WHAT WAS HE THINKING? PM Abbott Instructs Terrorists Where To Strike

Tony Abbott, Parliament, October 2014 (image via Twitter)

Australia still hasn't suffered a terrorist attack on our soil, and everybody agrees that is both fortunate and a very good thing indeed. But in the wake of a 'lone wolf' attack on Canada's parliament, PM Tony Abbott has been ramping up The Fear, with his near constant curious smirk, trumpeting, 'We Could Be Next.'

This morning on 3AW radio, Abbott made a clear and direct suggestion to potential terrorists where they could strike in Australia, for both impact and lack of security. Does he want terror to happen here? What the hell was he thinking? Was he even thinking at all?

PM Tony Abbott, 3AW, Oct 24, 2014:

"I suppose to extremist fanatics (the Canberra War Memorial) could therefore be a target. There's the Last Post at our War Memorial every day and I guess if someone wanted to do something gruesome that's the kind of thing that could be looked at." 

 He finished the interview by stating as prime minister he was the minister responsible for National Security.

Now that is scary.

Police Do Not Have The Right To Immediately Search Your Mobile Phone, Blackberry Or Video Camera

This story is a few weeks old, but it's worth repeating, again and again:

A man detained and threatened with arrest under the Terrorism Act for filming police on his mobile phone says police abused their powers.

Nick Holmes a Court, CEO of web-based media companies BuzzNumbers and ShiftedPixels, was walking to his home near Kings Cross in Sydney about 10pm on December 19.

He said police forcibly took his BlackBerry phone and threatened him with arrest both under the Australian Anti-Terrorism Act and for allegedly disobeying a police directive.

Mr Holmes a Court said he had started filming what looked like a search after he noticed a group of police walking down his street.

"I went to one guy and asked what was going on but he told me to move along, and if I didn't they'd be able to arrest me," he said.

"So I moved down the street a few hundred metres to where my apartment was, pulled out my phone and started filming."

Mr Holmes a Court said he had stopped filming before two of the police officers approached, demanding he surrender his BlackBerry mobile phone and telling him he had committed a crime if he had recorded them.

"It was in my hand, and they were saying, 'Give me your phone, give me your phone,' but I just kept repeating, 'I do not consent to a search of my phone'," Mr Holmes a Court said.

"It was pulled out of my hand - it wasn't me handing it over to her - and now I've got this girl looking through my phone and all my content - my contacts, photos, text messages and emails."

Mr Holmes a Court said he repeatedly complained to the police while they tampered with his phone, but was told to "shut up".

Queensland Council for Civil Liberties president Michael Cope said police did not have the authority to confiscate cameras or stop people from taking pictures of them performing their duties.

"It's not appropriate for the police to be stopping people taking pictures of them," Mr Pope said.

"They've got no power to do that, none whatsoever, and they've got no power to confiscate cameras.

"Why should they be fighting being scrutinised?"

Maybe they just wanted to see what the quality of the footage was like, maybe they thought they could use it in one of the many reality TV shows police now control, and profit from :

The insatiable demand for reality-TV is proving to be a boom for NSW Police with the force signing an increasing number of exclusive deals with "true crime" style shows.

The force has signed contracts with at least four highly-rated shows, granting film crews exclusive access behind the crime scene tape in "user-pays" arrangements.

In return for signing confidentiality agreements and allowing NSW Police to vet their final products, reality-TV crews are ushered in by police film supervisors to crime scenes while other media are being kept back.

Earlier this year, the NSW Police Force encrypted their police scanners, which means the media is not informed of many major crimes, such as murders, until a media release is issued the following day.

Unless the media happens to have an exclusive 'reality TV' deal with the police, then their on the scene program makers can report back to the news desk what sort of shit has just gone down.

Coming To Your Living Room, Police-Enforced Alcohol-Free Zones

Many Australians agreed with alcohol bans in violence and sex-crime plagued Northern Territory Aboriginal communities. Sure, the meme went, such catch-all bans mean responsible drinkers in those communities have to go without, but if it saves a community from more alcohol related violence and sex crimes then, well, obviously it's necessary, isn't it?

But what happens when alcohol bans are proposed for communities that not Aboriginal?

That is, what if police decide that a certain part of a suburb, or street or apartment block should be made a no-go zone for booze, due to violence and disorder, but the no-go zone is filled with white, middle-class Australians instead of Aboriginals?

What then?

Drinking a glass of wine in your own home could be illegal under extreme new liquor laws that rubber-stamp the use of no-go alcohol zones in NSW.

Under the plan, drinking hotspots across the state can be labelled as "restricted alcohol areas" for up to three years under new laws that are just 10 weeks away.

A document recently published by the State Government reveals the detail of the alcohol bans outlining that areas of "chronic alcohol abuse" can be slapped with a range of restrictions.

"Restrictions will not be limited to indigenous communities," the paper reads.

Under the new laws, any area of the state can be declared a restricted alcohol zone and it applies to the sale of alcohol as well as possession and consumption in any premises - licensed or not.

...it was still undecided as to what penalties might be imposed if someone was caught with alcohol in a banned zone.

Eviction? Enforced alcohol counselling?

Perhaps instead these no-alcohol zone insurgents will be screened for booze before they can enter their neighourhood or apartment building, or forced to endure in-home surveillance cameras.

It is undeniable that the media hysteria surrounding binge drinking and teenage alcohol abuse in recent weeks, with plenty of story meat processed by police media units, has been part of the softening up process for the implementation of alcohol-free zones that include the interiors of peoples' homes.

You can take away an Australian's right to smoke in public, to not care about seat belts, to burn off the rubbish in the back yard instead of sifting it for recyclables, to ride a train without a ticket once or twice in a year of paid for travel and to shout abuse at referees and opposition sporting teams, but if you try and take away the right to get hammered at home and pass out face down in a pizza box while missing the last five minutes of the Friday night game on the wall screen, then you're rolling down a road filled with neon billboards bearing the warning "Trouble Brewing."

Olympic Torch Anti-Freedom Farce Continues

Media Banned From Torch Relay Through Nation's Capital

Australia will get to see what the evening TV news is like in China during the Canberra leg of the fiasco-harassed Olympic torch relay on Thursday, after Beijing insisted on banning the general media from the event.

Channel Seven will have journalists there, Radio 2GB will have journalists there. But seeing as Channel Seven and Radio 2GB have exclusive broadcast rights for the 2008 Olympics, will we actually see any journalism?

If thousands of pro-China and pro-Tibet protesters come face to face in the streets of Canberra and get into it, how will it benefit either Channel Seven or Radio 2GB to give the violence the coverage it deserves? Will Channel Seven provide the rest of the media with Olympic Games-related rioting outside the nation's capital footage if they decide not to air it themselves? They are utterly compromised, and Beijing is insisting no other media be close enough to the actual torch relay to show what really happens.

Beijing can't stop the protests, but they can to, and apparently are being allowed, to limit the coverage :

Council for Civil Liberties national president Terry O'Gorman lammed the arrangements, saying there was a "clear conflict of interest" in allowing media companies with broadcast rights to the Games to produce most of the coverage.

"They've got an interest in promoting the Games and minimising any negative impact that the protests would have on the Games coverage," he said. A wider array of journalists, including from the print media, should be given access. "A picture in this case doesn't tell a thousand words; you need the words to tell the picture," he said.

How will the rest of Australia's corporate media respond to this crackdown on their freedom to cover history in their own country? Will they boycott the Olympics in protest? Not likely.


Another "wall of steel" and massive police deployment unfurls in an Australian city, with a promise from the prime minister himself of beatings from police for protesters who get out of line :

A great wall of steel has been erected along the entire Beijing Olympic torch relay route in Canberra, with the Prime Minister saying police would "come down like a ton of bricks" on protesters planning violent demonstrations.

Kevin Rudd's warning came as the cost of hosting Thursday's event doubled to almost $2 million.

"If any protesters, irrespective of their political point of view, engage in unruly, disorderly or violent behaviour, then the police will come down on them like a ton of bricks," Mr Rudd told the 7.30 Report last night.

A waist-high metal grille surrounded landmarks such as Parliament House, the National Art Gallery and the War Memorial.

"It's quite a blow to the innocence of our city but we must do it," the ACT Chief Minister, Jon Stanhope.

The Australian torch relay organiser, Ted Quinlan, could not rule out smuggling the torch on to a bus if protests in Canberra got out of control. "The flame has to be mobile," he said. "Any major disruption could kill it."

The Olympic torch is like a shark now, is it? It has to keep moving or it will die?

There is clearly a concerted effort by Olympic organisers in Australia and Beijing to confuse the public over just how involved the infamous blue-tracksuit wearing Chinese paramilitary will be during the Olympic torch relay in Canberra.

China is sending 30 of these official "flame attendants" to Canberra, and we are told they will follow the torch, in a bus, with at least one riding directly behind the relay runners on an ACT police motorbike.

The story, for now, is that the Chinese paramilitary will only come off the bus when the torch is handed from one relay participant to another, there is a lot of re-lighting to be done. But the torch changes hands about every 200 metres. Right. So every two hundred or so metres on the sixteen kilometre route, the bus will stop, the paramilitary will file off, stand around, attend to the flame and then it's back on the bus again, for another few seconds of travel.

They're going to get on and off the bus around 70 or 80 times, are they?

Of course they're going to be running with the torch, when it's not being transported on the bus that is. There will also be a solid turn out of Chinese security agents and videographers amongst the pro-Tibet protesters. Every single one of them have their image and movements captured by Chinese intelligence and immediately databased in Beijing.

The ACT and federal police, at least, do sound like they won't be putting up with any of the scenes in London and other city tours of the torch where the Chinese paramilitary took a front line role in violently dealing with protesters.

Police claim they will charge any foreign security agent who lays a hand on a protester. That's their job.

But if only Channel Seven and a radio station are allowed to directly witness what is actually going on inside the moving flesh wall of security, how will we know our police are keeping their word?

Let's hope it all goes down peacefully.

China Sends 30 Paramilitary To Guard Olympic Torch In Canberra

Police Threaten To Arrest Any Paramilitary Who Lays A Hand On Australian Protesters

A country quietly, steadily installing police state apparatus will, they claim, be protecting its people from an advanced police state security team, whose Quest For Fire-like mission is to keep a flame lit, while pro-Communist Capitalism and pro-democracy activists shout support and abuse at the flame as it's passed from one running person to another in the recreation of a sports-related ritual popularised by the Nazi German government in 1936.

The Olympic Torch relay in Canberra later this week has the makings of an utterly surreal, but hopefully not violent, mega-spectacle of the most bizarre kind :

Chinese officials have been warned their paramilitary "flame attendants" will be arrested and hauled away if they touch one of our citizens during the Australian leg of the torch relay.

Police are still keen to ban the attendants from escorting the flame at all.

Instead, runners will be protected by six Australian Federal Police officers: two behind; two alongside and two in front.

"The federal police have told the Chinese Embassy that the flame attendants will not have a security role," a source close to the negotiations said.

"They can't touch any member of the Australian public and if they do they will be arrested and charged under Australian law."

So 30 highly trained Chinese paramilitary will supposedly ride in a vehicle near the flame, while six Australian Federal Police provide running security, but should any of the foreign paramilitary engage in thuggish behaviour with a pro-democracy protester, the police will cause a (positive) international incident by arresting the foreign government paramilitary, who will probably then claim diplomatic immunity.

2008 has already proven to be an extremely weird year, and it's only going to get weirder from here on in.

Wait until you see the 'One World/Same World' Beijing Olympics opening ceremony, and the incandescent rage from Chinese officials at the numerous pro-Tibet protests from athletes, and media.

'Australians Now Support Big Brother Society'

Will 2008 Herald The Rise Of 'The Unplugged'?

Why did Australians fall so easily and with so little dissent into the clutches of a surveillance society?

We used to cherish our privacy and gag at the thought that our every movement outside the home could be captured on video and stored away somewhere. Or that our personal details, our opinions, our beliefs and our favourite food choices could be databased and monitored for the rest of our lives.

Many of are still repulsed at even the idea of every Australian being issued with a centrally controlled and fully databased ID card. But it's already here, even if it is spread across your driver's lisence, supermarket loyalty cards, credit cards, e-mail records and search engine queries. All those records will be centralized soon enough, if they aren't already. If you're working, or on social security, you've already been issued with a unique numerical ID - it's called your tax file number.

Echelon is yet another of those once absurd conspiracy theories that has turned out to be an everyday fact. Every phone call, every e-mail, every fax, every text message, every web page you visit can surveilled if you are deemed to be "of interest", or if you are associated with people "of interest", even if those friends or family members haven't committed a crime, yet.

Speak, type or text the right 'key word' and a record of your communication will be stored within Echelon. Three years or two decades from now, your teenage years joke text message about terrorism or 'bombing' may come back to haunt you.

And why did you buy so many tubs of pool chlorine during the second half of 2008? Your store loyalty cards are compiling details of your shopping habits that will be analysed and evaluated, in years to come, in ways that even the techheads at Coles and Franklins haven't yet considered.

Did you even stop to think about how all that personal information about yourself that you so freely typed into MySpace questionnaires and quizzes and into Facebook profiles will be used? Do you even know that all that info will never disappear, and that those personal details are already being traded and circulated and analysed and used to build profiles of you, your emotions and your thought patterns?

And if you think that using fake names or profiles on MySpace or Facebook will keep you safely anonymous, think again. That little bout of Googling your own name a few months ago IDed you to your computer's IP address.

Big Brother isn't just watching you. He's already inside your head and saving back-ups of your thoughts, your dreams, your passions and desires.

Perhaps the next great trend amongst Australians will not to become more 'wired' but to become one of 'The Unplugged' - lose the cell phone, burn the Blackberry, delete the MySpace and Facebook profiles, shred the loyalty cards and credit cards, hang up on anyone who rings your home and starts asking questions for a 'survey' and only use internet browsers that allow you to wipe your personal information and browsing records every time you end a session online.

Why make it any easier for them to know so much about you? They already know enough.

From the Sydney Morning Herald :

Increasingly Australians are being bar-coded and scoped. Their whereabouts are checked, along with the company they keep. How they make money, how they spend it - all is monitored in the name of progress, profit and private and national security.

Australians had been sceptical about the surveillance industry and associated identity checks. But the terrorist attacks in the US on September 11, 2001, and subsequent terrorist outrages changed much of that. And while law enforcement agencies' activities have expanded considerably to fit new laws and demands, other surveillance industries and programs have enthusiastically jumped on the "new world order" band wagon and grown exponentially.

Data-matching and data-mining allow information generated by people doing ordinary things - such as using automatic teller machines, paying with credit cards, using shopping loyalty cards or smartcards, writing cheques, renting cars or videos, sending or receiving emails or surfing the internet - to be collected and collated, often without the subject's consent or knowledge.

Once people carefully husbanded their identities, and that privacy was respected. For years the only piece of paper people were happy to carry was a driver's licence.

In 1987 Bob Hawke's government pulled a double dissolution in an attempt to get its proposed Australia Card legislation through the Senate. The ID check for Australian citizens and resident foreigners arose partly out of the ease with which drug runners wandered in and out of the country but voters remained unconvinced.

As a consequence Australians were lumbered with a tax file number, a sort of watered down version of the American Social Security number that, together with the Medicare card, targets small fish by permitting greater scrutiny of the link between welfare and tax.

For the hundreds of thousands who came to Australia as immigrants, the absence of ID checks symbolised the new freedoms they had embraced.

Authoritarian regimes were skewered as Big Brother in George Orwell's book Nineteen Eighty-Four, published in 1949. The two words were synonymous with one-party states and dictatorships for years. However, just as globalisation, the internet and money markets made Australians surrender to a brave new world where surveillance was king, the sense of incipient threat that Orwell's words symbolised was drained away with the 1999 arrival of the reality television franchise that eventually saw totalitarianism give way to "turkey-slapping".

The proliferation of online transactions and a trend towards a cashless society means thieves no longer need to steal a wallet when they can steal an identity.

Billions are being spent to counter identity theft. Research into "gait DNA" enables a computer to make identifications by matching a person's facial image to gait, height and weight. Also being investigated are body odour measurement and ear geometry.

Traditionally Australians have been wary of such "Big Brother" developments but opinion polls show that - like Americans and the English - Australians now tend to support more rather than less surveillance.

But for how much longer?

Could you live your life as one of The Unplugged?

Police Pepper Spray Children At Tennis Match

Those Australian Open tennis match crowds can really get out of control, and extremely anti-social, what with all that shouting and cheering and clapping...and shouting and cheering.

Obviously, there was no option but to unleash powerful jets of pepper spray into a crowd of mostly calm people who then bolted for the exits, placing the lives of dozens of people at risk. At least six children are believed to have been maced in the internationally embarrassing display of 'zero tolerance'.

Says one of the players, who witnessed the unbelievable scenes from the court:

"It was full of people who were cheering and looked like they were enjoying the tennis and it was a really nice atmosphere."

Fellow player Fernando Gonzales, was reportedly the one to whom a rail of abuse was hurled from someone in the crowd, who was then confronted by police, and told he had to leave. When his friends asked why, the police moved in and maced the crowd. Gonzales says a bit of verbal abuse now and then is no big deal, and he's used to it.

Gonzalez said he had never seen police use pepper spray before at a tennis tournament.

...the Chilean said, while the crowd was noisy and one Greek fan was abusive to him in Spanish, he was not overly insulted by anything said.

"They say a few things, but it's part of the crowd," Gonzalez said.

"Only one (offensive) thing (was said) in Spanish, but it's nothing that bad. I mean, they're fans ... it was very noisy, but also was the Chileans.

"It was really fun for them. It was a lot of Chileans and a lot of Greeks too.

"But, for me, it's fun to play like that. It's like a Davis Cup match. I think the people enjoy it."

The pepper sprayed children should count themselves lucky. Soon, police might be reaching for tasers instead of just the mace.

Prime Minister Declares Police Tactics Of Intimidation And 'Brutalisation' Of Sydney Protesters "Worked Brilliantly"

State Premier Declares "Mission Accomplished"



By Darryl Mason

As far as prime minister John Howard is concerned, the use of more than 2000 police officers, police dogs, snipers, the deployment of the full riot squad and a water cannon circling anti-Iraq War protesters in Sydney on Saturday "worked brilliantly."

So happy was the NSW state premier, Morris Iemma, with the police violence against peaceful protesters that he directly echoed President Bush's infamous May, 2003, declaration on the Iraq War by stating, "Mission Accomplished."

A video published on YouTube reveals that police ID tags did not fall off in scuffles, as senior police are now claiming, but were removed on purpose, according to one police officer :

"It's one of the policies the bosses have this week".

The fact that "no windows were broken" during the protest shows the police tactics were successful, said premier Morris Iemma.

The "forward action" taken by police, a strategy long planned to be used against protesters, was "the right decision" and "it worked brilliantly, it really did."

A former police officer has been quoted as saying on-duty police had no excuse to remove their ID badges, which are normally attached by velcro :

"They're saying they don't want anyone to know who they are, then they are demanding that the average citizen produce identification."

International tourism is one of Australia's biggest industries, generating billions of dollars. That source of revenue, and jobs, may now be under threat from the 'police state' display of security during the APEC summit, as tourism experts fear Sydney's international image has been damaged :

The managing director of the Tourism and Transport Forum, Christopher Brown, said authorities failed to strike the right balance when given a promotional opportunity akin to hosting the Olympics.

"Empty streets with concrete barriers, high fences and riot squad officers, snipers in buildings and helicopters," Mr Brown told ABC Radio. "We just got out of control … we just didn't get the balance right between the imagery and security."

A senator for the Green Party wants an independent inquiry to be held to investigate the tactics and full force display of intimidation used by police. The senator said she was concerned that 'police pointed guns at protesters and people were subject to video surveillance.'

We eyewitnessed more than three dozen police using video cameras to image protesters. Police are now allowed by law to database the faces of every single one of the more than 6000 people, including children, who marched peacefully through the streets of Sydney last Saturday.

Got The Fear Yet? Police Predict "Full Scale Riot" For Saturday 's Anti-Bush Rally In Sydney

Wednesday : Hundreds Of School Children, And Their Parents, Defy Police And March Peacefully, Without Incident

Anti-APEC Protests? That's The Propaganda Speaking. These Are 'End The War', Workers Rights And Anti-Bush Marches


The absolutely essential security fence cutting through the heart of the Botanical Gardens. This is needed to protect world leaders from jihadist-crazed possums and ducks.


A Question : Why, when running stories on planned peaceful protests in Sydney this week, does the television media point-blank refuse to show footage of the most recent, and most violent, protest seen in Sydney? The protest where police and police cars were bricked and bottled, where ambulances were smashed up and where innocent people were brutally assaulted?

We're talking, of course, about the Cronulla Riots. The violent, anti-police protests that journalists and commentators like Piers Akerman, Tim Blair, Alan Jones and Andrew Bolt now pretend never happened.

Surely it can't be an accident that the Cronulla Riots have conveniently disappeared down the Memory Hole?


When is a "full scale riot" not actually a "full scale riot"?

When it hasn't happened yet.

So insistent were the NSW Police on getting a protest march in Sydney, planned for Saturday, outlawed that they ramped up The Fear and mega-hype to such a level of overkill that the riot that hasn't happened, and is unlikely to happen, has now become an international story, dominating cable news breaks covering the APEC summit, filling front pages on American, Asian and European online news sites and burning up the wire services.

This AFP news report will be in hundreds of newspapers across the world today, on the same day that a poll of 30,000 international tourists voted Sydney the best city in the world. That is the news story about Sydney that should be dominating headlines, not rampaging fear-mongering about a riot that hasn't happened.

Sydney was the best city in the world, until President Bush came to town, and 'The Cage' became a mini-police state reality for more than one hundred thousand city workers.

I sure hope prime minister John Howard and the NSW Police are proud of themselves today.

They've made Sydney sound like a city about to explode, where nothing could be further from the truth.

There is not the slightest hint or sliver of proof, despite the absurd propaganda spouted daily by the Rupert Murdoch media, that any protest group is planning to "confront police" or launch into a "full scale riot" during the Saturday protests.

The international media traveling with President Bush got a taste for themselves today of what happens when Sydneysiders gather to protest against President Bush and the War On Iraq.

300 schoolchildren staged walkouts across Sydney and held an entirely peaceful and incident free march through the streets of the city, before congregating for an afternoon party in a park.

But between 200 and 400 police turned up, including undercover officers and intelligence agents, waiting for trouble that never came.

While police spokesmen were hyping violence, it was left to one young student, Rainee Lyleson, to state clearly and precisely why the marches through Sydney during the APEC summit were so important :

"Protest is not violent, war is violent....We will not be intimidated."

Some of the students parents were so worried about police violence, and the threat posed by 'agent provocateurs', that they volunteered to act as marshals for the protest.

There was not a single incident that made the news, except for a prank pulled by The Chaser, a satirical news/skit television show.

It is unlikely to be any different come Saturday.


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The psychological war conducted by prime minister John Howard, the NSW Police and some in the media against those planning to come to Sydney to march on Saturday has been chilling, and mind-numbing.

Part of the psy-op has been to put forward the notion that what the tens of thousands of people who are planning to march on Saturday are actually protesting against is the APEC summit itself.

APEC helps nations get out of poverty, mumbled Howard, these protesters don't want poor people to get out of poverty.

The man is a moron if he believes such guff. And why should he? He knows where such clearly idiotic propaganda has come from - his own advisers and speech writers.

But the media soaked up Howard's bullshit, and have reported all week on the protests as being 'Anti-APEC'.

The main target of the protest, and much of the dissent and disgust seen and heard in the streets of Sydney this week, is President Bush and the War On Iraq. The second and third key issues are climate change and workers rights, the two loudest issues chanted about by the schoolchildren on Wednesday.

By trying to seize, shape and control the debate about the protests, Howard attempted to present the need for rallies in the streets of Sydney as being nonsensical, pointless and entirely unnecessary.

Why do you want to protest? We're helping poor people. That's what APEC is for, goes the Howard line.

For almost a full week, the NSW Police have done little more than repeatedly claim that the Saturday protest will erupt into violence and the city will be torn apart by rioting and bloodshed.

The top riot squad cop even went as far as saying he has never been so fearful of the violence such a march will unleash on Sydney's streets.

This is all propaganda of the most dubious and anti-democratic kind, and it's been beyond disgusting to witness such a massive psychological operation of intimidation being waged on the peaceful and usually easy-going people of Sydney.

Forcing hundreds of thousands of Sydney workers to endure the daily confusion and disorientation of The Cage is bad enough.

But this war of intimidation on the hearts and minds of Sydneysiders is the only thing about the protests that is unprecedented. And it's disturbing in the extreme.


The Stop Bush Coalition, the main organisers of the marches, lost a court battle yesterday to hold their protest in a public space hundreds of metres away from The Cage and the hotels and conference centres were 21 world leaders will be holding a series of weekend meetings.

The Stop Bush Coalition last night voted to move the meeting place and street route for the protest, but they still have to get the okay from police.

If the NSW Police say no to the march, effectively banning an anti-war rally in a major city of the 'free world', anyone who gathers and attempts to protest can be arrested for blocking traffic.
And they will be arrested. Police have been very clear on this. That's why they have 40 to 60 buses fitted out as mobile prisons, and emptied five hundred beds in local jails.

Before the NSW Police began their attempts to outlaw the Saturday march, the crowd estimated to show up was around 5000 people. It probably would be been 1000, maybe 800.

But now the estimate is 20,000. After all the publicity, it could rise to 50,000 on the day.

At least government ministers have now admitted that the ultra-security locking down Sydney is there to protect the APEC world leaders against possible terror attacks, instead of the ridiculous spin earlier this week from John Howard who demanded that the public "blame protesters" and not the presence of President Bush, for the unprecedented city centre lockdown.


Later tonight, we'll take a look at the history of the 'Black Blok' anarchist groups that are the only ones threatening trouble on Saturday.

Conveniently, they always wear masks and are granted anonymity by Murdoch media to spread their propaganda and threats.

Most curiously, despite providing the media with shock footage of attacks on police, and kicking in shop windows, very few of these 'urban terrorists' are ever prosecuted by the police, in Australia, the US, Canada or across Europe. And yet such 'activists' are frequently responsible for the only acts of violence and destruction at numerous otherwise peaceful protests.

MORE TO COME....


APEC Protesters Should Be Alert For 'Agent Provocateurs'

Police Admit They Sent 'Agent Provocateurs' Armed With Rocks Into Peaceful Protests

PHOTOS : Inside The Great Sydney Cage - "We're Like A Bunch Of Fucking Rats In A Maze!"

The Psy-Op Is Underway : Police Predict "A Full Scale Riot" During Anti-Bush Protest, Warn Of "Unprecedented Violence"

20,000 Expected At Saturday's Anti-War Rally - Top Riot Squad Officer Says He Is Braced For "The Worst Violence Of His Career"

Protest Organisers Vote For New March Route They Hope Will Avoid Confrontation With Police

Police Commissioner Warns Protesters Who Obstruct Traffic Will Find Themselves In A Police Cell "For A Few Days"

Sydney : Inside 'The Cage'

"We're Like A Bunch Of Fucking Rats In A Maze!"


The 'steel wall' goes up only metres from the Sydney Opera House.

Report And Photos By Darryl Mason

On the outside of the 'steel wall' stretching five kilometres through the centre of Sydney, it looks like a fence. A three metre high, concrete reinforced fence.

But it's only once you're on the inside of the 'security zone' that you realise what it really is.

It's a cage. It's not the Great Wall Of Sydney, as the media were referring to it a few days ago.

It's The Sydney Cage.


One of The Cage entry points for vehicles in the heart of Sydney.

Inside The Cage yesterday afternoon, police, security guards and foreign secret service agents patrolled the streets, manned entry points along the 'steel wall' and videod every person who walked past the side and rear service entries to the Intercontinental Hotel, where President Bush is now staying.

The few pedestrians and tourists wandering around inside The Cage barely spoke. Heads down, shoulders slumped, people moved as fast as they could to get to where they were going. Entire cafes, normally crowded with tourists, sat empty, rows of chairs and tables bereft of customers. If you wanted coffee, or food, you waited until you were outside of The Cage to stop and get what you wanted.

Nobody wanted to linger in there. Inside The Cage was a Sydney I'd never seen before. Quiet, subdued, confused and nervous.

Inside The Cage, police can stop you, demand you show your ID, question you about your reasons for being inside the 'security zone' and ask to see photographs on your cell phone or digital camera.

The police 'can' do all these things, according to the media. We must get used to it.

But there isn't any law that allows the police to do any of these things.

The media has actively helped to create the mindset amongst Sydneysiders that they have to do what police and security guards demand of them, whether that be hand over their day planners and cell phones for investigation, or provide details of where they work.

But police don't have the law on their side. You can refuse all these police requests, and on Tuesday afternoon I witnessed a number of Sydneysiders, furious and frustrated at being forced to navigate a series of steel corridors just to cross the street, telling police they were not going to comply with requests for ID and personal details.

"You have no right to ask me for that information," said one elderly man, on Bridge Street. "Show me the law that says you have the right to question me like this."

The policeman couldn't, and he look embarrassed at being challenged.

At best, all the police can do inside The Cage is ask to you leave the area, and if you fail to do so, they are allowed to escort you out. If you resist, police are then able to arrest you on any number of minor offences related to resisting police directives.


More than 40 wireless 'emergency alert' speaker systems were installed throughout the city centre. They emit ear-piercing sirens and spoken alerts.

Before the arrival of President Bush, the general mood of the hundreds of security guards and police milling about at various check points and gate ways along the walls of The Cage was not tension, or paranoia, it was sheer and total boredom.

Inside, or outside, The Cage, there were no hordes of "violent protesters". No "roaming gangs" of anarchists and anti-capitalists as the media and John Howard had promised.

There were just an enormous number of security people standing around doing nothing, or chatting quietly with tourists.


story continues after....
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story continues.....


The only people I found in two hours of walking around inside The Cage who were close to anarchy were the owners and managers of retail shops, tourist outlets and restaurants and cafes.

Dozens of cafes and food courts and restaurants and bars had less than four or five customers, many others sat completely empty. Food outlets that struggle to break even at the best of times were selling off meals and containers of unsold food for a quarter of their normal prices. Literally forced to give away their products and produce by the presence of an economic summit that promoted free trade and free markets.

Nearly all the small business owners I spoke to inside The Cage, that rely on street traffic trade for their livelihoods, said their takings were down 60 to 80% because of the APEC summit, and the presence of the 'steel wall' security fence. They still have five more days of such economic ruin to endure before The Cage is taken down.

For many of these pro-capitalism entrepreneurs, the APEC summit has heralded a financial disaster that will take months to recover from. Staff have been laid off, deliveries from wholesalers cancelled, the financial damage seeps out from these small businesses across the sprawl of Sydney and its suburbs.

Tens of thousands of Sydney workers have been told they aren't needed to work this week in restaurants, cafes and retail outlets. For most of these casual workers, a day off means a loss of a day's wages. A week with no work means big financial trouble for minimum wage workers who are already struggling to get by.

None of the cafes, restaurants and retail outlets inside The Cage who are suffering from a massive loss of trade and income due solely to the APEC summit have been offered any kind of compensation by the state or federal government.


The three metre high 'steel wall' also, bizarrely, cuts through the heart of Sydney's Botanical Gardens. The local fauna were as confused as the office workers who usually eat their lunch in the park.

"I don't want to go in there," said one elderly German tourist to his family, at Circular Quay, as he balked at entering The Cage. "I don't like checkpoints and questions."

Neither do most Sydneysiders.

The crush of pedestrians on street corners at 5pm as people headed home from work was intense. Open gates to get out of The Cage were few and far between. You were forced to squeeze through small openings, people rushing to make buses and get home slammed into each other as the disorientating effects of so many 'steel walls' and checkpoints and gate ways caused confusion and anger.


Sydney, 3pm Tuesday - No cars, few pedestrians, stunned tourists, local businesses suffer 80% downturn in takings.

It's remarkable how easy it is to get disorientated trying to navigate your way through the maze of fences. Street names and routes through the city you've known and walked for decades become mysteries as you discover you can no longer duck down that back lane, or cross the street where you have thousands of times before. Everything looks different when there's a three metre high security fence blocking your view and looming over your head.

"We're like a bunch of fucking rats in a maze!", one business man cried out on a Bridge Street corner. "Look at this bullshit! We're rats in a goddamned cage!"

None of the dozens of people, all trying to squeeze through the one metre wide gap in the fence to get across the road, disagreed with him. Nobody laughed. Everybody just wanted to get out of there.

And then, on the other side The Cage, outside of that rat maze, the tension in the crowd visibly lifted. The pedestrians streaming towards relocated bus stops began talking, some were laughing, but everybody seemed far more relaxed.

It was like being free, for the first time that afternoon.


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No Customs, No Traffic, No Red Lights - Airport To City Hotel In Less Than 15 Minutes - It's Good To Be The President

Pro-Bush Rally Granted Permission To March Outside President Bush's Hotel - Inside The Security Zone Cage

Head Of Riot Squad Says Anti-Bush Protesters Run The Risk Of Being "Injured" If They March In Sydney

Police Tell Supreme Court Anti-Bush Protesters Will Target War Memorial, Smash Shop Windows - But Judge Refuses to Believe Them

Welcome To Sydney President Bush, But Watch Out For The Rocket Launchers

When Will The 'Security Threat' Related Curfews For Sydney Be Announced? Thursday? Or Friday?

The search for nine Army rocket launchers, stolen last year and allegedly sold on through a ring of organised crime members and religious extremists, goes on even today, as President Bush arrives in Australia.

Police and ASIO agents have reportedly spent many long nights digging up sections of national park near Sydney, searching for the missing rocket launchers, believed to have been hidden away inside lengths of PVC tubing, and then buried.

So far, all those night-time searches have turned up nothing.

It's easy to imagine the conference calls between the CIA, Bush's secret service detail, the Australian Federal Police and ASIO :

"Have you found those fucking rocket launchers yet."

"Err, no."

"WHY THE FUCK NOT?"

"Well, we're following some leads, and we believe they've been buried in a patch of land somewhere between Sydney and Wollongong, and we're very confident that..."

"The President of the United States is coming to Sydney and you've lost NINE FUCKING ROCKET LAUNCHERS! Find them!"

"Yeah, righto...(click)...bloody Seppos."


The Australian has a detailed story about the intensive, and sometimes bizarre, search for the missing rocket launchers :

The fact that there are nine rocket launchers believed to be in the vicinity of Sydney as a meeting of world leaders begins has meant in recent months this operation has become one of the highest priorities of ASIO.

It is one of the reasons Australian and US security advisers are insistent that protesters will be at least 300m from the President at all times.

Theoretically, the launchers can fire from that distance but an amateur would generally be able to fire them only 125m.

The most worrying aspect of the weapons is that they are concealable - when folded, they are about 67cm, which means they can fit into a backpack. They can be painted any colour to blend with carry bags.

The M-72 launchers are designed to carry warheads that can cut through metal with a small hole then explode. The warheads are designed for a "blast effect". They are often used in warfare to attack bunkers, as they cause maximum damage.

Despite all the claims by prime minister John Howard that "violent protesters" are the reason why the entire Sydney area of APEC conference centres and hotels are surrounded by a ten foot high, five kilometre long 'steel wall', it's clear that the missing rocket launchers are the most active, realistic and dire security threat facing President Bush while he's in town.

It has been occasionally mentioned in the media that the 'steel wall', reinforced by a few tons of concrete blocks every dozen metres, could stop car and truck bombs, it's clear once you've had a look at it that it has also been designed to stop rocket launchers.

Prime Minister Howard has worked hard to make sure that the unlikely threat of "violent protesters" fills news bulletins and newspaper front pages, but some in the media now know they've been conned, and distracted from the bigger, far more dramatic story.

The real story of APEC security threats is, of course, the Missing Rocket Launchers. And today, the media will begin making them the focus of their headlines.

They will make for some very wide-eyes amongst the APEC world leaders, delegates and international media when they pick up their morning newspapers outside their hotel room doors.


The question now is, when will some "new security threat" (which will not be revealed in the interests of national security) be announced, which will lead to the announcement that parts of the city will be put under curfew?

Thursday? Or Friday?

Under the raft of new laws NSW Police have been granted to deal with APEC security, we've been told they have the authority to declare entire blocks of Sydney completely off limits to non-APECers, under a dawn to dusk, or 24 hour long, curfew.

Back to back curfews may be announced due to "ongoing security threats" which would keep everyone but the APECers out of the key security zones for all of Saturday and Sunday.

A dawn to dusk curfew inside and surrounding the fenced off security zone would mean that anybody who doesn't posses APEC accreditation will not be allowed inside the 'steel wall' of Sydney, which takes in the conference centres and hotels where APEC leaders are staying and meeting.

Which means Stop Bush Coalition protesters could be stopped from attempting to march through parts of the city on Saturday.

And which would also mean a weekend long ban on any member of the public getting anywhere near the Opera House on Sunday night, where leaders and their partners will gather on a balcony overlooking Sydney Harbour for the biggest private fireworks show in Australia's history.


April 2007 : Army Captain And Army Officer Arrested For Stealing, Selling 10 Rocket Launchers - Army Captain Was Munitions Expert

January, 2007 : Stolen Army Rocket Launchers Allegedly Sold Onto Man Being Held On Terror Charges

December 2006 : Rocket Launchers Go Missing From Army Base, Intelligence Agencies Begin Hunt To Track Them Down

Tourists Questioned By Police For Taking Photographs In Sydney

What Happened To "Not If, But When" Threat Of Terror Attacks?


Don't worry. Everything's okay. APEC will benefit Sydney and Australia's international reputation enormously. As long as the tourists stopped in the streets of Sydney and questioned by police for up to half an hour by a police squad, for simply taking photographs, don't go home telling tales of fear and paranoia and Sydney becoming a mini-police state.

Taking photos and using your video in Sydney isn't illegal. But your ID information will be run through police and immigration databases, just in case, if you get caught. Pre-crime is now a reality in Sydney, Australia :

German tourist Thomas Gannopp was among those stopped on Bridge Street and forced to delete images from his digital camera as police watched on.

Mr Gannopp said he was quizzed for close to 25 minutes with police wanting proof of his identification down to the exact number of his tourist visa before having him checked through the immigration department's computers.

"I didn't expect all of this just because I wanted to take a photograph of the fence," he said.

The fence. The precious 'steel wall' now cutting Sydney in half. The security fence originally designed and planned to stop terror attacks is now simply to keep the "ferals" away from the world leaders.

Of course, John Howard can't admit that Sydney is at a heightened risk of a terror attack because President Bush is in town because that would cause an association between Bush's foreign policy, supported by Howard, and the threat of terrorism.

The corporate media are allowed to photograph the security fence as much as they like. Photographs of the fence are all over online newspapers and every evening news bulletin had extensive footage filling their stories.

But if you're some homeless guy and you get caught using your camera phone inside the security zone, you may be taken away for further questioning.

A Melbourne documentary maker, Pip Starr, had the gall to shoot footage of the fence and wound up being questioned by police and federal agents for "more than an hour."

"Having police going through my personal diary just for filming on Sydney streets is pretty appalling," he said.

As the full measure of the chilling ultra-security now enveloping the streets of one of the most casual and laidback cities in the world clarifies in the collective mind of the Australian media, the tone changes dramatically.

The most conservative newspaper in Australia is now making reference to "Fortress Sydney" in its headlines and the security fence has become "the wall".

Wait until the first photographers and journalists caught up in protests get hit with pepper spray, water cannon bursts (it's like being smashed with a block of concrete wrapped in carpet) and loose some ankle flesh to police dogs.

As the chant goes, "The Whole World Is Watching."

The first APEC related arrests of protesters occurred in Newcastle, when twelve Greenpeace activists were detained and charged for painting an anti-coal exports slogan on the side of a ship.


UPDATE : As commenters below point out it was very, very strange to see Sydneysiders forced to walk through a surveillance checkpoint on the morning news.

And still no news on those missing rocket launchers. What happened to the threat of terrorism being the reason for the Steel Wall through the heart of Sydney? Howard, Rudd, Iemma, the police chiefs all blame the threat posed by "violent protests". So terrorism is no longer a threat to Sydney and to the world leaders gathering for APEC?


Protesters On Alert For Agent Provocateurs Aiming To Turn APEC Marches Into Riots

April 2007 : Army Captain And Army Officer Arrested For Stealing, Selling 10 Rocket Launchers - Army Captain Was Munitions Expert

January, 2007 : Stolen Army Rocket Launchers Allegedly Sold Onto Man Being Held On Terror Charges

December 2006 : Rocket Launchers Go Missing From Army Base, Intelligence Agencies Begin Hunt To Track Them Down

Sydney To Be Cut In Half By Ten Foot High, Five Kilometre Long 'Steel Wall'