Quote:
Originally Posted by Addick
It's not that surprising. I mean, it wasn't American security that has the reputation for shooting first and asking questions later. The Australian authorities simply gained an understanding of the situation and acted appropriately. Although they were supposedly breached, they acted accordingly from there on.
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I think it IS surprising. Despite protestations by the Commonwealth and local government that no foreign delegations should bring their own weaponry, in the end they succumbed and allowed members of Bush's 600+ strong delegation to bring their own armaments into the country. The Chasers guys (the satirists) are lucky that the local police (and I use the term loosely because a lot of the cops were brought in from elsewhere and don't know a thing about Sydney) and not the American secret service were the first ones to spot them. [If you get the chance, check out some clips from The Chaser's War on Youtube. Very brazen, very biting, and very funny satire of all things political and pop culture. The guys in the troupe are all graduates from the University of Sydney law school.]
APEC has been a nightmare for Sydneysiders. The heart of the city has been completely shut down. Barricades and fences everywhere, police standing around on every street corner (that is barely an exaggeration), sniffer dogs, cops on jet skis, cops on dirt bikes, snipers on rooftops, snipers in helicopters, army personnel, fighter jets. I live a few doors down from the hotel where the Japanese and Hong Kong delegations (maybe more, I don't know) were staying and thus there has been a continuous presence of cops outside my window at any time of the night or day for the past week. All last night barricade-removing trucks woke me up repeatedly. Streets closed, fences as far as the eye can see, police telling you where to go and what to do, life grinding to a standstill for every motorcade driving the wives to lunch, a ghost town in the heart of the downtown. It was more like Pyongyang than Sydney.
There was a public holiday on Friday for APEC and all through the long weekend any business that stayed open in the city suffered from lack of business since few residents could be bothered going through the detours and gates downtown. It is hard to imagine any benefits for Sydneysiders which outweigh such a massive inconvenience, a lost day of commerce, lost tourist revenues, $250M worth of security precautions, police prickliness, and disgruntled locals and foreigners alike.
As what would have been a ten-minute walk yesterday to meet some friends turned into a fifty-minute circuitous detour, I pondered what it was really all for. Over the past several centuries monarchies have been deposed in the name of eradicating arbitrariness and encourage democratic participation. But what APEC revealed is that the monarchs remain, cutoff to such an extent that citizens are completely so far removed from their leaders that even a glimpse of an armoured limousine speeding by is avoided if possible. Around Bush's hotel was a two-block cordon. How different is this from the inaccessibility and alienation of government that the War of Independence was fought over?
Some examples of the APEC madness:
- The American delegation of well over 600 arrived via three 747s.
- Included in the American delegation was four personal chefs for the President, despite the fact that state lunches and dinners were provided every day
- Putin's delegation also numbered in the hundreds, and was the first visit by a Russian leader to Australia. The Russians immediately announced an agreement to buy Australian uranium upon arrival.
- The Chinese delegation was smaller, as President Jintao Hu spent more than a week travelling around Australia, touring some of the main sources of China's coal and wool imports
- Some leaders, Bush and Putin for certain, have their own food tasters who sample every dish in case it is poisoned
- One member of the Russian delegation has the job of carrying around the 'suitcase', from which nuclear weapons launches can be initiated at any time
- John Howard, Bush's lapdog, wined and dined with Bush at nearly every meal, whether at any army base, on a boat, or at the Prime Minister's residence at Kirribilli House
- The Taiwanese and Chinese delegations refused to go to any of the same events at the same time unless absolutely necessary, and even then would stay as far apart as possible
APEC Security breach in Australia
