So the protests turfed out Johnson and led to more than 4 more years of war. Gosh, that sounds effective.

The Vietnam protests were so brutally ineffective that one can argue that the Americans were apparently itching to go into Iraq just to show that those dirty fucking hippy war protesters were not just wrong then, but wrong now.

Sorry, you've lost me here. This is a bit too far over the top for me to even bother commenting upon.

That and some protestors are not bright enough to realize the difference between federal, state and local govt buildings.

Ex: one of the largest anti-Iraq protests occured in San Francisco, when I use to live there.

They chose to have it on the grounds of City Hall. So they were effectively protesting the Mayor and City council to not send the US Military to remove Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

I actually attended it for the spectacle of it all. It reminded me of Lollapolooza. Drum circles, pot smoking, people selling crap in side stands, some guys yelling about how we need to free some cop killer from death row and end homelessness NOW!. And I loved it when some hippies danced around an effigy of Bush hanging from a noose.

I was so distracted by the sights and sounds, that I forgot the reason they were having it.

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One day, I will sneak across the border into Canada and be an illegal alien. It will be fun.

it has been difficult for me to pen my thoughts to respond to Jihad4Beer’s post. I do feel the need to respond, though.

One of the obstacles to us reaching an understanding here is that we are coming from different premises.

JB, my responses below will focus on three points:

Firstly, it appears that you accept as fact the official line that the protests were expected to turn violent.

Secondly, you seem to be under the impression that the protesters were objectingd to APEC.

Thirdly, you view street protests as ineffectual.

We probably won’t come to an agreement with each other, but I’m going to try to explain where I’m coming from and give you my perspective as to what were the issues. I’ll have to do it in split posts.

That was the drift I got from reading your original question in the first place. But it was difficult for me to untangle the points in your question in order to respond.

I do not agree that security was the only issue for the clamp down on the protests and on people in general. That’s because I did not believe the protests would be violent to the extent of necessitating the kind of measures put into place. But I did not claim or think that suppressing dissent was the prime idea behind the heightened security. In fact, I believe the case can be made that it was conversely designed to incite dissent. So the effectuality or ineffectuality of street protests is secondary, in my view, and introduced an extra element to the debate. My belief is that political factors were at play.

You also wrote:

There is no disagreement over the basic principle that the Australian government had an obligation to protect the world leaders attending APEC, and also the citizenry, from the possibility of a terrorist attack or malevolent act.

What is in dispute, I believe, is whether all measures put into place were indispensable to this objective, whether the government similarly met its obligations to protect the citizenry, whether it was justified for the Prime Minister and the authorities to take such an aggressive stance against the planned protests, whether it was constructive to keep the citizenry at arm's length from the APEC event, and what is the best way we can face up to terrorism.

What kind of mood was created?

My city divided by a “ring of steel” was bad enough. But what of machines for pumping gas and a water cannon at the ready, cops in riot gear, police dogs, troops of police marching down Elizabeth Street in military-style formation, snipers on the roofs of buildings aiming at demonstrators, 30 buses with barred windows ready to act as makeshift lock-ups for 900 arrests at the protest!

What did these measures have to do with stopping a would-be terrorist bombing the APEC venue or killing a world leader?

And what happened in the end at this fearsome protest? 14 people charged, most for using offensive language. Yes, there were two serious offences - one involving someone throwing a dart at a police officer and the other involving someone using an iron bar wrapped in a newspaper. Inexcusable, dangerous acts, for sure. But there are uglier acts of violence committed in homes or on the streets each day. There are bad apples among protesters – and it can be said that one bad apple spoils the bunch – but they are in the police too.

For example, zealous police pushed and shoved a woman photographer to the ground with out provocation, punched a demonstrator repeatedly while he was down, and jailed a man for jaywalking - and there were other such anecdotes of police “losing the plot”, as an official put it.

The protest was NOT directed at APEC. There may have been individuals or fringe groups who opposed APEC for whatever reason(s), but it was not the case for the many who joined the protest, those who voiced criticisms in letters to the newspapers, or for me.

Look, standing on a street waving a sign is perhaps not the most effectual form of protest, but it’s a legitimate expression of free speech. Some people stand with placards declaring “I love Jesus”. Is there a problem with that? Effectual or not, it’s not violent. Yet some who did this, including the two Falun Gong followers I mentioned in a post, were harassed by police. And protesters and proselytizers are not the only ones who stand on the street waving placards. For decades businesses have used street walkers parading with sandwich board advertisements.

Civil disobedience can take many forms and can have varying degree of effectiveness. Civil disobedience does not equate violence. Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on the bus and the ensuing Montgomery bus boycott was a form of civil disobedience. The campaign was very effectual and awe-inspiring.

Sydney 2007 is far removed from the zeitgeist of the dark days of segregation in 1950’s America, but many Australians feel a sense of indignation at the social injustices that still prevail here and in our world. Many feel a sense of disempowerment, and see street protests as an outlet for voicing their concerns. Effectual? I don’t know. But are other means of making our voices heard effectual? It’s a valid point of discussion but, again, there are entangled issues here:

1) The protection of speech and freedom of assembly (including street protest);
2) Violent versus non-violent protest ;
3) The efficacy of street protests

And none of these issues are black or white.

The Stop Bush march that had been planned for the Saturday of the APEC Summit could not be branded as an act of civil disobedience. Let me tell you why. March organisers applied through the normal process for a March permit. When police refused to approve the requested route, the organisers appealed through the legal system. When their appeal was lost, they agreed to follow the authorised route, and they observed this order on the day. Anyone intent on civil disobedience would not have gone through such procedural motions – or would not have abided by the ruling..

The Greens also held a protest rally during the week. The permit was also denied, and they too sought a legal remedy. Their case was upheld and the rally proceeded without incident.

It is simply not true that the Stop Bush protest ever posed a significant security concern. For John Howard to claim that the intensive security measures were “the fault of people who threaten violence as part of their protest” was disingenuous in the extreme.

Yet both in the article I cited Violent protesters blamed for APEC security | NEWS.com.au Business and in other public addresses, John Howard has blamed the protesters. In fact, little was said about any potential threats from terrorists in any of these addresses, with the word “terrorist” barely being whispered throughout the event, while the protesters were cast as public enemy number one.

Let’s look at the facts.

There have been three notable riots in Sydney in recent years: the Redfern riots (2004); the Macquarie Fields riots (2005); and the Cronulla riots (2005). Only one, the Cronulla riots, was based around political agitation (led by far right groups).

In 2003, a quarter-million people in Sydney took part in the protest against the planned invasion of Iraq. The streets were choked with people, but there was no violence. There were rallies held when President Bush visited Australia in 2004 and when Dick Cheney visited earlier this year. Nothing happened that could not be handled by normal law enforcement. Prior to APEC, only 35 people nationwide were identified as potential agitators and issued with restraining orders.

I have been an open critic of stridency and violence in peace and social justice protests since I became involved in my young days three decades ago. I studied this, wrote many articles about it, and spoke at meetings about it. As has been stated in previous posts, agents provocateurs are often hired to cause trouble. Scuffles and bad behaviour do at times occur at rallies here, but nothing has ever happened that could form a rationale for the Prime Minister’s mistrustful attitude or the histrionics that were actioned. Policing has been the most effective when police have sought to manage crowd control at rallies in cooperation with marshals delegated by protest organisers.

As Daisy pointed out in one of her posts (on Moon’s thread, I believe), John Howard is reviled by a sizeable chunk of the population. Yet he feels perfectly safe jogging every morning among people going about their business - without a security shield. He rides in his government car with the window down, and the car stops at traffic lights like any other. There has never been an assassination attempt on his life.

President Hu Jintao arrived at the airport and extended his hand out to ordinary people there. Even though there would be many with a motive to take him out, little fuss was made over his safety.

There is always the risk of a first time but, from local experience, there was no real basis to fear that the protests would pose a major security threat to APEC.

Thank you. And what of the proclamation made by Andrew Scipione, the New South Wales (NSW) Chief Police Commissioner: "That's the way that we do business now.” Are we meant to take this in our stride?

Your point in an earlier post about choosing not to focus only on the negative and instead to look at the bigger picture is a fine motto, but I could invoke the same motto to argue the case for my concerns.

What, after all, is “the bigger picture” here?

What of that other fine motto, attributed to Benjamin Franklin? - “Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

For certain, part of the resentment came from the disruption to our lives. But I think you have really misunderstood the situation if you believe this was the main issue. The inconvenience factor was aggravated by the fact that many people perceived that the security measures were theatrical more than effectual. And were they wrong? $160 million worth of security at tax payers expense, a “ring of steel” dividing the city, police and army helicopters buzzing over head, thousands of police officers and security guards on duty, sharp shooters on top of buildings…and a bunch of TV comics – one impersonating Osama bin Laden - ride a motorcade straight through two security checkpoints into the restricted red zone and smack in front of President Bush’s hotel.

The fact is that the dominant gripe people expressed had to do with feeling excluded from the event in every respect. As I stated in a previous post, for all the Prime Minister’s lofty rhetoric and patronizing plea to “fair-minded Australians” to “recognise the importance of this meeting”, the reality is that we were shut out of the event – literally and figuratively. We were even told to stay away from the fireworks display. And to boot there was little information coming out of the key meetings and events, due to restrictions on media coverage, so we only got snippets here and there. I just can’t find the words to convey to you and others here just how much we were sidelined. The inconvenience thing will soon enough be forgotten, but we have been left with no positive collective memory of the event..

During the Sydney Olympics in 2000, my city exuded friendliness. There was colour, music and a palpable blend of calming quietude and exhilarating gaiety. We were made to feel these were “our” Olympic games, and we threw ourselves heart and soul into making our visitors welcome. We felt proud.

What happened at APEC was the antithesis of this.

And this change of mood was not the fault of a few thousand people who wanted to protest or even the overhanging threat of terrorism.

Tethys

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-- Harry S. Truman

I think it would have been better not to focus on President Bush. I believe the issues should always be at the fore. On the other hand, no US President has attracted so much wrath in Australia since the days of LBJ’s visit.

President Bush also used his visit for the APEC Summit to promote his Iraq policy. So to reciprocate your question: “Like does he think that we do not know?”

I think people have the right to use the occasion of the visit of any world leader here to protest any issues of concern. And to clarify, the Stop Bush protests were not held anywhere near the APEC Summit site. The original route would have passed through Martin Place, about 3 Kms from the APEC venue. It’s a public plaza, but it also hosts the US Consulate offices in Sydney. So, no matter what your views on the protest, it was an apt venue for its message. And though many protest marches have filed past the US Consulate throughout the years, there has never been any incident causing property damage or posing a threat to its staff.

Whoa! Crikey, have you twisted my words and my views! Read the discussion between Daisy and me here about the “Fear Factor” program we watched on Insight. Insight

The idea is that the hyped security associated with APEC was counterproductive because of the fear such hyped security CREATES. Call it a paradox. This idea is explored in studies on the psychology and politics of fear, and is also a theme in works of literature, such as Franz Kafka’s “The Burrow”.
I fully agree we should not live in fear. To me, this means we should be able to go about our business, even with APEC in our backyard and President Bush in our midst.

Sydney was turned into fear city (some even called it “dead city”) for the duration of APEC, and it was our leaders who fanned this fear.

As for Bush being criticised no matter what he does, that’s politics. In fact, that’s life. But of course he should have attended. That’s politics too. The point is that, if President Bush’s minders feel somebody wants to assassinate him, this should not be cause to clamp down freedoms wherever he goes. As Adele Horin stated in the article I posted for discussion, “What an irony. When the leader of the free world comes to town, the first casualty is freedom”. So to reciprocate your question again: “Is that the world we want to live in? That's living in fear.”

I understand the importance of the APEC forum and I support its broad objectives. In my OP, I wrote “One of the issues that have shadowed this APEC meeting in Sydney has been the level of security imposed on the city and its people.” I would not have said “shadowed”, if I didn’t see APEC in a good light.

I did not say that I did not want the world leaders to meet here. What I suggested was that the three-day Summit session be held on an island resort, if fears were held for the lives of the world leaders. The APEC Forum (which went on for 10 days) could still have been held in Sydney and delivered the showcase and all the other benefits listed. The primary security concern was around the Summit session (as distinct from the APEC Forum and associated events). That’s why the Friday, the day the Summit started, was declared a holiday and people were told to stay away from the city. Holding the Summit at a nearby island resort, just off Sydney, would have allowed the leaders to meet in safety.

I know it’s the usual tradition to hold the APEC meeting in major cities. “These logistical problems” you refer to, have in part been overblown by the security hype driven by the politics of fear. In other words: Terrorism creates fear. This fear is used for political purposes. The fear builds up and acquires its own momentum. It rules our lives. As Franklin D. Roosevelt put it, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself”. If our leaders took stock of this, then there is no reason why the APEC tradition can’t be preserved. “The world we live in” is, in part, the world we make it.

Tethys

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-- Harry S. Truman

Your scorn of protesters runs so deep that you don’t draw a line between the acts of terrorists and the acts of protesters.

And it is stupefying that you absolve GW Bush for the protests he attracts and the level of security apparently needed to protect him. In an earlier comment here, you describe the devastating consequences of Bush’s war in Iraq as a “misadventure”. What a mild word to use compared to the words you reserve for protesters. I reckon all the protests in the world taken together don’t come close to having caused the security threat, mayhem, destruction of property, grief, injuries and loss of innocent lives on the scale of President Bush’s “misadventure in Iraq”.

In one of your posts, you deride an anti-Iraq protest in San Francisco. And you say: “I was so distracted by the sights and sounds, that I forgot the reason they were having it.” It’s a fair comment. But I’ll tell you what, if you had no clue what the protest was about, there are a lot of us who equally have no clue what the reason is for the US being in Iraq. I never saw anything at a peace rally so degenerate as what took place at Abu Ghraib, for one thing.

And who blamed global trade? There were views expressed about the nature of trade deals being negotiated, but no protest against global trade per se. Again, you have this fixated idea that the protests were aimed at APEC. Do you know its history?

It was the brainchild of former Prime Minister Bob Hawke, a leader of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and his then treasurer, Paul Keating, with the first regional meeting being held in 1989.

Hawke reflects on 18 years of APEC - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Prior to entering federal politics, Bob Hawke was the leader of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), and Paul Keating was an industrial relations advocate for a major union.

The APEC initiative was further developed when Paul keating became ALP leader and Prime Minister

National Museum of Australia - Paul Keating

It’s rather ironic that Prime Minister John Howard seeks to discredit the credentials of the ALP to manage the nation’s economy and security, and is forever attacking the union movement, yet the APEC forum he holds up as a shining triumph of economic benefits for Australia and the region, and a very important alliance for national and regional security, was in fact a creation of the ALP and the ACTU.

APEC has its origins in progressive politics, as reflected by the language of its mission of cooperation between nations.

John Howard said:

Violent protesters blamed for APEC security | NEWS.com.au Business

This is our Prime Minister, the artful rhetorician and spin doctor, a master of wedge politics, true to form. He misrepresents the facts, and then invokes a straw man argument to give the appearance of strong and sound leadership. Yes, there may have been some individuals who wanted to protest against APEC. But this was not true of the organised protests or the majority of disgruntled people. There was no “attack” on APEC.

And Howard omits to mention that issues such as poverty and climate change got on the agenda in part due to the many years of people campaigning for bodies such as APEC to pay heed to these and other social issues. Why should we just rubber stamp APEC? We have a right and a responsibility to be part of the APEC conversation. It’s part of the mechanics for bringing about reforms.

The way to minimise antipathy to the work of bodies such as APEC is to democratise participation. I took part in such an exercise a couple of years ago. It was a role-play seminar with hypothetical scenarios, but it helped me to gain a deeper insight of the challenges of sitting at a table with different players and tackling major issues.

Now, as to whether or not street protests are effectual, I don’t think there is a yes or no answer. Having reflected on it, I believe this question probably has as many facets as asking if prayers are “effectual”, or whether force is “effectual”, or, indeed, whether our exchanges on this board are “effectual”. All our actions, as do our inactions, carry various degrees of consequence, sometimes positive, sometimes negative. It is rare that a single, random action will be transformative. certainly, we should always try to examine the effectiveness of our actions. Even our words carry the potential to affect the course of events. When I have attended a protest, it has always been with a passionate and deep belief for whatever the cause, and of course it is a source of much despondency that it may all have been futile. Was it? Who’s to say? Were the civil rights protests “ineffectual”?

I don’t think we should ever lose hope in our ability to bring about change through various means.

And we should never forget that street protests are a form of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. As much as they may be viewed a “nuisance”, “unpatriotic”, “a threat to order and security”, “silly”, “cliché”, “ineffectual” or any other negative labels some people like to call them…would it be better for our society if protests were banned?

Tethys

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-- Harry S. Truman

Tethys, you are a good person. Your initial posts were very interesting and indeed addressed in deapth your concern to many here on this forum, like myself, who neither Australian nor lives there. Here is what I have noted, though..you have let yourself being drawn into pointless discussion. And sinking deeper and deeper by the hour. Your original notion is being lost. Australians in unison are pissed to what Bush has brought to you. But it was only a modest introduction, first breeze of US sentiment and what is actually going on there. My question, didn't your people see it coming? Didn't you know that your people soon or later will be 'awaken' to 'current dangerous situation' in the word and introdused in full to the way to deal with it? Even if you feel different, you will be made and tought by artificial means to act and think just like some folks Bush supporters on this forum, didn't you had a feeling it would happen sooner or later? Vote your PM out. Make sure no one close to this character ever gets the office in forseable future. Limit the trade with the US. Just what imports from the US Australia needs? Arms? Who is the threat? Intensify trade developement with Asian region. You will find there all you need to continue comfortable living. Otherwise, sweet memories of what Australia once was will be left only on your childhood pictures where you smiling happy and pround of who you are and where are you from.

cheers