To thingummy whatsisname.
CHIEF JUSTICE OF THE A.C.T.
Oscar here.
Now that the scars of battle are less obvious and the walking wounded have rejoined the ranks it might be appropriate to fill you in on the view from the other side of the barricades.
I know you are impartial. You took some pains to tell me so. Maybe even liberal as my legal friends kept insisting. As test of this theory I didn't stand up for you when all else did, even my seven fellow felons of the moment. Someone hissed something to me so I said I didn't stand for any bastard. You heard.
So when you and the other fifty or so sat down you asked me what I said. As always discretion becomes the better part of valour I said I didn't stand for any person. You mumbled a warning and they read the charge.
Well I've heard some shit said on charge sheets over the years but yours took the cake. THE OFFENCE - 'that he, in the Australian Capital Territory, on the 25th November, 1991. did behave or conduct himself to the annoyance of various liege subjects of her Majesty the Queen by acting in a manner directly or manifestly likely to provoke the use of force or violence and therefore likely to cause a breach of the peace to ensue.
Directly or manifestly? Likely to provoke? Force or violence? Likely once more? Maybe another likely and it would have stuck. Whatever happened to innocence before guilt? And a blanket drag-net at that.
Come off it. Gearge 0 never saw 1984 out but this is 1991 and you (or the boneheads in the persecutors office or the Attorney General ditto or some idiot placed elsewhere in your bureaucratic labyrinth of time servers) brings one down going back to 1751!
I was flabbergasted as Rex and my Uncle Hilton would say. Some law made to protect some old tart in England whom the populace of the day may well have good reason to get after.
All this some thirty seven years before Cookie discovered us here and then sailed an to become hamburgers for the worthy citizens of Hawaii. At least they got it right. Long pork indeed.
Two hundred and forty years on and the Canberra peanuts can't do better than that? You haven't improved in twenty years since the Aboriginal Tent Embassy.
But not knowing this valuable information of the origin of the charge at the time all I could say extempore was that the bloody queen wasn't even there. Everyone laughed and momentarily your prejudice flashed over your impartiality.
Of course we all know now that the strategy was to avoid using the Criminal Code. As our worthy or less than so captors informed us thereby making a big deal of expediency. This obviated the problem of arguing bail and was intended to keep us out of harm's way until your filthy arms trade fair was over.
More so the problem of holding over a hundred crims with the prospect of more to come. As indeed they did, many more of us. Difficult in a watchhouse designed for less than ten percent of that number. While we argued the point in court the slots downstairs were already chocker and some impudent Olivers had already asked for not more but some food under the LAW. Hey you fuckin mongrels, bring us some tucker was one fond expression used. To which your witty constabulary replied, no worries we'll bring you a banana.
Of course we couldn't be transported as per the last century to Goulburn, the nearest penitentiary, because that's Yabber/Grinner land now with big problems with riotous citizens of their own.
As an unsolicited suggestion maybe you should build a large, proper jail like they have in your sister, mendicant territory up North. They will tell you it is useful for jailing half the blackfellers and other malcontents like those who want the yankee spy base pissed off from the Alice.
This could be especially important if this fair city of our illustrious leaders is to be insulated against the locust plague apparently endemic to the area every score or so years.
You turned backflips to agree with your beloved Inspector who was the proso's chief witness. Old school mates? Up behind the dunny?
You seemed to lap up every dark hint of a PLOT. Parenoia can be a dangerous thing. I know. But just to set the record straight. there was a plot alright. Some people worked their arses off for a long time to ensure Aidex was a flop. A public plot, public to all who see no future in the arms race. Which happens to be just about everybody on the planet.
Among your more irritating homilies was the gem that you were really impartial and that in a democratic society all, even yourself, were entitled to have an opinion about these events but that had nothing to do with it. The law's the law.
That's dumb as well as hypocritical yer honor. Why did you let them bring a bummer from feudal England when the issue was Aidex. That's about the eighth time I've heard that pious shit from you lot. And I felt like vomiting once again.
Maybe you are a nice person. Maybe. Maybe you feel a sense of responsibility to society as well as dispensing justice to all, rich and poor alike. As one of the latter I couldn't care less about your susceptibilities. You get well paid for exercising the power of the ruling class against us.
Power means many things.
On the Sunday, before our arrests an Monday hundreds of bodies blocked the main gate.
Along with Aidex staff your coppers were inside. They could only get out by driving over those bodies. There were long and protracted negotiations. We had your lot penned in for a change. It went on into the night and early morning.
During those hours we had the power. Or so it seemed even if we knew it was only temporary. To some it was a first time feeling.
Thus a short time stretched into a now lasting memory for all of us.
It was sweet while it lasted despite the tension and fear.
It showed what strong, determined people could do. Occasionally at some such moments in experience we realise that ultimate power rests with us. Our imaginations expand and new consciousness emerges.
We weren't all that many.
Arraigned against us were multi-layered levels of repression,
*The Tactical Response Group. Ah, the TRG. Fascists to their very core. Trained for brutality and mindless ferocity. Their Sydney counterparts murdered David Gundy which their Minister for THEM said was because they were 'uptight and edgy' at the time. Mindlessness starts at the top Mr Pickering. Then they blew half of Darren Brennan's face away in another 'raid'.
(What is ten metres long has sixteen wheels and looks lovely in flight? -A bus load of TRG's going over a cliff).
*The ACT Federal police. As some two hundred emerged from their buses to surround us someone remarked loudly that that was a bastard file if ever you saw one. Mind you not all the young coppers seemed delirious with delight at the job ahead.
*The Federal Protective Force. These innocents look after our humble Parliament House and its precious occupants. They were sent to the Alice in 1987 to protect our american protectors in yet another offensive against the abominable spy station. They were even more hopeless in the desert up there than in the desert on Capital Hill.
*Private security goons. Too stupid to even be admitted to the ordinary police farce, these killers drove into people crushing feet and inflicting other injuries under the benign gaze of their uniformed brothers.
*Army provocaters. In mufti, hassling women, kids and whoever they could in the dark, secured in the false heroism of alcohol.
*Local red necks. Some from Aidex firms staff. Equally courageous with all the cards stacked in their favour.
Add to this volume of overt power the various levels government, Federal, State, local, all holding their hands aloft in horror with the notable exception of Jo Valentine who was also incarcerated.
Rare indeed to find one who carries out her own rhetoric. Onyer Jo.
Add the role of the media, mostly going along with the 'official' line. Violence is one-sided. us.
And add your own puny efforts and those of your acolytes in the judicial system and you have a cauldron brew that even the WIZARD of ID would despair of emulating.
Among the plethora of rubbish in your summing up, boring as it was, I was still amazed to find that you could excuse lapses (considerable) of memory of the TRG lout who busted me. who couldn't recall how many between five and ten held arrested that day and who you excused on the grounds that he had a busy time and could not be expected to be precise. Pickering and you are a bloody good pair.
However, it all backfired on you lot. Finding me not guilty (or whatever you did find) didn't matter much. Only one.
What mattered was that while the argument went on on your dunghill for two days or so the rest of us got on with the job. Those arrested had to be released pending the outcome of our joust. And of course they went straight back to the trenches. The best laid plans of mice and men gang oft aglay as Robbie said. He wasn't too popular with the likes of you in his day either.
We reckon we had a big win overall. How can we claim that?
Because while the show of Aidex went on, it was a howling failure. We mighn't have stopped it but we stuffed it. And there can never be another arms trade exhibition in Oz. Here's why.
First there was the breadth of participation. You might consider it a ragbag of professional agitators and the naiive. Rentacrowd was the popular choice of your masters.
It was a trade union picket line an all the entrances to the complex. To the enemy that's a red rag to the proverbial. To us of the working class it was the imprimatur of everything decent and gave us the licence to act with the widest possible appeal.
It was the ecology and the environment movements. The defenders of this fragile globe. It was working class punks and alternative lifestyle hippies. Anti-bases forces with a lot of experience. Many grassroots peace organisations. Some Aboriginal presence. more for its spiritual effects than numerically. Broad Christian groupings. Gays and tranvestites who won the hearts and minds of the TRG. Student activists and national groups. Anti-colonial and liberation people. Representatives of the struggle of indigenous people for self-determination. Artists, writers and performers.
Pretty impressive because they were millions.
I didn't notice any septic tanks except maybe on the wrong side of the fence. Except for the Catholic Bishop.
Speaking of the unspeakable to borrow a phrase from my namesake some were disappointed that George Bush changed his itinery. Maybe he prefers Paul licking his arse instead of Bob. We'll just have to wait and see.
Sorry about the diversion into the low life.
The Yankee Bishop. There was a ecumenical service an the steps of the obscenity while the standoff aforementioned was taking place on the picket line. He was the one in the States who refused to bless the troops for Iraq. Probably an undercover Comm.
Anyway this Bishop makes a speech on the lawns (sorry about the steps before) and says how Australia shouldn't follow america because it is the biggest arms trader of them all with her own people in the shit with millions out of work, babies dying, a nonexistent health system and more. Don't follow america says this real AMERICAN guy.
Then this young woman from Bougainville sang a poem about her country and people. Then talked about the Bougaineville Revolutionary Army blowing up the pylons carrying power to the mine, that scouring disturbance of the mountain.
A young man from East Timor spoke of the massacre to which Hawkie was not so tear sodden.
The Croat mob with their own picket at the House sent a feller over to talk about his problems.
Best political meeting I've been to in ages. All Christians. Are you a believer?
It was this breadth of activity that made you breath harder. There were those who led attacks on individual companies who had their dirty little fingers in the profit pie. The cops would turn up and the villains would piss off after a bit of argument about morality. A subject you no doubt are familiar with. NO?
There were anti-colonial gatherings and exchange of view and contacts. Most important. An Anti-bases Rally where we chalked up numbers for the dead in our part of the world. Someone broke ranks and chalked up on the roadway which was out of bounds GARETH EVANS WAR CRIMINAL. This led to some sort of altercation with the boss cocky of the FPF who didn't seem to understand at first that piss off means piss off. So he called up an ACTFP an his blower who didn't seem to want to know about it.
Women got their thing together as they always do and caused more problems for our army of protectors.
By the way I forget to mention the other goons like Special Branch picking heads. ASIO? Maybe they're keeping a low profile seeing that chickens might be coming home to roost re the Hilton. We were riqht again then see. Tim was innocent all along.
As for the C I bloody A. Where were they and what role did the play in knocking Bob off? Only joking.
The point is, old chap, that it was much more than head-ons between the pros and your lot. That business is part of your ideology . Simplify things into black and whites so that the masses understand. But that's your problem too. The 'masses' know a fuck sight more than you do. They live in the real world.
One of the things out there that shook Canberra from its end of year torpor while it lasted over ten days was real democracy. You know what I'm talking about? On the line there was a determination not to invest power in any other than the decision making process at the point of the action. A corollary of all great movements as distinct from monuments. And another corollary with why so many people turned up to express their passion at THE POINT OF DELIVERY. Which is as we said central to the whole arms picture.
On Wednesday after you had given your totally impartial verdict which seemed to me to contradict the guts of your summing up (why should I complain) I saw one of the tyros of Canberra's best sitting outside in the foyer of the court. He was about nineteen with pimples. He was clutching a paper. I stopped and asked him what that shit was. The dummy said beg your pardon. That in your hand. That's my evidence he said. You bastards lie through the back of your neck I told him. Why don't you shove it up your arse. He looked quite offended.
Back at the action the street wedding was about to take place surrounded by people sitting in the road who in turn were surrounded by your police. The TRG arrived just in time to wish Jan and Jacob the best of married bliss. And also to remove the wearisome road sitters. Nice way to treat wedding guests. Jacob did a nice one at some stage elsewhere. The Inspector held aloft a bulging condom which he claimed was filled with acid as a weapon against his officers. (A condom full of acid? Must have been the highest quality). The media turned its attention to Jacob for an opinion of this disclosure. How would I know he said? I never put acid in my condoms.
So the whole thing ended up a bit of a circus really. I mean what with the dancing. singing, performers, trick cyclists, jugglers, drummers, musicians and others of artistic bent, it was as much a peoples' festival as a demo.
As it should be.
Even so. Those in the road were the real defenders of our country. Those who should have been in the dock are, among others, Bob Hawke, Robert Ray, Peter Cook and above all that paragon of the middle class, the slimy Foreign Minister, Gareth Evans who, would you believe, has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Apart from the Cambodian nonsense this is the turkey who provides the New Guinea military with helicopter gunships for use against Bougainville.
Who provides the arms and trains the goon squads from Indonesia to assassinate our people in East Timor and Irianjaya. Peace Prize indeed. He'd look good hanging from the million dollar flag pole over the cowards' castle. For the squeamish by the heels. for the uncouth by the neck.
Let me leave you with a few words from JAMES CONNELLY who died in a hail of British invaders bullets. This great Irishman was leader of the Easter Uprising of 1916. He was summarily executed at the Dublin Post Office. He was and is one of my heroes.
He said.....
I MAKE NO WAR ON PATRIOTISM, NEVER HAVE DONE. BUT AGAINST THE PATRIOTISM OF CAPITAL, A PATRIOTISM THAT MAKES THE INTERESTS OF CAPITAL THE SUPREME TEST OF RIGHT AND DUTY, I PLACE THE PATRIOTISM OF THE WORKING CLASS. A PATRIOTISM THAT JUDGES EVERY PUBLIC ACT BY ITS EFFECT ON THE FORTUNES OF THOSE THAT TOIL. THAT WHICH IS GOOD FOR THE WORKING CLASS I ESTEEM TO BE PATRIOTIC.
What else needs to be said?
Oscar.
P.S. Seeing that I am innocent would you arrange for the coppers to destroy my mug shots. You can keep the diagram of the affray I gave you in court. Frame it in your chambers pissary.
Would you send me a copy of the court records? A thousand bucks is beyond the pension. I want to be sure that I have been impartial and truthful in my version of proceedings.
And would you ask the State to pay all the expenses of Legal Aid and if it won't send the bread yourself.
Have a good New Year.
CHIEF JUSTICE OF THE A.C.T.
Oscar here.
Now that the scars of battle are less obvious and the walking wounded have rejoined the ranks it might be appropriate to fill you in on the view from the other side of the barricades.
I know you are impartial. You took some pains to tell me so. Maybe even liberal as my legal friends kept insisting. As test of this theory I didn't stand up for you when all else did, even my seven fellow felons of the moment. Someone hissed something to me so I said I didn't stand for any bastard. You heard.
So when you and the other fifty or so sat down you asked me what I said. As always discretion becomes the better part of valour I said I didn't stand for any person. You mumbled a warning and they read the charge.
Well I've heard some shit said on charge sheets over the years but yours took the cake. THE OFFENCE - 'that he, in the Australian Capital Territory, on the 25th November, 1991. did behave or conduct himself to the annoyance of various liege subjects of her Majesty the Queen by acting in a manner directly or manifestly likely to provoke the use of force or violence and therefore likely to cause a breach of the peace to ensue.
Directly or manifestly? Likely to provoke? Force or violence? Likely once more? Maybe another likely and it would have stuck. Whatever happened to innocence before guilt? And a blanket drag-net at that.
Come off it. Gearge 0 never saw 1984 out but this is 1991 and you (or the boneheads in the persecutors office or the Attorney General ditto or some idiot placed elsewhere in your bureaucratic labyrinth of time servers) brings one down going back to 1751!
I was flabbergasted as Rex and my Uncle Hilton would say. Some law made to protect some old tart in England whom the populace of the day may well have good reason to get after.
All this some thirty seven years before Cookie discovered us here and then sailed an to become hamburgers for the worthy citizens of Hawaii. At least they got it right. Long pork indeed.
Two hundred and forty years on and the Canberra peanuts can't do better than that? You haven't improved in twenty years since the Aboriginal Tent Embassy.
But not knowing this valuable information of the origin of the charge at the time all I could say extempore was that the bloody queen wasn't even there. Everyone laughed and momentarily your prejudice flashed over your impartiality.
Of course we all know now that the strategy was to avoid using the Criminal Code. As our worthy or less than so captors informed us thereby making a big deal of expediency. This obviated the problem of arguing bail and was intended to keep us out of harm's way until your filthy arms trade fair was over.
More so the problem of holding over a hundred crims with the prospect of more to come. As indeed they did, many more of us. Difficult in a watchhouse designed for less than ten percent of that number. While we argued the point in court the slots downstairs were already chocker and some impudent Olivers had already asked for not more but some food under the LAW. Hey you fuckin mongrels, bring us some tucker was one fond expression used. To which your witty constabulary replied, no worries we'll bring you a banana.
Of course we couldn't be transported as per the last century to Goulburn, the nearest penitentiary, because that's Yabber/Grinner land now with big problems with riotous citizens of their own.
As an unsolicited suggestion maybe you should build a large, proper jail like they have in your sister, mendicant territory up North. They will tell you it is useful for jailing half the blackfellers and other malcontents like those who want the yankee spy base pissed off from the Alice.
This could be especially important if this fair city of our illustrious leaders is to be insulated against the locust plague apparently endemic to the area every score or so years.
You turned backflips to agree with your beloved Inspector who was the proso's chief witness. Old school mates? Up behind the dunny?
You seemed to lap up every dark hint of a PLOT. Parenoia can be a dangerous thing. I know. But just to set the record straight. there was a plot alright. Some people worked their arses off for a long time to ensure Aidex was a flop. A public plot, public to all who see no future in the arms race. Which happens to be just about everybody on the planet.
Among your more irritating homilies was the gem that you were really impartial and that in a democratic society all, even yourself, were entitled to have an opinion about these events but that had nothing to do with it. The law's the law.
That's dumb as well as hypocritical yer honor. Why did you let them bring a bummer from feudal England when the issue was Aidex. That's about the eighth time I've heard that pious shit from you lot. And I felt like vomiting once again.
Maybe you are a nice person. Maybe. Maybe you feel a sense of responsibility to society as well as dispensing justice to all, rich and poor alike. As one of the latter I couldn't care less about your susceptibilities. You get well paid for exercising the power of the ruling class against us.
Power means many things.
On the Sunday, before our arrests an Monday hundreds of bodies blocked the main gate.
Along with Aidex staff your coppers were inside. They could only get out by driving over those bodies. There were long and protracted negotiations. We had your lot penned in for a change. It went on into the night and early morning.
During those hours we had the power. Or so it seemed even if we knew it was only temporary. To some it was a first time feeling.
Thus a short time stretched into a now lasting memory for all of us.
It was sweet while it lasted despite the tension and fear.
It showed what strong, determined people could do. Occasionally at some such moments in experience we realise that ultimate power rests with us. Our imaginations expand and new consciousness emerges.
We weren't all that many.
Arraigned against us were multi-layered levels of repression,
*The Tactical Response Group. Ah, the TRG. Fascists to their very core. Trained for brutality and mindless ferocity. Their Sydney counterparts murdered David Gundy which their Minister for THEM said was because they were 'uptight and edgy' at the time. Mindlessness starts at the top Mr Pickering. Then they blew half of Darren Brennan's face away in another 'raid'.
(What is ten metres long has sixteen wheels and looks lovely in flight? -A bus load of TRG's going over a cliff).
*The ACT Federal police. As some two hundred emerged from their buses to surround us someone remarked loudly that that was a bastard file if ever you saw one. Mind you not all the young coppers seemed delirious with delight at the job ahead.
*The Federal Protective Force. These innocents look after our humble Parliament House and its precious occupants. They were sent to the Alice in 1987 to protect our american protectors in yet another offensive against the abominable spy station. They were even more hopeless in the desert up there than in the desert on Capital Hill.
*Private security goons. Too stupid to even be admitted to the ordinary police farce, these killers drove into people crushing feet and inflicting other injuries under the benign gaze of their uniformed brothers.
*Army provocaters. In mufti, hassling women, kids and whoever they could in the dark, secured in the false heroism of alcohol.
*Local red necks. Some from Aidex firms staff. Equally courageous with all the cards stacked in their favour.
Add to this volume of overt power the various levels government, Federal, State, local, all holding their hands aloft in horror with the notable exception of Jo Valentine who was also incarcerated.
Rare indeed to find one who carries out her own rhetoric. Onyer Jo.
Add the role of the media, mostly going along with the 'official' line. Violence is one-sided. us.
And add your own puny efforts and those of your acolytes in the judicial system and you have a cauldron brew that even the WIZARD of ID would despair of emulating.
Among the plethora of rubbish in your summing up, boring as it was, I was still amazed to find that you could excuse lapses (considerable) of memory of the TRG lout who busted me. who couldn't recall how many between five and ten held arrested that day and who you excused on the grounds that he had a busy time and could not be expected to be precise. Pickering and you are a bloody good pair.
However, it all backfired on you lot. Finding me not guilty (or whatever you did find) didn't matter much. Only one.
What mattered was that while the argument went on on your dunghill for two days or so the rest of us got on with the job. Those arrested had to be released pending the outcome of our joust. And of course they went straight back to the trenches. The best laid plans of mice and men gang oft aglay as Robbie said. He wasn't too popular with the likes of you in his day either.
We reckon we had a big win overall. How can we claim that?
Because while the show of Aidex went on, it was a howling failure. We mighn't have stopped it but we stuffed it. And there can never be another arms trade exhibition in Oz. Here's why.
First there was the breadth of participation. You might consider it a ragbag of professional agitators and the naiive. Rentacrowd was the popular choice of your masters.
It was a trade union picket line an all the entrances to the complex. To the enemy that's a red rag to the proverbial. To us of the working class it was the imprimatur of everything decent and gave us the licence to act with the widest possible appeal.
It was the ecology and the environment movements. The defenders of this fragile globe. It was working class punks and alternative lifestyle hippies. Anti-bases forces with a lot of experience. Many grassroots peace organisations. Some Aboriginal presence. more for its spiritual effects than numerically. Broad Christian groupings. Gays and tranvestites who won the hearts and minds of the TRG. Student activists and national groups. Anti-colonial and liberation people. Representatives of the struggle of indigenous people for self-determination. Artists, writers and performers.
Pretty impressive because they were millions.
I didn't notice any septic tanks except maybe on the wrong side of the fence. Except for the Catholic Bishop.
Speaking of the unspeakable to borrow a phrase from my namesake some were disappointed that George Bush changed his itinery. Maybe he prefers Paul licking his arse instead of Bob. We'll just have to wait and see.
Sorry about the diversion into the low life.
The Yankee Bishop. There was a ecumenical service an the steps of the obscenity while the standoff aforementioned was taking place on the picket line. He was the one in the States who refused to bless the troops for Iraq. Probably an undercover Comm.
Anyway this Bishop makes a speech on the lawns (sorry about the steps before) and says how Australia shouldn't follow america because it is the biggest arms trader of them all with her own people in the shit with millions out of work, babies dying, a nonexistent health system and more. Don't follow america says this real AMERICAN guy.
Then this young woman from Bougainville sang a poem about her country and people. Then talked about the Bougaineville Revolutionary Army blowing up the pylons carrying power to the mine, that scouring disturbance of the mountain.
A young man from East Timor spoke of the massacre to which Hawkie was not so tear sodden.
The Croat mob with their own picket at the House sent a feller over to talk about his problems.
Best political meeting I've been to in ages. All Christians. Are you a believer?
It was this breadth of activity that made you breath harder. There were those who led attacks on individual companies who had their dirty little fingers in the profit pie. The cops would turn up and the villains would piss off after a bit of argument about morality. A subject you no doubt are familiar with. NO?
There were anti-colonial gatherings and exchange of view and contacts. Most important. An Anti-bases Rally where we chalked up numbers for the dead in our part of the world. Someone broke ranks and chalked up on the roadway which was out of bounds GARETH EVANS WAR CRIMINAL. This led to some sort of altercation with the boss cocky of the FPF who didn't seem to understand at first that piss off means piss off. So he called up an ACTFP an his blower who didn't seem to want to know about it.
Women got their thing together as they always do and caused more problems for our army of protectors.
By the way I forget to mention the other goons like Special Branch picking heads. ASIO? Maybe they're keeping a low profile seeing that chickens might be coming home to roost re the Hilton. We were riqht again then see. Tim was innocent all along.
As for the C I bloody A. Where were they and what role did the play in knocking Bob off? Only joking.
The point is, old chap, that it was much more than head-ons between the pros and your lot. That business is part of your ideology . Simplify things into black and whites so that the masses understand. But that's your problem too. The 'masses' know a fuck sight more than you do. They live in the real world.
One of the things out there that shook Canberra from its end of year torpor while it lasted over ten days was real democracy. You know what I'm talking about? On the line there was a determination not to invest power in any other than the decision making process at the point of the action. A corollary of all great movements as distinct from monuments. And another corollary with why so many people turned up to express their passion at THE POINT OF DELIVERY. Which is as we said central to the whole arms picture.
On Wednesday after you had given your totally impartial verdict which seemed to me to contradict the guts of your summing up (why should I complain) I saw one of the tyros of Canberra's best sitting outside in the foyer of the court. He was about nineteen with pimples. He was clutching a paper. I stopped and asked him what that shit was. The dummy said beg your pardon. That in your hand. That's my evidence he said. You bastards lie through the back of your neck I told him. Why don't you shove it up your arse. He looked quite offended.
Back at the action the street wedding was about to take place surrounded by people sitting in the road who in turn were surrounded by your police. The TRG arrived just in time to wish Jan and Jacob the best of married bliss. And also to remove the wearisome road sitters. Nice way to treat wedding guests. Jacob did a nice one at some stage elsewhere. The Inspector held aloft a bulging condom which he claimed was filled with acid as a weapon against his officers. (A condom full of acid? Must have been the highest quality). The media turned its attention to Jacob for an opinion of this disclosure. How would I know he said? I never put acid in my condoms.
So the whole thing ended up a bit of a circus really. I mean what with the dancing. singing, performers, trick cyclists, jugglers, drummers, musicians and others of artistic bent, it was as much a peoples' festival as a demo.
As it should be.
Even so. Those in the road were the real defenders of our country. Those who should have been in the dock are, among others, Bob Hawke, Robert Ray, Peter Cook and above all that paragon of the middle class, the slimy Foreign Minister, Gareth Evans who, would you believe, has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Apart from the Cambodian nonsense this is the turkey who provides the New Guinea military with helicopter gunships for use against Bougainville.
Who provides the arms and trains the goon squads from Indonesia to assassinate our people in East Timor and Irianjaya. Peace Prize indeed. He'd look good hanging from the million dollar flag pole over the cowards' castle. For the squeamish by the heels. for the uncouth by the neck.
Let me leave you with a few words from JAMES CONNELLY who died in a hail of British invaders bullets. This great Irishman was leader of the Easter Uprising of 1916. He was summarily executed at the Dublin Post Office. He was and is one of my heroes.
He said.....
I MAKE NO WAR ON PATRIOTISM, NEVER HAVE DONE. BUT AGAINST THE PATRIOTISM OF CAPITAL, A PATRIOTISM THAT MAKES THE INTERESTS OF CAPITAL THE SUPREME TEST OF RIGHT AND DUTY, I PLACE THE PATRIOTISM OF THE WORKING CLASS. A PATRIOTISM THAT JUDGES EVERY PUBLIC ACT BY ITS EFFECT ON THE FORTUNES OF THOSE THAT TOIL. THAT WHICH IS GOOD FOR THE WORKING CLASS I ESTEEM TO BE PATRIOTIC.
What else needs to be said?
Oscar.
P.S. Seeing that I am innocent would you arrange for the coppers to destroy my mug shots. You can keep the diagram of the affray I gave you in court. Frame it in your chambers pissary.
Would you send me a copy of the court records? A thousand bucks is beyond the pension. I want to be sure that I have been impartial and truthful in my version of proceedings.
And would you ask the State to pay all the expenses of Legal Aid and if it won't send the bread yourself.
Have a good New Year.
