verging_on_random

APEC

August 16, 2007 on 8:21 pm | In Uncategorized |

From this distance, the barely-suppressed hysteria about the forthcoming APEC get-together in Sydney is puzzling and annoying. The people who actually live there must be finding it a nightmare.

From September 1 to 10, the city will basically operate under martial law. Great sections of the city will be closed off to the public. God only knows what it’s all going to cost, and the inconvenience and disruption will be staggering.

Yet hardly anyone seems to be objecting, let alone questioning the point of the whole stupid exercise. So maybe someone can answer a couple of simple questions for me:

1. What is this monstrous exercise supposed to accomplish that couldn’t be achieved through normal diplomatic channels and the use of the numerous communication tools that modern technology has made available to us? If I can sit here and enjoy a free video hookup with someone in the USA, surely somebody can download MSN for the prime minister and show him how to use it? I have yet to hear one single concrete measure that this pointless pathetic wank fest is meant to bring to fruition. Indeed it’s hard to see what anybody would expect a meeting of 20 odd government representatives to achieve. All we’ll get are bland speeches and group photos and meaningless communiques about how they all agree to keep talking about stuff.
2. What is with Bush unilaterally deciding he’d arrive and leave a few days early? Anyone else would have been told “Sorry, plans are made, you’d screw up the security arrangements, come when you said you would or don’t come at all.” But of course the very thought of giving the Emperor such a message would have had Howard wetting himself. As far as he’s concerned, the main purpose of the APEC circus is to let him show off all his bestest friends to the rest of Australia. Ha ha, up yours the kids at Earlwood High who used to laugh at Johnny - who’s laughing now, eh? He’d have happily put the whole thing off to Christmas if that’s what it took to get the president of The Most Powerful Nation the World Has Ever Known doing a joint press conference with our John.

Meetings like APEC are designed for one purpose only: to impress upon the general population how insignificant they are compared to their rulers. Look on their works, ye ordinary folk, and despair!

And Australians take it. Supinely they submit to having their city turned into an armed camp for 10 days with barely a murmur of protest … because they have become willing subjects of an increasingly authoritarian state. When I was a kid we lined the roads to wave at the Queen as she drove past, so near we could almost touch her. Now we stand behind temporary walls, modelled no doubt on the ones that have been developed in the Middle East, and watch for distant signs of helicopters transporting The Great and The Good to their ceremonies.

Howard and Downer will tell us what an honour it is for Australia to host this charade. What bullshit. We’re like some tinpot outpost of the ancient Roman Empire, our rulers overcome with a mixture of pride and panic because Caesar is paying one of his rare visits. Expecting anything useful to come of it is absurd. The event is both the means and the end, a celebration of the obsession with power that has taken hold of our government since 2001.