Sydney Peace Protest (Yesterday) - What do people think abou

[Palmares]

Personally, I don't think it was all the protesters fault. There were several issues, one the police arrested a few people before the march even started. This provoked the crowd. Also, the violence was only caused by a small portion of the crowd. I was very disappointed how the media just happened to point out the religion and ethinicity of the protaganists.

Lastly, a less violent protest happened in Melbourne.

What do other people think of the protests? I guess it was somewhat of a hinderance to our cause, but I think people for the most part, people are too ignorant to think about the true causality.

(Edited by Cthenthar at 11:52 am on Mar. 27, 2003)

[MiNdGaMe]

I noticed alot of individuals on Nine, and Seven waving Iraqi flags? then noticed the burning of the US flag? isn't that a contradicition? Sure Bush is a Tyrannt, so is Saddam.

(Edited by MiNdGaMe at 8:11 pm on Mar. 27, 2003)

[Ian]

I, too, noticed Iraqi flag being waved but none of these flags had the arabic text for Allahu Akbar written on them, this means they aren't associating themselves with the fundamentalist Iraq but the Iraq thats um not fundmentalist (for lack of a better word). Sort of like the Palestinian flag, I would gladly fly it, that does not mean I am a massive nut-case like Hamas members or Saddam.

The issue of Student violence was, in my mind, largely manufactured and highly politicised ('youths of middle eastern appearance; throwing objects at police/carrying a knife'), there was much antagonism on the part of the police such as using 2 foot long truncheons on the crowd, the use of roman phalanx formations to force back a crowd physically and break up the protest a la early 20th industralists fond treatment of strikers.

Police in Sydney are overtly against anti-war protests threatening to ban protests "unless they can gurantee that they will be peaceful" in other words "if you can gurantee you can find a location where us cops cannot find you hippies and disrupt physically, or discredit your message of protest, and hence the rest of society cannot hear your message due to the lack of avenues to do so"

On the Thursday emergency protest I was struck by the obvious pro-war attitude of some of the police force, Myself and a number of comrades were standing on the side of the road within ear-shot of a police officer, at that time a man had just run straight across the 5 lane George Street and I muttered "What a dumb thing to do"***, to which the Officer replied "Not as dumb as an anti-war protestor". On the same march once it had got underway a unionist told me to hold his flag while he had a smoke and I was letting it blow in the breeze unaware that it was brushing a mounted policeman's horse, I noticed my mistake and quickly got it out of the poor animals face and apologized, he said "You better watch yourself you fucking c**t". Never trust Grey haired dudes on horses.

***I may have made my choice of words more appropriate ;)

(Edited by Ian Rocks at 10:05 am on Mar. 29, 2003)