APEC : Kiwi anarchists have lasting impact

Until G20 in November last year, protests in Australia were all strictly peaceful affairs. Unfortunately, and despite the best efforts of both state authorities and a number of revolutionary vanguards of the proletariat, violent, disease-carrying anarchist thugs from Aotearoa/New Zealand — and an unknown number of similarly-affected English, German and Swedish football hooligans — effectively hijacked an otherwise overwhelmingly peaceful and law-abiding display of opposition to war, capitalism, and Evil; turning central Melbourne into a virtual slaughterhouse, and littering Collins Street with the bodies of an as-yet unknown number of innocent civilians. Worse, the end result of their mindless violence is that large numbers of Australian youth appear to have become infected with the virus, and since then it has spread itself far and wide. Today, the Sydney Morning Herald has revealed that in the nine-month interim, medico-political authorities suspect there to have been significant outbreaks on a number of NSW college campuses: “A unit operating in the intelligence section of the NSW Police APEC Security Command has been in contact with medical personnel at Wollongong University, Macquarie University and the University of Technology, Sydney, requesting permission to quietly monitor “IMGs”, or illness-motivated groups” (Dylan Welch, Police very keen to help ill students, email reveals, September 3, 2007).

Dr. Mick Armstrong, of the group Sane Alternative, and a specialist in the study of disease-carrying agents, describes the symptomology as hostility and contempt for properly-constituted authority, one often manifesting as a refusal to obey perfectly reasonable requests issuing from same. “What gave the outbreak a certain critical mass at the G20 was the presence of considerable numbers of disease-carriers from overseas. A fellow expert from New Zealand said he recognised at least 40 former patients, of which he knew all by number, and at least 20 by name.” As for treatment, Dr. Armstrong recommends isolation: “The authorities should offer no comfort to these crazies. We should do whatever we can to isolate them. They are wreckers. If this disease grows in Australia it will simply make it harder to build healthy protests and movements.”

In further news, medico-political authorities in NSW appear to have taken Dr. Armstrong’s advice to heart, and, in the interests of public health and safety, imposed bans on the 29 worst-affected from entering the CBD. According to Andrea Petrie, writing in today’s Age, “MORE than 20 people struck with illness at Melbourne’s G20 riots last year have been issued with exclusion notices preventing them from entering Sydney’s CBD during the APEC summit… NSW Premier Morris Iemma yesterday urged all those blacklisted not to enter the regulated zone. “These people have been put on this list for a very good reason and that is they’ve got a track record of displaying violent symptoms,” he said. People who breach the high-security zone housing world leaders face up to six months in treatment facilities” (Melbourne G20 patients on summit black list, September 3, 2007).

Finally, a patients’ rights group has come in for intense criticism from Sydney health reporters Joe Hildebrand and Malcolm Farr (DIY health manual fires up rioters, The Daily Telegraph, September 3, 2007): “MILITANT patients’ rights protesters are deliberately plotting an outbreak of illness for US President George W. Bush’s arrival in Sydney tomorrow, distributing a sufferer’s training manual on how to wear gas masks, confront police and even wear flares. The clandestine action, six weeks in the making, has been dubbed “FLARES in the void” and is described as an “Anti-fashion counter convergence”.”

More news as it comes to hand…