“Mooners, bongo-drummers, green salvationists, and under-appreciated arts graduates of the world unite and take over!” Or: moar blah about Occupy Melbourne.
“For Democracy and Discipline: A Plea to Occupy Melbourne”, James Pollard, abstractblack, October 25, 2011: This is an article on the eviction of the occupation. In it, I try to show how certain assumptions and ways of action, crystalised in the chants we raised on the day of eviction, defined and limited what the occupation was. Throughout the week, a clique of liberal-pacifist activists attempted to impose these ideas upon the entire assembly, and to take control of the general assembly. In the wake of the eviction, their coup over the assembly has come to pass, leaving us in circumstances that demand reflection, re-organisation, and preparation before future action can be carried out with confidence. In the same spirit, the Rooftop Collective has published some Notes on Occupy Melbourne. What it might mean. Where we might take it., October 25, 2011. Liberal commentary @ The Occupy movement and the Importance of Civil Protest, Sarah Joseph, Castan Centre for Human Rights Law blog, October 26, 2011.
Norwegian Blues. Or: On Utoya: Anders Breivik, right terror, racism and Europe edited by Elizabeth Humphrys, Guy Rundle and Tad Tietze, available now on Amazon Kindle and other platforms. Or visit www.onutoya.com.
But here steps in Satan, the eternal rebel, the first freethinker and the emancipator of worlds. He makes man ashamed of his bestial ignorance and obedience; he emancipates him, stamps upon his brow the seal of liberty and humanity, in urging him to disobey and eat of the fruit of knowledge…
Finally, brethren, be strengthened in the Lord and in the might of his power. 11 Put you on the armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the deceits of the devil. 12 For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places.
This video of Friday morning’s eviction of Occupy Melbourne is neat.
Inspired by Dr_Tad, Mark Bahnisch @ Larvatus Proedo has some blah on Occupy Australia and the Antipodean “bubble” (October 22, 2011), talkin’ ’bout a revolution Australian exceptionalism. Why is Australia a “bubble”, seemingly insulated from the winds of change blowing throughout the world? queries Mark.
Something to do with history, apparently. That, and the fact that Australia isn’t NotAustralia (where things are different).
Speaking of bubbles, Living on a Knife’s Edge (PDF), a report released last (“Anti-Poverty”) week by United Voice, cites the following statistics with regards social inequality in Australia:
• Close to 20% of Australian workers are categorised as low-paid, an increase from 14.5% three decades ago.
• A study of working poverty found that in 2005-2006, 10% of Australians lived in poverty, or approximately 1.16 million households. Of these 1.16 million households 18% had someone in paid employment.
• The wealthiest 20% of households in 2009–10, accounted for 62% of total household net worth; an average net worth of $2.2 million per household. The poorest 20% of households, accounted for 1% of total household net worth; an average net worth of $32,000 per household.
• Low to moderate income households are resorting to increasing their levels of debt to keep up with the cost of living. RBA statistics show that in March 2011 the ratio of household debt to disposable income was 155.1%, compared to 33.7% in March 1977.
It’s not all bad news, however. While Spotless cleaners moan and groan, QANTAS CEO Alan Joyce is enjoying a 71 per cent rise, taking his annual pay package to $5 million.
Never in history has there been such a glaring contrast between what could be and what actually exists.
It’s hardly necessary to go into all the problems in the world today — most of them are widely known, and to dwell on them usually does little more than dull us to their reality. But even if we are “stoic enough to endure the misfortunes of others,” the present social deterioration ultimately impinges on us all. Those who don’t face direct physical repression still have to face the mental repressions imposed by an increasingly mean, stressful, ignorant and ugly world. Those who escape economic poverty cannot escape the general impoverishment of life.
And even life at this pitiful level cannot continue for long. The ravaging of the planet by the global development of capitalism has brought us to the point where humanity may become extinct within a few decades.
Yet this same development has made it possible to abolish the system of hierarchy and exploitation that was previously based on material scarcity and to inaugurate a new, genuinely liberated form of society.
Plunging from one disaster to another on its way to mass insanity and ecological apocalypse, this system has developed a momentum that is out of control, even by its supposed masters. As we approach a world in which we won’t be able to leave our fortified ghettoes without armed guards, or even go outdoors without applying sunscreen lest we get skin cancer, it’s hard to take seriously those who advise us to beg for a few reforms.
What is needed, I believe, is a worldwide participatory-democracy revolution that would abolish both capitalism and the state. This is admittedly a big order, but I’m afraid that nothing less can get to the root of our problems. It may seem absurd to talk about revolution; but all the alternatives assume the continuation of the present system, which is even more absurd…
Oh yeah. Tricksy police in Sydney smashed #occupysydney at approximately 5am this morning. Maybe 40 or so arrests, camp destroyed. Video seized along with arrested. Pride. Integrity. Guts.
I’m beginning to believe that Robert Doyle may not be the sharpest tool in the shed.
Either that, or he assumes his audience are fools.
In an opinion piece in the Sunday Herald Sun (‘Selfish rabble got what it deserved’, October 23, 2011), the Lord Mayor makes numerous assertions regarding the nature of the occupation, its aims and composition.
These claims are supplemented by straight-forward abuse.
According to the Lord Mayor, those who occupied the City Square were a “self-righteous, narcissistic, self-indulgent rabble”; lying, violent, thugs, both comically-amateurish malcontents and–simultaneously–professionally-trained vandals, acting under the influence of sinister forces of strange and exotic origin.
A brief survey of the contribution to public discourse by the numerous trolls populating Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms reveals that the sentiments expressed by the Lord Mayor find their echo in the quasi-demented outpourings of this unpaid army. To cite just one of many possible examples: local yuppie Cameron Voss (“Website Producer at Australian Football League”) tweeted that he wished more than 20 occupiers had been injured by police on Friday. (Then again, he is a Hawthorn supporter.) As Andrew O’Hagan wrote in the October 6 edition of the London Review of Books: “Twitter is marvellous in the way a school playground is marvellous: full of life, full of information, and heaving with bullies.”
So much for the bullies.
Well, not quite.
Robert asks:
And what of the promises of Occupy Melbourne spokespeople during the week in the media – that they would vacate City Square peacefully once requested to do so?
What of their specific requests to police that they be given some notice so they could leave peacefully?
Good questions. What promises? Made by whom? And with what authority?
On Thursday, October 20, Occupy Melbourne released a media statement regarding the fact that Inspector Bernie Jackson of the Melbourne East police station met with protesters to discuss a potential eviction scenario. It declared that his statement would be discussed at the General Assembly that evening. A further media release on the morning of the eviction (Friday, October 21) stated that Occupy Melbourne intended to remain at the Square.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
Again, look at the video footage. Peaceful? Hardly. And how do these protesters explain the knives, hammers, bricks, bottles and flammable liquids that we found in their illegal tent city? What were they for?
Obviously believing himself to have scored a coup, Robert repeats himself:
THE protest was infiltrated by professionals: what were those knives, hammers, bottles, bricks and fuel for?
Why, what possible use could anybody have for knives, hammers, bottles, bricks or fuel? Possibly, to cut things, hammer things, store liquids, anchor ropes and to keep things warm. If the Lord Mayor believes such mundane items pose a threat to public safety, he could ban carpenters, cooks, builders and other ‘professionals’ from entering the CBD.
You know it makes sense.
And the final irony?
“We are the 99 per cent,” they chanted.
But they are not the 99 per cent.
Literally-speaking, Robert is of course correct: 3,960,000-plus people simply won’t fit into the City Square. As a former English teacher, however, he should be familiar with the use of metaphor. Further, as a literate politician, Robert should also be familiar–even if only roughly–with the field of economics, and the use of such rhetoric is derived from the Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz.
In the May issue of Vanity Fair, Stiglitz wrote an article titled ‘Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%’, in which he claimed that the top 1 percent of the US population control 40 percent of the national wealth, and proceeded to elaborate why this fact, and others like it, spells trouble.
He concludes his brief analysis as follows:
The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late.
Aside from having a poor command of rhetoric and economics, Robert would also appear to have a slippery grasp of fundamental legal principles. Thus:
NO ONE gets arrested for protesting: you have to escalate it, break the law, get violent. And there were more than 50 arrests.
In reality, people get arrested because the police decide to arrest them. They are then sometimes charged. Sometimes they’re not.
On Friday, many more than 50 people were detained by police. Not all of them, however, were charged with a criminal offence. Some were released. Those charged are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a properly-constituted court of law.
Actually, Melbourne Lord Mayor Robert Doyle is only bound by political expediency–and bad advice, presumably emanating from government and police authorities. Otherwise, the defence of civil rights has a very definite legal dimension, while Dr_Tad has some interesting disco on the protest’s political dimension here. Nicola Paris is presumably one of several photographers to have documented the removal of police ID prior to police action: a practice disavowed by police command but now standard practice for at least a decade and adopted so as to limit police liability in civil cases.
A defiant Cr Doyle last night told The Saturday Age the protesters were ”arrogant liars” who had deceived police when they told them earlier in the week that they would move peacefully if required to.
He labelled the protests the most pointless he’s seen in Melbourne. ”Looking at the anger and violence on the faces of the protesters [it was clear] a number of them simply wanted to fight police.”
He said the protesters’ ”little self-indulgent moment in the sunshine”, had disrupted dozens of businesses and forced the cancellation of an awards ceremony at the Town Hall to acknowledge schools that had helped fight poverty.
”In the name of acting for the little people and the battlers, they have prevented the very people they purport to represent from being celebrated.”
Police attack on young girl – OCCUPY MELBOURNE from aphrodite.ff on Vimeo. This girl was linking arms with me while we were being physically pushed by riot police up Russell St. One police officer, totally unprovoked, grabbed her by the neck, strangling her and put her in a headlock, before pushing her to the ground and dragging her by her legs, scraping her face. While she was screaming in terror and struggling to get away, he dragged her back and put his body over hers. This was the only footage i managed to get.
Occupy Melbourne – Rally to retake our streets! Rally @ midday @ Federation Square tomorrow (Saturday, October 21) in response to the eviction.
“He will decide who comes to this City Square and the circumstances in which they come.”
Melbourne Lord Mayor Robert Doyle has told Occupy Melbourne to fcuk off. The eviction takes place ahead of the visit of some foreigner called Elizabeth (the first child of Prince Albert, Duke of York (later King George VI), and his wife, Elizabeth; her father was the second son of King George V and Queen Mary, and her mother was the youngest daughter of Scottish aristocrat Claude Bowes-Lyon, 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne) on October 26.
Click here to view Crikey’s Occupy Melbourne photo gallery. Also here. And video c/o AceKollective.
In other news, six people have been confirmed dead as Indonesian military and police officers stormed and shot the Third West Papuan People congress yesterday. A press conference was to be held today at 11am at the West Papua tent @ Occupy(ed) Melbourne to further explain the latest development.
So a former teacher from Geelong Grammar (turned Tory party leader Lord Mayor) and another former student from Melbourne Grammar (turned Tory party leader) want police to remove the rubbish from Melbourne City Square.
Ted is passionate about planning and the accrual of wealth (according to last year’s BRW Rich List, the extended Baillieu family is worth $466 million), while Robert has his own plans: “I’m not going to reveal the strategic planning going on behind the scenes at the city and with the police, but we will have a comprehensive, carefully thought through public safety strategy to put in place when we ask them to give the City Square back to the people of Melbourne.”
Oh well.
I guess it’s a matter of robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Melbourne Lord Mayor Robert Doyle has declared he’s had enough of the unhappy campers occupying the City Square and that they should pack up their tents and go. Just how much time the occupiers have left before Doyle instructs the police to evict them is unknown at this stage (”I would think days,” he said), but if history is any guide, they may have reason to hope for a stay of execution.
Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner were among 16 Tasmanian Aborigines who were brought to Melbourne in 1839 by the protector of Aborigines, George Robinson, to “civilise” the Victorian Aborigines.
In late 1841, the two men and three women, stole two guns and waged a six-week guerilla-style campaign in the Dandenongs and on the Mornington Peninsula, burning stations and killing two sealers.
They were charged with murder and tried in Melbourne. Their defence counsel was Redmond Barry, who questioned the legal basis of British authority over Aborigines. (Thirty-nine years later, Barry would sentence Ned Kelly to hang.)
The women were acquitted and the men found guilty, although the jury made a plea for clemency on account of the “peculiar circumstances”.
Judge Willis ignored the request and the men were hanged in front of 5000 people — a quarter of Victoria’s white population — from gallows erected on a small rise near what is now the corner of Bowen and Franklin streets. Their bodies are buried under the Queen Victoria Market.
167 years later, in June 2008, the Melbourne City Council Community Services Committee agreed to consider establishing a memorial to Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner. Despite Robert Doyle voicing public support for the project in January 2009, over three years later, the Committee is still wondering what to do.
The moral of this story? Possession is 9/10 of the law.
The best way [to procure a run] is to go outside and take up a new run, provided the conscience of the party is sufficiently seared to enable him without remorse to slaughter natives left and right. It is universally and distinctly understood that the chances are very small indeed of a person taking up a new run being able to maintain possession of his place and property without having recourse to such means – sometimes by wholesale . . . (9 December 1839)
Two Greek anarchists are making molotov cocktails. One says to the other: "So who will we throw these at then?" The other replies: "What are you, some kind of fucking intellectual?"
