Protesters and police face-off



February 23, 2007 - 9:10AM

Around 80 anti-war protesters chanting "Chain up Cheney, free David Hicks," are facing off with police who are blocking their path towards the Shangri-la Hotel in The Rocks, where US Vice President Dick Cheney is speaking this morning.

One of those voicing their concern is 18-year-old Bellingen man Miles, who told smh.com.au he was protesting against the war in Iraq and the incarceration of David Hicks.

"But I'm here for all Australians' liberty, not just Hicks," he said.

" I'm not saying he should be let go, I'm just saying he deserves a fair trial."

A small group of Dick Cheney supporters also showed up and were engaged in a heated argument with protesters over war in Iraq.

They were carrying a $1200 professionally-made banner covered in American and Australian flags, with the words: "The world needs great men like Dick Cheney. We Love America."

One of the Cheney supporters, John Ruddick, 36, from Sydney's north shore, said it was about time Australians who support America had a counter point to the left wing.

"I think the whole world owes a big thank you to the U.S. and to the hard men of the U.S. like Dick Cheney," he said.

One of the Cheney supporters was heard shouting, "You just hate America, baby," at one of the protesters.

"Don't call me baby, you're sexist," the protester responded.

Protesters arrested

A teenage boy was among eight people arrested during what police say was "unlawful protest action" before the arrival of Mr Cheney last night.

Seven males, aged 16 to 53 and a woman, 26, were arrested as scuffles broke out between protesters and officers, including mounted police, who tried to push the crowd into Town Hall Square.

The protesters were among several hundred people who demonstrated against the war in Iraq, the planned increase of Australian troops in the region, and the imprisonment of David Hicks.

Seven protesters were charged with assault police, obstruct traffic, malicious damage, inciting crowd violence, resist arrest and offensive conduct and language, police said.

Six of the adults arrested yesterday will appear at Downing Centre Local Court on 15 March, 2007, while the 16-year-old male was issued a caution under the Young Offenders Act.

Protest organisers spent the afternoon in talks with police, negotiating whether they could march to the US consulate in Martin Place.

Yesterday afternoon police advised they would not allow the 5.30pm rally to go ahead because it would cause traffic chaos.

After 15 minutes of pushing against police and the eight arrests, the protesters agreed to walk along the footpath to the consulate.

Police said three officers suffered minor injuries during the protest.
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Visitor is just a blast from the past

Peter Hartcher
February 23, 2007


Dick Cheney has arrived in Sydney, as popular as the traffic snarls he brings, as palatable as the gulag at Guantanamo he helped create. We are told he's here to show appreciation for Australia's support in the invasion and occupation of Iraq. He is an odd choice as an emissary of goodwill.

Cheney is generally regarded in Washington DC as the most powerful vice-president in memory. It is a pity of historical proportions that he used that power to advance dismally unsuccessful and destructive policy.

In decisions on the great issues of our times, he has represented the narrowest definition of US interest and the most violently counterproductive prescription for achieving it. He is the uber-hawk of the Western world.

The Iraq war is the first exhibit, but it is not the most extreme. In August 2002, frustrated that talk of a diplomatic solution was threatening to intrude on his personal timetable for the invasion of Baghdad, Cheney decided to push US policy into a more aggressive phase.

George Bush had said that Saddam Hussein "desires" weapons of mass destruction. Cheney took it further. "There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction; there is no doubt that he is massing them to use against our friends, against our allies and against us," he said in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars. It was "as great a threat as can be imagined".

The speech was tantamount to a declaration of war and we know from Bob Woodward's book Plan of Attack that Colin Powell, Bush's then secretary of state, was "astonished". Powell said Cheney seemed to be in a "fever" for war.

His martial ambition for his country sat uncomfortably on a man who had none for himself. With the US at war in Vietnam, the young Cheney, of drafting age, applied for four deferments to avoid service. "I had other priorities in the '60s than military service," he would say later. This is why he has been branded in the US as one of the Administration's so-called "chicken hawks".

And yet Cheney has the hide, during his visit to Sydney, to schedule an event at Victoria Barracks where he will pose with Aussie war veterans, hoping, one presumes, for valour by association.

The Bush Administration's policy of obtaining information "under duress" from detainees in US facilities abroad, a practice otherwise known as torture, is another Cheney accomplishment.

Powell's former chief of staff, the retired army colonel Larry Wilkerson, told CNN in November 2005, during a discussion of torture policy: "There's no question in my mind where the philosophical guidance and the flexibility in order to do so originated." In the office of the Vice-President of the United States.

Where the war dismayed the peoples of the world, including many pro-American ones, the torture policy disgusted them. This Vice-President has betrayed the high idealism that the US, at its best, has long offered the world.

"How can America go around the world preaching democracy and human rights with a straight face while you have the Vice-President in Washington defending torture?" asks Jim Steinberg, the dean of international relations at the University of Texas and a former deputy national security adviser in the Clinton administration.

So it may come as no surprise that Cheney, who vanishes to "an undisclosed location" in times of danger and whose only notable act of personal derring-do was to shoot his friend during a hunting expedition, is not terribly popular in today's America. A Harris poll this month put his approval rating at 29 per cent, his all-time low in the Harris series, making him several points more unpopular than the President.

John Howard will embrace the Vice-President today and tomorrow, but could he really want to be seen in close company with this man at this moment as Kevin Rudd brings his Iraq policy under fresh scrutiny? Even old Republican friends of Cheney have disavowed him for his fevered embrace of the neo-conservative agenda of imposing democracy at the point of a gun.

The national security adviser to two Republican presidents, Brent Scowcroft, one of the wise old men of US foreign policy, told The New Yorker magazine: "I consider Cheney a good friend. I've known him for 30 years. But Dick Cheney I don't know any more."

Still, despite the political liability that Cheney has become, Howard can use the opportunity to reassert his title as the custodian of the US alliance, always a positive in the eyes of Australian voters.

Cheney may be in Australia to say thanks, but he is also here because he has a lot less to do in Washington these days. The Democratic Party's victory in the congressional elections brought a clear end to the power of the neocon agenda in US politics. The firing of Donald Rumsfeld, one of Cheney's greatest allies in the Administration, was the clearest public indication that the neocon era was over.

And look what has happened since. Last week the North Koreans agreed to suspend their nuclear weapons program. It was a deal the former Bush neocon John Bolton said that the US State Department had wanted to do six years earlier.

Why hadn't it? In part because Cheney vetoed it. Cheney has always believed that the US should never make any up-front concessions in any negotiation. Speaking of Cheney and Rumsfeld, the former US deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage had said: "Their idea of diplomacy is to say, 'Look f---er, you do what we want."'

But the marginalisation of the neocon project has meant that Cheney's influence has been reduced, as The Washington Post pointed out this week. And so the deal was allowed to be done.

The US has moved into the post-neocon phase, and the fact that Cheney is here for the first time in six years, to say "thanks", is a sign that he doesn't have more important things to do in DC in his reduced status. And, however unloved he may be here, Americans are in no great rush to welcome him home again.

Walter Russell Mead, the Henry Kissinger fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, yesterday made this generous offer: "We are willing to let you have him for as long as you like."


Peter Hartcher is the Herald's political editor.

I really enjoyed reading this!! We don't get such detailed information about the failings of Bush & Cheney & Co. in our press very often. I think it's unpatriotic to call Bush and/or Cheney the dumb asses that they are!

For example, Rumsfield was not fired here in the States. He resigned under what great personal duress! Yeah, right. And in stories on the situation with North Korea, I don't think Cheney's name is ever mentioned as far as having any decision-making duties. I guess he's 'the Administration' for all intents and purposes.

The writer of the story is right though ... you guys can keep (the) Dick just as long as you want to! make him comfortable ... give him whatever he needs ... he can stay at Mr. Howard's residence ... I'm sure there's plenty of room! He certainly is not wanted nor needed here. Perhaps he can have chats with your protesters!

Speaking of ...

quote:

The protesters were among several hundred people who demonstrated against the war in Iraq, the planned increase of Australian troops in the region, and the imprisonment of David Hicks.

Seven protesters were charged with assault police, obstruct traffic, malicious damage, inciting crowd violence, resist arrest and offensive conduct and language, police said.

Y'all should take up a collection to bail them out!

And who is David Hicks? And why is he imprisioned?

EbonyRose... here is a brief rundown David Hicks has been imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay for five years without a trial. In a cynical ploy before the upcoming Federal Election, PM John Howard has "suddenly" said he would be sure to get Hicks home before xmas this year IF THERE WAS NO APPEAL against whatever trial & NEW CHARGES the USA invents. In other words, hang in there and defend yourself and it's HIS fault he stays there. Or, STFU and our Liberal government will bring him home. An absolute travesty of justice since Day One that my government has been complicit in.

After the outbreak of the 'War on Terror' in 2001, enemy combatants captured in Afghanistan by American forces were sent to Guantanamo Bay. Dubbed the 'worst of the worst', among them was an Australian, David Hicks.

Major Michael Mori is Hick’s American defence lawyer.

(excerpts from a TV interview transcript)

MAJOR MICHAEL MORI: The charges that they'd come up with before was a charge of conspiracy and attempted murder by an unprivileged belligerent, that they made up, and aiding the enemy.

ANDREW DENTON: "An unprivileged belligerent"? Meaning what?

MAJOR MICHAEL MORI: I don't know what they mean. They made it up.

ANDREW DENTON: So you're his defence counsel...

MAJOR MICHAEL MORI: Yes.

ANDREW DENTON: ...And you can't even define what the term 'unprivileged belligerent' means. How do you defend that?

MAJOR MICHAEL MORI: Well, their view was, everybody on the Taliban side. Anybody on the Taliban side was a war criminal because they resisted the invasion of their country. I didn't quite understand that. Then it was, as you heard the administration, their position was, "Well they didn't wear proper uniforms." So I started thinking about that. I said, "What about the Northern Alliance? What about the CIA they were fighting in Afghanistan? They weren't wearing proper uniforms." So it really can't be a crime and it's not a crime, but they had to try to fabricate something.

ANDREW DENTON: Can you confirm for me, David Hicks, in an interview with the Australian Federal Police back in somewhere around 2001-2002, allegedly admitted to the following - that he had trained with al-Qaeda and, Lashkar-e-Taiba. Correct?

MAJOR MICHAEL MORI: He is charged with that.

ANDREW DENTON: Do you accept that the US Government has the right to try David Hicks?

MAJOR MICHAEL MORI: I accept that they have the right to try anybody that violated the law of war of in a fair system. That's really what I've been asking for, for David Hicks since I got involved, "Give us a court martial." We could have gone to trial a long time ago, but that would have provided him actual rights and they wouldn't have been able to predict and control the outcome.

MAJOR MICHAEL MORI: You pretty much see the cell right there. It's just a cement room. He's in his cell until they wake him up to give him his morning meal. He gets his noon meal and his dinner meal. Sometime during the day, maybe during daylight hours, he'll be offered an opportunity for an hour to go out to a large, you know, chain link fence, pen, to have an hour of exercise. Besides that, he sits in his cell. When I last saw him he was allowed to have three books, and once a week they came around with a cart and gave him one book a week.

ANDREW DENTON: I know you tried to arrange books for him. What sort of books?

MAJOR MICHAEL MORI: Yes, we've been bringing him books. There is a lot of things we try to do, obviously, to get David to focus away from where he was just sitting there in life. So we brought him a lot of books to read. Some got through, some didn't get through. They wouldn't let us give him 'Presumed Innocent', I'm not sure why. 'To Kill a Mockingbird Bird, 'The Fatal Shore' never got to him, but we've been able to give him a lot of Charles Dickens. He likes Charles Dickens.

ANDREW DENTON: He's spent a considerable period of time not just in isolation, but in isolation without sunlight. Is that correct?

MAJOR MICHAEL MORI: Yes.

quote:

Originally posted by EbonyRose:
Y'all should take up a collection to bail them out!

absolutely! champions! If I hadn't been working, I'd have joined them.

The tide of public opinion has turned - even among the neo-cons and conservatives - the government is only talking about Hicks because of that. The federal opposition minister Kevin Rudd made time to speak with Cheney about both Iraq - an exit strategy - and about the appalling detainment and abuse of Hicks' human rights.
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there are more rants about Hicks here...
http://africanamerica.org/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/1181067493...551051134#4551051134

Almost everyone here HATES our Attorney General.

...and, meanwhile John Howard has been busy telling immigrants to sit a test about Australia, and our concept of a "Fair Go" for all. The fair go concept has been hijacked by a federal government who now wants everyone, to look and think like a white neo-con american. Ummm... what country am I living in... Amer... no, it's Australia! Don't pass the exam, don't get to become a citizen.
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EbonyRose... FYI... David Hicks "Candles of Justice"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MJMp9ZKpts&mode=related&search=

This whole Iraq fiasco has disrupted governments all over the world it seems. Here, too, our Republicans and Conservatives are becoming more and more vocal against Bush & his group over the war. In-fighting amongst the political parties has always been a big no-no!! One mustn't have the rest of the world think that we aren't united as a country!

But, the chit is hitting the fan on a daily basis here now! And I couldn't be happier! Bush's legacy is going to be so scarred ... and once his term is over, the media is jump all over him (they would never verbally abuse a sitting president)! It almost brings a tear to my eye in gleeful anticipation!

Well, the Brits are about to start pulling out, and a couple of the other smaller countries as well. Things will be crumbling soon, and hopefully, this whole Guantanamo mess will get straighted out with it. Hopefully.

O-oh... more Americans !!!


Sydney to be a ridgy-didge star in top US soapie
Rachel Browne
February 25, 2007

SYDNEY will be exposed to a worldwide audience of 35 million people with the cast of US daytime soap The Bold And The Beautiful arriving for a week-long shoot in the city.

Actors Katherine Kelly Lang, Ronn Moss, Kyle Lowder and MacKenzie Mauzy along with key production crew land in Sydney today.

They will film scenes around the city and harbour with key tourist attractions to feature prominently, executive producer Bradley P. Bell said.

"The scenes will be very romantic, enhanced by the immense beauty of Sydney Harbour," Bell said.

The veteran show is screened in 130 countries and enjoys a strong following in Australia, where about 500,000 viewers tune in each afternoon.

The Sydney shoot is the first time the show has been filmed outside the US since 2002, when filming took place in Portofino, Italy.

The Sydney shoot's executive producer, Leah Churchill-Brown, said the city was chosen because of its reputation as a desirable destination by Americans.

"They were attracted to the Sydney because it's regarded as being a bit exotic," she said. "Plus, it's summertime and the city looks at its best."

[Ed: So funny to hear an American say Australia is 'exotic'... lol ]

Churchill-Brown said the filming would employ 35 people during the week.

The US cast and crew are staying at a five-star city hotel and will be the guests of honour at a cocktail party on Tuesday.

However, Churchill-Brown said the benefits of playing host to a show as big as this would be long-term.

"The fact that it is seen by so many people in so many places is obviously a positive thing for Sydney," she said.

"But it's also a positive thing for the film community here because once other producers see what we have to offer, they will be encouraged to bring work here as well."

The episodes will go to air in the US in next month and here in the mid-year.


[If you're wondering... noone I know watches The Bold And The Beautiful lol! All that big hair and 'frozen silences' in US soap-operas... LOL!]

quote:

Originally posted by FireFly:
[If you're wondering... noone I know watches The Bold And The Beautiful lol! All that big hair and 'frozen silences' in US soap-operas... LOL!]

I was about to feel bad because I didn't even know that show was still running!!

...then we had Snoop Dog doing a promo vid on Bondi Beach , and now Beyonce's about to tour.... BUT where the heck is Jill Scott? Someone we really want to visit !!

Oops, Dubya picks wrong PEC



United States President George Bush made one of his characteristic pronunciation bungles this morning welcoming business leaders to the "OPEC" meeting instead of the APEC meeting.

But with a dose of Texan charm Mr Bush grinned and said OPEC - which stands for Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries - was a meeting he is due to attend next year.

Later in his speech, Mr Bush recounted how Mr Howard had gone to visit "Austrian troops'' last year in Iraq. There are, in fact, no Austrian troops there. But Australia has about 1500 military personnel in and around the country.

Sailing through an attempt at bidding everyone "G'day" Mr Bush gave a strong speech praising the development of democracy in the Asia Pacific region and a rousing defence of America's role in the war in Iraq.

Mr Bush described the ongoing war in Iraq as "the calling of our time" saying the fight to spread democracy must never be abandoned.

"Mums around the world share the same hope and that is for their kids to grow up in a free and safe society," Mr Bush said.

"Whenever they are given the chance the people of every culture and every region choose freedom over repression."

Mr Bush told delegates the "surest road to stagnation and instability is isolation".

He mentioned Burma and North Korea as countries America wanted to see open up and become fully functioning democracies.

He also said that even though he was looking forward to attending the Olympics in China next year it was an opportunity for China to become a more open society.

"Chinese leaders can use this opportunity to show confidence by demonstrating a commitment to greater openness and tolerance", Mr Bush said.

Mr Bush also lavished praised on Prime Minister John Howard saying he was "determined, courageous and steadfast" and that America could have "no better ally".

Australia...

You cannot win a crime, you can only stop it
By Matt Howard




Mr Howard says the war in Iraq has nothing to do with the liberation of the country's people. John Howard is secretly praying for violence this week with APEC to further tighten his rein and justify his campaign of fear.

But the real violence today is the violence being perpetrated by the Prime Minister and his dignitaries - a violence that can only be truly understood by those that have witnessed it first hand. It is the slaughter of 600,000 Iraqis.

As a two-tour combat veteran of this brutal war, I have a responsibility to speak honestly and openly about what has been done and what continues to be done in our name.

We veterans know that this war is not the one being sanitised on the nightly news.

It has nothing to do with the liberation of the people of Iraq; instead everything to do with the subjugation and domination of these people in the name of US economic and strategic interests.

I did not go to war with the country of Iraq. I went to war with the people of Iraq.

During the initial invasion we killed women. We killed children. We killed farm animals.

We were the United States Marine Corps, not the United States Peace Corps, and we left a swath of death and destruction in our wake all the way to Baghdad.

Four and a half years later we as soldiers are done. We are done being told under threat of court martial to run over children that get in the way of our speeding convoys.

We are done raiding and destroying the homes of innocent Iraqis on a nightly basis.

We are done abusing and torturing prisoners.

We are done being hired thugs for the 160,000 contractors and US corporate interests in Iraq.

We are done coming home broken, from two, three, four tours of duty - only to find our commander in chief has actually cut funding to the Department of Veterans Affairs. To find our doctors being told to diagnose us with pre-existing personality disorders instead of post-traumatic stress syndrome.

We are done killing for lies.

So we are taking back the history that has been deliberately robbed from us. We are dispelling the myth that the Vietnam War ended when the Democrats started voting against it.

The truth is that the Vietnam War ended when the people followed their conscience and took to the streets. The Vietnam War ended when soldiers refused to fight; when pilots dropped their bombs in the ocean.

The power lies with the people. The Government knows this and is deathly afraid of it.

No where is this more clear than in the thousands of pages of internal documents from the US Department of Defence explicitly detailing how at the end of the Vietnam War the military was literally in a state of collapse - a state of mutiny.

As a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, I am here to tell George Bush he is not welcome - wherever he decides to set foot. He is guilty of crimes against humanity and needs to be tried accordingly. Australia's military contribution may be small, but the political legitimacy it adds cannot be discounted.

This war is a crime by all standards of international law, and you cannot win a crime. You can only stop it.

I ask the people of Australia to join the ranks of the thousands of veterans and active duty service members in the United States currently standing up to put an end to the lies; an end to the aggression.

Instead of using the ideals of peace and prosperity to further corporate interests, let's take the opportunity this week to demand a real change in Australia's foreign policy - a change that truly benefits people, not their governments.

Matt Howard was a 7-tonne driver in the 1st Tank Battalion of the US Marine Corps. He was also a part of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. After another tour about a year later he joined the counter-recruiting campaign of 'Iraq Vets Against the War'. He is currently in Australia.

Well thank you so much, Ms. FireFly, for pointing out how ignorant our Commander-in-Chief still sounds when he goes abroad!! Just what we need ... even more embarrassment!!

But, I really appreciate the article by the Vet! We would never hear an account like that about what's going on in Iraq over here. Our media continually makes us try to believe that all is going well over there ... and that the troops are all happy campers, during their duty for the country, and glad they are making a difference.

I wish there were a way to make him have to pay for what he's doing to the minds and bodies of the soldiers over there fighting this illegal and immoral conflict.

quote:

Originally posted by EbonyRose:
Our media continually makes us try to believe that all is going well over there ... and that the troops are all happy campers, during their duty for the country, and glad they are making a difference.

...NOT

quote:

I wish there were a way to make him have to pay for what he's doing to the minds and bodies of the soldiers over there fighting this illegal and immoral conflict.

a war-crimes tribunal might be a start.