Protesters no match as police rule streets

Danielle Teutsch and Daniel Dasey crow that Protesters no match as police rule streets but admit

Despite fears the protesters would resort to violence, the main show of force came from heavily armed police who dragged a number of banned protesters out of the rally and into waiting vans.

The NSW Police says that there were Seventeen arrested in protest activity. Of particular concern is the following:

Two police officers were injured during today’s protests with one officer sustaining a head wound after being hit with an iron bar, the other sustaining a head injury after being hit with a dart.

I was at the protest from about 09:30 until 14:30. During that time, five (5) people were arrested before the rally reached Hyde Park. The protest was quiet until about 14:00 when the police made their first incursion into the crowd to arrest a prohibited person near the Cafe above St James Station. Then came another quick two (2) arrests: one man and a TV reporter. Another man was thrown to the ground by the police. The people then pushed us further back into Hyde Park. The action then moved further south towards Park Street.

There were eight (8) arrests that I know of before I left. The other nine (9) must have happened after I left or just before.

That only one (1) person out of 6,000 (or 10,000) hit a police officer is good on average (0.01%) but very bad in practice because it could mark the beginings of individual terrorism.

There was one group handing out leaflets saying that protest actions were no longer effective:

But after eight years of such demonstrations—starting in Seattle in 1999 and reaching a high point in the global demonstrations against the Iraq war in February 2003—it is time to draw a political balance sheet. International experience has revealed that, to the extent that protests are dominated by the conception that the political establishment can be pressured to change course, no matter how large they are, or how sincere their participants’ motivations, they cannot resolve the problems of war, repression and social reaction.

This group concludes by saying:

The urgent task faced by students and working people in Australia and around the world is the building of a mass international political movement of the working class guided by the program of socialist internationalism. This is the perspective of the International Committee of the Fourth International and its Australian section, the Socialist Equality Party, developed every day on the World Socialist Web Site.

Here, we have the conundrum of this stage in the struggle: the mass actions are becoming difficult and less effective while the oppression is increasing. This is what the title of the original article. We used to be able to say "Whose Streets? Our Streets!", but no longer.

This underlines the stupidity of the ruling class: they are now relying more and more on naked force to maintain their power, and yet they are destroying the foundation of that power in the Iraqi insurgency as the US Army disintegrates.

The Iraq War is the Battle of the Bulge for US Imperialism: the last grasp offensive to secure vital oil supplies to maintain its war machine and deny those oil supplies to its enemies. There can be no retreat! There is only victory or death. Either the USA will prevail or it will be destroyed.

It is time to start building a world without the USA. We should consider them already dead. This will give up time to try out solutions to the economic and military balances of power.

At this time of history, we will still have a Capitalist world system dominated by PRC and EU. The Russian Federation realises this and is trying to exploit its strategic position between two (2) powers and its proximity to the last remaining major oil fields in Central Asia.

The Communists can only scurry like mammals while the dinosaurs fight it out over access to resources.