View From The Couch - APEC First

Sick As A Dog

I've been down with the flu again since Wednesday. It has meant I've been confined to the couch to watch a lot of Television this weekend while APEC festivities went ahead. And when I say Festivities, I do mean it with the utmost contempt and snide sarcasm, thank you very much.
Apart from the infamous/glorious Chasers' stunt, the best joke I heard on it was that "the APEC fence was successful because so far none of the 21 leaders have escaped".
Pacific Solution indeed. :)

The Sydney Declaration

It's one of the running jokes of the world that the USA and Australia just won't sign the Kyoto protocol, but still want to be seen as somehow environmentally friendly. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer ha declared that Aspirational targets are meaningless. So the Federal Government worked up an aspirational target as the Sydney Declaration. Errr, excuse me, but we're not that stupid.

I'm guessing the Howard government is going to wave the Sydney Declaration around as a glorious environmental accomplishment as it heads to the election. That is going to be a bit like waving a thong bikini around and claiming it will cover your whole body. Pardon the pun, but we'll see just how that one washes.

Demonstrations Don't Work Any More

In my youth, Brutus Colcagoon described me as "the sort of guy, who on the eve of the revolution runs down to the barricades and says 'stop this madness, somebody might get hurt!'" Which is kind of cruel, but upon having lived the 20 years since, I find it to ring true. Maybe I've mellowed somewhat, but I just don't see the point in mass demonstrations that turn violent. [Unless of course you're serious about overthrowing the government, in which case you have to get a substantial portion of the police on your side in this day and age, but that's another story.]

Saul Alinsky wrote a book called 'Rules for Radicals' which points out that if you really want to combat the status quo, you must organise in a way that confronts the status quo in a new way. Well, in this day and age, the police have a tremendous amount of accrued know-how as to how to deal with demonstrators. It's just a process of history. It's not like it's the first time a mass of people have gathered and marched. In the absence of a new angle, the protest was always going to be largely meaningless.

So I sat from the couch watching the Channel 7 coverage of the demonstrators and a few things really stuck out. The police cordon created was successful and the demonstrators really were a rabble. Well-meaning, but without any kind of uniting vision of what exactly they were protesting against. Sort of a Champagne Socialists' day out at the protests. Pretty pathetic.

Did We Just See Chris Bath And Her Champagne Socialist Leanings

One of the more curious aspects of Channel 7's coverage was how the team seemed to really want a bloody, violent stoush to go down on the streets of Sydney. That spectre never raised it's ugly head, thankfully as at the best of times Champagne Socialists have no spine. Anyway, the one notable thing was how Chris Bath kept asking the "security expert" sitting next to her, "but don't you think this is too draconian? "Isn't this a bit excessive?"
The security expert kept saying, "no, this is all very good. It's working smoothly."
Well good sir, everything done to excess works. Nothing succeeds like excess.
Yes, Ms Bath, it was excessive - And good for you for pointing it out.

Police State Blues Part 3-a

Now that David Hicks is coming home later this year, it sort of took the big cause out of the protesters at APEC. What they really should have been protesting about were the excessive APEC powers designed to muzzle them. But such is life. The fascists always beat up on the left because as George Orwell observed, the left can't unite while the fascists can easily line up and beat some people up; which is exactly what they were champing at the bit to do.

I really don't like the NSW Police as an institution. I think at the best of times they're gun-happy, belligerent, officious, racist and not-at-all interested in true community harmony, but always looking for a bit of biffo, because they're all frustrated Rugby League players. They're generally bumpkins on the make and easily corruptible. My car was broken into during the week. I've been burgled 3 times in the last 15 years and they've never solved a burglary case for me, let-alone caught the perps (They even refused to take a fingerprint of something hat was obviously handled by the perp.) Yet these guys are happy to let red-necks riot in Cronulla and stand by and watch. Talk about "wouldn't know a perp if they ran right into one".
So in a sense they're institutional tax-robbers as far as I can tell. And every state government gets elected on Law and Order hires more of these moronic thugs. Colour me unimpressed.
The NSW police is a state-sponsored protection racket.

So giving this bunch the APEC powers was like giving a violent delinquent a truncheon and calling him a cop. But amplified to eleven.

Police State Blues Part 3-b

And if you think I'm kidding about the eager hostility of the Police force, there's this arrest of one Mr McLeay.

A FATHER of three wept yesterday as he revealed how crossing the road ahead of an APEC motorcade led to his violent arrest in front of his young son and a traumatic 22 hours in jail.

Greg McLeay was released on bail yesterday after his wife, Sophie, and children spent a sleepless Friday night worrying about him.

"Because of APEC I was not allowed to speak to him - even the lawyer couldn't," Mrs McLeay said.

"The children are traumatised. We spent the night sleeping together on the sofa. How does walking to yum cha with your 11-year-old son end up with 22-hours in jail and no access to a lawyer?"

Footage available on ninemsn showed Mr McLeay, a 52-year-old accountant from Sydney's North Shore, speaking to police in Pitt Street before four officers pushed him to the ground.

He could be clearly heard trying to explain that he was simply attempting to protect his glasses. He has a condition called astigmatism, which means he can barely see without them.

I'm wondering what kind of democracy allows an ordinary man to be arrested and kept without access to a lawyer for 22hours. It gets worse when you hear his side of it:

Mr McLeay said he and his son, George, cycled into the city on Friday - the APEC public holiday - and met a friend, Stephen Carter, 40, to work on his accounts at Mr McLeay's Pitt Street office.

They walked out at lunchtime to go to Chinatown for yum cha. They were crossing the street to avoid a police cordon outside the Westin hotel when a police officer started shouting at them.

"I didn't know what was going on," Mr McLeay said.

"I asked which way to go and he directed me around the block. I started to walk away and he suddenly started yelling at me. It was like a fool's comedy.

"He threatened me with arrest and demanded my ID. Then this character pushed me and told me that I had assaulted a police officer.

"I was pushed up against the wall and then I was thrown to the ground and they kept telling me to put my hands behind my back. There must have been four of them pinning me to the ground.

"I was frogmarched down to the hotel's underground car park and then they tried to put another pair of cuffs on me. I was just crossing the road. Never have I felt so mortified, embarrassed and invaded. I feel violated."

However, the news of the evening portrayed Mr McLeay as somebody who defiantly crossed the road against the Police. Defiant? I see an ordinary guy (in a tasteless shirt admittedly but it is APEC) getting thrown to the ground who is more calm than the eager-beaver cops taking him away.


When you watch the footage above, you don't see a man who is resisting arrest. You can feel the excitement of the cops - "we've got one, we've got one!"
No you haven't you stupid nongs! He's not a violent protester at all! Poor Mr McLeay submits to the police brutality quite peacefully. I love how the police try to get the camera away from the scene of the 'crime'. If they weren't doing something guilty, why would they try and block the camera? They know they're doing something illicit. They know it's a wrongful arrest. But they do it anyway.

I am eagerly waiting to see how judges are going to view this arrest and all the sweeping APEC powers that enabled the police to go on this little rampage. It must've been fun for them, arresting what is essentially a non-violent, non-protesting citizen without warning. Well done, boys.