An afternoon sky over Sydney, August 2010.

2pm.



2.30pm



3pm



5pm



5.30pm

This brilliant tilt-shift vid by ZebraFive was "constructed from over 9000 stills shot on location around Sydney using a Canon EOS 5D MKII."

1 Million Sydneysiders Want Out Of 'The World's Best City'

Only two days after Sydney was declared the world's best city (through a poll that placed Melbourne at #6), another poll reveals that one in five people who call Sydney home want to leave. Permanently.

Brilliant. A simple solution to rental shortages and fury-inducing traffic crawl presents itself : don't build more apartments and add new lanes to busy roads, just offer incentives to help the one million people who want to leave to get the hell out.

Problem solved?

Revelations On A Rooftop

From the online novel ED Day, about life in Sydney after the bird flu pandemic :

There was no moon, and with no huge glow of city lights, the star field seemed to be suspended just out of reach. Bright pure pindots of light, planets flashing colours, the occasional satellite blinking past.

The dogs were quiet last night. We could hear the dolphins in the harbour chattering away to each other. It seems like such a normal sound of this city now.

This is it then, I thought, this is how my new life really begins, in this new society in this new world after ED Day, it begins here, with Kat, kissing her under falling stars on the rooftop of the Imperium, in Dead Sydney.

One day, I said to myself, years from now, I will look back at this moment as the punctuation mark to when my old life ended and my new life began. Everything that happened between ED Day and now was just preamble, the prologue, this was the new start. With Kat, this was my new life.

I had to tell her. I knew it was too soon, but it felt like it was going to be the right thing to say...

I felt the words, I could taste them in my mouth, like I could taste the wine and chocolate on Kat's breath. I had felt this way for weeks now. I was sure she felt this way, too. How could it be too soon when we had both lost so much?

We needed to hear each other say this.

Go Here To Read The Latest Chapter From ED Day

Go Here To Read ED Day From The Beginning

The Green Tide

Chapter Seven of the online novel ED Day is now up. ED Day tells the tale of how survivors of an apocalyptic bird flu pandemic in Sydney rebuild their lives and their society in a city of the dead.

Here's an excerpt from Chapter Seven of ED Day :

The Botanical Gardens are spreading, growing out through the wrought iron fences and across the city streets. There's nobody around to trim the trees, or cut back the vines, or pluck the little shoots that are now sprouting here and there in the cracks of the footpaths.

....for a moment I saw Macqaurie Street a decade from now. The unchecked growth of the Botanical Gardens, of all those trees and vines, had spread through, or pushed down, the old fence. The Gardens were swallowing up the concrete and steel of the city.

The jumbled lines of dead cars that filled the street were beds for flowers and weeds. The road had cracked under years of heat and rain and cold, with no council maintenance crews to repair the damage. Part of the tarmac had collapsed into some old tunnel below, the rear ends of three cars poked up out of the hole in the street.

The windows of the old apartment blocks and the sleek blue glass facades of office towers were cracked and broken. Foliage spilled down from tenth floor window frames.

Where before ED Day there had been clean footpaths and gleaming facades, everything was covered with vines and flowers and weeds and plants.

I walked back to the Imperium, thinking about how long it will be before the animals and plants own this city.

Are we really going to spend weeks and months fighting to keep plants and vines from taking root in the malls and court yards and public squares of this city? Of course not. We'd have to devote whole teams of survivors to sweeping away the soil and seeds that meet up in the cracks of concrete buildings and the gaps in the footpaths after rain and wind storms carry them through the city.

It's a fight we can't win.

Go Here To Read The Rest Of Chapter Seven.

If you're not yet a regular reader of ED Day, then go here to start at Chapter One.

"The Age Of Instant Everything Is Over"

The latest chapter from ED Day, the online serialized novel about life in Sydney after a bird flu pandemic, is now up.

Go Here For That

Here's an excerpt :

When I first saw her, sitting in the aisle, reading by sunlight, I asked her, ”Are you okay?”

She nodded, gave me that amazing smile. Her teeth were almost black. With chocolate.

I asked her, “What are you doing in here?”

She waved the novel at me, pointed at the neat pyramid stack of dark chocolate KitKats she was working her way through and said, “The good chocolate, the stuff with lots of cocoa, it boosts your immune system. Did you know that? And that keeps you safe from the flu.”

“Yeah, but won’t you get sick from eating all that chocolate?” I said.

She thought about this for a moment, laughed, and then showed me one of the wrappers. Her smooth, clear and shiny fingernail pointed to the Use By date.

“You see that?” Kat asked me. “In a few months this will be no good to eat. And now that the air-conditioning is gone, and we’ve got this weird combo of sun-rain, sun-rain nearly every other day, this stuff won’t even last that long. The rats will get into it all eventually.”

“Yeah,” I said, “so what? There's plenty to eat."

Kat shook her head slowly at me, ate some chocolate.

“Yes, but that’s it then, isn’t it?” she said, not noticing, like I had, that the chocolate was all over lips. “We’ll never have these again, chocolate bars like these, I mean. Nobody is going to be making these anymore. Right? Someone might be able to hand make them, but they won't taste the same. They won't even look the same. These perfect chocolate bars, the exact same measure of ingredients in every single one, all exactly the same size, flavour, smell, the bright wrappers…they’ll be gone soon."

She stopped to finish eating another Kit Kat and then continued : "It’s not just the people who died. This, all this kind of…production, it’s gone now, too. And in a few months, or less, you won’t be able to eat this stuff anymore. I mean, this is it. Then it's all gone forever."

Kat frowned at me, flicked through a couple of pages of her novel, then looked back at me.

"I’m not crazy, you know."

I knew then she was right. "You mean the mass production thing, don't you?"

She nodded quickly, "Exactly. This is it. The last of the last. Then no more."

"No more delivery trucks," I said.

"Delivery trucks? There aren't any more factories, or enough people to work in them," Kat said. "Everything from now on, for a few years at least, if not forever, will have to be made by hand. Chocolate, our meals, then our clothes. The age of fast food, instant everything, is over."

Go Here To Read ED Day From The Beginning

"I Want To See This City Come Back To Life Again"




Another chapter now online from the free-to-read serialized novel, ED Day, on life in Sydney after an apocalyptic bird flu pandemic.

An excerpt from ED Day - Chapter Five :

It’s night outside now. The towers of the city stand tall and dark, shiny black fingers against the deepening sky.

Why did you leave me behind? I want to go, too...

I didn’t believe much in God before ED Day. I don’t believe in God any more now. Hundreds of corpses of little kids scattered all over the city makes you realise fast that there probably isn’t someone who really gives a fuck about what happened to us, or what happens to us now.

I want to go, too.

But I don’t want to go. I did a few weeks back. I stood on the roof, toes over the edge, waiting for a wind, or a muscle spasm, so I didn’t have to decide. I thought about Kat, and how she'd feel when she found out I was gone.

I thought about all those babies that Kat and Matron looked after in the hospital, some of them still fighting for their lives.

I thought about that day, three days after ED Day, when I came down from my rooftop hideout and first met Bookman and Matron and Trader, walking the streets, calling out for other survivors. I thought about how happy I was to still be alive, and to find people like them, so happy to have found me.

And I thought our first barbecue in Hyde Park, when three dozen of us cooked the last of the steaks that were still edible (before we cracked the first tin of Spam), and drank warm champagne, and found a few minutes amongst all the death and misery when we actually forgot what had happened and we were just new friends, having a drink, and eating together. Sharing. Surviving.

I want to go, too...

I want to survive this. I want to live through it, and see what happens next. Tomorrow. Next month. Next year. Two decades from now.

I want to find out if Chrissie is still alive. I want to see the vegetable gardens and rooftop orchards grow big enough to feed all the survivors. I want to see a whole flock of sheep and lambs grazing on the slopes of the Domain and chickens and ducks getting fat for our future dinners in the Gardens and all the streets of our part of the city totally cleared of corpses.

I want to help these people as much as I can, because we all need each other now.

And I want a million more nights like this, when you can see every star in the sky, and you can see the flurry of movement of the owls and other birds making new homes in the apartments next door, where people had left balcony doors open before they died, or ran away, and when you can hear the soft, beautiful songs of the dolphins in the harbour, as they swim and play, coming back to waters their ancestors knew before any of us came down out of the trees.

I want to be here, I want to be a part of it. All of it.

I want to see this city come back to life again.

Go Here To Read Chapter One Of ED Day

Go Here For The Latest Chapter


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Those Who Leave Don't Come Back

Chapter Four of the online novel ED Day is now up. Some 'light' fiction for your weekend reading.

This is a novel writing experiment, that's already proved to be both exciting, and terrifying.

ED Day is a serialised novel, where readers can comment and critique the story as it's being written. Most of the comments have been kind and encouraging, so far.

Three or four chapters will be published each week online, free to read, until the tale is told.

ED Day is the story of how a few hundred people survive and build a new society in Sydney, after an apocalyptic bird flu pandemic strikes and kills millions. Most of the people are gone, but much of the city remains undamaged. Supermarkets are full of food, but the streets are littered with corpses. The survivors are now learning that they can't leave the city. At least, not alive.

Here's an excerpt from the latest chapter :

I never really worked out whether the government was lying to us, or whether they didn’t know what was happening, or just how bad the pandemic really was.

The more people who got sick, the less people there were to keep the power stations and the rest of the infrastructure running. There were blackouts and dry taps every two or three days. You got used to it.

The prime minister and the health minister were on the news all the time, but never live on air. People reckoned they were already out of the country, and that most of what they said had been pre-recorded.

In the first week of March, a lot of senior government ministers pissed off to islands up north for “conferences”, taking their families with them.

Some of the survivors here reckon the government knew what was coming, but they didn’t want us to survive. Something to do with a worldwide depopulation program that Prince Philip and Henry Kissinger have been talking about for decades.

The government ministers, say some survivors, saved themselves and their families and friends, by hogging anti-virals and leaving the mainland, and left the rest of us here to die. Bookman seems pretty convinced that's what happened. The more he talks about that version of what happened to us, the more survivors believe it.

When we think back the chaos and confusion in February and early March, it’s easy enough to believe such things might have been true. This is the sort of stuff people end up talking about when there’s no nightly news or newspapers anymore, and no television or radio shows. It’s like we have to make up our own news.

Here’s one of the most popular theories on what happened before ED Day that some of the survivors talk about, a lot :

Those in the government that didn’t leave before March 21 (the day when nearly everyone who stayed in the city ended up dying) isolated themselves away, beneath the city.

Somewhere under the city, some of the survivors reckon, there are all these halls and bunkers and vaults, dating back from World War 2. They were expanded as nuclear bunkers during the 1950s and 1960s, and refurbished during the massive building projects that swamped Sydney in 2008.

Down there, goes the theories, there is a big network of rooms and kitchens and sleeping quarters, with air filters and warehouses full of food and water and medicine. Enough to last a year or more.

That’s where some of the state government ministers, senior public servants, and their families, are supposed to be hiding out right now.

If you go into the basements of the State Parliament on Macqaurie Street and put your ear to the wall, you can sometimes hear something that sounds like the whir of air-conditioning. Or it could just be wind blowing through ducting.

“They’re still down there,” this one guy yelled at a Town Hall meeting last week, “they’re down there right now, waiting for the all clear.”

Go Here To Read Chapter One

The Lambs Of Temptation

The second chapter of the online novel, ED Day, is now up. It's free to read and download and new chapters will be published three to four times a week :

ED Day : Chapter Two


ED Day is the story of how 300 survivors of a massive bird flu pandemic, that kills millions in Sydney alone, rebuild their lives and society in the city centre. They clean up the streets, stockpile food and water, but they are 'trapped'. Outside of the city, something terrible is happening, but so far the survivors only have glimpses of what is going on.

Here's an excerpt from Chapter Two :

...nearly everyone is hanging for fresh meat. A big fat juicy steak smothered with fried onions and sauce is only the stuff of fantasies now. Lots of fantasies.

Nobody yet has snuck into the pen where we keep the sheep and lambs we rescued from the petting zoos in Darling Harbour. Butt some of the survivors get this weird look in their eyes when they’re standing around watching the sheep and lambs crop the grass in Hyde Park.

I probably do, too. There's about sixty legs of lamb walking around the park most afternoons, with Preacher as their shepherd. Trader was drooling over those lambs one day last week, and he pointed out that some of the lambs were snacking on the wild mint that's popping up all over the park.

"Look!" he said. "They're just asking for it!"

Go Here To Read Chapter One Of ED Day

Dead Sydney

By Darryl Mason

This will either be one hell of an adventure, or an absolute disaster. But it's too late to back out now.

From today I will be publishing three or four short chapters a week from my new novel 'ED Day' on a dedicated blog. That is, I'll be posting chapters from the new novel I'm still writing.

The chapters are free for you to read, download and even comment on, if you're motivated or inspired to do so by what you read. And I hope that you are. If you've ever wanted to be a book critic, before the book is finished, here's your chance. Go for it.

I'll be posting chapter two over the weekend. Another two chapters will go up during the next week.

The novel, written in the form of a journal, tells the story of how 300 people survive a massive bird flu pandemic that wipes out millions of people in Sydney. Some of the survivors are convinced there was nothing natural, or accidental, about the pandemic that has killed everyone they knew and everyone they loved.

As the story unfolds, you will learn more about how the pandemic came about, how the survivors met, and how they go about rebuilding their lives and society.

A quiet, still Sydney where humanity has all but disappeared is a scary place, but I like, and believe in, the idea that that survivors of such a near completely fatal pandemic as portrayed in ED Day really would help each other, and take care of each other, and get on with rebuilding their lives and society, as best they can.

As Paul, the leader character of ED Day, says in Chapter Two (or maybe Chapter Three), you can only sit around in your commandeered penthouse getting hammered on free 40 year old whiskey for so long before you want to get back to work and get busy doing something worthwhile. Get busy helping people.

But the world of ED Day is not going to be full of kindness and caring and sharing.

Far from it.

There's something going on outside of Sydney that none of them are even remotely aware of, but I think they're going to find out about it before we get too far into the story.

There are dark forces at work amongst the ruins of a once bustling Sydney society. And for many of those who survived the pandemic, the worst is a long way from over.


Writing the novel this way may prove to be a good idea, or an extremely bad one. Whatever. It will be a writing adventure and that's what I'm most interested in right now.

You can read more about why I'm doing this, and how it came about over at Your New Reality.

Or you can just go straight to the first chapter and start reading :

ED Day - Chapter One : The Silence In The City

Enjoy.

Sydney Jails Cleared Of Prisoners To Make Way For APEC Protesters

Bondi Beach To Get The Ultra-Security Treatment So The Ladies Can Lunch

Police are making room for at least 500 APEC protesters in jails across Sydney. Weekend detainees will be given 'two week holidays' from serving time, so their beds can be available.

Police are clearly anticipating mass arrests. The reason why weekend detainees are being give such long breaks from their sentences is because police will be allowed to detain 'persons of interest' from September 2 and then hold them, without bail, for the entire duration of the APEC summit, expected to finish on September 12.

Police are known to have already drawn-up lists of potential 'troublemakers' and are expected to make contact with these people in the next fortnight to warn them to stay away from the five kilometre long, three metre high 'steel wall' which will divide the Sydney CBD into two, and create a series of security zones around the hotels and conference centres where 21 world leaders will stay and gather for meetings.

At least eight buses have been converted into mobile prisons, with wire mesh over the windows, to transport those the police wish to detain during the APEC summit to the prisons.

Police are making the media aware that they expect "violent clashes".

Hopefully the NSW and Federal Police won't be following the example of Canadian police, who used agent provocateurs, in hoods, armed with rocks, to try and incite clashes with peaceful protesters last week. The agent provocateurs were outed by protesters for trying to start trouble and were forced to flee behind police lines.

More on the emptying of Sydney jails here :

Three of six wings of Parramatta Jail, in Sydney's west, will be cleared and a recently refurbished section of Long Bay prison, in the city's east, will be reopened to accommodate the expected surge in prisoners.

Prisoners serving periodic detention will be excused from reporting for mid-week or weekend jail.

About 200 periodic detainees are serving sentences for offences including drugs, violence and driving breaches, News Ltd said.

A Department of Corrective Services spokeswoman confirmed the move.

Columnist Michael Costello says Sydneysiders shut the hell up and stop whingeing about APEC-related disruptions. And don't even think of blaming Bush for costing taxpayers an extra $6 million for arriving two days early, on top of the $331 million already being spent on APEC, or all the traffic chaos and locked down city streets. If you want to blame someone, blame terrorists, or 'violent protesters'. That would be 'violent protesters' who haven't actually protested yet. Another example of the infamous psychic powers of News Limited employees :

Let’s look at the complaint that the meeting will cause traffic and business chaos and inconvenience.

Okay, lets. Will APEC cause traffic and business chaos, Michael?

Sure it will, though mostly in central Sydney and really only for four or five days.

Only four or five days? Why that's barely a week. The security measures, closed streets and presidential motorcades blocking traffic for hours will actually be spread over nine days, not four or five. And roads will be closed and clearwayed all the way out to Richmond, and over to Bondi, when the leaders are being transported around.

Why should such a meeting cause this level of chaos and inconvenience? Because of the high levels of security necessary to ensure the safety of these important guests of our country.

And why the high levels of security?

Because it helps feed the 'I'm so important, I want the works' egos of some of the world leaders?

There are two reasons. Any prudent security planner must work on the basis that such a gathering could be an attractive target for a terrorist attack. Such an attack could be on the US President alone, on one of the other heads of state or government or against the group as a whole.

That same prudent security planner would also work on the assumption that planned protests and expressions of dissent, despite the undoubted peaceful intentions of most of those planning to participate, will likely turn violent _ potentially very violent _ at some stage.

Apparently, Michael Costello claims, we know such protest "will likely turn...potentially very violent" because violence has broken out at "similar gatherings around the world". Except for all those APEC and WTO summits where there was no violence at all. But hey, why ruin a good rant with facts?

Are we to accept that world leaders can’t come to Australia because terrorists or violent protesters necessitate stringent safety precautions, thereby inconveniencing Sydneysiders? Surely not.

Nobody said they shouldn't come to Australia. By why not hold the APEC summit in Canberra? Or one of the more beautiful island resorts? Why inconvenience millions of people trying to get to work and do their jobs?

...if there is chaos, violence and inconvenience, don’t blame Bush. Don’t blame the leaders of China or Vietnam, who are two others who have already been singled out to be the object of protest. Don’t blame APEC as a whole. Gosh, don’t even blame John Howard.

So who do we blame?

Blame the terrorists, whose threat is real...

Anyone else?

...and blame those who will want to turn totally defensible and legitimate peaceful protest into violence.

But of course. The violent protesters who haven't actually protested yet, or turned violent. Expect more of this kind of blame-spreading in the next two weeks, even though police already know there are but a few dozen, if that, anarchists and troublemakers in the whole of the country who they are expecting to try and cause mayhem. As we noted above, the police will be contacting them and telling them to stay clear, or cop a free holiday in prison.


But it's not only central Sydney that will be disrupted, as is becoming abundantly clear.

Even a kite-flying festival at Bondi Beach won't escape the reach of APEC-related ultra-security, when John Howard's wife, Jeanette, and the spouses of 20 other world leaders, swoop on the Bondi Icebergs for Sunday lunch :

Bondi's Icebergs will endure a meltdown so guests of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit can do lunch.

The story notes that many of the top Sydney restaurants are situated inside the APEC security zone. But none of them have a view of Bondi Beach. So Jeanette Howard sees no problem disrupting an entire Sunday at Bondi Beach and at the Icebergs so she can show off the view from the restaurant.

The Prime Minister's wife, Janette Howard, and the partners of the 20 visiting leaders will descend on Bondi on Sunday, September 9.

They will bring with them a security operation that will disrupt the celebrated Bondi Icebergs Club swimming races, the annual Festival of Winds kite event and anyone intending to visit the area that day.

The source said club members were "not terribly impressed" with the officials' choice of venue.

That would be an understatement. If the club members are the same ones I came to know as a regular visitor to the Icebergs in the late 1990s you can translate "not terribly impressed" to "extremely f..king pissed off".

The Bondi Icebergs clubhouse will be closed to members until 4pm, before which it will be an operational security centre, the source said. "They're going to use the club for security and police. We're feeding and looking after them while Mrs Howard's entertaining the spouses.

Between 400 and 600 swimmers usually attend Sunday races at the Bondi Baths public pool, on the ground level of the Bondi Baths complex.

The Herald understands that many members are expected to stay away because of the clearways that will be in place and the security checks they will have to go through to swim in the races.

Enjoy your lunch, ladies.

Hopefully the hovering BlackHawk helicopters won't disrupt the kite-flying too much.


3000 Police Slated For APEC Duty - 1/5 Of State's Entire Police Force

Police Warn School Student Protesters : We Cannot Guarantee Your Safety

Eight Year Olds Subjected To APEC Security Checks - Have Your Photo ID Ready If You Want To Cross The Street

APEC Protest Hysteria Gets Big Fat Tabloid Push

Police Warn School Student Protesters : We Cannot Guarantee Your Safety

President Bush's Early APEC Arrival Will Cost Taxpayers $6 Million

The $331 Million Party You're Not Invited To, But You're Paying For


The Daily Telegraph's Kara Lawrence and Joe Hildebrand use their remarkable psychic powers to predict what will happen in Sydney during the coming APEC summit, when thousands of Australians exercise their democratic rights to free speech and right of assembly :

A WEEK-long campaign of mayhem involving every major protest group in Sydney will cause mass CBD disruption during next month's APEC summit.

Unlike the APEC summit itself which, of course, will cause absolutely no mass disruption to the centre of Sydney at all. Except for the ten foot high, five kilometre long 'steel wall' cutting the city in half, BlackHawk helicopters sweeping over the city, massive presidential motorcades blocking traffic for hours at a time, and the deployment of more than 5000 police, armed soldiers and foreign secret service onto city streets who have the right to body search and detain, without charge, anyone they feel like.

The organisers of the APEC summit, according to the Daily Telegraph are bracing "for protests from a range of radical groups..."

Radical groups? Oh my gawd. Hizbullah? Hamas? Tamil Tigers?

Ah, no. Some of the radical groups the Daily Telegraph is referring to, in regards to their self-proclaimed 'campaign of mayhem', include :

Amnesty International, the Greens, Vietnamese and Chinese groups, and Critical Mass...

Amnesty International is a radical group? Chinese groups protesting Communism and campaigning for human rights are radical groups?

Well, Critical Mass sure sound like a bunch of dangerous radicals. Who are Critical Mass? They're bike riders, celebrating their love of biking, and promoting the riding of bicycles as an alternative to filling city streets with more cars.

Yeah, that's pretty radical.

Clearly the Daily Telegraph has already decided that 'MAYHEM' will be the action word in all its stories and headlines covering the protests surrounding the APEC summit. Even if there isn't any mayhem.

Here's a couple of headlines you'll never see in the Daily Telegraph :

'Thousands Of Australians Celebrate Their Love Of Democracy'

'Peaceful Protests Turn Sydney Streets Into One Big Party'

Meanwhile, police are warning that they cannot "guarantee the safety of children caught up in the protests".

As long as the 21 world leaders at the APEC summit don't get tasered, hit by water cannons, targeted by disorientation weapons or stepped on by police horses, how could any parent complain?

The Daily Telegraph also helpfully provides starting times and meeting place locations for a variety of rallies and marches, something the mainstream media rarely does, usually because police would prefer they didn't reveal such details.

By publishing full details of the events, the Daily Telegraph now stands accused of actively encouraging and promoting the rallies and marches by the very groups they've deemed to be 'radical' :

September 7 and 8 - the peak of APEC leaders' week - have emerged as the most popular for protest groups.

Hyde Park, Martin Place, Sydney Town Hall, Belmore Park and Milsons Point will all be occupied on these days.

On Saturday, September 8, at least 15,000 protesters are expected to clog the CBD. The biggest protest, at 10am on that day, is expected to be the 10,000-strong Stop Bush Stop Howard rally and march from Sydney Town Hall to Hyde Park North.

...the Vietnamese community is also staging a protest on that day, which is expected to attract thousands of protesters to Belmore Park, opposite Central railway station.

The Stop Bush Coalition is also organising a stunt protest at Sydney Town Hall to coincide with the arrival of US President George W. Bush on September 4.

Students from at least five Sydney high schools will also walk out of school in a student strike at 1pm on September 5 for a protest at Belmore Park.

The group is to then march along Elizabeth St and back to the park.

Assistant Commissioner Dave Owens, who is heading the police APEC response, said school students who attended protests put themselves at risk.

"These kids might get caught up in a violent protest but, as police, we cannot guarantee their safety if they do," he said. He said police were well-briefed on plans for a student walkout and said "the same rules apply to them as anyone else".

Hear that, children? You have been officially warned that if you turn up and exercise your democratic rights - you know the kind of democratic rights that Australian went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan to help spread around to the oppressed - you may be deemed to be posing the same level of threat as violent anarchists and ski-masked agent provocateurs.

Interesting that nobody organising the numerous rallies is planning for, or even anticipating, "violent protest".

The police and the Daily Telegraph aren't trying to scare off people from exercising their democratic rights in the streets of of an Australian city by any chance, are they?

The irony is that the people who have actually unleashed untold violence, death and destruction will be the ones ringed by the kind of ultra-security never seen deployed before in Australia's history.


A report aired on Channel Seven News on Monday night revealed that the APEC summit will cost Australian taxpayers more than $331 million. One lunch alone will cost $12,000. And President Bush's early arrival in Sydney, throwing years of security planning into chaos, will cost an extra $6 million.

But forget about all that. Lookit! School students are taking part in democracy and demanding that vile war makers be held responsible for their actions. Quick! Somebody stop those kids before they start making sense!


The New South Wales Premier, Morris Iemma, has warned "ferals" to stop trying to recruit school students to take part in the protests around APEC.

That's right, students. If you're politically motivated and you want to make a real difference, then think about joining the Young Labor Party. It's a hive of action, and change. Kind of. Then again, not really.

Iemma has to get in early. That way, "ferals" can be blamed for brainwashing students into marching and protesting, when thousands of them turn out in opposition to the anti-environment policies and anti-human rights doctrines that about half the world leaders present at APEC actively support and practice.

Students, particularly high school students, aren't allowed to be motivated by what they see happening in the world around them, and genuine concern for their futures, to take to the streets of Sydney.

They have to be recruited, by "ferals", as though they're taking part in the rallies against their will.

Cops In Disguise - Agent Provocateurs Busted Trying To Cause Mayhem At Protest

Revealed - White House Manual Details How To Isolate, Marginalise Dissenters And Protesters

Police Reveal Secret APEC Weapon - Motorcycles

Water Cannon Can Break Limbs and Blind - Welcome To APEC Sydney, 2007

APEC : Eight Year Olds Subjected To Security Checks

Mobile 'Prisons' Readied For APEC Summit Protesters

Sydneysiders Told To "Leave Town" During World Leaders Summit

APEC : Sydney To Be Cut In Half By Three Metre High 'Steel Wall' Security Fence

Eight Year Old Children Subjected To Security Checks

Have Your Photo ID Ready If You Want To Cross The Street


The large red lines show the route of the 'steel wall' security fence that will enclose the hotels and conference centres used by world leaders during the APEC summit. No cars will be allowed inside. The blue marks show the gates in the fence where pedestrians can cross, but you may need to produce photo ID to get through, and be subject to body searches.

Apparently it's an honour for Sydney to be chosen to host the APEC conference in three weeks time, bringing together more than 20 world leaders, including US President Bush. But most Sydneysiders are wondering why they couldn't have chosen one of the dozens of luxurious islands of the far north to hold their conference, now the full scope of the staggering security measures that will lock-down half of the city's centre for 10 days are being made public.

A five kilometre long, three metre high security fence will cut Sydney's CBD in half.

You will only be able to enter the lockdown zone on foot, and then only through a small number of gates, manned by some of the 4500 police and thousands more private security guards, secret service and intelligence agents already descending on the city.

You will need to queue at the gates, where your face will be scanned in a live field test of facial recognition technology and assessed by agents for suspicious body language. Police and intelligence agents have been scouring through years of anti-war protests and building up a database of faces that were captured on police and security video.

Nearly everyone who passes through the gates will be searched, have their ID checked and have their handbags and briefcases unpacked.

Once you've produced ID, your name and address will be compared to a long list of suspected 'troublemakers' that the police and intelligence agents have been compiling for months. Everyone who enters the security zone is expected to be photographed, and databased along with their ID information.

Even if you work on the other side of the fence, you can be refused entry without explanation. Should you then choose to make a scene, you may be judged to be a troublemaker and detained, without charge, for the entire length of the APEC summit. If you are charged, you can be denied bail.

There will be buses, converted into mobile prisons by the police, to hold those who the police and intelligence agents deem to be suspicious, or those they want to interrogate further, or submit to full body searches.

Inside the security zone, you will come face to face with police and soldiers carrying machine guns, and if you look to the top floors and rooftops of buildings you might catch a glimpse of the dozens of snipers expected to be in place once President Bush settles into his room at the InterContinental Hotel.

If you watch the skies you will probably see BlackHawk helicopters, surveillance balloons and even jet fighters conducting patrols of the airspace above the city.

Gone from some of the busiest streets of Sydney will be all parked cars, and most other vehicles.

Inside the security zone, even if you are simply enjoying lunch at a cafe with co-workers, you may be singled out for further searches or interrogation. And don't even think about trying to smuggle inside the zone a "Bush Is The World's Number One Terrorist" banner.

Free speech and democratic rights will be suspended inside the security zone.

With an expected 21 world leaders inside the security zone at the height of the summit, it is expected that only people with important business, or security clearance, will be allowed into an inner high security zone, around the hotels housing the leaders, that will swallow up entire blocks of Sydney's central business district.

In preparation for the APEC summit, the staff of dozens of restaurants and hotels were subjected to intense background and security checks.

Even eight year old children, who will be singing at the Opera House, as part of the Sydney Children's Choir, were subjected to security checks and assessments. The good news is none of the children were deemed to be terrorists, or security threats.

During the ten days that the three metre high fence will be in place, or in the process of being constructed, you will need ID to cross city streets that take you inside the fence, however briefly, as part of your journey.

If you want to escape the high security for a quiet lunch in the Botanical Gardens, you will find the three metre high fence cutting right through the heart of the park.

Although the security fence is claimed to be necessary to stop 'terrorists', it will have the added benefit of keeping all protesters hundreds of metres to a kilometre away from the gathering of world leaders, which include Communists, despots, dictators, champions of democracy and war makers. You can decide for yourself who is who.

The NSW police commissioner has made a point of stating that no protesters will get within shouting distance of any of the world leaders.

The NSW government claims the security measures will cost Australian taxpayers more than $170 million, but some estimates place the final costs at more than $300 million.

While some businesses will be mildly compensated for losses incurred during the 10 days of high security, many restaurants and small businesses are expected to lose millions from loss of patronage.

Outside of the city centre, major arterial roads leading to the airport and out to the RAAF base in Richmond, in western Sydney, have been designated 'clearways', which means locals will not be permitted to park outside shops or restaurants in their towns.

Massive delays are expected to further lock up Sydney's already notoriously gridlocked morning and afternoon traffic, as world leaders are shuttled across the city and suburbs in police and secret service motorcades dozens of vehicles long.

President Bush will travel through Sydney in a motorcade compromising of black 4WDs, from which, in the event of an attack, or major security incident, machine gunners will appear through the roofs of the vehicles, firing weapons that can unload more 20 rounds per second.

When the first details of the massive delays and inconveniences caused by the APEC summit were made known, a few months back, Sydneysiders were advised to "get out of town" and take holidays while the world leaders are meeting. A public holiday has been declared in Sydney for Friday, September 7, when the key APEC events are expected to be held.

So if you get stuck in stalled traffic for an hour, or three, or if you're forced off the road driving home from work by a fleet of police cars and limousines, or have a machine gun pointed in your face because you're wearing a 'No More War' badge on the lapel of your suit jacket inside the security zone, just try to remember how much of an honour it is that APEC chose Sydney as the host city for its summit.

Melbourne must be so jealous.

Maybe.

"The Biggest Security Event In Australia's History"

Pedestrians, Present Your Papers Please

Icons Of Sydney Will Be Locked Away Behind Security Fence

Sydney Turns 'Big Brother Police State' Into A Cliche

If you haven't been to Sydney for a few years, and you're familiar with Communist-era East Germany, you will be shocked at what you see if you happen to be in town come September.

September is, of course, the month that central Sydney is turned over to 21 of the world's most powerful regimists, dictators, Communists, war makers and mega-capitalists. In short, 21 of the world's most powerful leaders.

Sydneysiders will be greeted by police and soldiers sporting machine guns, checkpoints, sniper nests, random full body searches and special badges that restrict the movement of people through the centre of the city where the APEC summit is being held.

Although the State government denies it, the APEC summit is also the reason why light poles and traffic lights in 40 locations around Sydney are now being fitted with large speaker systems, just like in the China of Chairman Mao, from which messages of warning, instruction, control, conformity and behaviour modification can be blasted, thrummed and inaudibly toned.

APEC is the reason the speaker systems are going up, but "unspecified emergencies" is the reason why they will still be there, long after the world leaders have gone home.

First you will hear a wailing siren, then you will hear the messages telling you what to do, where to turn, where to hide, in the case of an "attack", straight from Police Central.

Are we living in Israel now? Is Newcastle or Wollongong about to start launching homemade rockets into our suburbs?

Less detail is know about the 'Text Message Boards', which will also spring up in time for APEC, and will allow police, or Chairman Iemma, to relay glowing, flashing instructions to the people of Sydney from a mobile phone.

Tied in with all this is the fact that the public and private surveillance cameras, red light cameras and traffic cameras are now being united into a combined surveillance system stretching the length and breadth of Sydney and its suburbs.

Terrorism is the excuse. The mega-billion dollar security industry is the reality.


All of the above also gels nicely with extraordinary new super police powers :

Police and security agencies will be given unprecedented "sneak and peek" powers to search the homes and computers of suspects without their knowledge under legislation to go before Federal Parliament next week.

The extensive powers - which also give federal police the right to monitor communications equipment without an interceptions warrant - come amid growing public disquiet about counter-terrorism powers following the bungled handling of the Mohamed Haneef case.

Under the laws, officers from the federal police and other agencies would be able to execute "delayed notification warrants", allowing them to undertake searches, seize equipment and plant listening devices in businesses and homes.

Police and security officers will be able to assume false identities to gain entry and conduct the surreptitious searches.

But the person affected by the raid does not have to be informed for at least six months, and can remain in the dark for 18 months if the warrant is rolled over.

The Greens senator Kerry Nettle said the handling of Dr Haneef's case served as a reminder that law enforcement and intelligence agencies made mistakes, and already had extensive and intrusive powers.

"Given the Haneef debacle, now is not the time to be giving more powers to the Australian Federal Police," she said.

The bill also deals with "controlled operations" - undercover operations where federal agents are permitted to undertake criminal activity in order to further their investigations.

Privacy Is An Illusion.


'Mobile Prisons' Readied For APEC Summit

APEC To Cost A Staggering $24 Million Per Day For Security - Sydneysiders To "Leave Town" During Summit

Detentions Without Charge, Random Body Searches, Machine-Gun Armed Soldiers To Hit The Streets Of Sydney

Aussie Circa 2007 : Cynical, Lacking In Empathy, Obsessed With Money And Property

Is This Really Australia Today? Or Just Sydney?

As is traditional, an Australian author has scored an English release for his new novel, so it's time to piss all over the homeland for the amusement of the Brits, many of whom still don't like the idea that "the worst of the worst" of England's prison ships built something close to paradise over the past two centuries in this sun-drenched land so far away.

Well, if not paradise, then something far less grim than most of England on a wet, misty winter's day, when the sun sets at 4pm, and nothing else to do but fuck, dance and drink.

The Australian author in question here is Richard Flanagan, who wrote a fairly interesting novel The Unknown Terrorist. It's one of the few novels to look at the effect of terrorism and the 'War On Terror' in Australia. But the true terror for Flanagan seems to be what he found on the streets and in the hearts of Sydneysiders when he decamped from his tree-crowded Tasmanian home to Sydney to write the novel.

Actually, Flanagan does make some valid, but troubling, points about what occupies the minds of many Sydneysiders today, and, as he explains in the quotes below, the new Australian exemplified by money-obsessed, property-focused Sydneyites, is the antithesis of the creature that once passed as the typical Aussie.

Blame John Howard? No, says Flanagan, we did it to ourselves :

"I wanted to make a mirror to what I felt Australia had become. I think it is a pretty bleak country at the moment. It was a land of such hope and possibility when I was younger, and in the past couple of years, like a lot of Australians, I've ended up feeling ashamed of what it had become. But we can't blame governments or parties or politicians; we have to accept in the end it was we as a people who happily went along with this.

"There was a loss of empathy. I don't know where that comes from. We're a migrant nation made up of people who've been torn out of other worlds, and you'd think we would have some compassion."

On laying blame :

"...in my country, they're blaming Howard, but that's such an absurd and easy option. There is a crisis that is not political - an epidemic of loneliness, of sadness - and we're completely unequal to dealing with it. We're obsessed these days with believing that the answer is always individual, that it lies in ourselves. This takes every form of madness from self-help manuals to step aerobics, and is always about improving yourself. But the reality is, it lies in other people and making connections with them, yet it is a world where it's ever harder to make those connections."

The limits of truth :

"In Australia....we have a whole spectrum of media commentators who consistently argue that things like national security demand that individual freedoms be truncated, and we're also constantly told there are needs and necessities of the nation that mean there are limits on the truth. But there can be no limits on the truth. If there are limits on the truth, you've opened up the road to tyranny."

On David Hicks :

"To train with al-Qaida prior to 2001 is a different thing than to go and train with them now. One can understand how people like him might end up there. You don't have to agree with them, and I don't. I have a friend who died in the Bali bombing. I don't support the murder of innocent people anywhere by anyone, but what really matters is truth and individual freedom, and when those things start coming under such heavy attack as they have in recent times, then people should be very disturbed....there is nothing higher than individual freedom."

On terrorism :

"Terrorism is simply murder. What is it we dislike? We dislike murder and the use of murder to try to impose a repressive regime. But it's murder, that's what it is. The word terrorism has been misused for so long that it clouds our understanding of what happens. After the Bali bombing, you can make a lot of criticisms of the Indonesian authorities, but they treated it as a crime and they tracked down those people. That's what it was - a crime. The Americans saw September 11 as an attack on their national honour, and it led them into a madness that the world is now paying for".

The Full Story Here is a worth a read. As is Flanagan's novel.

Philip Adams : Australia Has Become Another Country....Almost