The Crime of Protest

Just a quick note on the Asian Economic forum in Sydney.
Sydney will be shut down, at least three blocks of the CBD. A helicopter will block mobile phone coverage. Protesters who are arrested can be held for the duration of the conference.
Is this Australia or the USSR?
When the Berlin wall came down nearly twenty years ago the feeling was that totalitarianism was coming to an end. Democracies had prevailed against the terranical oligarcies of Eastern Europe and soon the other Communist states would fall as well.
The advent of the terrorist menace has put an end to this hopeful moment, the moment when it seemed possible that all the countries of the world could be bastions of liberty.
But has the rise not of democracy but of capitalism, itself now possing a threat to democracy? Has the very Draught Horse who pulled democracy to the pinicle of political systems, now begun to threaten its very survival? When corporate power, infringes on the populations right to know, when governments can suppress information to the public, when libel can shut down the truth, capitalism is biting the neck of democracy.
As China and modern Russia are now proving, capitalism does not require democracy in fact China is proving to be a success without a change even in the ruling regime. The same murderous regime which the world watch on in disbelief as they moved down thier own people in Tianamin square is priciding over the worlds fastest growin capitalist economy.
We are in real danger of falling into totalitarianism rather than pulling other countries out of it. If we continue to create more rules to protect the powerfull from the powerless in opposition to the founding ideals of democracy we will fall into the same despair that swept Eastern Europe and still effects it to today.
Protest is not a crime. Protest is a cornerstone of our freedoms.
Democracy is not to be taken for granted, we live in a time unusual in the extreme, oligarcy, tyranny and at best monarchy are the norm. The jew in the crown of political systems, liberties daughter, she must be protected from those who would restict her, corrupt her, manipulate and distort her and especially those who would sell her into slavery.