Joining Disrupt Land Forces Is a Moral Duty in Times of Genocidal Decay
published on 21 Aug 2024
Land Forces is a biennial exposition of global weapons manufacturers, bringing companies, like Elbit, Lockheed, Boeing, Thales and NIOA, together to display their wares directly to potential clients – ministers, military bosses and diplomats – all under the one roof, without a spot of blood in sight.
This year Land Forces 2024 is being held at the Melbourne Convention Centre over the 11th to 13th of September, having decided to give up its once regular location in Meanjin-Brisbane, as the activist collective Disrupt Land Forces was so successful in its nonviolent actions, it ran it out of town.
“The genocide campaign is still ongoing in Gaza,” says Muayad, a Palestinian man living in Naarm, who adds that with the official death toll of the 10-month-long Israeli perpetrated genocide on the Palestinians of Gaza now surpassing 40,000, it’s never been more urgent a time to protest the expo.
“We don’t see any serious steps being taken by the Australian government or the weapons manufacturing firms to sanction the Israeli occupation,” the activist further set out. “We are protesting companies that have provided Israel with weapons directly used to kill innocent children”.
Muayad is just one of an estimated up to 25,000 concerned civilians who will descend upon Melbourne city to disrupt the event in a nonviolent manner to draw attention to the “unmoral profiting from the war crimes in Gaza, which we all see live on TV and social media”.
Spruiking death in the showroom
“The Land Forces event, Australia’s foremost military trade show, must be completely disrupted and eradicated from existence,” Canberra-based West Papua musician and activist Ronny Kareni told Sydney Criminal Lawyers.
“It serves as a chilling marketplace for arms deals and a networking hub for the defence industry, wielding a devastating impact on regions burdened by oppressive regimes, such as West Papua,” he continued.
West Papua has been occupied by Indonesia since Jakarta conducted a falsified referendum on self-determination in 1969. And over the last half a century, West Papua people have lived under brutal military rule, while an official transmigration program has left them as a minority in their own land.
The “horrific acts of extrajudicial killings, brutal torture, and arbitrary detentions” that are commonplace in West Papua, a country of Melanesian peoples, are directly facilitated by deals made in airconditioned exhibition centres by executive in suits at events such as Land Forces 2024.
“The Disrupt Land Forces protests are not merely symbolic acts of dissent,” Kareni underscored, “they are a passionate call to action, urging an urgent re-evaluation of the catastrophic repercussions of military trade on the most vulnerable, in places like West Papua”.
Land Forces security squad
Indeed, in the lead up to Disrupt Land Forces, which will be mobilising over the 8th to 14th of September, Victoria police, state ministers and the media have conducted a smear campaign against the nonviolent activists, who merely seek to highlight deals made to kill and maim the innocent.
“Victoria police is preparing for the biggest protest since the turn of the millennium at a military expo in Melbourne,” said the Channel 7 talking head last week. “As many as 25,000 people are expected, stretching police resources to the limit.”
The report further outlined that Victorian law enforcement is expecting the biggest protest numbers it has seen since those demonstrating against the 2000 meeting of the World Economic Forum in Naarm. And Victoria police chief commissioner Shane Patton said, “It could be really, really big.”
That thousands of civilians don’t like companies selling machinery designed to perpetrate the horrors they’ve been watching on their screens transpire in Gaza will turn out on the street to express this is evidently going to require up to 10 percent of the entire Victorian police force to manage.
And Patton warned that “if they come with an intent to disrupt, to confront, to assault, um, to impede, then we will deal swiftly with them”.
This statement implies Victoria police officers will likely be using force because the whole idea is to disrupt. But raising assault in relation to nonviolent protesters is a bit of sensationalism really, as is the entire report.
Although the fact that so many demonstrators are expected is not so startling after the entire population has been witnessing the Gaza genocide. And over 40 groups have committed to participate in Disrupt Land Forces, some of which didn’t exist before Israel began its mass slaughter.
In reply to this demonisation, Wage Peace put out a tongue-in-cheek warning to activists about a “paramilitary group” planning to attend Land Forces “to provide ‘protection’ to the arms trade”, most of whom “will be uniformed and armed” and “may identify themselves as police”.
“A one stop genocide shop”
“These merchants of evil will always go where there is conflict and ignite it. They have never cared about defending anyone. They care about multimillion dollar deals and their own profit,” remarked Carlos, a Colombian filmmaker and activist. “War has always been their end, not peace.”
“Disrupt Land Forces is our chance to expose them and let the world know that we refuse to keep feeding them with our taxes, that we know what they’re actually doing, and we won’t stand for it,” said the man who had to flee his own country due to the types of deals to be made at Land Forces.
Carlos fled Colombia as a result of the US Clinton administration’s 2000-launched Plan Colombia, which, as part of the war on drugs, saw $10 billion invested in military equipment from those exhibiting at Land Forces, so Israeli trained militias could knock out the leftwing political opposition.
Although, the filmmaker further points out that in today’s Colombia it’s a different story as president Gustavo Petro cut ties with Israel in May over the wholesale killing operation it’s carrying out in Gaza, of which the International Court of Justice ruled on 26 January is plausibly a genocide.
However, the Australian government has made no such determination, rather foreign minister Penny Wong cut aid funding to UNRWA, then the main aid channel into Gaza, on the day after the ICJ ordered that aid into the region be restored immediately.
And it’s actions like this that have led to a situation where Disrupt Land Forces is set to make quite a splash this year.
“As Palestinians we can’t see our people in Palestine slaughtered by weapons sold in this land where we live and work,” continued Muayad, who’s associated with the protest group Free Palestine Melbourne.
“The exposition is going to attract governments and war criminals to be part of it and aid the genocide campaign they’re conducting, therefore, morally, we need to express our outrage and rejection of this kind of killing exposition,” the Palestine man made certain in ending.
Author Paul Gregoire. Originally published on the Sydney Criminal Lawyers website.
People participate in a Pro-Palestine demonstration in Melbourne, Sunday, October 15, 2023. Several marches for Palestine are planned around Australia, with NSW authorities flagging the use of “extraordinary powers”. (AAP Image/James Ross) NO ARCHIVING Source: AAP / JAMES ROSS/AAPIMAGE
SBS Arabic24 Podcast on Disrupt Land Forces
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Expectations indicate the participation of 25,000 demonstrators from groups supporting the Palestinian cause and groups against wars and arms trade.
The Victoria State Police announced great preparations to confront expected chaos with a demonstration that will be the largest in the commercial heart of Melbourne on September 8th.
Media reports indicated that the police will allocate 1,800 members of its security force to deal with demonstrators seeking to disrupt The Land Forces Expo, which is considered one of the most important international exhibitions for the sale of weapons and defensive systems.
A Victoria Police spokeswoman said that the force is preparing for the largest security operation it has undertaken since securing the activities of the World Economic Forum, which Melbourne hosted in 2000. The spokeswoman declined to specify the size of the demonstrations, but expectations indicate that 25,000 demonstrators from support groups for the Palestinian cause and anti-war and arms trade groups will participate in a sit-in. The exhibition will be located at the Melbourne Convention Exhibition Center until the event ends on the 14th of next month
Mr. Moayed Ali, a member of the Free Palestine Melbourne Association, one of the parties supporting this upcoming demonstration, says that many activists have united to work against this largest exhibition in the global south, where deals worth millions of dollars are expected to be concluded with countries including Israel. Ali accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, explaining the goal of the demonstration
“We will disrupt the exhibition and demand a ban on the sale of weapons to Israel, which continues to kill civilians in Gaza,” said Mr Ali.
Israel denies committing any genocide in its war in the Gaza Strip, stressing that its military operations aim to eliminate the Hamas movement, which on October 7, 2023, launched unprecedented attacks on southern Israel, which, according to Israeli figures, resulted in the killing of 1,200 Israelis and Hamas held 224 hostage.
Mr. Moayed Ali stressed the right of the demonstrators to express their opinion, which is a right guaranteed by the Constitution, stressing its peacefulness:
“The culture of demonstration and support for Palestine is purely peaceful and has not witnessed any violence since its launch 10 months ago.”
For its part, the Victoria State Police commented in a written statement to SBS Arabic that a number of police officers will be allocated to the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Center to ensure the highest level of safety and security throughout the event.
This includes hundreds of regional police who will travel to Melbourne for the event, as well as metro general duty police and specialist police including the Public Order Response Team, Highway Patrol and Mounted Branch.
Victoria Police will also establish a State Police Operations Center at Victoria Police Station. Police said that although the national terrorist threat level has been raised to probable, there is no intelligence to indicate that this event is the target of any specific threat. The police confirmed their readiness to provide a rapid response to any security breach
Source : SBS
Posted on: 08/15/2024 4:55pm By Hana Yassin
Protest genocide and war profiteering at Melbourne’s Convention Centre
Published August 23, 2024 in Green Left Issue 1413
Anti-war and social justice activists are getting ready to protest a weapons industry convention at the Melbourne Convention Centre between September 8-13.
Land Forces, which bills itself as the “premier platform for defence, industry and government”, is one of the military industrial complex’s annual “meet and greet”. It will feature Elbit, Lockheed, Boeing, Hanwha, Thales and NIOA, some of the biggest weapons makers in the world.
The protest — Disrupt Land Forces — endorsed by more than 50 organisations, including Socialist Alliance, aims to bring the power of the pro-Palestine anti-genocide mass movement, which has held Labor to account for more than 45 weeks, together with the anti-AUKUS and First Nations movements.
Victorian Labor has thrown its full backing behind what some call the “one stop genocide shop”. The fact that Labor is a “principle sponsor” should come as no surprise. Labor governments, since Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, have been firmly in the imperialist camp.
But the major parties are not just willing to go along with the United States’ global plans for war and militarisation, they are enthusiastic participants.
Former Coalition defence minister Christopher Pyne in 2017 said his mission was to make Australia a “world player” in the arms trade.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, in 2018, announced Australia was aiming to be one of the top 10 weapons exporters — war profiteers in the world.
Federal Labor, under Anthony Albanese and Richard Marles, has embraced the Coalition’s push for Australia to set up its weapons’ manufacturing.
In fact, Marles wants to turn Drilling /Geelong into a major weapons manufacturing hub. He has tried to justify this on the grounds of “investment” and “job opportunities”.
But this has been contested, again and again, including that scarce funds must be allocated to the transition away from fossil fuels that the climate emergency demands.
Protesting the Land Forces expo will also help in the fight to stop Australia aiding Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Despite it purporting to support a ceasefire, Australia is complicit in Israel’s murderous aggression because it has not stopped arms exports and not withdrawn political support for Israel.
Labor is also supporting the United States’ “Operation Prosperity Guardian”, a military offensive against Yemen, for its steadfast support for Palestine, taking command in late August of the aggressive force in the Red Sea.
Land Forces advertises itself as a “networking space” for weapons dealers. A critical part of the Palestine solidarity movement has been to expose and disrupt Australian weapons manufacturing, including parts, being shipped to Israel.
Australia provides a key link in the US’s military-industrial complex, through US bases, and raising hell about that is a way we can show our solidarity with oppressed peoples everywhere, including in Palestine.
Disrupt Land Forces will be an important protest against the unjust world order of war-profiteering imperialism in which Australia’s ruling class reaps the spoils. The struggles of First Nations peoples will also be highlighted on September 10, including a march to the Philippines Consulate.
A mass rally has been called for September 11 at 10am, the opening day of the weapons’ convention.
We must use opportunity to protest Australian support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the Occupied Territories. We also need to call out the US and Israel’s provocative behaviour towards Iran and China.
The ruling class tries to convince workers to defend “national security”. But the Australian working class will not benefit from US dominance over the Middle East or from an AUKUS-led war on China.
Rather, our security would be better served by fighting for a peaceful, independent Australia, which does not seek to exploit or push its neighbours into joining a potentially disastrous war in the South Asian region.
If you agree, come to Disrupt Land Forces and become a supporter of Green Left, the media project which, since 1991, has stood with those struggling for society’s resources to be used collectively for people and the planet.
Author Elizabeth Bantas. Originally published on the Green Left website.
Killing Bazaars: The Land Forces Expo Down Under
Written by: Dr Binoy Kampmark
Published September 3, 2024 by AIM (The Australian Independent Media Network)
Between September 11 and 13, the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre (MCEC) will play host to a bazaar of networking and deal making as part of a show that really ought to be called The Merchants of Death Down Under. And the times for these merchants are positively bullish, given that total global military expenditure exceeded US$2.4 trillion in 2023, an increase of 6.8% in real terms from 2022.
The introductory note to the event is, typically in the lingo of the industry, mildly innocuous, even dull. “The Land Forces 2024 International Land Defence Exposition is the premier platform for interaction between defence, industry and government of all levels, to meet, to do business and discuss the opportunities and challenges facing the global land defence markets.”
In greater detail, the website goes on to describe the Land Defence Exposition as “the premier gateway to the land defence markets of Australia and the region, and a platform for interaction with major prime contractors from the United States and Europe.” When it was held in 2022 at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre, the event attracted 20,000 attendees, 810 “exhibitor organisations” from 25 countries, and ran 40 conferences, symposia and presentations. From 30 nations came 159 defence, government, industry and scientific delegations.
Land Forces 2024 is instructive into how the military-industrial complex manifests. Featured background reading for the event involves, for instance, news about cultivating budding militarists and numb any disturbing tendencies towards peacemaking. And where better to start than in school, where things have yet to even bud? From August 6, much approval is shown for the A$5.1 million Federation Funding Agreement between the Australian government and the state governments of South Australian and West Australia to deliver “the Schools Pathways Program (SPP)” as part of the Australian government’s Defence Industry Development Strategy. The program offers school children a chance to taste the pungent trimmings of industrial militarism: visits to military facilities, “project-based learning”, and attend presentations.
Rather cynically, the SPP co-opts the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) aspect of government policy, carving up a direct link between school study and the defence industry. “We need more young Australians studying STEM subjects in schools and develop skills for our future workforce,” insists the Australian Minister for Education, Jason Clare. Hard to disagree with the proposition, but why make things so blatantly easy for the Merchants of Death?
Mutterings of discontent have registered against the Land Forces exposition. Ellen Sandell, a Victorian member of parliament and leader of the Victorian Greens, and Adam Bandt, the federal member for Melbourne and leader of the Australian Greens, have written to the statePremier Jacinta Allan to call off the arms event. The party notes that such companies as Elbit Systems “and others that are currently fuelling … Israel’s genocide in Palestine, where 40,000 people have now been killed – will showcase and sell their products there.”Like most state premiers in Australia, Allan sees dollars before principles, icily dismissing such demands.
The protest outfit Disrupt Land Forces, one that so far boasts 50 different activist collectives, has been gathering some steam. As early as June 4, the publishing outlet Defence Connect reported movement on the activist front, with groups such as Wage Peace – Disrupt War and Whistleblowers, Activists & Communities Alliance planning to rally against the Land Force exposition.
On its website the group writes that it “hassled Land Forces out of Magandjin (Brisbane)” in 2022. The prospects look even better now for a re-run. “Imagine what we can do now, in Narrm (Melbourne).” Various activities are anticipated stretching over a week, a usual mix of carnival, activism, harrying – especially the arms dealers – with the goal of gathering 25,000 people who will ultimately encircle the MCEC and cause a halt to proceedings.
Ahead of the event, the Victorian Labor government, the event’s satisfied sponsor, is already anticipating trouble, seeing the threat to peace from protestors as far more profound than boardroom arms dealers making deals in the shadow of death. A further 1,800 police officers are being mobilised, drawn from the regional areas of the state.
The Victorian Minister for Police, Anthony Carbines, did his best to set the mood. “If you are not going to abide by the law, if you’re not going to protest peacefully, if you’re not going to show respect and decency, then you’ll be met with the full force of the law.” Let’s hope the police observe those same standards.
Warmongering press outlets, The Herald Sun being a perennial stalwart, warn of the “risks” that “Australia’s protest capital” will again be “held hostage to disruption and confrontation” given the diversion of police. Its editorial of August 15 gives the protestors a flatteringly demon tinge, treating the projected number of 25,000 attendees quite literally, swallowing whole the optimistic incitements on the website of Disrupt Land Force group.
The editorial also notes the concerns of unnamed senior members of the police force who fret about “the potential chaos outside MCEC at South Wharf and across central Melbourne,” one that compelled the forces to mount “one of the biggest security operations since the anti-vaccine/anti-lockdown protests at the height of Covid in 2021-21 or the World Economic Forum chaos in 2000.”
Were it up to the editors, protesting activists would do far better to stay at home and let the Victorian economy, arms and all, hum along. The merchants of death could go about negotiating the mechanics of murder in broad daylight; the Victorian government would get its blood fill; and Melbournians could turn a blind eye to what oils the mechanics of global conflict. The forthcoming protests will, hopefully, shock the city into recognition that the arms trade is global, nefarious and indifferent to the casualty count.
SBS. Protests in Melbourne over Weapons Expo
Published 8 September 2024 7:45pm
By Tom Stayner, Haylena Krishnamoorthy
Presented by Haylena Krishnamoorthy
Source: SBS News
A major weapons expo is being held in Melbourne this week, but the event is facing strong opposition from anti-war protesters. The Australian government has distanced itself from the exhibition, saying it’s privately run for the defence industry.
Victoria Police patrol along fencing in place ahead of the Land Forces International Land Defence exhibition at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre in Melbourne, Sunday, September 8, 2024. Victoria Police erected a ring of steel around the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre ahead of the weapons exhibition, which is also expected to attract up to 25,000 activists.
Protesters have been active in Melbourne’s central business district since Friday, vandalising hotels with red paint and blocking traffic.
A small group of demonstrators from Extinction Rebellion – a UK founded global environmental movement, also blocked a street near the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre which is hosting the weapons expo.
Disrupt Land Forces activist, Nathalie Farah says they are standing against the death and destruction brought by weapons of war.
“We don’t want weapons in our city. We don’t want weapons in this continent. We don’t want to be supplying arms to a genocide entity like Israel. It is against international law to be supplying to Israel. And this government continues to do it and they continue to shut down debate saying that we are anti-Semitic, saying that we are threatening social cohesion. To Penny Wong, I would say we are not the ones threatening social cohesion, by not listening to your people you are actually threatening social cohesion.”
Last year, the Victorian government secured the relocation of the nation’s biggest defence industry showcase from Brisbane.
The conference is intended to promote Australian military innovation to international contractors.
But protesters have questioned its timing given the sensitivity of the conflict in the Middle East.
Nathalie Farah has been taking part in a weekly pro-Palestinian demonstration.
“This is the protest capital of this continent. There is a beautiful history of resistance in the city. And to bring it from, you know, Brisbane where it was hosted the last couple of times and the Victorian government again investing millions of dollars to host it here. It seems like they are asking for trouble to be honest.”
Victoria Police has erected what’s been called a ring of steel around the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition centre.
Extra officers have been deployed from around the state in the event more protests erupt in the coming days.
Police have described this as its largest such operation since the World Economic Forum in 2000.
More than 100 people were arrested at the time.
“It is clearly an inflammatory decision of the Australian government to move the Land Forces expo to Melbourne, to the heart of pro-Palestine solidarity in this country. And like I said before all of us are going to be there to disrupt it and bring attention to it and even if we can’t totally shut it down, we are going to bring attention to the fact that the Australian government has decided to bring and advertise Israeli weapons in Melbourne. They advertise these weapons as field tested on Palestinians. We will not allow it to happen.”
Renee Nayee is with Students for Palestine.
In response to the criticism from protesters, the federal government described this as a privately run exhibition for the defence industry.
It’s organised by the AMDA Foundation Limited – a registered charity – and the nation’s largest promoter of international defence industry.
Military tanks, heavy-duty trucks and semi-automatic guns are some of the weapons expected be on display during the three-day event.
Land Forces says it has no comment on the protest activity.
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