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APEC Conference / 'Osama bin Laden' motorcade prank

Pep'rJack

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'Osama bin Laden' motorcade with Canadian flags clears APEC checkpoints

Associated Press
September 6, 2007

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/serv...wfakemotorcade0906/BNStory/International/home


SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA — Members of an Australian TV comedy show, one dressed as Osama bin Laden, drove through two security checkpoints Thursday before being stopped near the Sydney hotel where U.S. President George W. Bush is staying.

The stunt embarrassed Sydney police who have imposed the tightest security measures in city history for a summit of leaders from Pacific Rim countries, including Mr. Bush and Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who arrived Thursday.

Police arrested 11 cast and crew from the TV program, The Chaser's War on Everything, and impounded three vehicles, the Australian Broadcasting Corp., which airs the show, said on its website.

Cast members put together a sham motorcade, hiring two motorcycles and three large cars on which they put Canadian flags. Police waved the motorcade through two checkpoints before pulling it over near the Intercontinental Hotel where Mr. Bush is staying.

Cast member Chas Licciardello got out of the car dressed in a white tunic and cap and wearing a long fake Osama bin Laden-style beard.

“No particular reason we chose Canada,” cast member Chris Taylor was quoted as saying on The Sydney Morning Herald's web-site. “We just thought they'd be a country who the cops wouldn't scrutinize too closely, and who feasibly would only have three cars in their motorcade — as opposed to the 20 or so gas guzzlers that Bush has brought with him.”

Mr. Bush is a frequent target of The Chaser,”as are Australian politicians. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said the stunt proved security was working.

“Whatever you think of the humour of The Chaser, the honest truth is they were clearly not going to harm anybody in a physical way,” Mr. Downer said. “They presumably were, as is the nature of their show, aiming to humiliate a lot of well-known people.”


0906osama500big.jpg

Comedian Chas Licciardello, dressed as al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, is arrested by police outside U.S President George W. Bush's hotel during the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation group forum in Sydney on Thursday.
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"Bums for Bush" protesters won't turn the other cheek

AFP
September 5, 2007

http://rawstory.com/news/afp/_Bums_for_Bush_protesters_won_t_tur_09052007.html


A game group of Australian anti-war protesters are planning a cheeky protest against a visit by US President George W. Bush -- baring their bottoms in what they hope will be a world-record moon.

Organiser Will Saunders said the Friday protest was aimed at lightening the mood in Sydney, a city currently patrolled by 5,000 police and soldiers and divided by a massive steel and concrete fence ahead of the APEC summit.

Police have said they expect violence during a series of protests against the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit which will gather together 21 leaders from around the world.

"There's this heaviness about the protests," Saunders told AFP.

"It's hoped to make the point that protests don't have to be these terribly heavy serious things."

The "Bums Not Bombs" group will particularly target Bush, whose unpopular war in Iraq has been strongly backed by Australian Prime Minister John Howard.

The visits by the world leaders, including Bush's five-day stay at a luxurious 3,500 US dollar per night harbourside hotel, have resulted in road blocks, changes to public transport, and other disruptions in Australia's biggest city.

The protest will take place on Friday in Sydney's Hyde Park, close to where the leaders will be meeting.

In a leaflet to possible supporters, the group calls for 4,000 cheeks -- er, 2,000 people -- to "tell Bush what we really think about his visit."

Saunders said numbers for the protest were not yet certain but he had a core group to perform a "21 Bum Salute" to represent each of the countries in the grouping.

"I think there's certain to be hundreds of people," said Saunders, who previously attracted media attention when he and another man painted "No War" on the Sydney Opera House in huge, bright red letters on the eve of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The group said it needed 4,000 cheeks to break the previous world record moon. "This is one APEC protest we can all enjoy," it said.

Bush himself seemed unworried about any of the protests.

"People feel like they want to protest -- fine, they can," he told a press conference in Sydney.

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"Mooning is the universal human gesture of contempt..."

http://www.bumsnotbombs.org/
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Apec

http://www.theage.com.au/news/natio...1188783415730.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

Chaser comic convoy beats summit security

David Braithwaite and Andrea Petrie, Sydney
September 7, 2007

rgn_chaser_narrowweb__300x315,0.jpg


The Chaser team's Chas Licciardello dressed as Osama bin Laden in the APEC stunt.
Photo: Channel Seven


IF ONLY the police had stopped to read the fine print on the "APEC 2007 Official Vehicle" sticker.

"This vehicle belongs to a member of The Chaser's War on Everything. This dude likes trees and poetry and certain types of carnivorous plants excite him."

Two police security checkpoints into the sniper-ridden "ring of steel" later, and it took a comedian in an Osama bin Laden outfit to rouse Sydney's $150 million APEC security monster into action.

The much-vaunted protection for the APEC summit was peeled away with embarrassing ease yesterday by satirists armed with hire cars flying Canadian flags.

Nine men and two women were charged last night with breaching APEC security zones after the fake motorcade sailed past police checkpoints to drive within metres of President George Bush's hotel, the InterContinental. The charges carry a maximum sentence of six months' jail.

Those charged include the show's executive producer, Julian Morrow, and his fellow cast member Chas Licciardello — who donned fake beard and white robes — along with members of their crew and hire car drivers. All were granted bail to appear in court on October 4.

The Chaser's bogus motorcade of two black vans, a hire car, two very unofficial looking motorcycles and jogging security heavies remained undetected until Morrow and Licciardello got out of their car outside Mr Bush's hotel, where police grabbed them.

Chaser team member Chris Taylor said there was "no particular reason" they had chosen Canadian flags. "We just thought they'd be a country who the cops wouldn't scrutinise too closely, and who feasibly would only have three cars in their motorcade as opposed to the 20 or so gas-guzzlers that Bush has brought with him." :D

Last night, the ABC issued a statement saying: "The Chaser team had no knowledge that they had entered a restricted zone."

"When the Chaser reached the perimeter of what they thought was the APEC restricted zone, they voluntarily turned around," the statement said.

"The police only detained the Chaser motorcade when it was turning around and after Chas Licciardello emerged from a car dressed as Osama bin Laden."

It said the comedians were wearing mock "insecurity" passes, which expressly stated they were a joke.

NSW Police Minister David Campbell said that rather than being an embarrassment in front of 21 visiting world leaders, the breach was a success for security arrangements.

"This reinforces that APEC security has been successful by the mere fact that 11 people have been arrested," he said.

Mr Campbell said he "did not see the funny side at all".

Police had been worried the Chaser team would cause trouble and had warned them to behave responsibly, Mr Campbell said.

"(Police) said 'we understand that parody and satire are entertaining and fun … but please understand the seriousness of this matter … That seems to have been thrown out the window."

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer denied the stunt had exposed a flaw in APEC security and appeared amused. "Whatever you think of the humour of The Chaser, they were clearly not going to harm anybody in a physical way," Mr Downer said. "They presumably were, as is the nature of their show, aiming to humiliate a lot of well-known people."

Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd told Channel Nine he thought the team had gone too far. "I'm a fan of The Chaser … they take the mickey out of me all the time — that's fine," Mr Rudd said. "But I think when you've got a major security event going on in Sydney right now, I think these guys have crossed the line."

The latest clash with police came as ratings figures showed that the first show of The Chaser's second series on the ABC on Wednesday night drew an average audience of 1.49 million people nationally, making it the second most-watched show behind Channel Ten's Thank God You're Here.

With DANIEL ZIFFER

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http://www.abc.net.au/tv/video/program.htm?program=chaser

TV report on it: http://media.theage.com.au/?rid=31416
 
On to more serious shizzle now:


http://www.theage.com.au/news/busin...1188783495843.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

APEC deals show China main act, US a sideshow
Tim Colebatch
September 8, 2007

PRESIDENT Hu Jintao specialises in a shy, distant smile. He wore it on Tuesday when he was in Perth, presiding with Premier Alan Carpenter over two events to announce deals to export 20 million tonnes of the West's natural gas and untold amounts of iron ore to fuel his rapidly growing economy.

By Thursday, President Hu was in Sydney, still wearing his reserved smile, as he joined Prime Minister John Howard in presiding over announcements of three more resource deals. One of them, Woodside's deal to sell PetroChina up to $45 billion of gas, is the biggest single export deal ever landed by an Australian company.

Imagine how rapidly Australia's economy would grow if we could persuade President Hu to visit every month!

Add to that the Federal Government clearing the way for Russia to import Australian uranium, and you might get the impression that the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum summit has brought more action in resource deals than it has on any of the things the leaders came here to discuss.

Such an impression would be wrong. None of these deals owed anything to APEC; it was just that the presidential visits made APEC week a good time to announce them.

The two big ones were both about supplying liquefied natural gas to PetroChina, China's biggest energy company.

First, Shell agreed to sell its share of the still undeveloped Gorgon gas field, 1 million tonnes a year over the next 20 years, for a total price estimated at $7.2 billion. Two days later, that was trumped by Woodside's agreement to sell 2 to 3 million tonnes a year for the next 15 years from the similarly undeveloped Browse gas field in the waters far north of Broome.

But both deals were necessarily tentative, since as yet, neither project is certain to be developed.

The Browse consortium involves the same partners as the North-West Shelf, but in a different configuration.

Woodside owns 50 per cent, with BHP Billiton, BP, Chevron and Shell sharing the rest. At Gorgon, Chevron owns 50 per cent, and ExxonMobil and Shell share the other half.

Neither consortium has yet approved the investment of the billions of dollars required to develop them.

In the background were the smaller deals: two joint ventures between Gindalbie Metals and China's Anshan Iron & Steel (Ansteel) to develop the proposed Karara magnetite mine and Mungada hematite mine inland from Geraldton, and a $750 million investment by five Chinese state-owned enterprises in Yilgarn Infrastructure's proposal to build an iron ore port in Oakajee on the WA coast.

All the deals, directly or indirectly, involved China buying up future resource supplies in Western Australia. They came after two years in which China's imports of our iron ore have trebled to $7.6 billion — more than all the other APEC countries together. They came as Howard predicted on Thursday that China would overtake Japan this year to become our largest trading partner — and while International Monetary Fund data shows that, at current growth rates, China's output of goods and services will overtake the US by 2009.

When the limelight was on George Bush this week, it was as a celebrity with a phenomenal entourage of secret service agents. When the limelight was on Hu, it was because the world wanted to know what he thought, what his plans were and where China would take the world.

In his keynote speech to the APEC Business Summit, Hu spelt out five challenges to build a successful future:

■Reduce current account imbalances. In talks with President Bush, he pledged China would reduce its surplus by stimulating domestic demand (and hence, demand for imports) while continuing its appreciation of the yuan. But then, China has been doing both for a year now, yet its surplus has kept growing.

■Conclude the Doha Round negotiations to ensure a "fair, open, equitable and non-discriminatory multilateral trading regime" as a basis for sustainable growth. But he implied that the main responsibility for this rested with "the major developed members of the WTO … demonstrating more sincerity and showing more flexibility on … reducing agricultural subsidies and tariffs".

■Ensure stable energy supplies. Buying up WA's natural gas is one way China is doing this, but Hu's blueprint also calls for curbs on speculative activities, and more focus on R&D and technology transfers to developing countries to raise energy efficiency and develop new energy sources.

■Conserve the natural environment. From his home in one of the world's most polluted cities, Hu argued that climate change was "ultimately, a development issue", and reaffirmed China's unambiguous support for finding international agreement for tackling it through the Kyoto Protocol and the UN negotiations on climate change.

■Increase resources for science, technology and education as the driving force behind building a sustainable future.

None of this implied any radical change in the path that has made China the world's fastest-growing economy, and its most polluted country. Yet the emphasis on buying up natural gas — reportedly at prices four times the bargain price China paid its North-West Shelf partners in 2002 — reflects the increasing urgency of China's quest to make clean gas, not dirty coal, its dominant urban fuel.

China showed this week that it is an early mover in what is likely to become a global trend.

In Australia, any meaningful emissions trading cap is likely to see gas replace coal as the dominant fuel in future power stations, particularly in Victoria. Yet who could imagine any Australian energy company moving, like PetroChina, to lock up supplies well ahead of demand?

Australians can only hope that nothing derails China's whirlwind growth. A survey of Asia-Pacific business and government officials and academics released this week found they believed a slowdown in the Chinese economy would do far more damage to the region than a slowdown in the US. And fortunately, a slowdown in the US looks far more likely.
 
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