Weapons conference resistance continues

Tonight we descended on the weapons conference delegates as they were entering the duxton hotel on wakefield street, wellington for the ‘Minister of Defence awards for excellence’ and gala dinner (one presumes, covered in a nice bloody sauce). Their composure was disrupted with shouts, screams, drums and general noise. Food not bombs served up a tasty soup, delicious dumpstered bananas and bread to keep us going for 2 hours.

The duxton hotel has been surrounded by poolice and provision security scum for two days. They have gone to extreme lengths to keep the conference secret and to keep disruption to a minimum. The police were inside and outside the hotel, filming people from cars and on foot. Provision security were also using film and video cameras to record events. One suit-wearing scumbag quickly donned a balaclava in order to avoid being filmed by us, while another was forced out of the lift as he tried to hide from people.

Provision is feeding the culture of extreme fear as a way of generating more business. As a subsidiary of Thompson Clark Private Investigators, they specialise in surveilling activists and providing security to scumbag companies involved in dodgy businesses (like weapons traders and vivisectors). In TCIL’s newsletter (called ‘National Extremism’) that it sells to clients at $1000/month, they routinely refer to people as ‘terrorists’ and ‘militants’.

The level of security and surveillance should be viewed in two ways. One we are being effective; they are worried about their image and about what we actions we will take. On the other hand, we must be conscious that they are collecting information about us at every turn so it is important to keep safe, and to keep our mouths shut when around these people.

We need to get things geared up again in order to resist the war machine. If any readers out there have details on the conference agenda or list of delegates from this year, please forward them to peacewellington@hotmail.com