Extremism is Nasty

In all it's forms. Here, for example, we see pro-Israeli protesters behaving as a mixture of creepy toughing perverts and/or aggressive bone-heads as they demand that the IDF kill more people and chant "death to the leftists". Charming. Such a friendly bunch of democratic people, can't imagine how the world perceives Israel to be a rogue state... (and during the protest the cop sits there and does fuck all while the pro-Israeli protesters get nastier and nastier.



Remember all that killing and destruction the IDF does is to protect the world from extremist Islam... Ooops. Forgot about the home-grown extremists...

G8 Cops Found Gilty

Finally, after almost a decade, the police who attacked innocent protesters, beating them savagely then planted fake evidence to incriminate them - reports lapped up the the right-wing press globally at the time - have been found guilty of their crimes...

Some of Italy's most senior police officers have been given jail sentences of up to five years for what the prosecution called a "terrible" attack on demonstrators at the 2001 G8 meeting in Genoa and an attempted cover-up.

Except that this isn't real justice:

It is highly unlikely that any of the officers will go behind bars. The case has taken so long that most of the offences of which they were accused have been "timed out" by statutes of limitations.

Nice - want to beat the shit out of people and get away with it? Join the police!

BP Policing the Media

I blogged about Apple's police force. Next in the corporate cops rosta we have BP:

Emerging reports are raising the question of just how much of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill journalists are able to document.

When CBS tried to film a beach with heavy oil on the shore in South Pass, Louisiana, a boat of BP contractors, and two Coast Guard officers, told them to turn around, or be arrested.

"This is BP's rules, it's not ours," someone aboard the boat said. Coast Guard officials told CBS that they're looking into it.

As the Coast Guard is a branch of the Armed Forces, it brings into question how closely the government and BP are working together to keep details of the disaster in the dark.

Mre example of state-paid policing serving not the citizens, but a corporate agenda. If there was justice the cops would be busting in the doors of executives from the companies involved in this eco-clister-fuck...

Police Storm House over 'Wanker' Poster

This is a typical story of cops acting outside the law they are supposed to enforce. Entering a house without a warrant, arresting a guy without cause, using excessive force to do so and so on. Worth watching the video:

David Hoffman: 'They were a gang of bullies who burst into my house'

On election day David Hoffman had a knock on his door by the police, who instructed him to take down a poster he had in his window of David Cameron with the word 'wanker' written on it. Moments later he was handcuffed and threatened with arrest.

The Corporate Cops of Apple

There is an interesting technology story doing the rounds: an Apple guy leaves a new prototype iphone in a bar. Somebody finds it and sells it to an online technology blog, Gizmondo, who report all the new gadgets that it has. Blah blah. Except that Apple goes mental and gets the cops - who bust this bloggers door in like they were raiding the house of some right-wing terror cell. OTT to say the least. But that's not the most disturbing part of it...

So, what happened? This week, Chen's house was raided by officers from California's Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team (REACT), a special task force of police officers and federal agents created to combat computer-related crimes -- and which just happens to have Apple on its steering committee. The cops took all of Chen's computer equipment.

Meanwhile, the San Mateo County district attorney is considering whether to bring charges against Chen. It all hinges around whether California's journalist shield law covers bloggers. Well, speaking as someone who was an investigative reporter for one of the nation's top 10 newspapers: Of course it does.

This is appalling. As Instapundit uber-blogger Glenn Reynolds has rightly noted, this is basically "gangland politics," with one side getting to use to the police as its muscle. He's also correct in noting that neither the police nor Apple would ever have tried this against, say, the San Jose Mercury-News (I know because I worked there).

As for Apple, it has been unquestionably the most important and exciting technology company of the last dreary decade in tech, and bless it for that. But big companies are inherently totalitarian (which should give pause to boosters of the current administration's corporatist leanings) and none more so than Apple.

Welcome to the era of state paid, but corporate rule, policing.

Fairford Protests Put The Shits Up 'em (Good)

I went along to a couple of the protests during the Iraq War at Fairford, the huge US airbase that was used to send B52 bombers over to iraq to bomb some democracy into the natives. The first protest I went to was small (hundred or so) and the second was huge (couple of thousand?) - both were noisy and confrontational affairs; as they should have been. Here's what I wrote at the time;

The massive police reactions in Fairford, Bristol, across the South West and UK show a system in trouble. For those of us attending the demo at the US airbase of Fairford on Saturday 22nd, and I suspect for those attending any of the hundreds of demos and actions across the UK, we witnessed what can only be called the state in panic. Police presence was overwhelming to the point where you could see the fear of the state manifested in a thick blue line around the gates of USAF Gloucestershire. It made you think of a cornered and wounded beast.

Such was the fear of the people attending that the first use of the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2000 / Section 60 in mainland Britian was at in effect. Its use was not to stop al Qaeda, but to protect a US airbase. As back up for the anti-terror laws there were huge number of police Forward Intelligence Teams, contracted civilian photographers and Evidence Gathering Teams. They had enough cameras to film a Hollywood epic, even if most of their footage was of people making roll-ups. Such was the panic of the authorities that they turned back coaches of protesters under the thin veil of 'legitimacy' as the numbers attending the demo threatened to spiraled out of their control. Police from all over the UK including Thames Valley, Manchester, Devon and Cornwall and Liverpool been drafted into sleepy Gloucestershire with their leave and rest days canceled as they struggle to cope with the popular resistance to war. ... more.

Now we find out that I was right - these protests really had put the willies up the Neo-Labour fuckers and thier neo-con backers! Good:

[Documents] show [anti-war] protests made the authorities very worried: the Americans leaned on defence minister Lewis Moonie, who leaned on Home Office minister John Denham to resist protests. Moonie wrote: "Concerns remain, especially on the part of the US authorities, who also see RAF Fairford becoming a focus of increased protester activity."

Moonie revealed that Americans helped plan policing this bit of Gloucester, writing: "Plans to respond to demonstrations and protest action in the Fairford area, whether at or away from the base itself, have been worked up by the Ministry of Defence police, the US authorities and the civil constabularies."

A draft reply from Denham shows the Home Office was worried that US soldiers might shoot protesters. Talking about the danger of "overreaction" by "American military personnel", the draft letter says: "We are all clear, I think, that the consequences of protesters being seriously injured, or even killed, would be very serious indeed."

For his part, Moonie was concerned that "the possibility clearly exists for unhelpful media coverage should future demonstrations get out of hand, and for our relationship with the US authorities to be damaged as a result". The papers also reveal David Veness, the Scotland Yard boss involved in dealing with terrorism and liaising with the head of MI5, was involved in discussions about how to police the Fairford demonstrations.

My recollection was that the national Stop The War hierarchy didn't want to protest there and wanted us to go to London. Local autonomy prevailed and we went and went. Let that be a lesson to us; same old same old marches in London do fuck all. Protests need to be focused.

(Also see here for more on the counter-intelligence tactics used on protesters.)

The Nature of Evil: It's In Us!!

A must-listen talk by the social psychologist Phillip Zimbardo on the nature of evil...



In a nutshell, evil is less within us and more within the structures we live within - normal people who are not sadists, in the wrong circumstances, in a matter of days can become the sadists we see in Abu Graib. It is mindless obedience to hierarchy that kills more people than disobedience to laws. The people at the top of a hierarchy create the system that breeds evil in people who would not otherwise do so. The irony is that Bu$h and Bliar in their war on evil, created a system of evil in the process. (A point John Gray warns us of!)

But there is also message that none of us know what we will do if faced with the same situation - we all have this capacity for evil. Our protection is to ensure that we do not allow the hierarchy systems and/or personality cults that encourage it.

On the plus side heroism is the same - we all have the capacity to do good in such situations...

Lying Fucking Cops, Complicit Fucking Media

I fucking knew it - when that poor guy at the G20 protests in London died, I was told second hand that the police has been pelted with bottles when they tried to help him. Lying fucking bastards. Not only was this not the case, but footage that has emerged clearly shows a copper assaulting the guy - knocking him to the ground, while the protesters are the ones trying to help him up. Lying fucking bastards. They lied at Forest Gate, over De Menezes and what does the IPCC do? Fuck all. Useless. Here's the footage:



So what did the media say about the lying police claims? Did they investigate? Well the Guardian did and credit to it, but plenty of others took the lying police claims at face value and reported them;

The Sun: Man dies as bottles lobbed at rescuers. POLICE were battered with beer bottles and cans as they desperately tried to save a dying man at the height of the G20 riots in London last night.

Sky News: The man was found after collapsing at a protest camp near the Bank of England. Police said bottles were thrown at them while they attempted to treat him.

So as a result of this type of reporting we get things like this; a commentor on the Independent laps it all up; "A law abiding citizen died on his way home from work died because of the protests not because of the police."

I am not surprised that the media don't learn from past police lies. They don't want to. This is why we should be doing our own media.

More on this;

http://bristle.wordpress.com/2009/04/07/the-guardian-the-police-murdered-ian-tomlinson/
and
http://www.chickyog.net/2009/04/02/sky-news-not-learning-lessons/

Some News Updates: Afganistan, Bristol, So-Called 'Eco-Terror' and Bristol

A few quick links that might be of interest updating some news I have been blogging about;

I blogged about the drug-wars of Mexico: things have got even worse since then. Recently the severed heads of 8 soldiers were found in a bag with a warning. A former DEA agent is claiming that elements in the US law enforcement are on the cartel's payroll;

One of Celerino [“Cele” Castillo III is a former DEA agent]'s discoveries, in particular, likely incurred the wrath of a particular federal agency, the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms and Tobacco (ATF), Castillo claims. As part of his part-time work as a consultant on criminal cases, Castillo contends that he uncovered evidence that two ATF agents “were on the payroll of a Mexican cartel.” That “cartel,” Castillo asserts, is a paramilitary offshoot of the Mexican military that is being supplied with U.S. weapons, some only available through the U.S. military, by operatives on the U.S. side of the border.

Now the Guardian article above claims the army are seen as 'cleaner' than the corrupted and compromised cops. But are they?

But several other federal law enforcers who spoke with Narco News, on the condition their names not be used, don’t find his analysis to be far-fetched. “The Mexican military and government are corrupt,” one law enforcer says. “The Military escorts smugglers to the border. It’s a daily occurrence. The video cameras at the El Paso Intelligence Center have it all on video, filed away. If we report the suspicious activity to our superiors, nothing ever happens. It’s just covered up. “The Mexican military cartel has taken over Juarez. Our government knows it; they’re not stupid, but they’ve made some backroom deal with the Mexican government.”

It's a fuck-up. And from one fuck up to another: Afghanistan. Check this quote:

"The problem is the British. They support the Taliban." Why? "Because they want to control Afghanistan. They want us to stay fighting forever. The British only kill the innocent, they don't kill the Taliban."

And that's from a fucking police man! Yes, there are Afgan coppers who think the UK military are there to facilitate the drugs trade. Here's another one;

Crossing his long fingers, and speaking quietly, the uncle explained his trade. "If we smuggle 40kg, we give the Taliban 4kg. We pay the 10% as a zikat [Islamic tax] to the Taliban. And we pay another 10% to the government officials and the police.

Yup - both the Taliban and the cops are on the take. While the government, police and army of Afghanistan are so corrupt - and they are - the war there can never be won. UK soliders and cash are being used to prop-up a dysfunctional, corrupt and dead-end narco-state (like Mexico?).

And from one dead-end to another - so-called Eco Terrorism; Monbiot has weighed into the issue that us bloggers have been on for a while now;

Just as the misleading claims of the security services were used to launch an illegal and unnecessary war against Iraq, [National Extremism Tactical Co-ordination Unit]'s exaggerations will be used to justify the heavy-handed treatment of peaceful protesters. In both cases police and spies are distracted from dealing with genuine threats of terrorism and violence.

And while NETCU were busy helping out polluters and corporations under the guide of 'fighting terrorism' this is what they should be doing;

A right-wing extremist who wanted to "secure a future for white children" and kept explosives at his Yorkshire flat was convicted on terrorism charges on Tuesday. Martyn Gilleard, 31, from Goole in East Yorkshire, was found guilty at Leeds Crown Court of the preparation of terrorist acts and of collecting information useful for an act of terrorism. He had pleaded guilty at earlier hearings to possessing live ammunition and 39,000 indecent images of children. Police conducting a child pornography raid last October had discovered racist literature, home-made bombs, knives and a rifle at Gilleard's flat.

Finally another shout-out to the protesters in Bristol taking on Raytheon. Great work people!
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Eco-Terror Rubbish Story Withdrawn

I blogged about a rubbish story by the Observer on so-called 'Eco Terror' and why it was complete rubbish and looks more like a strategy to soften the public up for mass arrests of environmentalists. Well, after much online pressure and research by bloggers, the Observer has withdrawn the story!

Environmentalist Keith Metcalf explained that Earth First! supported direct action against property, but not against people. He believed that the debate around sustainable population size had been twisted to imply that environmentalists wished to kill people.

He also repeated the belief of several others that Nectu [the police agency who was the source for the dodgy allegations of eco-terror] was briefing in this manner in order to make prosecutions easier and to boost its funding, which is at risk owing to the decline in animal rights campaigns. I can't verify that or the fears about mass murder because, despite repeated requests, Nectu won't respond. Accordingly, The Observer has decided to withdraw the story.

Hat-tip to Ian Bone's blog for this.
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Police Soften Up Public for Clampdown on Environmental Activists

You can see the beginning stages of a campaign by police to soften the public up for a repression of environmental protesters as campaigns around global warming hot up. As it looks possible for the government to push forward/allowing a number of massive carbon-white elephants, from locals schemes like the Bristol Ring Road or Bristol Airport Expansion to national projects like Heathrow or more coal fired power stations. There is a long tradition of non-violent direct action in the country from opposition to slavery, for universal suffrage to stopping apartheid. However the power-that-be don't seem to want to see it this way. This article shows how the cops have been briefing the media;

Police have warned of the growing threat of eco-terrorism after revealing they are investigating a group which has supporters who believe that reducing the Earth's population by four-fifths will help to protect the planet....Officers from a specialist unit dedicated to tackling domestic terrorism are monitoring an eco-movement called Earth First! which has advocates who state that cutting the Earth's population by 80 per cent will ease pressure on other species. Officers are concerned a 'lone maverick' eco-extremist may attempt a terrorist attack aimed at killing large numbers of Britons.

rIIIGHT. A lone maverick would be just that - a lone maverick outside any group. This could and sadly does happen anyway with or without the ideology of environmentalism. Interesting how the article then links the lone maverick to various groups like Earth First! who use non-violent direct action. This is lazy journalism to take the cops story at face value, for there have been a couple of people wounded by a bomb related to Earth First!....but those wounded (Judi Bari & Darryl Cherney) were from the group itself and while initially the cops tried to frame them for the bomb that nearly killed the activists themselves. A court case subsequently decided that the cops never bothered trying to find out who really did it, but were intent on framing the environmentalists and gathing more data about the protest movement. The jury in the case awarded the pair $4.4 million total damages for the illegal police actions;

The jury unanimously found that six of the seven FBI and OPD [Oakland Police Department] defendants framed Judi and Darryl in an effort to crush Earth First! and chill participation in Redwood Summer [protests].

We have seen this type of media operation before; All the major summits have a pre-ceding media campaign where the police express their 'fears' of violent protesters. For example in Genoa the police even uncovered actual weapons! However it turned out they were planted by the cops. The police who battered protesters without provocation turned out to the the real purveyors of violence. Another good example comes from Donson et al's 2004 research;

This paper argues that we are currently witnessing the development of a new type of folk devil...The paper examines the way in which anti-capitalist activists are constructed as a new class of folk devil through the media portrayal of protests and the associated political and expert comment. In this process prominent politicians and senior police officers identify activists as 'violent', 'mindless thugs', views widely reproduced in print and broadcast media. The reasons for, and results of, this construction are varied but it is argued that primary amongst these is the ability to trivialise and dismiss activists through a rejection of their behaviour as simply destructive and dangerous. This then facilitates a silencing of these alternative voices in terms of both wider debates on the pros and cons of citizens rights to protest within neo-liberal capitalist democracy and wider contested issues of social and economic justice.

The Observer article is a big 'un - almost 1000 words to drive the message home. Compare this with less than 100 words written about the arrest of a man accused of carrying a Waffen SS UK Members Handbook and two improvised explosive devices last week. The Observer article have this classic statement;

Reports on the Earth First! Journal website, which tells users how to send encrypted emails, reveals connections to the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) which has been linked to a series of violent attacks in the US. ELF was classified as the top domestic terrorism threat in the US by the FBI in March 2001.

I would contest the use of the term 'violence' - and there are a couple of good debates about this issue on Bristol Indymedia (1,2)- no people were hurt by Earth First! only property. So that would be the March 2001, 6 months before radical Islamic terrorists crashed planes into the twin towers and killed thousands and the FBI failed to stop them? Oh the irony: perhaps they were too busy looking in the wrong place?

The Battle of Genoa

There is a very good write-up on the police riot of Genoa in the Guardian;

"There are several good reasons why we should not forget what happened to Covell, then aged 33, that night in Genoa. The first is that he was only the beginning. By midnight on July 21 2001, those police officers were swarming through all four floors of the Diaz Pertini building, dispensing their special kind of discipline to its occupants, reducing the makeshift dormitories to what one officer later described as "a Mexican butcher's shop". They and their colleagues then illegally incarcerated their victims in a detention centre, which became a place of dark terror....Genoa tells us that when the state feels threatened, the rule of law can be suspended. Anywhere."

We should also not forget how much of the media just climbed on-board with the faked police account of what happened. I single out the Daily Mail & it's 'journalist' Lucie Morris as the worst. But the deeper meaning in the article holds true. When the state feels threatened, than and and all means become available;

"No government fights fascism to destroy it. When the bourgeoisie sees that power is slipping out of its hands, it brings up fascism to hold onto their privileges."

Buenaventura Durruti

It is worth remembering this are we move into the age of the end of oil.

Maori Resistance and the War of Terror


I read an article in the Guardian recently about a group of Maori's who were arrested under a giant terrorist sweep:

Sixteen people are on trial in Auckland district court following the raids, the culmination of a year-long police undercover operation that involved up to 300 officers and was centred on the isolated North Island hamlet of Ruatoki, gateway to the Urewera mountains that are home to the fiercely independent Tuhoe tribe. The raids followed sightings of "armed men in camouflage and balaclavas moving through forests carrying heavy packs and firearms". There are unconfirmed claims that among the weapons seized was a napalm bomb, or perhaps some molotov cocktails, and rumours that the prime minister, Helen Clark, may have been a target

.

It all sounds very dramatic and seems to follow the pattern of similar UK raids that were all hype and no substance; the duff Forest Gate raid the so-called ricin plot and so on - the War of Terror gone mad (or exploited for political reasons). Thanks to Indymedia New Zealand we are able to find out loads more about this case and how it has panned out, and yes, so far the 'terrorism' looks like all smoke and mirrors:

At a press conference broadcast live on radio new zealand, solicitor-general David Collins has announced his decision denying a police request to lay charges under the Terrorism Suppression Act. This means that none of the 17 people arrested in so-called "terror raids" will be charged under the terrorism act. The solicitor general had access to police evidence which has not been made public. Although he stated that the police had 'acted properly' in their investigation, he denied the request to lay charges under the Terrorism Suppression Act.

The War of Terror has always had a duplicitous and insidious hidden agenda of geo-strategic control and this is now becoming increasingly clear - it is a War on Democracy, for example we see Musharraf in Pakistan, our ally, arresting democracy supporters under the guise of 'combating extremism', given the billions of dollars he receives in military aid, his move could not have happened without some form of complicity.

PS. Its remembrance day and a couple of links of note:
http://www.international-brigades.org.uk/
http://www.ppu.org.uk/poppy/index.html

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Report Back - the MOVE Talk

Ramona Africa and her colleague visited Bristol on the 2nd July as part of a European speaking tour. She introduced herself as the minister for information of the group MOVE (note, MOVE is not an acronym, but a greeting to fellow members as in, 'on a MOVE' ) The evening began with a showing of a documentary about the group and its struggles narrated by Howard Zinn. The documentary is a shocking account of the brutality of the police – one stark example is when the police, after denials of brutality, are caught on camera surrounding and beating an unarmed MOVE member. Following the pubic revelation of the film footage, the head of the police union asserts (on camera) that if the cops had simply killed, rather then beaten him, then they would not be in this mess at all.

Ramona takes up this theme following the video, “You call the police when you are under attack, but who do you call when its the police that are attacking?” She asked the audience, “They say that police brutality is just a few bad apples, when when things like this happen time after time you find yourself asking, where are all the good apples?” She then talked about the ideas of MOVE – that move believes in life and freedom. She talked about life; that move protested wherever life was 'caged' from zoos to care homes with unsafe conditions. Another example she gave was how MOVE used to compost their vegetable waste – back in the early 70s they were derided as 'nasty' for this, now widespread practice. She talked about freedom; about MOVE's belief that when you give responsibility to officials, you give away your purpose. She talked about self-defense and differentiated it from violence. She said all living things had the instinct for self- defense in one form or another and MOVE refused to give this instinct away. She talked about then when MOVE refused to back down to the police violence they had often won concessions such as the freeing of MOVE members from jail. In regard freedom she talked about the difference between 'legal' and 'right' – that the system confused us into thinking that legal = right when in MOVE's view it did not always match. She reminded the audience that slavery was once 'legal', but that it was never 'right'. She talked about the system as a whole – that in MOVE's view the system is sick – that is is any surprise the rocketing rate of respiratory disorders and cancer when we poison the food and the air? She ended in a call for global solidarity from Chiapas to Bristol to Iraq everywhere in defense of life and freedom.

PS. The Kebele cafe on the 1st July raised £120 to assist the MOVE tour and the film night added a further £65 to this – thanks to all who supported the event!

PPS. You can help the 9 MOVE people still in jail by going here; http://www.onamove2007.org.uk/ to find out more!

Policing Priorities in the War on(of) Terror (TM)

It is often the case that you hear of a disproportionate use of state resources. So the cops in Bath spend thousands stopping a climate camp, the state spends millions trying to jail five peace protesters – and remember we are supposed to be in the grip of a tooth-and-nail fight for survival with Islamic radicals, so why is it that 20 cops have been diverted from other crimes to see if a Scottish socialist (or his wife) might have lied in a trial about who he might not (or might) have been having sex with:

Detectives are investigating whether the wife of Tommy Sheridan, the former leader of the Scottish Socialist Party, committed perjury during his high-profile libel trial against the News of the World....Yesterday, police confirmed that they have stepped up their inquiry, bringing in 20 officers, whose tasks include combing through statements made by Gail Sheridan in Edinburgh's High Court last August. The News of the World was ordered to pay Mr Sheridan £200,000 after it claimed that he was a serial adulterer who hung out in swingers' clubs and took part in orgies.

20 cops!!! For fucks sake, you've got the rape conviction rate in the dumps, politicians committing war crimes and the state puts 20 cops onto a perjury case? I guess the fact that the guy in question does not believe in the neo-liberal war on terror and won in court against one of Mrdoch's papers is an issue worth 20 cops.

My Tube...

Just getting into YourTube, and here's a bit of what's on my tube...

Refuse/Resist by the youth wing of Sepultura - great fun!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TviTCFAGr6w

Drumcorps-02-04-06 (get ready for GoatLab!!! 1st Dec http://www.thegoatlab.com )
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hymZ3qWfqa0

Venetian Snares @ BGMW-XIV - Live and lov'in it!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVj2sJ5zx94

The Assdroids-snakes & ladders video ????
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHTRF_uhVnQ

PS. Also please sign the petition!

We believe that after two hung juries – which are failures of the government to prove their case – that the it should end its persecution of the 5 Fairford protesters who tried to stop the war crimes of aerial bombardment of civilian areas during the Iraq war. The Fairford protesters were acting out of a human concern for the civilians of Iraq and morally (as well as legally) did a brave action.

The Fairford protesters are people who were arrested while trying to disarm USAF B52 bombers stationed at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire before the attack on Iraq in March 2003. They are nonviolent and accountable, attempting to prevent the deaths of innocent Iraqis in an illegal war.

http://www.petitiononline.com/FAIRFORD/petition.html

Bliar should be in the dock!