMsters. The moment of truth is fast arriving and you all look like Deer in the headlights.

Somethings goin' on but you don't know what it is
Do you Mr lamer, leftist, loser?

...we must all have three minutes hate for Nelson Mandela because this criminal bought heat down on the movement.
This left-wing terrorist Mandela was going about armed with a gun.
QUICK!
' Four legs good! Two legs bad!'

Fuck you lamer leftist losers make me ill sometimes, I swear.

Thanks Stop The War - good to hear some bloody sense in this discussion. Don't let the corporate bastards tell you the protests were a waste of time because they weren't despite the silly media-chasing antics of a handful of infantiles. We got our message across more convincingly than Peter Costello and Wolfowitz as Brian and John explained here http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/7.30_clarkedawe.htm

Congratulations on your efforts, Stop the War. You have achieve significant things.

Except stopping the war, of course.

Well done to the art block. If it wasn´t for them there would have been no media coverage and no discussions on forums like this.

Arterial Blocs actions were not 'misguided and counterproductive', as this pious article suggests.

Corporate media should not be pandered to... pictures of 'feral protestors' taking peaceful action excite exactly the same response from the media and from sections of the public as the pictures of violent action. Even from personal experience being berated returning to work after a protest... you can't do anything to damage perceptions of protestors in these peoples eyes.

I've typed many a transcript when working for the man of talkback calls and interviews illustrating the reaction to protestors from those who feel most threatened.

NOTHING PROTESTORS DO CAN DAMAGE THIS PERCEPTION FURTHER.

Even staying at home wouldn't help here.

Only difference is AB's action makes them FRIGHTENED as well as contemptuous.

This is important, because there's been so much shite posted to MIM about avoiding giving the media the pictures it wants.... all they're doing is filling in the gaps.. the picture's already fully developed in the minds of some parts of the populace. Forget about them. Make good television their kids will enjoy instead>:>