Sydney APEC Police are Pro-Social Justice

Dear John Faine
ABC Radio 774 Melbourne

I’ve been a “Green” for thirty-six (36) years, beginning at sixteen in 1971 with a group which grew from a couple of (then) aging university women, names forgotten (sorry) in the leafy eastern suburbs of Melbourne. “Bodie” de Boshier as best as I can recall, was one.

Since then, I’ve been a “motorbikie”, as distinct from “biker”, riding with a few seasoned ex-Hell’s Angels and other “outlaws” though never signing-up with any gang.

I’ve earned my living driving trucks and taxis and as a motorcycle courier, while mixing with a wide diversity of “cultural sub-groups”, but have always shunned the stereotypical Australian or “western” mainstream Christian culture.

All the while I’ve held the Highest respect for vegetarianism, and healthy living generally, etc.

At 52 years old now, after having been a “pamphleteer” addressing deep political issues during the 1980s and 1990s, and still quite a listener to political arguments, I am marginalized and now live in self-imposed exile on the roads around Australia.

This last week I’ve watched on tele the APEC shammozzles both in the meetings and on the streets of Sydney.

So, now let me comment on the whole event, but from a very different point of view.

The police were definitely in overkill mode, and cannot be condoned for their at times rough actions.

However: For decades I’ve attended thus witnessed many, many rallies and street protests against the governments and “forces” who, it seems are railed against our personal and communal Freedoms or Liberties.

For almost as long I have been concerned that too many rallies are made ineffective by the “dilution” of power to the People by (self) interest-groups, who of course, are free to partake, and I have come to be respected by policing services across the nation and further afield, for an “Issue” I have stoically championed – Global Land Reform.

Sydney’s protest marches seemed to me to be of the typically same make-up, with several groups, quite disparate waving placards for their own preferred cause.

This seems to me to only weaken any protest, for there is no Unity in the protest, for any overall improvement to our social dilemmas.

The police services know well my Cause of Land Reform, and I’ve had some of them listen hard to what I say. Many of them have recognized and agreed that this is at the bottom of most-all of our social, cultural, environmental et al, et al woes.

Several quite serious gangs and political groups have also shown their agreement.

So, may I, from the margins, put this scenario:

The overkill by the New South Wales police force this week is NOT against the Fundamental Human Rights we all deserve. Quite the opposite.

It is worth remembering, and keeping to the fore of our considerations, that the coppers, worldwide, have daily to face the rough-end of the social pineapple or malaise, and in terms of quality of life, outside of work, they are often the ones who end up suffering most for it.

Military Personnel being the other group who are shunned by and suffer most for the social culture they are asked to defend.

No doubt much of their actions this week and in past international government meetings such as APEC have been harsh and have been against the fundamental right to voice our concerns.

But there is no doubt that they, the police, are very aware of the uselessness and indeed damage of many protesters, not only to their policing reputations, but to any of the genuine reasons for the protest in the first place.

So, in another sense, I actually applaud the police force’s heavy hand this last week in Sydney.

As we’ve seen over the years most of the protests at big multinational meetings have not stopped the meetings from going ahead, whether they have forced the meeting to go “offshore” or not.

I put it to you that the police are more “on-the-money” politically than ANY of the protest groups, and, should there grow a consolidated movement for Global Land Reform, with ALL minor protest groups signing-on and Uniting at the next meetings, NOT just a “one-off”, the protesters would be given the Respect they deserve from the police, and we would, not “might”, see a Magnificent Step Forward in GLOBAL Social Progress.

This would in one, I suggest, address and resolve the fears we all have (“we” being the thinkers of the world) about all aspects of the future of Life-on Earth, and also would I assert, bring Humanity Together as never before, and as we now more urgently than ever before, NEED.

To be sure, there are many self-interest “protest groups” (land speculators from colonialist Britain and Eurape, for example) who are active in diluting such a Fine and Honourable Cause of Global Land Reform, and who actively go to protests just to fracture them and give just cause for the police to be brutal to otherwise innocent marchers. But “no-one is innocent” when it comes to Globicide, if they fail to address the bottom-line issues which underpin their own erring lifestyles and beliefs.

Land occupation and Human distribution upon the arable surface of our ONE PLANET.

With all our concerns and fears and speculations, it is beyond time Humanity faced-up to a few simple and clear facts about Life-on-Earth.

We do not need religion anymore. Neither in fact, do we need adversarial, Howardian-type competitive politics.

We do need People to Stand-up, En-Masse, as a Democracy, to overcome this deadly delusion about individual leaders, individual fabricated messiahs to teach us WHAT to vote for.

If the People are to protest or lobby or go-to-war effectively, then it may well be that we-the-People should start throwing rocks at the glass-houses of – the MEDIA, as the media, YOU, for one, are the link for most of us, to Local and Global events.

I believe you and your compatriots at the ABC, are serious about Justice-thence-Peace on Earth, but of course there are innumerable excuses from above and below as to why Aunty should not get down and dirty about the future.

The future is now, John F……aine!

Yours for Yummy Justice,

The Outlaw’s Outlaw.

Max N Meredith