12/6/07
"Howard's gone, we voted for change, now let's bring all the troops home!"
click for larger image
Unity for Peace invites you to join a rally marking International Human
Rights Day:
"Howard's gone, we voted for change, now let's bring all the troops home!"
streets, Melbourne
Organisations endorsing this rally called by Unity for Peace include:
Australian Nursing Federation (Vic); National Tertiary Education Union
(Melbourne Uni); Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (Vic Printers
Division); Islamic Council of Victoria; Federation of Australian Muslim
Students and Youth; Friends of the Earth; the Greens (Vic); Young Unionists
Network; Campaign for International Cooperation and Disarmament; Civil
Rights Defence; Stop the War Coalition; Moreland Peace Group; Carlton
Fitzroy Peace Group; International Socialist Organisation; and Freedom
Socialist Party.
Speakers include:
Adam Bandt, Greens candidate for Melbourne
David Manne, Refugee and Immigration Legal Centre
Islamic Council of Victoria
Alliance for Indigenous Self-Determination
Civil Rights Defence
Glenn Floyd, campaigning for Howard to be tried for war crimes
ALP and union speakers invited
End military intervention in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Northern Territory
Stop the creation of refugees by western intervention
For more details or for a flyer by email, ring David on0418 316 310
or
visit
www.unityforpeace.org
12/5/07
12/4/07
West Papuan independence day marked in Aotearoa
In Wellington last Thursday Peace Movement Aotearoa and Green MP Nandor Tanczos raised the Morning Star outside Parliament. In Auckland last Saturday the Morning Star was raised outside the NZ Defence Force HQ in Grey Lynn, to protest the NZ Army training Indonesian Army officers. A young woman, who said she had been sent by the Indonesian Embassy, took photos of the flag raisers. This wasn’t the only attention we received from the Indonesian government.
To our surprise the spokesman for the Indonesian President condemned the Indonesia Human Rights Committee (IHRC) for giving Papuans 'false hope' and 'provoking confrontation and conflict' by flying the Morning Star flag. It seemed quite strange that we were singled out when the West Papua solidarity movement in Aotearoa has a lot less prominence in the media than in other places, such as Australia. I guess it shows we must be having an impact.
Following the flag raising the Indonesia Human Rights Committee hosted a forum ‘ASEAN and Human Rights’, attended by around 40-50 people. It was our version of the 'ASEAN at Forty conference held earlier this year at the University of Auckland – a stuffy elite gathering addressed by conservative academics and the former Indonesian Foreign Minister and apologist for the Suharto dictatorship, Ali Alatas.
At our forum Maire Leadbeater gave a speech outlining the history of the conflict in West Papua and the situation there today. Dennis Maga, a trade unionist from the Philippines spoke about the death squad killings of Filipino unionists and activists being committed by the US backed Arroyo regime. He compared the situation to the ‘dirty war’ carried out by right-wing death squads in the 70s and 80s against leftists in Chile and Argentina. Naing Ko Ko, a trade unionist and former political prisoner from Burma drew on his impressive knowledge of international relations in South East Asia to speak about the origins of ASEAN and its role in the region. Green MP Keith Locke talked about how ASEAN was originally started by states that could hardly be considered democracies, such as Suharto’s Indonesia and Malaysia ruled under the Internal Security Act.. He also outlined the human rights situation in each of the ASEAN countries. Cameron Walker spoke about the recent ‘terror raids’ in Aotearoa and how the Terrorism Suppression Act criminalizes those supporting struggles for human rights and justice in both Aotearoa and around the World.
Police Corruption: Cops Hit the Front Page
Original article here
It all started with a dead gigolo named Shane.
Who would have thought that, four years after the murder of Shane Chartres-Abbott in June 2003, an initially unrelated probe into inappropriate emailing would culminate in the resignations and suspension of several high-ranking police?
But that’s exactly what happened at the Office of Police Integrity (OPI) hearing in Melbourne over the last few weeks — the latest episode in the enduring drama of Victoria Police corruption, which, with its plot twists, secret evidence and high-profile cast, has had Victorians on the edge of their tram seats.
At the centre of the hearing were allegations that high-ranking police had leaked information that tipped off another police officer that he was under investigation by Operation Briars, a taskforce investigating the gangland murder of gigolo Shane.
As reported in The Age, the same officer, Detective Sergeant Peter Lalor, was concurrently being investigated over emails, written under the alias ‘Kit Walker,’ which discredited a rival to the Police Association leadership.
The bombshells dropped at the OPI hearings destroyed some high-profile careers — Assistant Commissioner Noel Ashby and Media and Corporate Communications Director Stephen Linnell resigned in disgrace after being found to have lied to the OPI, while Police Union President Paul Mullett and Head of the Media Unit Inspector Glenn Weir were suspended. But it has not been without collateral damage.
In the words of Counsel assisting the OPI, Dr Greg Lyon SC:
This hearing focuses on a very few. This hearing should not cast a shadow over the majority, who in reality are also betrayed by such misconduct .
Which is exactly what happened.
Apart from, perhaps, Inspector Weir, no one at the Media and Corporate Communications Department (MCCD) had the barest suspicion of the goings-on behind their Director’s door. Yet the fallout from Linnell’s public humiliation and resignation cast a pall over them all.
Labelled by news-hounds as the Police Propaganda Unit and the ‘101 members of Victoria Police’s Spin Machine,’ the mood in the MCCD plummeted, reputedly ‘like someone had died.’
And slagging off the department attained new heights. Neil Mitchell on 3AW asked:
the police are so far into media manipulation it’s obscene. This isn’t to do with helping the public, it’s to do with hiding things from them. Why do we need 101 spin doctors in the Victoria Police?
Instead of asking the MCCD, he asked the Herald Sun’s Keith Moor, who answered:
I remember before there was a Media Unit and it was certainly, in my view, a much more efficient way of members of the public finding out exactly what was happening … The old Chinese whispers happens if you’ve got to deal with somebody other than the detective who pulled the knife out of the back, then you get a slightly different story…
Andrew Bolt’s post on the issue in his Herald Sun blog elicited dozens of responses from all the usual conspiracy theorists:
‘They probably need [the 101 people in the department] to keep all of the Vic Govt’s information suppression orders in line,’ wrote ‘Larry of Canberra.’
‘MartinX’ of Springfield Lakes was on the right track: ‘Some of those 101 would be involved in internal communications, possibly AV work, intranet support, etc.’
But a salient point was made by ‘K Walker of Melbourne,’ who suggested: ‘Before the boring slagging off most should get some facts right.’
As the Media Department later informed Mitchell, the MCCD actually comprises 102 people (OK, make that 101 now) across several divisions, only one of which, Inspector Weir’s Media Unit, is involved in day-to-day media campaigns and response — accounting for 22 people. The remainder work in areas such as Strategic Communications, the Film and TV Office, the Police Museum and, largest of all, 50, in the Police Bands.
But the Herald Sun’s Roger Franklin wasn’t letting the facts get in the way of a good rant. On 16 November, he wrote:
at a time when police are thin on the ground, so stretched that some officers responding to a recent riot in Noble Park had to be summoned from 40km away, why did disgraced PR man Steve Linnell need 101 staff in his spin machine? Residents in areas plagued by hoons, drugs and increasing numbers of knife crimes will be particularly interested in that one.
Fair enough, the next time there is a riot in Noble Park, perhaps Victoria Police can redeploy its pipe band.
The MCCD was enraged. But worse was to come with the very public humiliation of their boss. If the cringing transcriptions of secretly taped conversations weren’t enough to destroy Linnell’s career, there was no shortage of journalists willing to add an extra sentence or two.
Linnell’s locker-room language was a particular shock for some: Paul Austin editorialised in The Age about the ’foul-mouthed’ Linnell — as if newsrooms aren’t equally as colourful.
Roger Franklin wrote: ‘[Linnell] talks the lingo like a man born to the blue and he shoots the poison darts of gossip and slander … as if he was himself in the running for the top job.’
Nor was there a shortage of people willing to say ‘I told you so.’ At The Age, John Silvester wrote:
One senior officer was warned that Linnell was a ’wild card’ who lacked the experience for the job and could be manipulated. Before he left The Age he was warned to be wary of cut-throat police politics because it could be career-ending and to try to temper his locker-room language because it could be used against him. He chose to ignore the advice. Former media director Bruce Tobin offered to provide a background briefing on the job and the key players in the force. Linnell declined, preferring to wander into the minefield without a map.
At least the Herald Sun’s senior police reporter Geoff Wilkinson speaks from personal experience, having been Victoria Police Media Director 1981-89.
Linnell failed one of the most basic tenets of journalism and his job — the need to be right and assume nothing. He also ignored the fact that the first test of the credibility of a police media director … is the number and nature of the secrets you can keep.
By their very nature, relations between police media units and the news media are strained. Stereotypically, journalists perceive media units as providing too little information too late, while police place the imperatives of their own investigative inquiries above those of journalists.
In a time when both police and news media are equally skeptical of each other, media units are caught in the middle trying to facilitate the timely exchange of information. In reality, it works quite well. Police news, particularly crime and arrests, sell newspapers, while police rely on the media to promote campaigns, improve the public perceptions of police, and call for information.
It is not foolproof, as past president of Liberty Victoria Brian Walters wrote:
Instead of informing the public, the [police] media unit can be used to spin a line that is deceptive, or even use their position to trade influence.
Compared to the rest of the world, Victoria Police charts the middle ground with its media relations. In Sweden, at the overarching National Police Administrative Board (Rikspolisstyrelsen), the desire to be seen as transparent means the official police magazine has beaten the news media in breaking controversial policing stories. Any police can proffer personal comments on policing issues without fear of retribution from their superiors, and following media conferences, journalists may even be granted one-on-one interviews with relevant police to ensure they get different grabs from their rivals.
The New York Police Department, meanwhile, is strict with its media control; reporters have office space within the media bureau which facilitates all media comment. The NYPD utilises technology such as podcasts to promote public messages — with the added bonus that journalists can write off iPods as a tax expense.
But perhaps the most generous police media relations exist in Cambodia. Following the January 2004 assassination of Trade Union leader Chea Vichea, whose death was the seventh political murder in a year, the police surprised everybody with the speed in which they apprehended the two murderers. A media conference was hastily convened around a large table at the police station, and the ‘culprits’ were paraded in for journalists to photograph, touch and question.
So what if the lowly small-time crooks protested, tears streaming down their cheeks, that their confessions had been beaten out of them, or that the Phnom Penh Post later found that one had been four hours away at the time of the murder? The pressure was off the police to solve those dastardly political murders, and the media had a great front page.
About the author:Sam Davies worked in the Victoria Police Media Department between 2004-2006 as a journalist on Police Life magazine and as the Internet Content Editor, also undertaking a research trip to the Swedish National Police Board and the NYPD. He worked with the Phnom Penh Post in January 2004 and is now a freelance journalist based in France
Nothing New Under this Sun
As others have said these tactics are nothing new here, cause its always has been a penal, capitalist, colonial and genocidal settler colony.
Spin Cycle
What complete pig spin, are the press aware that they are the Police Associations PR? Because their reputation is being trashed at the moment, rotting from the inside with corruption, racist policing of the African communities in Flemington, looks like the only positive pr they can get in this climate is to have another go at us mob and hide the fact that they brutally bashed people outside the museum.
Tactical and orchestrated on their part for sure. Check this out :
http://momentumgroup.com.au/
CASE STUDY: Victoria Police at G20
Situation: Victoria Police are involved in crowd control at
major events and protests. The aim of these events is to keep
the crowd peaceful and act quickly if things escalate.
Challenge: During an event, on-site officers move amongst
the crowd reporting activities and crowd behaviour to the
Police Operations Centre (POC) and/or Forward Command.
Traditional approaches to crowd management involve officers
patrolling in-the-field and then relaying information via radio.
Incidents can often only be dealt with in a reactive manner
once they are occurring.
The G20 meetings, held all over the world, often result in
protests and demonstrations. In anticipation of Melbourne
hosting the G20 Victoria Police wanted to investigate the
how live video streaming could assist with more accurate
information gathering and quicker decision-making.
Solution: Officers moving around in the field used the
fully mobile m-View GoPack, allowing experts at Command
and Control to watch the action as it happened. Police
captured and streamed video from the protest live to POC and
Forward Command. Many high-quality snapshots were taken,
recording crowd behavior and evidence.
Police attack G20 protesters at Melbourne Museum
Sunday afternoon a group of 50 demonstrators were beaten and trampled by police during a peaceful anti-G20 protest inside the foyer of the Melbourne museum. A woman was severely injured after police used batons and fists to disperse the small group of singing, dancing demonstrators. Several hundred police, including two divisions of riot police, were deployed in the incident.
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Sunday afternoon a group of 50 demonstrators were beaten and trampled by police during a peaceful anti-G20 protest inside the foyer of the Melbourne museum.
A woman was severely injured after police used batons and fists to disperse the small group of singing, dancing demonstrators. Several hundred police, including two divisions of riot police, were deployed in the incident.
The group consisted mostly of women and included musicians and children. “We were given no warning and were not asked to leave before police charged.” Said one of the demonstrators. Members of the group were badly shaken after the event, and the severely injured woman was hospitalised with suspected broken ribs.
“We were singing and dancing at the front of the Melbourne Museum, as a non-violent way of publicly raising our concerns about the G20”, said one of the demonstrators. “Without warning we were baton-charged by heaps of cops. It was frightening, especially when a couple of busloads of riot police turned up afterwards.”
Police only called an ambulance to attend to the injured woman 10 minutes after the incident, despite repeated requests from members of the group.
Protesters afterwards attempted to disperse peacefully, but were followed for twenty minutes by a large police contingent.
Today's incident follows on from two days of protesting against the G20, a gathering of finance ministers, reserve bank governors and the heads of the IMF and World Bank.
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12/3/07
Rise Up - Concientising and Mobilising the masses
click for a larger imageThrough Creative Communications, we are Conscientising and Mobilising the Masses, Artists from Aotearoa and Hawaii have stepped forward to express themselves on this kaupapa and support the people affected by the State Raids
A fund raiser event for those affected by State Raids
Cornerstone Roots - Unity Pacific - Batucada Sound Machine - Damn Native - Nat Rose - DLT - Miss B Me - Antonio Maioha - BT - Miss Ginger Hawaiian MC - LadiSix
http://www.conscious.maori.nz/front.php
Never Again: photos from 1Dec Tamakimakaurau protest
Larger, original photos at: www.flickr.com/photos/simonoosterman/
License
This work is in the public domain12/1/07
NZ AND AUST ASKED TO LEAVE MELANESIAN COUNTRIES ALONE
Date: 30 November 2007
Auckland 6am: A call's been made for New Zealand and Australia to step back from interfering in Melanesian countries, such as the Solomon Islands.
The spokesperson for Global Peace and Justice in Auckland says both of the Regional Superpowers want a finger in the pie.
John Minto says both try to dominate the regional security group, RAMSI, under the guise of terrorism.
Minto says locals would rather see resourcing that'll lead to their daily life being less of a struggle and the nation more stable economically and democratically. (listen)
Tautoko Kanaky Tautoko USTKE
Scandalized by what occurred on November 20, the Commission of theWomen of the USTKE firmly denounces the violation of the rights of thechild and the humans right of which proof made, once again, colonialjustice and its forces of repression by challenging persons in chargefor the organization, of which its President.Police officers, heavily equipped stopped manu militari fathers infront of their children as if they were criminals.No State, was it that which defends the human right, is authorized totrample the dignity of a relative in front of his child and whom, inthe same way no child can see tearing off from force the protectiveand respectful image which it has of his father.For the Commission of the Women of the USTKE Mrs. Marie-PierreGOYETCHE
http://www.ustke.org/syndicat/2007/11/21/279- -
http://www.cwo.com/~lucumi/kanaky.html
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=44&ItemID=10896
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2006/668/6666
Bolivian Workers oppose 'anti-terror raids'
The following statement from the Workers Central in the Department of Oruro, Bolivia, in solidarity with the workers and Maori activists arrested under the so-called 'anti-terror' raids has been received.
It is signed by the Central Obrera Departmental, the union centre to which all unions are affiliated in Oruro, November 9th.
New Zealand workers should note that Ururo and the COD based there is the centre of the miners movement in Bolviva which has led several revolutionary uprisings since 1952. It is significant that this union has as its founding documents, the Theses of Pulacayo, written in 1946 which clearly call for an anti-imperialist struggle for socialism. These sentiments are echoed today in the statement below at a time when Bolivia is at the brink of a civil war.
"STOP THE STATE AND PARAMILITARY REPRESSION IN NEW ZEALAND"
"The Bolivian workers affiliated to our central organisation, the Central Obrera Boliviana, and belonging to the Central Obrera Departmental, condemn the brutal deliberate repression of the state and Government of New Zealand against the workers and indigenous Maori people.
The repression unleashed on 15 October against fighters or liberation and sovereignty in this semicolony dominated by Australia and Britain, satellites of American imperialism, is intended to protect the economic interests of the privileged minority that exists in any capitalist country in the world, including Bolivia, and who subject the majority of the people to the most miserable social and economic conditions.
The struggle of the brother and sister workers and people of New Zealand is not alone and has the backing and solidarity of the oppressed of the world. The epoch of the abuse and plunder that imperialist capitalism has enjoyed has led inexorably to the differences between this minority and the poor in the world to become more and more abysmal and inhuman.
We have no alternative but to replace the corrupt and degenerate world capitalist system with a system where the majorities have the right to decide their future by redistributing wealth among all the peoples who are its inhabitants - a system where human rights are fundamental and not for the profits of an irrational and unlimited capitalism. The system can not be anything less than socialism, inspired by the most human and patriotic sentiments. The dilemma facing humanity is: Socialism or the reign of Barbarism"
Oruro, November 9, 2007
C.O.D. Founded 1st May 1953, Affiliate of the C.O.B. Oruro - Bolivia.
FSTMB (Miners) FED FABRILES (factory workers) FUSTCO (officeworkers) FED CONSTRUCTORES (construction) FED SALUD (Health workers) FED MAG URB and FED MAG RURAL (teahers) FESTRATEV (transport) RED RENT JB (retired workers) FUL (univerisity students) FES (secondary students) FED EST NOL (student teachers) CASEGURAL, SIND MUNCIPALES (public sector workers) ENTEL, ECOBOL, SINTRAUTO, COTEOR, (telephone, electricity, water etc) ASOC RED MIN (retired miners) PRENSA (media workers) DESOCUPADOS (unemployed) SEPCAM and ACMPD (small farmers).