Who gives a Cheney?
23 Feb 2007So some American rocks up and Sydney stops. There were more police than civilians in some parts of Sydney last night (Circular Quay), public transport is stopped, private vehicles are allowed in, and it must have cost an absolute fortune in overtime.
All for some American power-behind-the-throne. If he’s going to be the key string-puller, he should at least stay invisible so we don’t need to concern ourselves with his (admittedly unwelcome) presence.
They were blocking all useful traffic (but letting private cars through? Bizarre…), and claimed to have been using sniffer dogs on the cars they were letting through. Yeah, right. I didn’t see a single dog last night. I was wearing a backpack the whole evening. OH, LOOK, THERE GOES A TERRORIST!
No-one stopped me…
Then, after having blocked off half of the northern CBD, police stop a protest from going ahead on the grounds that it’s going to cause traffic chaos. Like that was a consideration a few nights back.
And, whilst I’m on this little soapbox, what on earth is a “lawful protest” about? “Oh, here you go, protest in a nice little out -of-the-way place where no-one can see you, much less be seen by the person you’re protesting about/to. Just… stay away from the Rocks and everything’ll be okay.”
Because I’ve seen so many rabid gun-toting uni-students trying to blow up the US puppetmaster. Nevermind that Australia has far-more-sane gun-control legislation than the US does… John Howard isn’t the centre of all this rubbish when he travels to the US, even, and yet over here we’ve got to keep unarmed protestors a good couple of kilometers from their target in case they pull out… well, something.
Meanwhile, I don’t know whether I should be satisfied or frustrated that I was wearing a conspicuous black backpack all evening around various protest sites and didn’t get glanced at once.
Go home, Cheney. You’ve wasted enough of Sydney’s time and resources already.