Monthly Archive for October, 2022

Police move in to arrest Ash and Claudia, who had occupied a small robot tank being towed into the exhibition centre – photo by WagePeace

by Jack Cohen-Joppa, from reports by WagePeace

A broad spectrum of Australian activists returned to Meanjin (Brisbane) during the first week of October for a Festival of Resistance and nonviolent actions to disrupt Land Forces 2022, the largest weapons expo in the Southern Hemisphere at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre (BCC). As they had last year, organizers welcomed many diverse constituencies – radical youth, Quaker grannies, Aboriginal leaders, refugees, climate activists, veterans, a clown army, musicians and more – into the action planning.

It was a festival of ideas, story telling and culture with the voices of First Nations and West Papuan people central. The stated goal was to “disrupt, interrupt, and obfuscate [the arms dealers’] efforts to generate conflict as the by-product of profit”, the organizers invited all who shared that goal to participate and plan Festival events according to just two rules:

Photo by Chris Knudson

Killer Drone Base Blockaded to Oppose Remote-Controlled Killing of Humans

from Shut Down Creech

Anti-drone activists, in Nevada for a week-long protest at a U.S. assassin drone base north of Las Vegas, continued their resistance on Wednesday morning, October 19 with a nonviolent blockade of the entrance road into Creech Air Force Base in Indian Springs. After nearly 30 minutes, three protesters were arrested.

Dozens – maybe hundreds – of vehicles were stalled on the highway trying to enter the base. Protesters hope to motivate Air Force personnel involved in the U.S. drone program to follow their conscience and no longer participate.