Tim the Spectator

Memo to Police: go find some real criminals

In an article in the Sydney Morning Herald weekend edition 6-7 September it was revealed student activists and Greenpeace members made up a third of a list of 61 poeple the NSW police banned from public areas during the APEC summit last year.

Due to a successful FOI request, you can follow this link and actually read the police document.  Unfortunately all the names have been removed, but it is still facsinating to read the police assessments.

What struck me was this assessment in one Mutiny member’s profile: “A1 intelligence indicates that on 27 March 2007 [name redacted] was part of a small group of Mutiny members who attempted to maliciously damge the ASIS/Defence stall at the UTS by deploying ‘stink bombs’ and red dye.  Due to a proactive operaton their efforts were thwarted.”

…really?  The police devoted time and resources to stopping student activsts with too much time on their hands from “deploying” stink bombs and red dye?  And they were so concerned they launched a “proactive operation” to stop them?

What a complete waste of energy.  Let me put it bluntly, while I sometimes agree with their stand on issues, the student activists/anarchists that make up Mutiny are nobodys.  They have no capacity to cause real harm to anyone.  During APEC the police were granted powers far beyond what was needed, in order to stop anyone from causing embarrassment to the government.  Not that it worked.

Here’s a link to the Black Rose Anarchist Library and Bookshop webpage, where members of Mutiny meet.  Their e-zine is also available.

The police described Mutiny as “an anarchist group consisting of a number of layers of trust and information management” that meets “at a covert location” to plan and prepare for violence.  Every student activist I’ve ever met has either been a rich kid flirting with rebelling against the machine until they finish their law degee, or is a serial compaigner (read: loser) with nothing better to do.  Devoting scarce police resources to monitoring their activities and stopping ther stink bombs is absolutely ridiculous.

Michael Kennedy, a former police officer and now an academic at the University of Western Sydney, said it best in the SMH article:  “You can’t make an international terrorist out of a Sydney Uni dickhead.”