Direct action

Dust tiptoes in a standing ovation
after the explosion
Edward Said is out of place,
again:
His books fall from my shelves
Onto the broken window glass.
Palestine is also out of place:
Its map
falls off my wall.
– Mosab Abu Toha.

No mass movement in the form of large demonstrations and marches has led to change. Even the priest of non-violence, Martin Luther King Jnr, engaged in direct actions including garbage collectors strikes, sit downs, occupations, marches and so on. To stop the export of uranium we used to mobilise from mass rallies in the city and get people down to the wharves to block the uranium trains, but with mixed success. Even when the wharfies went on strike in support of the protests on the wharves we could not stop the capitalists profiteering off sales from uranium mines from Northern Territory and Queensland (Mary Kathleen mine).

Mass mobilizations by themselves will not stop a war, the invasion of Iraq in 2003 proved that.

Nor will direct action by itself. nor will the ballot box. The Hawke Labor government bypassed all three and extended mining and export of uranium in the 1980s and building some of the biggest uranium mines in the world. There are currently three operating uranium mines in Australia: Ranger in the Northern Territory, and Olympic Dam and Beverley Four Mile in South Australia.

In Chile, the right-wing simply changed the rules when the Unidad Popular government of Salvador Allende mobilised the people to nationalise the copper industry. The Generals staged a coup and brought in a dictatorship killing or exiling people like us in the process..

It is very hard to build effective opposition to war without strong socialist organisation. This is lacking in both in Queensland and Australia.

Paul Gregoire, published some advice in Sydney Criminal Lawyers, containing some interesting information for activists engaged in direct action. However I do not agree with all of it because of the unusual ‘laws of association‘ we have here in Queensland given our history of democratic rights struggles (See Short notes on Public Assembly in Queensland). Our political history of repressive governments led to the Goss Labor introducing liberal protest laws because of the defiance of the street marches a decade earlier refusing to bow down to a ban on marching even refusing a permit system that exists in other states of Australia.

Police have manufactured a case against the people who occupied a small room in a building which Boeing leases and a larger factory where Ferra Engineering which makes bomb parts is of course nonsense (see Protest activity charges, Tingalpa and Brisbane City). There is no way that any of the participants in those demonstrations are violent, so the reader can discount that immediately. Therefore the charge of unlawful assembly (presumably under the QLD Summary Offences Act 2005) should be dismissed before it even goes to trial. In both cases there was an occupation and some postering on a glass wall using wheat paste (removable in minutes). Their actions do not justify charges of entering premises with intent, unlawful assembly, assault and wilful damage.

There is a defence to the charge of unlawful assembly. Police were not acting in the execution of their duty because it is not their role to prosecute an occupation of a factory producing F-35 parts assisting Israel to violate the Genocide Convention. Important here is the ruling by the Dutch Court of Appeal concluding that the Netherlands must take adequate measures to stop the further shipment of F35 parts to Israel. Both Ferra Engineering and Boeing in Brisbane are also engaged in providing Israel with F-35 parts. They are part of the supply chain of the war machine Israel and the US are using.

Ian Curr
19 Feb 2024

–oOo–

The Queensland Police Service announced on 23 January (2024) that officers from its Counterterrorism Investigation Group had executed multiple warrants at Brisbane residences, in relation to protest actions that took place in Tingalpa and that capital city earlier in the month.

According to the QPS, officers allege “the group forced entry to the workshop premises, assaulted staff and caused property damage, deliberately spilling paint, destroying documents and causing graffiti”. And whilst this description sounds confronting, what actually took place was much less aggressive.

“During entry, it is alleged that a staff member was assaulted before damage was caused at the premises,” the QPS continued in a press release.

Although participants would translate this assault as equating to a group walking through a door and the damage as the pasting of paper to a cabinet.

And “a 59-year-old Bardon woman”, who was “expected to appear before the Brisbane Magistrates Court” later in the month with four other activists arrested on the day, is globally recognised antiwar activist who is not known for perpetrating violence at peaceful protest actions.

Strategic incapacitation

Pestorius has been mobilising against the global war industry for decades. And of late, as an activist educator, she’s been popularising the use of the term ‘strategic incapacitation‘, which is a technique being employed by police of late, in an attempt to break popular protest movements.

Strategic incapacitation is a technique that was first championed by NSW police around the time it and the state began an enhanced crackdown on climate protesters in early 2022. And it comprises of the imposition of inflated charges, severe bail conditions and increased surveillance of civilians.

As Pestorius tells it, strategic incapacitation allows law enforcement to demonise protesters by charging them with inflated charges that are often later dropped, to frame their actions as having been more extreme and, indeed, violent, when they were actually peaceful.

The other key aspect to strategic incapacitation is loading activists up with bail conditions that prevent their communicating with other activists, restrict their participation in certain activities and limit their movements. And all these factors are designed to dissolve the protest group.

“The Brisbane home was raided by the Queensland Police Counterterrorism Investigation Group on 23 January 2024.”

Five suspects were taken into custody during multiple raids involving two antiwar actions targeting aerospace company Ferra Holdings on 9 January and a second action in the foyer of Boeing offices on 17 January.

The initial action was by the group #ShutDownFerra and the Boeing action was by Wage Peace.

What happened during these raids?

There were three simultaneous raids on shared households: five households in all. Six to ten counterterrorism officers were present at each, and they were accompanied by a single representative of the Australian Federal Police.

There were reports of a backup squad of about 30 police officers nearby, but they were not deployed.

The people who entered Ferra engineering in suburban Tingalpa were upset by the genocide of Palestinian people in Gaza, the killing of families and the destruction of hospitals, residences, water supply, and agricultural lands in Gaza.

Understandably many ordinary people are very upset including Jewish people, and they are taking action worldwide in support of Palestinians and First Nations people standing up against these terrible injustices unfurling before our eyes.

These are just ordinary people.

At an activist’s house, police rapped at her door fairly loudly at 6.30 am. They woke people up flashing a warrant issued by a magistrate, who apparently serves in Emerald, a long way from Brisbane.

What happened at the actions?

At the Ferra action, people entered a factory space in Tingalpa. There were about 30 people, and they spread out over that space.

Some people turned off the machines. People shouted slogans, read poetry and made speeches. They generally made their presence known to workers and management in the factory, where an essential product is being made for the bombing of Gaza.

Ferra are also making all sorts of components for Boeing and Lockheed Martin. But they were there because Ferra are making an essential product for F-35s assembled in Texas in the US and exported to Israel for use against Palestinians, Yemenis, Syrians, Lebanese, Iraquis and Iranians as part of the US war of terror.

Ferra claims to be the only maker of this product in the world, and it goes to a particular Israeli version of the F-35. It is a weapons adaptor, so the IDF can rack and stack different types of bombs to drop on Gaza.

There is also information circulating about another Australian company producing components for the bomb delivery door on F-35s.That’s RUAG or Rosebank in Melbourne. There is a map circulated by the Greens MP David Shoebridge showing multiple parts for the F-35 being made in Australia. Some of those are essential parts.

A weapons researcher, Kellie Tranter, wrote an article about this for Declassified Australia.

Police response to two acts of civil disobedience was total overkill. At some point somebody has directed the counterterrorism squad to make a series of raids to address this nonviolent action that’s occurring.

Another action that Federal police were here for was the Boeing action, which was similar to what activists have been doing against Boeing over the years.

Peace activists went and occupied an office. Some people read poetry. Some people pasted up pictures of dead Palestinian babies on the glass.

So, it was a simple action. The young woman in the office left them to do what they were doing. Police gave activists move-on orders and sent away.

Police didn’t even follow people out onto the street. Boeing admin staff were seemed unafraid, they just said, “Okay, off you go now.”

Once the counterterrorism squad got involved though, everything got over-inflated.

So, now there is a special police taskforce involved that is designed to stop these actions against weapons dealers.

Nonviolent peace activists are now being equated with terrorists. The counterterrorism squad has been shifted to target these activists. And they have choose several people they can identify from the actions and then they have gone after them.

Police tried to impose onerous bail conditions. Lawyers and activists have resisted the misuse of bail conditions to stop participation in public protests. A judge has refused police conditions because they were improper and against the law. Police know a fair magistrate would throw them out.

Activists have been charged with assault for moving through a door with a group of people. People have also been charged with unlawful assembly passed in the Queensland parliament and originally aimed at rioting. And there are also charges for violence toward property.

Authorities now have a definition for violence so broad it has become meaningless. And they said the people stayed in this so called unlawful assembly for a long time after the “violence” against property occurred.

The violence against property was sticking small pieces of paper to a glass cabinet with food paste.

Violence against property allows police to charge activists with this other indictable offence unlawful assembly. The Peaceful Assembly Act 1992 made public assembly lawful. That act provides immunity from other charges. It is the most liberal protest law in Australia. It was introduced by the Goss Labour government because there were over 3000 arrests of street marches in Brisbane city streets and elsewhere in the state in 1977 till 1979. These people were in mass defiance of the government of the day.

Yet police try to get around this by describing protest as violence. Then they charge people with violence. Then they try to get people concerned about genocide on extreme bail conditions.

So, one activist has been charged with entering Ferra Engineering at Tingalpa with intent to do wilful damage.

There was also an action at Boeing offices in Brisbane on 19 January 2024

The police have described it as violent, but also, media reports have described the actions as “violent invasions of defence contractors’ offices”. Police and Media are in cahoots with each other. The counterterrorism squad put out a media release, which was very vague. The media started to put together what happened, looking back at the other actions a group had done previously, via media releases.

The use of the word violence and descriptors like assault, these are technical legal terms, which are defined in the laws, then spoken in court by prosecutors and reported by the media to make people sound violent.

One of the violent hotspots described in the particulars of one charge is about people tussling over a banners that read “Stop arming Israel” and “Ceasefire“. So, at the Ferra factory in Tingalpa, workers try to grab a banner, and the activists hold onto it.

So, this tussle over a banner becomes a violent incident in legal parlance. Meanwhile starving Palestinian people are being shot while queuing up for food in Gaza

Police, courts and media are framing activists using nonviolent actions used by Ghandi in India

The authorities do it through the charges, and in the way they impose these overinflated charges.

Activists are targeting Ferra and Boeing right now because these companies are essential for the F-35 jet fighter operations in Gaza. Ferra also makes wing attachments for bombs that have been researched at the University of Queensland. Ferra is an unaccountable US private equity company that specialises in parts for US weapons that are being used in the mass murder of over 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza.

Ferra is a US company manufacturing weapons parts in Australia under licence by State, Commonwealth and local government. The factory at Tingalpa is not even owned by Ferra anymore, it is owned by this US equity company. Peace activists have targeting Boeing for three years.

Boeing has a special relationship with the Queensland government. It is a US company, so it’s representing the US military-industrial complex here in Australia.

Boeing’s international office is headed by ex-Australian defence minister, Brendan Nelson, which is a testament to Australian government commitment to the war on Gaza. Australia gives Boeing $4 to $5 billion a year in military contracts.

It is the Liberal Party’s Brendan Nelson that orchestrated these contracts. And Boeing products are at the heart of the genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza: the bombs, the Apache attack helicopters and so on.

Peace activists are raising all this information, while Penny Wong has been telling parliament that there have been no weapons exports to Israel for the last five years. Wong is a terrible liar totally in the thrall of zionists in America and Israel. Weapons come from Australia and go via the United States..

The campaign against Boeing and Ferra involves looking at what is legal and not legal. Both David Shoebridge and Michael West media have been exposing how these contracts are being used. On the political side a social licence is given by all levels of government for arms dealers to perform their dirty deals here in Australia.

People are acting while genocide is unfolding driven by profitmaking of weapons corporations like Ferra and Boeing.

The ‘money men’ love it when they have a genocide like this. All those weapons from their stockpiles are being used up, and now they have to be replenished. This is the way they view it.

These companies do not do anything to prevent the genocide. They push and produce the genocide.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong and her government have been exposed as liars, they are totally implicated in this genocide through allowing Boeing to transfer weapons components to Israel.

And this component made in the suburb of Brisbane at Tingalpa, this weapons adaptor, is made for the Israeli version of the F-35. Even if it goes to America first, and then America sends it on to Israel, the component came from Australia. In my view that puts the Australian government and its ministers in content of the international court of justice ruling that there is to be no aiding a possible genocide by Israel. Prime Minister Albanese has been referred to the International Criminal Court because of his alleged complicity in these crimes against humanity.

Also, the spreading of component manufacture across the globe is connected to the contract that is supposed to assist in the development of local manufacturing capabilities. Queensland government Treasurer Cameron Dick and the former Premier Anastasia Palaszczuk are directly involved in the promotion of the arms industry here in Queensland, in Tingalpa, Ipswich, Maryborough, Rockhampton, and Townsville, basically where all the railway towns used to be but because the Queensland Labor government sold state owned Queensland rail to a private company, Aurizon. The economy in these towns has floundered, so Treasurer Cameron Dick are attempting to replace the public industry the government helped destroy by promoting arms manufacturers that make armoured cars, huge howitzer shells, F-35 bomber parts and wings for bombs. Government Ministers and their counterparts in industry have sponsored research facilities at the University of Queensland. The napalm manufacturer Dow Chemicals has a building named after its former CEO who graduated in Engineering about the same time I graduated in Science at the University of Queensland. Anti-war activists or agent provocateurs attempted to fire bomb Dow Chemicals offices in Toowong at the height of the American war in Vietnam in the 1970s. Instead they hit the wrong floor of the building and destroyed the office of John C Walker Solicitors where my brother was working as an article clerk.

For over 50 years here in Queensland, research and manufacturing capabilities by war mongers have been interwoven with the exports of weapons to dealers across the globe.

The United States denies Australia use of intellectual property for almost everything of a military use, apart from arms bought by the Australian army, navy and airforce. The AUKUS submarine is a case in point. $368 billion dollars paid by the taxpayer for a nuclear powered submarine that Australia will never own. That’s what I call capitalism, getting someone to pay for something they will never own.

The US will not allow Australia to have a manufacturing sector, except one that it controls with its own intellectual property. The US is in control of the global signals facility at Pine Gap in Central Australia. When Whitlam and his ministers expressed concern about Pine Gap, the CIA participated in a coup that overthrew the Australian government in 1975.

Many people can see the current genocide for what it is and want to take action.

Justice for Palestine Magan-djin has been actively working with groups like Shut Down Ferra and Wage Peace to bring an end to the genocide. JFP have organised 16 mass rallies since the genocide began in October 2023. They have mobilise people on a scale not seen since the Iraq war in 2003. With one difference. The Iraq war prompted one big demonstration where as Just does for Palestine has organised 16 big demonstrations and other actions by groups like Unions for Palestine, the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance are conducting an action this Saturday to expose the biased reporting in favour of Israel by the Australian Broadcasting Commission.

The genocide in Gaza continues. The Biden administration has escalating the conflict with ongoing strikes against Yemen, which have Australian government support. Both administrations will pay a heavy price for their involvement in the genocide of a people whise only crime is to return to their homeland. Free Free Palestine!