Aussie bin Laden penetrates APEC security A crack squad of Oz TV comedians - one dressed as Osama bin Laden - today succeeded in penetrating tight defences around the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Sydney, Reuters reports. The Chaser team drove three cars, complete with motorcycle escorts, unchallenged through two checkpoints and were only detained …
Isn't Jasper Carrot living proof that Aussies have a humour-disability?
Still, you have to give these pranksters credit for having brass balls. You don't even have to look like Osama to be shot in the back of the head in this day and age. Ask the family of Jean Charles de Menezes (Fatally mistaken for terrorist by armed police in London).
These guys should've never made it past the first checkpoint. Someone has some seriously slack procedures. Still, no harm done. I say strip the offenders (including the slack police) naked, paint them bright orange, and turn them loose in the city center to find their own way home as best they're able. Put camera crews on them, and you'll have your comedy filler for their show.
I recommend checking out the podcast (once again available world-wide, it seems) of their show from yesterday, which was also filled with APEC security jokes. http://www.abc.net.au/tv/chaser/war/int/vodcast/ is the address.
(The show is recorded on Tue night, and then broadcast the next day)
As long as no Fake ID's were used I don't see how they can have done anything illigal. They drove up to the gate, were waved through and keped on driving. Not illigal. Not very funny though.
BTW, What dos Jasper Carrot have to do with Aussie comedy? Is he realy popular there?
Jasper is worshipped in Australia. They look up to him like some sort of cargo cult god after some of his videos washed up there.
Anyway, this kind of thing goes to show that if you look like the real thing then most people believe you are. Or. Maybe the police were in their little hut things watching Jasper videos.
The only commedians we worship are funny. Kevin Bloody Wilson, Rodney Rude, Oscar Suave, Barry Humphries, Austen Tayshus. Carrot was never big in Australia for all the years I've been aware of what funny is, and I'm now 30.
He may have been on once or twice - but I promise that even Beadle got more laughs for the one season he was on telly.
Who's kidding whom , for the reality is due to the extreme popularity of their TV Comedy Show "Chasers War on Everything" shows a "Google" page reference > one million and on "youtube" well in excess of 40 pages of clips from the comedy show and is actually webcast as well from the ABC TV in Oz !
If one was to search the channels of web video on "Miro" (fomerly known as Democracy) they are available for view on the Internet as well !
So alas , with the popularity and the notoriety of this parody show with a high publicity show in Oz , it is not as if they are anonymous by any means!
Quite frankly , the real idiots and incompetent wowsers and adherents to the "Peter Principle" in this case are the big noting publicity seeking self wanking police officials cops who arrested them in the first place !
As Forrest Gump would say "Stupid is , Stupid Does! "
Well, that looks like $160m well spent on security that's as tight as ... a fishnet.
I can't work it out. After arresting the bad boys from Chasers, a stern looking "security expert" told news media that the prank was very dangerous as innocent bystanders could have been shot!
What's the use of shooting bystanders? Shouldn't they go for the baddies?
Or are the highly trained Police and experts such terrible shots that anyone in a 1km radius is likely to get perforated?
Nice one guys!
Doesn't anyone find it interesting that a couple of guys can drive a MOTORCADE up to the front door of the APEC conference? Timothy McVeigh didn't even have to go that far in Oklahoma City.
I think the police arrested the wrong people here. The checkpoint plods and the monitors watching the route should be slapped in a "re-education camp": if your job is to stop a potential terrorist from getting to the conference, then the entire security apparatus is well and truly busted-ass.
Hell, forget about the APEC conferees: how about a car bomb into the midst of the crowd of protesters or gawkers outside the conference? A few hundred killed with heavy security standing by would be pretty tough to wave away.
Fortunately for us, the REAL terrorists spend too much time reading their "little red books" rather than watching TV and getting real ideas...
...that the security arrangements that the US rammed down our throat since 9/11 has been nothing more than a PR exercise. Just about anybody not connected with the security companies will tell you the "security measures" are a joke and the only thing they do is annoy the normal public - they will never deter anyone who REALLY wants to do damage.
It will be interesting to see how PM Howard will handle this: if he ignores it, he looks like a weakling to the outside world. If he does anything about it, the Australian public will crucify him (we love a larrikin and a good practical joke)... and he's already trailing in the polls.
As for Alexander Downer - does he think I'm going to seriously put weight behind the words of someone who recently used his political clout to "hijack" two pandas from the Gold Coast to his home-town of Adelaide? One more nail in the coffin of the Fed Gov, as far as I'm concerned. Bring on the election, I'm sick of the current mob.
The thing I found most amazing about the story is that the Police Minister and the Foreign Minister both hailed this as proof the security worked. What rubbish. These guys got waved through 2 checkpoints (no evidence in the news that they actually said anything to anybody at the checkpoints, they just got waved through). They only got stopped because Chas jumped out of the car dressed as Osama Bin Laden. If he hadn't, I wonder if they could have pulled right up to the Hotel. If he was wearing a suit, he might have even got in.
Photos on the news show that the hire-cars used has Australian and Canadian flags (which look very much like the $2 op-shop variety) shoved in the front grills and a sticker with a Canadian flag and some numbers and other things on the corner of the windscreen.
I'm wondering what crime they committed. If you drive up to a checkpoint and somebody opens the gate and invites you through, are you not, in some form or another, "authorised" to be there? The fallout from this is going to be fun to watch.
My favourite comment from one of the uninvolved cast members later was "please direct all questions to Today Tonight or A Current Affair".
These are the wacky kids who sent legal letters to Google over having their video REMOVED from youtube, and forced them to put it back up God bless their souls.
If anybody wants to see truly gutsy political comedy, try and find the video of Norman Gunston at the famous dismissal speech of Goff Whitlam.
What you may not realise is that a law was passed to make it illegal for unauthorised people to enter the public streets where this motley collection of corrupt war-criminals is conducting its wank-fest:
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/nsw/consol_act/ampa2007252/s19.html
"(1) A person must not, without special justification, enter a
restricted area or any part of a restricted area."
The term "special justification" is defined in s37.
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/nsw/consol_act/ampa2007252/s37.html
The best shot at a loophole for these "satirists" will be this one:
"(c) the person is required to be in (or pass through) the area for the
purposes of the person’s employment, occupation, profession, calling,
trade or business or for any other work-related purpose, "
....assuming the word "required" hasn't already been hijacked by lawmakers to exclude "entertainers seeking material for a show."
I can see the first draft of the Police Press Release:
"Members of the Chaser Comedy team have today been charged for exposing Police incompetance. No bail has been set due to them walking out of the watchhouse when someone forgot to close the door again."
Signed,
Bemused Aussie.
Are they sure this was just a comic stunt? Maybe they were trying to make a tiny bit of a political statement?
Of course these days we have special zones for free speech--where no one will notice or even see it. Everyone knows that silent and hidden dissent is no problem at all. Just ask Alberto Gonzales.
"Jasper is worshipped in Australia. They look up to him like some sort of cargo cult god after some of his videos washed up there"
Ok, i'll tell you this, Rolf fkn Harris is more popular there than Jasper Carrot is here.
The Carrot used to appear on television, all of what, 12-15 years ago, lasted a season or 2, and was never seen again - that droll, geordie english humour? ur havin a giraffe surely...
Next Up, the Chaser dudes did use fake ID's - yet they made them that ridiculously fake, that one look would have informed a half educated security check-point operator that they were fake - the passes had "The Chaser's war on everything" written all over them - the very word "war" should have set a few alarm bells ringing.
Ahh well, off to grab a few jasper carrot DVD's - oh hang on, we don't have DVD yet in Australia, i'll take the wombat out for a walk instead - fooowells...
Not one, but two police checkpoints allowed them to pass.
With this on the "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."
With passes that had the phrase "It's pretty obvious this isn't a real pass".
What a joke !
Stop Press: They just got busted again ! http://abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/09/07/2027186.htm
Did anyone else hear the Ghost of Graham Chapman in PolSup David Owens's words?
Also: No Alex, what they actually proved was that your security sucks. If the first man out of the fake Canadian diplomatic limo HADN'T been wearing an UBL costume, would anyone have challenged him at all? And this is after the security staff had been specifically briefed to be on the lookout for notorious publicity stuntmen the Chasers.
Carrot is a brummie, not a geordie. He came up through the folk club circuit in the 1970s, the start of what became modern standup. If you get one of his early albums like "Rabbits on and on" you'll find he uses a lot of local references and regional stereotypes, which was very funny at the time if you lived in Solihull or Wolverhampton. When he got to TV, he had to broaden the targets to appeal to a wider audience, which he did successfully for a while, but the strain of writing topical gags in the volume required for TV nearly killed him. So, early Carrot: good in the context of its time, later Carrot: not so hot; and no real expectation that it would appeal to anyone outside the UK.
<quote>...that the security arrangements that the US rammed down our throat since 9/11 has been nothing more than a PR exercise. Just about anybody not connected with the security companies will tell you the "security measures" are a joke and the only thing they do is annoy the normal public - they will never deter anyone who REALLY wants to do damage.</quote> Aubry Thonon, above
That was why Bruce Schneier started using the term "Security Theatre" to describe the process of upsetting everybody by pretending to protect them.
It seems to me that the whole "security" process is part of the softening up necessary to deliver docile, compliant citizens to an increasingly totalitarian government. Just like the ban on smoking in "public" places, the legal penalties for failing to recycle enough waste, and the work of the DNA Collection Service (formerly known as the Police Force).
The APEC ACT is an interesting read.
Paragraph 19 is entitled 'Offence: Entering restricted area without special jurisdiction'
It states that 'A person must not, without special justification, enter a restricted area or any part of a restricted area.'. This is really simple. There is only one issue. They defined Special Justification.
Paragraph 37 is entitled 'Special Justification'.
It states that 'A person has a special justification to be in an area if:
(c)the person is required to be in (or pass through) the area for the purposes of the person's employment, occupation, profession, calling, trade or business or for any other work-related purpose'.
Therefore regardless of wether the person had a security pass or not, they were permitted to be in the area because they had a reason to be there because their employer wanted them there. All they need to do is to be able to prove this as part of paragraph 38.
Ahh Phil,
I guess not being in the UK, a lesson on someone who used to be on telly here was quite a read,and honestly, Jasper Carrot isn't big here in Australia, as suggested by some "anony-twunt" earlier in this thread..
Now if I said Geirdie, maybe I generalized a little, like some of the "convict-bash up" simpletons over there do, and i appologise prefusely :)~ ,I now feel at least a few IQ points brighter, and enlightened, for knowing the origin of Jasper Carrot. Phil, Jolly good show old chappy!!
Craig and Chris interviewed on video this morning about the second stunt, so they were likely to be directly involved. I didn't see Andrew, and Chas and Julian were released on bail hours before this stunt took place, so all of them could have potentially been involved. I guess we will all find out next Wednesday who was involved.
Adam
terrorists interested in crashing the APEC party only those TV people it's only fair Australia gets some entertainment from this as it's more than likely costing them a fortune for nothing in return.Bunch of washed up old neofascists get together to what, compare how much of their countries basic freedoms they have removed and how easy it was.
Idiots.
Then they arrest the "comedy troupe" for breaching their so-well-thought-out security cauldron. I think the guy in charge of security should have been arrested, hung, drawn and then quartered for nothing more than his complacency. ...Along with the smug, mangleworzle keystone cop-out of a Chief Cuntstable.
"Our security was great - we just didn't plan on it being breached by a bunch of comedians....dressed as terrorists"
The plan, according to one of the Chaser's crew who was not among those arrested, was to, at the first checkpoint, have Chas Liccardello, dressed as Bin Laden, demand entry, on the grounds that he had more influence over Asia-Pacific affairs than Chile, Peru, the Philippines, and so on, and that they were as surprised as anyone that they were let through. When they were arrested, it was not Chas who was arrested, but the other member of the Chasers who was with him, then a second policeman also came over and grabbed the one they already had hold of, before anyone did anything about Chas.
Alexander Downer is possibly better than Costello or Downer. I don't know what he studied, but he handled an audience with a large number of Physicists and engineers at the University of Adelaide very well, far better than others have handled that crowd. Of course, I could be slightly biased, as I am a South Australian (his electorate home is not far from my home).
From reading the act posted above, I'd say they'd have a better chance with s37 2.b: "the person is required, authorised or permitted to be in the area by the Commissioner or a police officer". Since the police at the enterance waved them through, that would kinda indicate that a police officer permitted them to be there.
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