• large parts of Sydney’s CBD will be sealed off (causing traffic gridlock)
• the mobile phone coverage in the city may be partially jammed (apparently to stop people bombing George Bush via text message)
• three inner-city train stations will be closed
• the police have just been given extraordinary stop-and-search powers and the power to incarcerate “suspicious” people without charge until the conference is over (yet another strike against due-process)
• and no doubt people protesting globalisation will be tempted to run amuck like lunatics smashing windows and burning things

… Gee, I can hardly wait! Some local politicians have been heard to question why APEC even needs to be held in Sydney at all – couldn’t it be in Canberra instead? I’m inclined to agree; the whole reason Canberra even exists is because 100 years ago, Sydney and Melbourne squabbled like little children over which of them should be the nation’s capital – and the compromise solution was that nobody should be happy, and that a new artificial capital city should be build, at significant taxpayer expense, in the middle of nowhere, half-way between the two cities, thus pissing off everyone equally (seriously – you can’t make stuff like this up). Now, if there are any benefits to my tax dollars subsidising an artificial capital in the middle of nowhere, surely hosting conferences that nobody normal wants should be one of those benefits? If not, then I just have to ask: what the hell is the point of Canberra? … Thus far, the one and only redeeming factor to APEC is that Friday the 7th September has been declared a public holiday – Yay!