Re: <nettime> Proposal to create EU-wide "troublemakers" database

["Dan Jonez" <i.jesus@gmail.com>]

For those that don't know, a similar thing happened in the lead up
to the APEC demonstrations in sydney where a blacklist was created
of people who were affiliated with particular groups, and they were
banned from going into the city centre for a week. All but one or
two of the list had never had criminal records and were put on
there shearly for political beliefs. They said they had spercific
intelligence on us and that we were being monitored by ASIO (the
australian equivalent of the CIA or MI5), but for the record, as
one of those people who were on this list, we were nothing but the
organisers of the main demonstration and were planning nothing but
a demonstration which refused to bow down to government attempts
to isolate the demonstration geographically and politically. The
organisers who wanted to relocate the demonstration weren't on this
list and it was an attempt to divide us. In the end, because of the
militant line we took against these political attempts to characterise
us as "violent threats" anywhere from between 10-20,000 people turned
up to demonstrate, which was beyond our expectations.

I was involved in a supreame court of appeals (the highest court in
australia, baring the Commonwealth High Court, which is the same
for all countries under the british monarchy) and we lost on the
basis that we could demonstrate, just not in the city or anywhere of
significance.

It was as if, for a week, Downtown sydney was a police state.

In the end I believe we won the political victory, by showing despite
bypartisan support for the laws in parliament, the real opposition in
this country to the war and to the sort of global geosecurity regime
promoted by APEC was in the streets, not in the parliament.

They are now attempting to make the laws permanent to apply to any
demonstration.



-- 
Dan Jones
0425 255 184


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