Pictures from G20 protest : Melbourne Indymedia

All of this is the best thing the police could have hoped for coming off some troubling times.

Memories of cops bashing arseholes in interview rooms fade into the ether when images of hooligans hurling abuse, spit and items at the police are spread across the front pages of the mainstream media (and here at MIM!!).

Well done, tools. You just gave a helping hand to those you hate.

Who are the winners now, arseholes?

The violence sold out the genuine justice seekers. You achieved nothing except putting the movement back... again.

Alas for those of you with white skin priviledge you do not see the common everyday violence of the police and are shocked when there is some biffo at a "political" event.
Do you not remember the Palm Island uprising after the DEATH IN CUSTODY
Do you not remember the Redfern uprising after the DEATH during a Police pursuit.
Do you not remember the Macquarie Fields uprising after 2 DEATHS during a police pursuit.
I could go on but even the everyday violence of poverty, homelessness
is exotic to you or easily avoided.
What sort of people are you to get upset when someone has a go at the cops protecting the planners of the planet's exploitation.
Who was Costello talking with at G20, while Howard was away at APEC talking with Bush and the other Criminals and NO PROTESTS were allowed because of house arrests and a Police State in Hanoi.
Global warming ? - these are the guys
Union-busting ? these are the guys

A weekend before and 30,000 walk against warming,
same weekend 15,000 go to see the Make Poverty History (by prolonging it you will do anything but get off the back of the poor)

Next week 100,000 plus unionists are supposed to rally at the G...

All neatly divided and ruled.

The snotty comments about smelly hippies, ferals, anarchists being violent is just sour grapes from those too afraid to admit they are
angry enough to want to smash up Authority too.

Well wake up quietists there is a new generation who can either go the usual way and become racist mobs like at Cronulla or worse gang rapists with their machismo ie pick on other powerless people
or
you
can fight the Powers that be.
Don't believe the hype !
Smash the State
(if you really want freedom like the indigenous, the billions of militant poor in Africa, Americas, Asia...Australia - but that could never happen here, surely, OmiGawd, we are really really safe only with John Howard in charge - please bourgeois Australia re-elect him so we can really get a head of steam up that shall blow all the cobwebs out of your heads! )

To the posters critiquing the actions of protestors in this thread...

If you're not the police you might as well be. You're doing their work for them.

Its easy to critizise the democratically elected government of this country. If you find the system and way of government so distressing why not try your whinging options in one of the worlds more opressive regimes.
If you believe in change you would be better to work within the accepted framework offered by our decent and reasonable society than to draw attention to the short comings of your naieve and simplistic global outlook by disrupting legitimate and foward thinking processes of our government.
You are lucky to live in this country - wake up to yourself.

lol what a cute little establishmentarian

problem is this country's a significant part of the problem... of the world's problems.

This redneck backwater and its allies the US are responsible for CREATING and PERPETUATING many of those oppressive regimes...

you're living in a fantasy world, E-man. Or a fantasy Australia. And unfortunately for you and your kind your Australia - your safe extra continent for Whitey - has to go.

We're not keeping it. 'Australia' as a nation was a bad idea to begin with, and it's definitely not sustainable.

Take a last look around at 'your' former country. Too bad you didn't make a better one.

The criticisms against Australia, Bush etc are all good. But that doesn't recover the protest.

If you are trying to look for why the world pretty much now is sided with Mr E, try harder. Your imagination seems to have been atrophied by too much Hollywood movies.

Violence feeds the violent system. If you want to hurt that system, you should be working to get workers to strike. You should be working to educate at every opportunity.

Your 100 or fewer "rebels" destoryed any chance to use the G20 as an opportunity to educate people. They're minds are now closed. They either agree with you -- not enough of them to make a difference, we already know that -- or they think you are wankers, and we are wankers, and all hippies etc are now wankers.

Haven't you even cottonned onto the way the media, integrated into the list of problems enumerated earlier in the thread, influences people's opinions of issues? The issues you are supposedly trying to attack are abstract and removed from people's direct experience.

They (we) can *only* learn about those issues from indirect means. That indirect experience is *mediated* by .. guess who .. the people we call "the media" -- including places such as this Indymedia, but DOMINATED by the "mainstream press" .. the people you are fighting, remember? If you maintain this isn't true, I don't even know what you think you are fighting.

Try reading some of "the media" coverage of this rally, and ask yourself again if you think the rally was a success? Where in regional Australia do you think people get their issue of Red Worker Daily delivered, showing its enlightened and accurate, comprehensive coverage of the background issues and explaining the need for violent overthrow of the state?

Compare coverage of this rally with coverage of the anti-Iraq-invasion. Yes, that protest movement did not stop the war. If we had a general strike, it might have. We are starting from behind the 8 ball, and we need to move way ahead before we can expect to actually stop an event like this -- whatever the means that would achieve that.

Sad, but true. So shoot me.