OK, so at first I had nothing to blog about and NOW - almost too much to choose from!
My choice was made easier though, by the stupidity of APEC (The Asia-Pacific Economic Community) security.
For those who don't know, there is a meeting of APEC this week in Sydney and security has been horrendous. It's something you would expect in any country where civil liberty is curtailed and where authority is obeyed without question.
I had never thought we in Australia were like that; I always trusted that we questioned authority wherever possible and didn't simply obey 'anyone' with a badge. Sadly I was mistaken. This week the televison programme "Chaser's War on Everything" (the last bastion of rebellion in this parched land) chose to highlight this, by having one of their crew walking around Sydney wearing a laminated copy of his televison station ID card, stopping people randomly for a 'security check'.
The sad spectacle of people blindly doing as they were told broke my tiny, stone heart. People are idiots. Only one of them questioned what being asked of her (to raise her arms and turn around). Even a muslim man wearing traditional arabic clothing, stopped and did as the fake security officer asked him. He complained a little but he complied. We have become a nation of sheep! Of Girly-Men! Of Whimps!!!! We deserve to be treated the way we are by our government because we allow it. Civil disobedience has become a 'Bad thing'.
So then they went further and set up a fake motorcade to drive straight into the APEC conference! A stroke of pure genius. They set up four black cars, including a large, shiney, black SUV and put Canadian flags on them and drove straight into the gapping maw of the best security teams Australia has to offer.
They made it through three security checks!!
When the 'motorcade' was eventually stopped and asked for ID they were asked to exit the cars and searched. One of them was dressed as Osamma Bin Laden! Needless to say the security forces are in a furore, not because of the obvious uselessness of the systems they have in place but because they've been embarrassed. The fact is that these comedians have done us all a gigantic favour by showing us the complete waste of time this massive expenditure of public funds has been. They have acted as agents provocateur putting pressure on and testing our security set-up, showing us it's flaws. We should be grateful to them for daring to question, for daring to try the system. We should hail them as heroes for showing us that the biggest and most complicated security system is only as good as it's smallest flaw.
There is an added benefit to this excercise, the actual terrorists will now have a tougher time if they try to break security at this useless and expensive event, because the system has been tested. I see so many people angry at the 'Chaser's' team and yet I cannot see why. All they did was what any good Aussie should do, they questioned authority and they pushed their luck. They said 'No' when told to bend over and take it up the arse.
We're turning into a nation of obeyers and it will end in tears folks. We will end up being like the Singaporese, with a 'nanny' government that tells us how to behave and when. If we fail in our duty to question the authorities and to disobey wherever possible , we will end up a nation of girly-men, unable to decide what to have for breakfast or when to poop. I applaude the 'Chaser's' Team and I hope to god they stay with us, working for the good of our nation.
security