A woman outside the Ritz Carlton bombing site on Sunday.
For those that have been hiding out in caves over the last few days, there were two suicide bombings in Jakarta on Friday morning at the JW Marriott Hotel and the Ritz Carlton in Mega Kuningan.
So far, the death total stands at nine, with more than fifty people wounded. Three of those killed were Australians.
I wanted to write about this earlier, I wanted to write something substantive, but as I’m sure you could imagine, work was so hectic and I have just finished two long days of editing and writing stories about the bombings.
I guess all that I have to say is that it’s really horrible, I hope those behind it are caught and I hope it doesn’t make people overseas think badly about Indonesia. And while it is defiitely very sobering, it hasn’t had any impact on my plans to continue living here for a while longer yet. The people here are overwhelmingly wonderful… a few murderous hardline bastards aren’t ever going to change that.
A woman and child walk past condolence banners at the JW Marriott
Security guarding the bomb site at the Ritz Carlton. The bomb exploded in the Airlangga Restaurant.
Police outside the Ritz Carlton on Sunday
Some random guy and a journalist chilling on the back of a police truck outside the Marriott.
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So, after months and months and months of trying to get my lefty comments posted on the Daily Telegraph website, I finally got one up.
I have seriously posted about 30 comments to that site, all of them rational, well written arguments (of course!) outlining how perhaps the article in question is either extremely reactionary, extremely offensive to women or flawed in some way. I’ve tried using different computers, email addresses, everything to try and get my comment posted, but to no avail. It has perplexed me for some time why they never seem to get posted.
Why have I bothered? Well, I guess I feel that perhaps putting forward some sort of rational argument might make some redneck from somewhere far flung like Baulkham Hills think twice about condemning a certain race as “dole bludgers” or something. Idealistic I know.
Even the simplest comments have not passed the “true blue middle Australia” filter that they must have installed on the site.
But finally, I have thwarted that filter.
Behold, dear readers, my maiden comment posted on the Tele website, in response to the recent outcry over the photograph of a naked six-year-old on the cover of an art magazine.
“It’s great that this 11-year-old is more intelligent and
articulate than most of our pollies. It gives you hope that this
country isn’t just full of reactionary nutcases too quick to
jump on the moral panic bandwagon.
How, in any way, is that image pornographic or exploitative? I know my
parents took photos of us eating icy poles in the nude in the bath when
we were kids, and nobody got upset when they were “broadcast” at our 21st birthdays.
Get some perspective pollies. Fix the trains instead of wasting time
reinforcing middle Australia’s narrow
minded views. Art isn’t for state censorship.”
I think it was the use of colloquial language and the word “pollies” that helped get it over the line. Also, that I was knocking said “pollies” instead of editorial decisions of the paper, which is the mistake I have made in the past on this comment posting mission.
So join the crusade, people. Go and flood the websites of tabloid newspapers with rational arguments and thought. Maybe we can change the world one comment at a time!
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A man rests against one of the State Transit buses that were turned into mobile holding cells just for APEC.
I went to the major APEC protest on Saturday. I was appalled by the number of police, and the aggressive manner in which they treated the well behaved crowd, including middle ages ladies just watching from the pavement and people clearly there just to take photos. Some of the footage you can see on the major news websites shows how heavy handed their approach was.
Once again, police and media did a good job of matching the number of protestors, and rain kept some people away as well. There was still a good crowd though, estimated at a couple of thousand people or so.
In those shots you can see the police water canon in position. It wasn’t needed. It was really weird… the coppers were stopping people from dispersing and leaving Hyde Park. And they were pushing people back from the pavement for no reason at all. It was very strange. You would think in a "mob" situation, people dispersing wouldn’t be a bad thing.
So many people were protesting about so many different things. Those pictured above are sex workers with banners saying "Whores rights at work; Worth fighting for". There were also many Workchoices protestors, and of course, anti-Bush/Iraq war people and climate change activists. A lot of the things people were protesting about had nothing to do with APEC at all. How can APEC do anything about Workchoices? The State gov couldn’t even! But I think most people were simply angry that they were having their rights stripped because of APEC. But it had a very peaceful and laid back atmosphere at the rally. People wanted to show the APEC thing to be a farce, and if people had gotten violent, it would have simply justified the ridiculous police presence and security measures.
More of my APEC photos over at my Flickr account, as always. And more APEC photos by fantastic snappers can be found here.
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Today I was at the Peacebus and ‘Bums not bombs’ protest (where a 21 bum salute was performed for the APEC leaders) today at Hyde Park. Driving around the city was surreal… barely any cars. Soooooooo many police though. I was reporting live crosses with a colleague for 2SERFM’s APEC Protest broadcast. Great opportunity for lame bum puns. Not a huge turnout though due to the rain.
There were also a small group of pro-Bush protestors, who were being loudly heckled by passers by, and had just survived an attack on their banners with tomato sauce. Lucky the police were there to arrest the tomato sauce spraying threat to society/national security/global democracy.
There were also all the former State Transit buses parked around the place that have been turned in to mobile holding cells. I really think they have overestimated what will go down tomorrow. I doubt it will be any bigger than some of the other protests that have been held in Sydney in the past couple of years over the war in Iraq/Workchoices etc. What a waste of money and resources.
I ended up getting stopped by several motorcades as they zoomed around me when I was driving in the city, policemen on motorcycles halting me. I also saw the ‘green light’ traffic corridors in action. Tip: if you are trying to get through the city in a hurry this weekend (not that there is much traffic to slow you down), follow a motorcade. The fastest you will ever get from one end of the CBD to the other, guaranteed. The motorcades sped by so quickly I didn’t get any pics of them.
Police far outnumbered protestors today in Hyde Park. Far outnumbered. In fact, I don’t think there were many protestors there at all. Mostly media and coppers. It was raining fairly heavily though, and tomorrow is the big protest in the city, so people were probably at home painting banners and making molotov cocktails and stuff in preparation.
Possibly the thing that freaked me out the most was that most Sydneysiders had actually listened to the requests to stay out of the city. To me that was an open invitation to come and stickybeak at something completely out of the ordinary. I guess that’s why I went in to journalism.
Apparently George Bush congratulated Johnny Howard on the ‘beautiful’ city of Sydney. Devoid of Sydneysiders, fences up around the gorgeous harbour, and weather which is staging its own protest. All those caged diplomats must be wondering what all the hype about the apparently gorgeous and glitzy harbour city is all about.
For more great APEC photos capturing life in the Ghost City taken by people far more profesh than me, visit the APEC Australia group on Flickr.
My colleague Belinda… being cheeky (in a different way to the bum protestors).
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by Ashlee on May 12, 2007
in news
As someone who regularly sits at work and refreshes online news sites as a means of procrastination (or just to see if anything exciting has happened), I have noticed a steady decline in the quality of online reporting on Australian websites such as smh.com.au and the Daily Telegraph recently. The ABC’s Media Watch also noticed this and had a show dedicated to it not long ago.
While a lot of people would argue that the Tele is always trash, and yes, it is a tabloid, the print version of the paper offers a lot more substance than the online site. In the last week, the front page photo stories have included a debate on which rugby players have the hottest bods, multiple Big Brother stories with quotes from serious commentators (AKA the people who post comments on the Daily Telegraph site) as the sole basis of the story, and of course a couple of weeks ago there was the famous splash about Candice Falzon and Sonny William’s toilet tryst at the Clovelly… complete with saucy snapshots.
Clearly, these are the big issues.
And some of the crap that gets posted on the Sydney Confidential section is just laughable.
The SMH has all the hard hitting news in the early morning from the paper, and is nowhere in the league of trashiness that the Tele inhabits, but still, by the time lunch rolls around the front page of the site slowly starts to fill up with celeb stories, weird and wonderful tales such as the Japanese mistaking sheep for poodles, and general fuzz. And I haven’t even mentioned the loathesome blogs, like Skank in the City. I wonder how much Sam gets paid to ask a vapid question each day and quote experiences from her "friends" and "bloggers".
On Friday, the fuzz factor ups itself a lot on both sites. This is clearly a device to try and keep traffic on the site all day, considering most visitors are probably office minions like myself (with a grasp on sanity so weak that something as simple as a flickering florescent office light bulb could tear it from our hands) but what effect is all this trash talk having on news? And are we living up to all the terrible fears that media commentators had about online journalism reducing accountability and the quality of reporting?
It’s a bit of a worry.
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