Mr HoWARd sends his congratulations:
…at a function to thank police involved in the APEC operation yesterday, Mr Howard expressed his complete support of all police actions. “I think the Commissioner has done a first class job. A decision was clearly taken – the right decision – that pre-emptive and forward action was better than retaliation and, Commissioner, it worked brilliantly, it really did.” The Premier, Morris Iemma, said police acted appropriately and declared “mission accomplished”. “It could not have happened without the extraordinary level of professionalism,” he said.
And in Wellington [correction: Tamakimakaurau (Auckland)], Aotearoa / New Zealand…
On Sunday September 9 @ 9.30am, two police officers arrived at A Space Inside social centre, on Symonds Street, and arrested one activist for alleged breach of bail conditions in relation to Saturday’s demonstration against the detention of Iranian asylum seekers in Mt Eden prison. When other activists came to his aid, the police sprayed several people in the eyes with pepper spray. According to witnesses, the police did not have a warrant. The arrested activist was beaten by police once he was taken outside the building and was then taken to a police station.
Kia Ora Andy
A Space Inside is in Tamakimakaurau (Auckland)
Ooops! Sorry Ana. Cheers!
I think along with the Stalinist League that the police powers have gone to fair. They have infultrated into protest groups. They have powers to attack peacful protesters even if they are doing nothing illegal. They even arrested a man in front of his ten year old son.
Allegedly Mr McLeay has a history of violence and pushed one of the police officers before they arrested him. Sounds like his own stupid fault.
Who alleges this George? Do you have a source for this allegation? And even if he has “a history of violence” — whatever that means — what has this to do with what appears, on the part of the police, to be a sizable over-reaction to the crime of jaywalking? Or do you believe that individuals should in fact be arrested, held in jail overnight, and strip-searched, if police catch them doing so? What, exactly, was his fault?
The joke is that the federal or state governments spent 86 million dollars on APEC security. They brought in three thousand police officers. They introduced new powers for the police. George Bush had heaps of FBI agents. But yet a ABC programme got within a hundred metres of Bush’s hotel. They past two check points and the police waved them along. Does any one here think that it made the whole attempt at making Bush safe a joke?
My theory is that the police were trying to provoke violent reactions so as to justify being there.
According to the news a number of people were arrested with the pretence that they were in a restricted zone, and it turned up that they were not and later released. The method with which they were apprehended however was violent to say the least, if anyone treats a policeman the way the police treat innocent bystanders he would get shot on sight, see what they did to Greg McLeay for not putting his hands behind his back. The past couple of generations of Australians and Americans have given their lives to fight against fascism, now we have fascism right on our doorstep. I don’t want to live in Australia much longer.
G’day ozman,
Interesting theory. What were the police doing, do you think, that was designed to provoke violent reactions?
I’m aware of the incident you refer to: Paddy Gibson and Daniel Jones were arrested as they sat in Hyde Park, drinking cafe lattes. As it happens, Hyde Park was outside of the restricted zone that three NSW Supreme Court Justices had earlier declared, should the pair stray within its borders, police were legally entitled to arrest them for so doing, on the slightly, ah, dubious grounds that the NSW Police Commissioner had declared them to be ‘potentially dangerous’ — possibly because they’d mastered the art of not-so-spontaneous human combustion and declared a jihad on world leaders… or perhaps because they’d entered into a conspiracy to lead their followers in a mass recitation of Vogon poetry, who knows? Not them, and not the public, as the basis upon which the blacklist was compiled was also declared to be a state secret, and not subject to appeal.
Which the Justices thought was both just and Constitutional.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22388433-26103,00.html
http://slackbastard.anarchobase.com/?p=835
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/hitchhikers/vogonpoetry/lettergen.shtml
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Anyway, here’s a poem by Attila the Stockbroker called ‘Contributory Negligence’, written some 25 years ago following the decision by an English High Court judge to issue a fine to a rapist ‘cos the victim was hitching late at night when the rapist picked her up…
Hitching up the M11
Coming back from a Dexy’s gig
Got picked up at half eleven
By a bloke in a funny wig
Flash Mercedes, new and gleaming
Deep pile seats and deep seat piles
I got in and sat there scheming
While the dickhead flashed me smiles
Told me he was back from sessions
With a load of braindead hacks
Told me he’d made no concessions
To the boot-boys and the Blacks
Said it was stupid to put “Rapist” on the news
The guy was only playing cupid
Girls like that they don’t refuse
He asked me if I bore him enemy
Asked if I bore a grudge
Told he came from Henley
Said he was a High Court judge
I asked him to pull over
“Needed a slash”, that’s what I said
When the anger beckoned
I smacked him in the head
Took his keys, took his wallet
Crashed his car into a ditch
Though he moaned “They’ll get you sonny”
I got away without a hitch
I know they’ll never find me
As I’m many miles away
But if one day they’re right behind me
I know what I’m gonna say
“HE ASKED FOR IT!”
He’s rich and snobbish
Right wing, sexist, racist too
Fat and ugly
Sick and slobbish
Should be locked in London Zoo
He wanted me to beat him up
It was an open invitation
Late at night he picked me up
An act of open provocation
High Court judges are a blight
They should stay at home in nice warm beds
And if they should be out late at night
They should never pick up Harlow reds
A five pence fine is right and proper
And to sum up my defence
It was his fault he came a cropper
At one point I thought I was the only person who was funny enough to write stuff like this.