In the news

GREEN LEFT WEEKLY Kerry Smith May 28, 2021

In a spectacular start to the Disrupt Land Forces, a week-long festival of resistance, anti-militarism activists blocked two military vehicles from entering the Brisbane Convention Centre on May 27.

Four people climbed on top of a Rheinmetall’s armed drone and Ripleys armed truck as they entered the Brisbane Convention Centre for the arms industry sales conference. More than 300 arms manufacturers will be showcasing their products from June 1-3.

Disrupt Land Forces spokesperson Margaret Pestorius said that the Land Forces represents “a convergence of so many issues of militarism in our society”.

“The 300 companies gathered at the convention centre profit from the terrorising of innocent people in warzones like Yemen, the colonisation of West Papua and Latin America, the militarised destruction of our planet. the corruption and water of the military-industrial complex and the cycles of violence that flow from the boardrooms of power to the margins of our society.”

Pestorius said Rheinmetall has sold weapons to the Indonesian military which are being used to kill West Papuan civilians.

“That is just a fraction of the destruction the companies at Land Forces cause. Their business model is to sell violence, terror, and the maintenance of power. This is why we need to disrupt the Land Forces convention.”

Read on Green Left Weekly

By ANDY PAINE 27 May 2021
It was Thursday afternoon peak hour in South Brisbane, soundtracked as usual by trucks rumbling down the busy thoroughfares of the area. But these were not the usual trucks, and the response to them was not the customary indifference we give to our surroundings on busy city streets.

Two trucks began to pull into the Brisbane Convention Centre. On the trailer of each were small military vehicles. One was an “Autonomous Combat Warrior” made by Rheinmetall. The company describes the vehicle as the “next generation of land vehicle systems warfighting capability”. Essentially it’s a giant remote controlled car with off-road wheels and guns. The trucks were headed for the Land Forces Defence Exposition, an arms industry sales event which will take place from June 1-3. There over 300 stallholders will “showcase equipment, technology and services for the armies of Australia and the Indo-Asia-Pacific.”

Greg Rolles and Jarrah Kershaw were near the Convention Centre when they spotted the trucks rolling in. They were in South Brisbane preparing for the counter-event Disrupt Land Forces – a week long festival of resistance organised in response to the sales expo. They weren’t exactly expecting the military vehicles, but with a mixture of good fortune, flexibility and good preparation they were able to respond.

Greg jumped in front of the convoy while Jarrah called for reinforcements. Before long a group had gathered around them in Glenelg Street. Two others joined them on top of the trucks, refusing to come down. 

Banners were unfurled. From the serious tones of “War Crimes Start Here” and “Terror Australis” to the more jovial “Thanks But No Tanks”. Similarly, a bit of shouting about death and destruction was mixed with a bit of dancing and humourous chants. More people kept arriving. Before long there was over a hundred people surrounding the vehicles. Police turned up and shut down the street. But it was hours before a fire engine arrived to facilitate arrests – hours of jubilant blockading, hours of disrupting the Land Forces’ preparations.

By the time police finally removed the blockaders, news cameras had arrived too. As is their custom, they made a big deal about the “violence” of protesters having to be forcibly removed, while saying nothing of the deadly weapons right before their eyes. “It’s a non-combat vehicle for training purposes” said the truck driver to one news channel, speaking of his load that literally had “Autonomous Combat Warrior” printed on the side of it.

This is the mundane evil of the weapons industry – existing always in the background, obscured by a web of jargon and euphemisms. Every day, new more efficient ways of killing are developed. Weapons sales and research funding suck taxpayers’ money out of underfunded social services – $44 billion a year of military spending, encouraged by a never-ending stream of defence industry lobbyists and thinktanks assuring the vitality of each new product. Weapons made in Australian factories are sold to warzones – to Saudi Arabia for bombing Yemeni civilians, to Indonesia for crushing the West Papuan independence movement and enforcing the ongoing theft of their land for resource extraction.

Even in peace time, the weapons industry is everywhere. They are in our suburbs, manufacturing and distributing products designed to kill. They are in our schools and universities, offering teacher resources and tours of their facilities to enculturate bright young minds. They are in the ears of our politicians, whispering threats about the inevitability of war with our number one trade partner. Every few years they appear in the middle of a major city for a showcase like Land Forces. Most of the time, they manage to do it all without anybody pointing out their presence or their practical cost in money, lives, trauma, wasted human potential.

But not this time. As stationary trucks sat waiting for police in a cherry picker to extract the blockaders, it became clear to everyone that this week the weapons industry was not going to be able to conduct their business deals and networking chats without anybody kicking up a fuss. It was still almost a week before Land Forces officially opened, but the disruption has already begun.

By Andy Paine

On June 1-3, businesses and potential customers will descend on the Brisbane Convention Centre for the LAND FORCES International Land Defence Exposition. At first glance, it might seem like just another industry showcase in the endless cycle of convention-centre events. The promotional material is a masterpiece in euphemistic corporate language, difficult for the outsider to penetrate. “A comprehensive industry exhibition with more than 600 participating companies… Formal business to business networking programs and events… A three-day Industry and Defence Conference Program, built around the themes of: Industry Capability – Equipping Defence; Innovation and Technology for the Future Force; Civil Defence – Preparing for Community Crisis.”

Look through the fog of corporate sales jargon, though, and it’s possible to see what is really being bought and sold at Land Forces. That’s what the group of activists calling themselves Disrupt Land Forces have done. And they have gone further than just identifying that 600 of the world’s biggest weapons manufacturers are getting together to showcase their products. They have been studying where the weapons manufactured in Australia are actually sold, and have found quite a number of them make the short journey across the Timor Sea to Indonesia. Read more on Flood Media…