Condoning/not condoning* violence

November 10th, 2010 § 2 comments § permalink

Just a quickie as I’ve got other stuff to get on with.

Gareth F Compton is, according to his Twitter profile, a Conservative activist and councillor for Birmingham Erdington.

He has some wise words about the violence at todays student demo

Wise words indeed…

Just saying. that’s all.

*delete as applicable

Update 23:40
Oh, look. What a surprise. Gareth has now deleted his ‘stoning’ tweet.

Update 11/11/10
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is not happy and Gareth could be in the shit with this one…

The columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown has said she will report a Conservative councillor to the police after he posted a message on Twitter saying it would be a “blessing” if she was stoned to death.

What a lovely aoplogy too…

Twitter is a forum for glib comment of the moment. It was a glib comment. Who could possibly think it was serious?

“Obviously I apologise. No offence was intended.

As ever with these things, it’s not just that Gareth would do something like that, I’m sure he wouldn’t, but that someone else might take it up on themselves to act on it however remote the chance.

If someone publicly, or privately for that matter, called for my death, I’d be bloody upset too.

And another…

April 18th, 2009 § 0 comments § permalink

The man with the camera at 1:51, …

Via OblonskysGhost

Yet another video

April 18th, 2009 § 0 comments § permalink

BBC

The video of the latest incident to emerge was released by Climate Camp protesters. In it, 24-year-old IT worker Alex Cinnane is shown being forcibly hit in the left temple with a round shield by a policeman wearing a balaclava and a visor.

Well, that’s torn to shit any excuses that may (or have already come up) about Ian Tomlinson death being an isolated incident.

Keeping up appearances

April 15th, 2009 § 7 comments § permalink

The BBC has got the vid of the copper showing how, according to some, a woman should be treated. But once again there is a little bit of caution thrown in. Y’know, just in case…

The footage shows the woman swearing at a police officer who then appears to hit her in the face before apparently striking her on the leg with his baton.

The woman is swearing at the copper, but he only appears to slap her with the back of his hand, whilst wearing leather gloves that wouldn’t look out of place on a biker, and then he strikes her on the leg, apparently.

If we’re going down that sort of path, then surely, the woman only looks like she is swearing at the Filth.

But then, the girl probably hasn’t got institutions the size of the Met and the IPCC to defend her honour, has she?

Update:
The officer, a sergeant, it would appear, has been suspended.
David Howarth (LbDem justice spokesman)…

“The fact that this video shows another example of an officer with his number obscured assaulting a member of the public indicates that there is a systematic problem here, not just a series of individual acts of misconduct.

“The question is on my mind whether the police are using a some kind of ‘designated hitter’ system.”

Link via Rwendland in the comments on Bloggerheads.

You vicious bastards

April 8th, 2009 § 8 comments § permalink

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.

Video of police assault on Ian Tomlinson

April 7th, 2009 § 0 comments § permalink

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

Would the phrase ‘police state’ be overdoing it?

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