Crikey

APEC in panorama. Amazing interactive 360 degree panoramas of the APEC demonstration at Peter Murphy’s Panoramic VR Weblog. Especially the second one of the water cannon etc.

Meanwhile, Jeff Sparrow writes:

“The square is seldom is ever cool… He is ‘not with it’, that is he doesn’t know ‘what’s happening’. But if he figures it out, he moves up a notch to ‘hip’. And if he can bring himself to approve of what is happening then, he becomes ‘groovy’. And after that with much luck and perseverance, he can rise to the rank of ‘cool’.”

That’s Dr. E. R. Bloomquist explaining the drug culture to a conference of district attorneys in Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

One could be forgiven for thinking Bloomquist alive and well and living in Sydney, judging from the tone and the content of the various official pronunciations over the last weeks about that curious specimen, the APEC protester.

For instance, Chief Superintendent Stephen Cullen. Cullen told a Sydney court that he was braced for the worst violence of his career, that 20,000 protesters would descend upon the city and that a “full-scale riot” was probable:

Based upon my research, experience, current intelligence and evidence from internationally similar events – more recently G20 in Melbourne – I have absolutely no doubt that minority groups will engage in a level of violence not previously experienced in Sydney.

Despite water cannons, neo-Nazi provocateurs and legions of twitchy cops, the APEC protests actually manifested less violence than the average inner-city Saturday night.

So what, one wonders, was the “research” that allowed Cullen to so confidently predict a protest about ten times bigger than G20, chock-full of mayhem and slaughter?

Thompson’s book contains a clue: “Bloomquist writes like somebody who once bearded Tim Leary in a campus cocktail lounge and paid for all the drinks. And it was probably somebody like Leary who told him, with a straight face, that sunglasses are known in the drug culture as ‘tea shades’.”

NSW Police Minister David Campbell also seems to have sipped the cocktails with Cullen and Leary.

You’ll remember him explaining that organisers of the Stop Bush Coalition demonstration faced a challenge to keep the protest peaceful and not allow other groups to cause trouble:

Of course the concern is there are other people from other organisations such as Mutiny, another group called AC/DC and a group called Resistance, who said they would come to Sydney intent on violence.

Someone should alert the police minister to a wonderful invention called the internets (apparently it’s on computers now). With a few clicks he could have discovered that, “the group called Resistance” was, in fact, straining every nerve to achieve a non-violent event – not so surprising, really, given its leading role in the same Stop Bush Coalition that Campbell saw it as trying to hijack.

Does it not seem odd that, with the zillions of dollars spent on security, Campbell can’t get the most basic details of the protest correct?

In that respect, the War on Terror (and its mutant child, the War on Protesters) replicates the old War on Drugs: it emboldens every charlatan and huckster to talk up the perils confronting law-abiding citizens without fear of contradiction.

Thompson links Dr Bloomquist’s effusions to the “kind of dangerous gibberish that used to be posted… in Police Department locker rooms”. He gives an example:

KNOW YOUR DOPE FIEND. YOUR LIFE MAY DEPEND UPON IT! You will not be able to see his eyes because of Tea-Shades, but his knuckles will be white from inner… The Dope Fiend fears nothing. He will attack, for no reason, with every weapon at his command – including yours. Any officer apprehending a suspected marijuana addict should use all necessary force immediately. One stitch in time (on him) will usually save nine on you. Good luck. The Chief.

Change “dope-fiend” to “protester” and you have the bulletin issued for APEC.