60 Minutes on 9, hardly the last word on Stop Bush rally and APEC washup
60 Minutes is the higest rating magazine current affairs show on a Sunday, and maybe for the week. But it's not the last self referential word on real reportage and democracy of the Stop Bush protest rally or significance or otherwise of this APEC week. Far from it, despite the pomposity of Peter Harvey's swollen larynx with the moneyed vain hierchical condescending tone, not least vainest of them all yellow cake ex PM Bob Hawke.
Laughably Hawke vouches for the rest of the little people that we 'can put up with a couple of days of inconvenience'. Gee thanks Bob, how rich are you now exactly? Still want Australia to be an international nuclear waste dump?
"You're the father of the [APEC] child" says Harvey so sure of himself to Hawke.
Only he's not actually. PH is such a pompous goose, multiple heart bypass notwithstanding. Here is a real journalist Kerry Obrien dealing with the founding of APEC here in an interview with Paul Keating last week:
23/08/2007 - Keating takes aim at world leaders
and here is another real journalist namely George Negus, long time gone from 60 Minutes, dealing with the founding of APEC as currently constituted again in an interview with Paul Keating:
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 Paul Keating interview Depending on which analyst or commentator's recall of recent Australian political history you're relying on, APEC was either Bob Hawke's idea, one that he pinched from garrulous Gareth Evans who nicked it from a couple of excitable bureaucrats in Foreign Affairs down in Canberra ...more > |
including this exchange
GEORGE NEGUS: Mr Keating, can we clean up an APEC conundrum that
has been bugging me? I mean, who actually was the architect of APEC?
Because depending on who you read, Bob Hawke pinched it from Gareth
Evans, Gareth Evans pinched it from public servants. I mean, are you
really the rolled gold architect?
PAUL KEATING, FORMER
PRIME MINISTER: I am the rolled gold architect of the APEC leaders
meeting. Bob is the rolled gold architect of APEC, the economic
meeting.
GEORGE NEGUS: So I guess we can say this is all your fault then, those people who think the APEC thing is a bit of a farce?
PAUL KEATING: This part of it is, yeah.
Last time I looked this last 3 days has been the "rolled gold APEC leaders meeting" the subject of Harvey's reportage, and thus founded by Paul Keating, and the several days before that was Hawke business meeting, NOT the subject of Harvey's report.
But Harvey presumably couldn't get Keating before the camera for this once top level magazine current affairs show.
That big error no. 1 in the 60 Minutes show.
The big error no. 2 was the tone of the march and rally coverage. Lazy, trite, biased, pandering to Establishment power mongering, lacking perspective, again relying on pompous swollen larynx in place of real journalism.
The clue to the segment was in the special access to the high tech gee whiz "big brother". "unAustralian" police control room chaperoned by senior cop Dave Owens obviously puff proud he can track a pigeon from the Blue Mtns to Bondi perhaps completely missing the point that no one in their right mind would.
The footage of the protest was low rent scuffles and conflicts admitting that the great majority were peaceful but totally failing to get the amazing colour solidarity and indeed love and goodwill in those images. The 'IMAGNE' banner for one, the choreographed T shirts, the amazing puppetry and costumery, relying on one image of Queen of England (a good one, but narrow).
Yes it was all about the police force, and maybe too enthusiastic police FORCE with some footage on that but you just knew pompous zipper man Harvey and Hawke were more than happy to do their hearts in over cocktails and fatty food with the big knobs. You could feel their noses crinkling up at those dirty protesters ...teachers, fire brigage, ambulance officer, ship workers, this lawyer writing now, students, mothers, families, professionals of various kinds. Dirty screaming aggressive protesters really ... only they weren't. They were the light and hope of our democracy and our country and the ecological future, not some greedy craven criminal govt puppets of big multinational corporations.
Harvey could never get that, because he is wage enslaved to that hierarchy, and is not much of a journalist. He hung his moral hat on an 86 year old veteran of Japan's infamous WW2 prison camps being shut out. This was smart arse Harvey's way of saying who the real patriots are - not the protesters worried about world ecological oblivion from nukes or climate change but a 60 year old wound still not healed, and never to be.
A weird direction for Harvey to take - the veteran grandfather who reminded me of my own - a symbol of the horror of war but also of the horror of Abu Grahib prison in Iraq run by the US allies in this century. Uh oh better not go there - that's the big knobs who pay for my gilded media cage.
The ABC had the real weight in their 7 pm prime time news - issues of police lack of integrity with footage of one Big Meeja photographer flung onto her back by a psycho cop in the attempt to take a picture of a brutalised female protester - that 7's Chris Reason criminally tried to sanitise, but Harvey couldn't even run on 9, but the ABC ran in a story about the likely need for a State Parliamentary Inquiry into policing.
And therein we have the real purpose of the special 60 Minutes corporate media access to the Big Knobs police control room (which real purpose it seems is to ensure corporations have a hugely expensive $330M party with taxpayers money with no gate crashers, except perhaps honourary corporate apologist PM in waiting Kevin Rudd.)
The NSW Police are scared of an investigation into abuse of power and lack of integrity and are doing their best to justify themselves via 60 Minutes and sad tame hacks like Peter Harvey a breath away from his next coronary. That's one 'journo' whose going to take the path of least resistance.
Harvey is a dinosaur. He should go along with Howard. They are both embarrassments to their profession.
Tom McLoughlin, SAM editor
Re: 60 Minutes on 9, hardly the last word on Stop Bush rally and
NSW'S new top Cop Andrew Scipione is a member of and attends Hillsong.
Talk about a conflict of interest, hope he is not getting counsel of Pastor Brain Houston?
After the extreme crackdown on our civil liberties during APEC I would not at all be surprised.
Urip Hudiono, Hanoi/Jakarta
Urip Hudiono, Hanoi/Jakarta – President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has warned people not to "excessively" protest US President George W. Bush's visit on Monday, as Muslim militants publicly called for Bush's assassination and thousands of people rallied across the country to oppose the meeting.
"If something bad happens, the world will blame us. We certainly don't want to be regarded as a country that can't respect its guests," Yudhoyono said Sunday in Hanoi after attending the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit.
Bush is scheduled to talk with Yudhoyono at the heavily guarded Bogor presidential palace during his six-hour visit Monday.
Yudhoyono said any incident during the short visit would cause repercussions that would last for much longer.
Jakarta Police chief Maj. Gen. Adang Firman said police were treating extremely seriously reports of possible attacks by hard liners on the meeting.
The city police will deploy 7,700 officers, about two-thirds the total staff, to guard the visit.
Meanwhile, more than 5,000 protesters grouped in the "Coalition To Crush Bush" marched from the Hotel Indonesia traffic circle to the State Palace in Central Jakarta on Sunday, with Muslim militants publicly calling for the assassination of the American leader.
Habib Rizieq, leader of the Islam Defenders Front (FPI), said the deaths of Muslims across the globe should be revenged. "His blood is halal (permitted) to be shed. Not only is it halal, but it is obligatory to kill him," Rizieq told a crowd on Sunday as quoted by AFP.
"Kill, kill" the crowd yelled, pointing their fists up, when Rizieq shouted Bush's name, while the shouting of "America" was greeted with shouts of "Destroy, destroy".
The coalition of hardline and conservative Islamic groups included Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia, the Muslim Forum, the Surakarta Muslim Youth Forum, the Indonesian Muslim Brotherhood Movement and the Tafsir Alquran Assembly.
They carried banners and Palestinian flags and condemned Bush as a war criminal and a human rights violator for invading Muslim states such as Iraq and Afghanistan, and for supporting the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
The protesters warned Yudhoyono and Vice President Yusuf Kalla they risked an election defeat in 2009 for receiving Bush.
They later marched to the United States Embassy, some six kilometers away from the State Palace. There they distributed posters and fliers to recruit people for a major anti-Bush rally in Bogor.
At another protest in South Jakarta, more than 5,000 supporters of the Islamic Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) rallied peacefully against the visit at the Al-Azhar mosque. PKS leader Tifatul Sembiring and former People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) Amien Rais were in attendance.
Tifatul, whose party holds the largest number of seats in the Jakarta legislative council, said Bush was responsible for the deaths of more than 650,000 people since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The PKS leader later blessed some 2,000 party members set to leave for Bogor to join a protest.
Similar rallies were also staged in cities in East Java, West Kalimantan, South Sulawesi, Riau, West Nusa Tenggara, Yogyakarta and Aceh.
In Bogor, West Java Police chief Insp. Gen. Soenarko Ardanto inspected several helipads prepared for Bush and his entourage, while security forces were on full alert at the palace. It is estimated Bush's visit has cost the government a whopping Rp 6 billion (about US$660,000).
Streets around the palace will be cordoned off Monday and cellular phone signals will be jammed within a 200 meter radius around the venue.
Bush is set to arrive at 4 p.m. at Jakarta's Halim Perdanakusumah Airport before leaving for Bogor by helicopter. He will have dinner with Yudhoyono and is scheduled to leave at 10 p.m.
The talks between the two leaders will focus on education and health issues, including increasing study scholarships and efforts to combat bird flu, officials have said.
The two will be joined by experts, public figures and a group of elementary school students.
__________________
Submited by : Dietas
No coverage of this protest in Australia
Virtually no media coverage of this anti Bush protest was conveyed here in Australia. Even allowing for the intolerant philosophy of these groups, and the rent a crowd cliche that rallies in Indonesia are said to be at times from such a hugely populous country, it's curious there was absolutely no coverage here, at least that I noticed.
It might have run on SBS tv news but I didn't catch it.
There was another disturbing story, a mere postage stamp in the in Fairfax Sydney Morning Herald from memory of Jakarta police firiing at 'an Australian anti terrorism training officer' by mistake who they said later was taken for a drug smuggler.
I took the clipping here:
This looks like a much more significant story than this tiny treatment. Not least for the guy dodging the bullets, the poor b*gger.
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