StoryAug 23, 2024
Category: Protest
The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) examined 553 campus protests that took place across the U.S. between April 18-May 3 and found that fewer than 20 resulted in serious violence or property damage — meaning that 97 percent of the protests remained non-violent.
Police Pleasure themselves at Punishment Park
On 4/26, four students were “temporarily suspended” by Cornell University for exercising their constitutional right to protest. In response, these students issued the following statement:
Thus, our demands remain the same, and we raise our voices in unison to say: Divest Now.”
If our government fails in that duty to protect my generation against the greed of the coal and gas barons, we have a duty to stand up – because unionists, suffragettes, and civil rights campaigners fought and died for our right to do so.
Source: Peaceful coal port protesters prosecuted like bikie gang on bail – Michael West
Naive Demonstrators were Set up for a publicity and political STING
The Players were: 1 The Israeli Embassy 2 The Protesters 3 The Pawns were The Families 4 The Police 5 The media News Corp 6 The Australian Jewery Town Criers
Activists were acting on information that the Embassy of Israel was hosting an event at the hotel. The details of the event weren’t known to them. Only who was hosting. We know there were, in fact, embassy delegates there, with a booking — it’s just that there also happened to be families at the hotel not at that event either attending another event elsewhere or simply staying there.
The protesters said:
“As always, our protest was directed toward those who hold power — the Israeli officials playing politics with Palestinian lives.”
They held their rally at about 10 PM to an audience of barely anybody. We’re told that families of hostages, returning to the hotel after that event elsewhere, felt unsafe and retreated to a nearby police station. OOPS! That’s terrible.
Now we know it was a mistake that this happened and was certainly not a case of any activist intentionally attempting to “organise a demonstration against grieving families”, to quote our Prime Minister.
So you are welcome to find the reporting tasteless, but you can also put to bed any discussion of suppressing peaceful protest. Correct? Because now we’re only talking about an incident with bad optics that was a mistake — an action undertaken based off of a lack of information. It’s not a case of intentionally targeting families. Now we know this.
THE STING
But knowing this doesn’t seem to have changed the breathless media coverage on the subject. The Australian quoted WACA as clarifying what its intentions and planned targets for the protest were, before moving on to quote Executive Council of Australian Jewry CEO Alex Ryvchin competing with others to have the most lurid quote regarding the protesters.
“Indistinguishable from Neo-Nazism,” said Ryvchin. “A cancer on our multicultural society,” said Zionism Victoria president Yossi Goldfarb. “A full-throated anti-Semitic movement,” said Anti-Defamation Commission chair Dvir Abramovich.
A protest against the families of Israeli hostages has been turned into a political stunt, providing our leaders with a reason to call for increased anti-protest laws.
Source: Pro-Palestine rally gives politicians fuel for anti-protest agenda
The blockade of Australia’s biggest coal port Newcastle by climate protestors over the weekend resulted in 109 arrests. Wendy Bacon speaks with those arrested about the price of peaceful protest.
This not the Democracy I grew up in. We seem to be becoming more Chinese, Russian, and less and less the country of a “fair go”. We have Jewish friends who we went to school with but are less likely to have Indigenous ones. We may have some Muslim friends but less likely African ones. But it’s our Jewish friends who are now calling us anti-Semites, why? Because we don’t support the Israeli Government’s draconian policies. However, shamefully the Australian Government does, and it’s they who shame us. When did protest stop becoming a civil right?
The criminalisation of pro-Palestinian activism could see states implementing further anti-protest laws that would stifle democratic freedom of speech, writes Tom Tanuki.
Source: Criminalisation of protests may increase draconian laws
Warren Mundine claims to be Indigenous when he wants to just be recognized as any other Australian. Well, that seems to have proven to be a load of bullshit since he expects special treatment claiming he was dudded by KPMG. KPMG went ahead and treated him just as they would any other Australian, but Mundine the No advocate jumped on the “I’m a proud Indigenous Australian bandwagon” Yes that request in Uluru Statement for the same Voice which all other colonial countries have systemically given in one form or another to their FNPs. Mundine voted for Australia to remain the lone global exception. Well, Warren got what he wished a rejection like any other Australian from a company that supported the Yes vote. One wonders how Mundine intends carrying out his threat and with whose backing?
Warren Mundine sent an extraordinary series of angry and expletive-riddled text messages to a KPMG partner after the firm cancelled an invitation for him to address staff following his request for a $10,000 fee.
Mundine used the N-word to describe how he felt the big four firm had treated him over many months, before warning the partner he was “going to treat you cunts like you treated me!”
“I’m a proud Aboriginal man,” he said in the text messages. “I have [had] a gutful of KPMG. I’m going to treat you cunts like you treated me!
“And for me to talk like this tells you how angry I am.”
estimated on social media that half a million people attended the London march, which went from Embankment past U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s official residence at Downing Street to Westminster. Aerial footage showed streets and bridges thick with crowds. Sunak has stopped short of calling for a cease-fire, and Great Britian has emphasized Israel’s right to defend itself after the surprise October 7 attack by Hamas that killed around 1,400.
“The superpowers at play are not doing enough at the moment. This is why we’re here: we’re calling for a cease-fire, calling for Palestinian rights, the right to exist, to live, human rights, all our rights,” London marcher Camille Revuelta toldReuters. “This is not about Hamas. This is about protecting Palestinian lives.”
Protests also took place in cities across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, including what +972 Magazine journalist Oren Ziv said was the first anti-war protest in Tel Aviv.
Source: As Gaza War Enters ‘Second Stage,’ Hundreds of Thousands March for Cease-Fire
Western Australia’s police are targeting those aiming to put an end to environmentally destructive fossil fuel projects, writes Davey Heller.
Source: Crackdown on protesters reminding who law really serves
As Hollywood executives insist it is “just not realistic” to pay actors — 87 percent of whom earn less than $26,000 — more, they are spending lavishly on AI programs.
While entertainment firms like Disney have declined to go into specifics about the nature of their investments in artificial intelligence, job postings and financial disclosures reviewed by The Intercept reveal new details about the extent of these companies’ embrace of the technology.
In one case, Netflix is offering as much as $900,000 for a single AI product manager.
Hollywood actors and writers unions are jointly striking this summer for the first time since 1960, calling for better wages and regulations on studios’ use of artificial intelligence.
Source: As Actors Strike for AI Protections, Netflix Lists $900,000 AI Job
It is a timeworn saying that young people are the future and the hope of our species. Now it is equally true that old people are, too.
Source: Look out! Here come The Elders… – Pearls and Irritations
Democracy gets an almighty punch to the guts in WA
AAP has confirmed about 10 officers were involved in the search at the home of Roebourne-based Ngaarda Media reporter Eliza Kloser on Friday.
The journalist shares the property with a colleague charged over an incident at Woodside Energy’s annual general meeting on the same day.
During the search in connection with her colleague’s alleged actions, Kloser’s bedroom, clothing, bedding and other personal items are understood to have been searched.
Western Australia’s police commissioner has defended the treatment of a journalist who had her home searched and equipment seized.
Source: Commissioner Col Blanch defends journalist’s home search
Anti-Protest Laws Are Not About Safety, They Are About Silencing Dissent We must not allow our movements for justice to be silenced by laws that criminalize dissent.
Source: Anti-Protest Laws Are Not About Safety, They Are About Silencing Dissent – scheerpost.com
Australians are starting to realise that their children are going to live precarious lives under the spectre of climate hardship, and more people are seeing big companies sweeping in behind favourable laws and bipartisan protection to take one last whack before it all falls apart. Coco represents a growing number of Australians that are willing to protest, and risk arrest to act as a driver for change in a stale political environment that crawls towards inadequate change.
Source: Arresting climate protesters at the end of the world | The Shot
According to Peter Dutton she should count herself lucky she’s not in a country where she could have been shot
If you are seeing this campaign, then I have been sentenced to prison for peaceful environmental protest. On April 14, I stopped a truck on the Harbour Bridge with my firefighter friend to draw attention to the climate and ecological emergency, and to the fact our firefighters do not have the tools they need to protect us.
Source: Deanna ‘Violet’ Coco on her arrest and why she protested
When people protest and the cause is obvious governments capitulate or are overrun. Vietnam, Apartheid, Sri Lanka, Climate,
With anti-protest laws on the rise as our climate crisis worsens, activists are fighting back to raise awareness, writes Claire Burgess.
Source: Climate protesters criminalised as climate crisis escalates
Blockade Australia is not trying to convince the motorists caught in traffic; they’re showing strength to the powerful. Tactics like blocking roads, stopping coal trains, and non-violently halting environmental destruction are reminders that the cogs of capital are ever susceptible to a few strategically placed spanners – that the public can always fuck shit up if they’re motivated enough. And right now they seem plenty motivated. It’s important for our future that groups like Blockade Australia and Extinction Rebellion, that people like Greta Thunberg and Bob Brown, that brave activists willing to pay the price, stay this motivated. We need them.
Source: If you think traffic jams are inconvenient wait until you hear about the climate crisis | The Shot
Vaccine mandate protests around the country are distracting politicians from the ongoing climate crisis that still requires urgent attention, writes Sue Arnold.
Some in the crowd certainly appeared to have far-right sympathies. There was one who identified as a Proud Boy, someone who complained about the New World Order while wearing a Donald Trump hat, two Trump flags were waved by people in hi-vis, and a former member of the United Patriots Front was spotted in the crowd on the West Gate Bridge. But for the most part, the thousands who gathered were not identifiably aligned with any political group or message, save for being anti-Daniel Andrews and anti-mandatory vaccination. Some said they had been CFMEU members for decades, others were clearly young tradies. Some hi-vis gear had cement stains, others looked as they were wearing it for the first time. Many were keen to stress they had no connection to the far right. Quick Guide How to get the latest news from Guardian Australia Show Tanuki said it was much too simple to label those attending the protests as neo-Nazis or far-right agitators. “I don’t agree with Setka saying they’re all ‘neo-Nazis’, this is dumb or sloppy or inaccurate. But they’re sent out by anti-vaxxers; that’s what they are. And their immersion in the anti-lockdown scene makes them predisposed to the manipulations
We saw how easy it was for right-wing thugs to organize and attack the US Capitol in Washington on 6/1 flags here even had Trump on them. The majority of union members in fact support vaccinations and mandated ones.
It’s just as easy for the organized right-wing in Victoria to create chaos in the name of a Union when that union’s organizers the CFMEU loudly deny the reality that’s being described. They aren’t the organizers of this chaos being witnessed nor are many really “workers” let alone union members. However, the media certainly weren’t looking for truth. The truth might be slower than mainstream media but it will prevail and will come out.
Protesters wore high-vis gear to look like tradies: CFMEU boss.Union secretary John Setka says “professional protesters” from the far-right were behind Monday’s violent demonstration
Victorian Treasurer Tim Pallas says half of inspected construction sites failed COVID compliance checks Some of today’s protesters have identified as CFMEU members who do not want to be vaccinated Union secretary John Setka says “professional protesters” from the far-right were behind Monday’s violent demonstration
Source: Protesters march through Melbourne’s CBD in wake of construction industry shutdown – ABC News
Neo-Nazis are targeting anti-lockdown rallies and using covert tactics to indoctrinate frustrated Australians into their hate-filled and violent ideology. At least two leaders of the far-right National Socialist Network were at Melbourne’s anti-lockdown protest on the weekend, trying to recruit new members to their group, The New Daily can reveal.
Source: How neo-Nazis use anti-lockdown protests to recruit new members
I don’t support the anti-lockdown movement. It offers little in the way of cohesive views to support or condemn. The movement is, to borrow the phraseology of Travis View, a ’big tent’ conspiracist movement that houses discordant ideas and sometimes leaderless factions. It’s given direction by a ruling caste of portrait-video-filming figureheads who often scrap with each other for viral supremacy. The attention-seekers among them get a sugar rush of shares, the grifters get lots of money and the political careerists try to craft a future voting bloc.
Source: The good, the bad and the ugly side of lockdown protests
Adriana Midori Takara was just 38 when she died from COVID-19 this week. She was only a year older than I am and had no underlying health conditions. Her first COVID test was negative and then a few days later, when she was tested again, it was positive. Ten days later, she was dead.
Source: Protesters’ cries for freedom ring hollow for dying woman
Politicians, academics and celebrities have voiced their frustration over lockdown protests which could make the situation even worse, writes Dr Binoy Kampmark. PANIC AND FURY. A sense that things have gotten away. This was the feeling on Sunday morning, 25 July, with the vision of COVID Zero vanishing in a country that had boasted of suppressing the virus and its disease.
An angry white man was caught on video attacking Black Lives Matter protesters in Texas over the weekend.
Source: WATCH: Angry White Man Threatens Protesters, Cops Let Him Walk | Crooks and Liars
Clearly jarred by the power and the depth of the protests against systemic racism and against police brutality that erupted in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis Police last year, right-wing, Republican-controlled state legislatures are passing laws specifically targeting dissent. At the same time, chillingly, many of these laws include provisions legalizing violence against protestors, granting immunity to people who drive their cars into crowds.
Source: Dangerous Republican Anti-Protest Laws Grant Drivers License to Kill | The Smirking Chimp
New forms of terrorism rooted in conspiracy theories could emerge after the coronavirus pandemic, the EU’s terror chief has warned.
New forms of terrorism inspired by conspiracy theories may emerge after pandemic, warns EU counter-terror chief | The Independent | Independent
According to the Pew Research Center, some 15 million adults participated in the protests, which makes it the largest movement in American history. In terms of interracial composition, three times as many whites as Blacks participated and the percentage of Hispanics was higher than that for Black people.
Which Black Voices Should Their White Supporters Heed? | The Smirking Chimp
Personal trainer Patrick Hutchinson was pictured rescuing an injured man during clashes at a far-right protest in central London on Saturday.
That brings us to the present day. On the one hand, this history doesn’t mean that the FBI or local police are currently acting as provocateurs during the current unrest. But it does mean that such activity is clearly one avenue that is open to U.S. police forces looking to undermine protests and escalate violence.
via A Short History of U.S. Law Enforcement Infiltrating Protests
The World is Young and so there’s hope. You can’t get a Million people to a right-wing demonstration only guns(ODT
It’s important we don’t switch off, but rather refocus our attention on effective, loud and colourful resistance.
There’s plenty of inspiring action going on right now in Spain, Chile, Lebanon, Hong Kong and other places. Extinction Rebellion is not going away. It’s time to get off the couch and join in.
The Morrison Government is stupid and cruel, but I’m not giving in to it
Peter Dutton has described protesters as ‘a scourge’ with the threat of increased penalties and imprisonment in several states
On Monday, the activist group Extinction Rebellion will begin a week of global protests.
In Brisbane, home to the grassroots organisation’s first Australian chapter, activists are preparing to stage protests around the city. At the group’s headquarters in Woolloongabba, a busy training schedule is under way. It is hosting introductory sessions at local libraries planning two large-scale marches, with a litany of other “non-violent disruptive actions”.
Since the group conducted its first action in Australia in April, there have been more than 170 arrests, with penalties ranging from a warning to a $1,500 fine.
It has been written elsewhere that Patriotism is but a short goose-step away from Fascism, and that Nationalism is but a short spurt of frenzied flag-waving away from Totalitarianism. There is more than just a shade of truth in all of that.
Mass unstoppable protest, to my mind, is the only answer. Reasonableness, and hope in the power of our electoral system, has not worked, and the rightist nationalists and patriots currently control our national political and societal agendas. They present a face of Australia to the world that is not representative of who we are.
But getting out there and protesting, and standing solidly in the road against the nationalists and patriots, is not always an easy thing to do in contemporary Australia. Because it identifies you to them clearly as a non-patriot, and a non-nationalist, and a non-fascist, and a non-bigot, and a non-racist, and a non-hater, and a non-ignoramus, and a non-denier. It publicly identifies you as NOT being like them.
Their power will continue to grow in Australia unless more and more of us are prepared to get out there, unless more and more of us are prepared to run the risk of identifiably standing in opposition and defiance to them.
Our political parties who oppose the Right need to do more than just try and represent us in our parliaments. They need to join us on the streets. We need to join them on the streets. We need to join each other on the streets.
I cannot see any other method that will, from now on, help us to achieve a better and more humane and more progressive Australia.
via Patriots in a Red Dirt Land – » The Australian Independent Media Network
The more politicians lie to us, the more they think advertising replaces substantive debate, the more they rely on talking points rather than considered informed opinion, the more they use their position to reward their mates, the less relevant they become.
Scott Morrison can say until he is blue in the face that we will meet our emissions reduction targets but we can actually look up the facts for ourselves.
Tony Abbott can keep spinning on his arse doing the Paris hokey pokey – no-one is listening to him.
Matt Canavan and George Christensen can pray for more coal-fired power stations but no-one will put up the money.
Peter Dutton can cry wolf till he is hoarse but the citizens of Melbourne continue to enjoy its culinary delights.
The “better economic managers” myth is a persistent one but how long can they even hang onto that when we are in a per capita recession because of stagnant wage growth and increasing cost of living? I know company profits are high, but companies don’t vote.
Trade unions are habitually attacked because we can’t have the workers having a voice about the value of their labour. Groups like GetUp! and Greenpeace are likewise vilified. They seem to fear ordinary people having a say.
But our children have had enough. Girls are fleeing the oppression in Saudi Arabia. Schoolchildren in America are fighting for gun laws. They are bemused by the intolerance of some adults to diversity. And around the world, children will march tomorrow to demand that we put the health of the planet before profit.
More power to their arm. Politics is not confined to the Canberra bubble boys much as you may have fought to keep it that way.
We are people hear us roar
In numbers too big to ignore
Cause we know too much to go back and pretend.
via Politicians are making themselves irrelevant – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Come to Australia it’s easy money and Murdoch Media will actively promote you as political opinion dressed as entertainment deserving of free police protection. The more the protest thegreater the gate returns which you don’t have to pay.(ODT)
A petition with 81,000 signatures calling on the Immigration Minister to ban the American founder of far-right “men’s organisation” the Proud Boys from Australia has been delivered to Parliament House in Canberra.
Key points:The Proud Boys are listed as an extremist organisation by the FBI
Their founder is touring Australia along with the UK’s Tommy Robinson
The petition’s organiser says the Proud Boys have a “clear record” of inciting violenceGavin McInnes and UK activist Tommy Robinson are due to bring their The Deplorables speaking tour to Australia in February.
The Proud Boys were founded by Mr McInnes in 2016, and describe themselves as “a pro-Western fraternal organisation for men who refuse to apologise for creating the modern world; aka Western Chauvinists”.
Both sides taunted each other from across the street, with the left-wingers holding signs saying “fight racism” while the right-wingers carried banners saying “let the right ones in”.
What Murdoch Media Mocks
via March for Our Lives Updates: Students Inspire Huge Rallies on Guns – The New York Times
Media by Protest is better than Government by Media, (OD)
via Sunrise rushes in Indigenous panel after train wreck show leads to protests | NITV
More than 200 people who were arrested on Trump’s inauguration day risk up to 60 years of jail. Meanwhile, the white supremacists in Charlottesville walk free
Right-wing protesters storm a Melbourne council over Australia Day decisionImage1/Video1/AudioRight-wing activists draped in the national flag have stormed Moreland Council, in Melbourne, protesting against the cancellation of Australia Day.
Source: Right-wing protesters storm a Melbourne council over Australia Day decision | SBS News
“We had a protest here and the police went to grab mum and slam her on the ground so I just went to walk over and then they jumped on me,” Voller said in a video posted from his cell in Alice Springs.”They just chucked me in the paddy wagon and brought me to the watch house and then when we got out they said for disorderly behaviour.”
Source: Dylan Voller and mother Joanne arrested in Alice Springs at deaths in custody rally
As the official start time of the contentious “Free Speech Rally” in Boston approached, the winner in the battle of words between organisers and counter-demonstrators had already been determined. If hateful speech aimed at Jewish people or minorities was chanted at Boston Common park, it was not audible at one of the largest rallies being held just one week after the deadly demonstrations in Charleston, Virginia, where neo-Nazis marched bearing torches, and where one woman was killed.
Tens of thousands of people in the US city of Boston protest against a Free Speech rally featuring right-wing speakers.
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