[Oh yeah: F.L.A.R.E. in the void, ‘for liberation, autonomy, resistance, exodus and a Collingwood victory in the Grand Final’ is a convergence taking place from Wednesday September 4 — Sunday September 9 somewhere in Sydney. Go read the blog, phone 0434 585 264 or drop in to Black Rose (22 Enmore Road, Newtown, 100 metres from Newtown train station) on Tuesday September 4 — Wednesday September 5, 11am — 5pm for more information.]
You still don’t get it, do you? It’ll find you. That’s what it does. That’s all it does! You can’t stop it. It’ll wade through you, reach down your throat, and pull your fucking heart out.
Listen. And understand. Capital is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.
APEC anarchy: our man at the planning committees
Cam Smith
Crikey
August 30, 2007
News Ltd. papers breathlessly report this morning that “a Melbourne group has announced its intention to violently disrupt next week’s APEC summit and has issued a call to action to recruit more people for a ‘mass, strategic intervention’.”
The Australian carries the headline “Protesters warn of violent challenge.” Unfortunately, for those hoping to avoid a repeat of last year’s dull G20 riots, the articles fail to deliver on these promises. From The Oz:
The group, AC/DC, which is believed to be aligned with the anarchist political movement, plans to act as a “mobile disruption” unit during APEC, which will be held in Sydney for a week from Sunday.
AC/DC’s open letter, posted on a number of internet forums, said APEC “promotes exploitation, inequality and the destruction of the planet” and acknowledged the group’s actions might be seen as violent.
“By the very praxis of stepping out and challenging their control of space, we are committing what is regarded as a violent act,” the letter reads. “It is the violence of articulating resistance; it is a violation against their understanding of our lives.”
At a meeting of AC/DC (Alliance for Civil Disobedience Co-ordination) attended by Crikey last week, members did not give the impression that they were planning much in particular, let alone the alarmingly dubbed, ahem, “mobile disruption unit.”
Discussion largely centred around whether APEC was to be used as an election rally (it, apparently, was not) and under which metaphorical banner AC/DC would march – it was proposed that their united distaste for capitalism would do, as that was something all could agree on.
The meeting became most heated when an elderly (and quite possibly inebriated) anarchist began a diatribe about “Statist sh-ts.” His state-smashing days appeared to be behind him.
A member of AC/DC told Crikey this morning that the article contained a number of glaring inaccuracies:
It’s quoted the sections where the words “violence” are used, and we’ve explained exactly what we mean by that, that just by saying that we’re going to challenge APEC, that will be construed as violence [by the media and the police].
The Acker Dacker also noted that AC/DC was not an anarchist group – though some members were anarchists – but was actually made up of people from a variety of political streams of thought: Socialist, Anarchist, Environmentalist, etc.
It seemed that the violent rioter was about to further slander the journalistic standards of The Australian, when the realisation dawned upon both your fearless Riot Reporter and the fearsome AC/DC rioter that the article in question did not actually quote from AC/DC’s open letter at any point, but was in fact quoting from a different group entirely, Shared Intent.
“I can’t really speak on their behalf” said the problem child in question, before they had to rush off – possibly to procure explosives which will be used to dismantle global capitalism.
See also : takver, Melbourne: Police provoke arrests at G20 Solidarity Court protest, Sydney IndyMedia, September 2, 2007, concerning the brave actions of local police who narrowly averted the sky falling on our heads by arresting a man possibly guilty of possessing a pocketknife. Either that, or PC Richard Head really really really wants to make it into the Schnews ‘Crap Arrest of the Week’. “On Friday, August 31, 21 people appeared in the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on charges including rioting, affray, reckless conduct endangering injury and criminal damage from the G20 protest in Melbourne in November 2006. Outside the court 30 people turned up in support and solidarity for those facing these charges. Police provoked an incident outside the court arresting two of the people who were there in solidarity with those inside the court facing charges…” | Stephen Smith, We can build you – APEC and the rise of military urbanism, Webdiary, September 2: “We can define military urbanism as the way in which global power works to inscribe political violence and war into the planning and design of cities. It is more than an APEC like pause to business as usual. It is the marking of the city as a permanent zone of conflict. What they learn from APEC’s laboratory in the CBD they can apply to Sydney’s more ‘feral’ postcodes…”
