APEC Day 2

The news in the morning was the best I had ever seen, the three hundred million dollar security operation had been breached by a group of Australian Comics named The Chasers who just got three motorcade looking cars put a Canadian flag on the front one and drove through all the security. Once they got outside George Bush's hotel they decided they better turn around before they got in trouble, when one dressed as Osama Bin Laden gets out ... and ... well attracts surprisingly little police attention. Stop now and watch the video in the link (episode 15 if your reading this at another time) its amazing, they really stole the show and I have an incredible about of respect for them. George Bush was on normal form, as he blundered through his speech he called the conference the OPEC conferences and thanked the people of Austria.

This was the day of the big march and I'm not sure how but they managed to find even more police, the route of the march was completely enclosed by police and police buses. I'm not sure how but one protester had managed to get a poster up on one of the buses. For those of you that haven't been on a march yet its really fun, there is a carnival kind of an atmosphere and everyone is having a really great time. Well apart from the police you could see on there faces that even though all of them where here they where still massively outnumbered.

The march carried on with much chanting, lively music and on the way back to Hyde Park, once there the police surrounded the park leaving only one way in or out and it was time for the speakers to do there bit. The speakers where very good but had some very different messages to say. Some would be thanking us for being peaceful and other speakers would try and incite the crowd to go and attack the fences around the CBD. Things remained fun very much like a music festival this was great I didn't really feel like toppling global capitalism today, it was slightly rainy after all you really need a sunny day for that.

The news that evening was great, Australia like England and America has two main political parties the really right wing one and the not quite so right wing one. So the news tends to be polarized to either supportive of the government or against it a bit. Watching the news that evening was great in a small way I had just taken part in history. It was nice to see the new reporting on what we had been doing today. Also for the first time I had first hand experience to judge the accuracy and bias of the news. They all agreed that during the day there had been 17 arrests, mostly for small infractions like spraying tomato sauce on the Pro Bush protesters who where there too. Seems a bit over the top to me, but I'm pretty biased on this one.

Then depending on which channel you watch there where between three thousand and ten thousand protesters and the police presence was described as either completely over the top, aggressive and trying to provoke the protesters or as the good guys that kept Sydney safe from the hordes of evil anarchists. I'll add the press to the list of things that I should fix when I take over the world ... evil laugh