Sim-O

Excuse me PC fucking Bastard, but we’ll be the judge of that.

Via loads of people on twitter

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to launch a full enquiry into the circumstances of Ian Tomlinson’s death seperate to the IPCC investigation.
…
Due to the new evidence being shown in the press of the circumstances of Ian Tomlinson’s death we urge the Prime Minister to step in now to immediately bring the truth to light.

Go on then. What you waiting for?

Oops! I forgot… Via

Well. That’s it then. No more denying it. The Police are vicious bastards.

I’ve probably knew it all along but been able to block it or excuse it. But now, fuck ‘em.

What’s changed? When previous instances have happened there have been circumstances that, well…

A bloke and his mate are looking in a Jewelry shop window and get handcuffed and accused of attempted robbery.
Well, maybe the bloke got lippy, didn’t comply with resonable requests by the officers to, I don’t know, turn out his pockets or something, so the officer has to take charge of the situation and bring things to a head in a way so the officer comes out on top, and not the other way round.

Then there’s the house raid that goes a little wrong and one of the occupants, who is innocent as it happens, ends up getting shot.
Well, the information the coppers had meant that firearms were appropriate for the raid, and when a raid gets started there is lot of noise and confusion, everyone is hyped up and it’s usually dark as they are carried out in the early hours of the morning. It’s quite scary, even for the officers. I know, I’ve seen them on telly.
It’s surprising, really, that more people hurt. All it needs is the suspect to not put there hands up, or make a wrong move and, well…

Or there’s the suicide bomber that wasn’t. Armed officers, in a stressful situation, the tube full of people. OK, so there were errors made. Would you have done any better?

The thing is, with all those examples, we weren’t there. It doesn’t matter what witnesses say, you’re own mind can add little caveats, little excuses, that still leave the rozzers The Good Guys.

What happened at the G20 shattered that completely.

The assault was unprovoked, cowardly and on film.

As you can see, Ian is strolling along with his hands in his pockets, the fuzz come up behind him, a dog sniffing him, and then he gets a whack on the back of the legs and an almighty shove to the ground.

Why? What purpose did it serve? Ian wasn’t giving them abuse, the coppers could see his hands were in his pockets, so he wasn’t gonna be able to do anything before they could get to him, and he wasn’t giving them abuse. It was just malicious.

The police are supposed to protect us. It’s one thing getting the baton out when you have a crowd of angry soap-dodgers pushing against you and spitting in your face…Fuck it! I’m doing it again!

The game has changed. Why the hell else are coppers leaving off a letter or number from their lapels? ‘If you’ve got nothing to hide…’ applies to them too. Why else were the police telling people in the Climate Camp to delete photos of plod or have their cameras seized? Was the Climate Camp full of terrorists, was it?

This isn’t about the big things, like 42 days detention or the UK governments complicity in torture, this is about the little things that the police feel they can get away with.
The institutional bias in favour of the police when things go wrong, even when the investigation has only just begun…

A lie can be delivered by innuendo. The so-called “Independent Police Complaints Commission” – whose investigations in this case are being conducted by the City of London Police – had put out a statement saying that “it appeared that Mr Tomlinson had contact with the Police.” If we had not seen the video, what image does that conjure up in your mind?

The justification for tactics…

John O’Connor, a former Flying Squad commander, defended kettling in extraordinarily totalitarian terms, saying that

…using these tactics in a non-selective way does cause inconvenience to persons who are legally trying to make their point, but it is effective in controlling the troublemakers.

The same could be said of subjecting the entire population to house arrest or amputating the limbs of anyone not in the police. Certainly, what he says is a clear admission that kettling does not ‘facilitate peaceful protest’.

Do I need to spell out what message is that sending to the ordinary plod on the beat? The modern policeman already wears a quasi-military uniform, with their stab vest and utility belt. They do work under some tremendous pressures, and you can excuse them with that and the adrenaline and all sorts of other reasons, but that is what training is for. If a copper goes loses it, makes an error of judgement or gets power crazy and attacks an innocent person, he either needs to be fired or retrained. As well as prosecuted.

The example needs to be set from the top and that is what is missing. Last word goes to Craig Murray…

We have reached the stage in the UK where we need a revolutionary change. We have to sweep out the old order of corrupt politicians whose one guiding principle is to keep their own snouts in the trough: of City bankers who are multi-millionaires from their bubble scams and whose lifestyles and jobs the ordinary people are now supporting by a massive tax and debt burden, while nobody guarantees the jobs of those ordinary people who fund it all.

We have to realise that the end of the centuries old prohibition of torture by agents of the state is of a piece with the freedom of the police to maintain the system of power by fatal force, in both cases without consequence. You cannot separate this brutalisation of power from the illegal war that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and thousands of our own soldiers, on the basis of a lie but really to secure oil.

The whole system stinks from the head like a fish. And people are starting at last to understand where the smell comes from.

More links here.

Guardian: Video of police assault on Ian Tomlinson, who died at G20 protest.

Would the phrase ‘police state’ be overdoing it?

BBC…

Online advertising firm Phorm is pressing ahead with plans to launch more than a year after it first drew criticism from some privacy advocates.
…
“We have been supported or endorsed by all of the leading stakeholders,” Phorm chief executive Kent Ertugrul told BBC News.

“Ofcom, the Information Commissioner’s Office, the Home Office, leading privacy advocates like Simon Davies, the advertising industry and publishers have all backed our service,” he said.

All the major stakeholders except the people who will be effected the most: the internet using public.

And who’s this Simon Davies bloke? Never heard of him. he might have got this award or done whatever, but he can’t be that much into privacy if he’s ok with Phorm.

Kent Etugrul of Phorm…

I am surprised by the fact, after it has been repeatedly explained how the technology works, they seem to be very keen on misunderstanding what it does

No, people know what it does, and even how it does it. And that is the problem. It is opt out. A fucking awkward shitty opt out that one will have to opt out of every time ones cookies are cleared.
Even when someone has opted out, their movements on the web still go through Phorms equipment, there is no way to bypass Phorm. The user is still dependent on Phorm and its’ technology doing the right thing and not recording their movements.

Phorm and privacy? My arse.

Word comes from Craig Murray that the British embassies in the EU are to start getting support for Tony Blair to be the made the first permanent president of the EU.

Maybe I should’ve used the proper word there: appointed. ‘Made’ could mean elected by the people he would be president of.

As Craig eloquently puts it…

For anyone to occupy the position of President without a popular election would be very, very wrong. But Tony Blair? It is simply an appalling thought.

Why would anyone want a war criminal as president?

Horrifyingly, it appears that Blair may well be able to get a majority of EU member governments prepared to support him. That is despite his record as Bush’s poodle in launching illegal war, as one of the chief architects of the banking bubble economic disaster, and as the Middle East Peace Envoy who held the ring for Israel’s murderous assaults on Lebanon and Gaza.

I’m in two minds about the EU. It could be good, but at the moment the unaccountability and the bureaucracy, well, it seems like it is being run for the commissioners and the MEPs benefit, not the citizens of the EU.

In typical EU fashion, even the term is a bit ambigous: Permanent President.
Do they mean ‘for life’? Would they do that? What other meaning could the EU mean? The presidency at the moment is on a 6 month rotating basis, with the national leaders taking up the role. The occupant of the new style post of president would be full-time, rather than part-time, but still not permanent. Surely?

Either way, for the EU to have Blair as an unelected permanent El Presidente would lose what little credibility it has. And that isn’t a lot.

Cannabis NI…

Dont be using empty coke cans for ashtrays. Breaks your heart when ya drop your j in :(

Back Towards The Locus…

As you might have heard, a man died after collapsing during the G20 protests. This was immediately notched up to natural causes. Yup, natural causes. No doubt about it.

To understand why someone may have been so affected by le cause naturali, one should look at the treatment of the protestors. Yesterday, the police used a tactic called ‘kettling’, whereby cordons are imposed and enforced to stop protests spilling out into the city. This left demonstrators in appalling conditions. There are numerous accounts of “cordon-induced claustrophobia“, with Rowenna Davis and Sunny Hundal reporting that “one woman sat down because she was feeling faint“. Water was scarce and there were no toilet facilities, forcing people to piss in the streets…

I was told by a police officer informed of my bad back that I’d ‘better go and sit on the floor then’ (cos that’s great for your back – sitting in piss on a concrete floor).

Read the rest

Guardian G20 live blog…

1.43pm:
More windows reported smashed at RBS, branch and masked people trying to get in. Chants of “Whose bank?” answered by “Our bank” and “We paid for this, rob the bank”.

I understand feelings run high and the adrenaline gets going, but what does fucking places over achieve? Not a lot. Apart from it can feel quite good, smashing stuff up.

And that chant? You’re going to rob yourselves then? Or you’re going to rob every other taxpayer, unless you take something equal to your share of RBS. Like a pen, or a pad of Post-It notes.

And take those fucking masks off. If your there for a noble reason and not for looting, general vandalism or because you just love fighting then show your face, your fucking cowards. Criminals, thugs and crooks wear masks.

Rhetorically Speaking…

There’s something about the lede of this story that makes me deeply proud to be British:

Members will this week be shown copies of thousands of receipts and other documents due to be published under the Freedom of Information Act. They will be invited to redact the documents, blacking out information they do not want to disclose.

Other countries have corruption. Other countries have censorship. But we, the British, have a free media which reports that – in the coming weeks – our elected officials will finally be forced to release details of their expenses after a lengthy legal battle, but not before those politicians have been invited to censor their own records.