Just in case you missed it
My, hasn’t it been a busy few weeks in the State’s campaign of “keeping the People down”.
Most of it, admittedly, sparked off by the death of Ian Tomlinson during the G20 protests at the beginning of this month. And the revelations about the Met’s attempts to cover up the real facts (with, it has to be said, a little help from the IPCC, the supposedly “independent” Police Complaints Commission) after the style of the de Menezes cover-up.
The initial lies about police attempts to “help him” being thwarted by protesters. And the lies about the cause of death (resulting from a really hasty post-mortem examination conducted by a right dodgy-seeming pathologist). Ok. Conceivably, just conceivably, those “lies” could be (if we’re really charitable) attributed to a desire on the part of the cops to keep the public informed in a timely fashion. And undoubtedly that’s the spin they’ll eventually put on it. But I think not somehow. Speaks to me much more of a panicked response of attempting to hide their own wrongdoings.
That we have the mainstream Guardian to thank for most of these revelations sticks in my craw a little bit. But hey, if one of the mainstream platforms hadn’t picked it up in truth its unlikely to have received the widespread attention it so rightly deserves. Or that “attention” would have painted a wholly different picture.
Anyway, that whole sorry mess led on to some serious questions being asked about the ubiquitous police tactic of “kettling”, whereby a whole bunch of folk are herded into a confined area for a number of hours and, not being allowed to leave, are periodically subjected to various forms of cop nastiness.
Then, just to keep things interesting, another cop gets suspended for assaulting a woman simply because (so it would appear at the moment) she didn’t immediately “obey his order” to move back, and was a bit mouthy in protesting against the violence of the… er… cops.
Well, excuse me whilst I indulge a momentary apoplectic episode.
If we really did live in an ideal society where the cops policed “by public consent” as they so often claim, then perhaps there’d be a reasonable expectation for members of the public to “obey police orders”… not immediately perhaps (after all, the public aren’t exactly highly disciplined and trained to react instantly to a command), but in a reasonably prompt fashion. If we lived in an ideal society. But we don’t. And we certainly don’t live in one where policing is by public consent. Not where that policing so frequently goes so far over the top that the legality of police actions has to be called into question.
So, obey police orders instantly? You’ve gotta be joking. And your reward for not doing so? Your punishment for not being submissive, obedient, responding to the cops with Pavlovian automaticity? A back-handed slap across the face! What does that say about 21st century British policing techniques then?
To my mind it speaks volumes about the systemic police attitude of arrogance and disdain exhibited toward the public at large… the public whose “consent” they invoke whenever it serves their purposes. ‘Scuse me, but someone should point out to them that “consent” elicited by violence isn’t actually consent at all!
Sticking with the G20 protests for the mo’, we then stumble across the much less reported story of the police raids on two convergence centres in London, one of which being rampART (the squatted creative centre and social space). And, surprise surprise! More tales of police brutality and unprovoked violence.
Hard on the heels of all this excitement there’s then that bizarre “pre-emptive” police raid in Nottingham where 114 people are arrested for… er… having a meeting! And a school gets unnecessarily trashed in the process. Local MP Alan Simpson had a few choice words to say on the matter (quite right too) but so far it appears that few connections have been made (not in the mainstream media at least) between this and the previously quoted examples of repressive policing.
Connections that, if made, could well point to the serving of a political agenda rather than a straightfoward “law & order” one. Hmm.
As I said, a busy few weeks. Shame that the real message of the G20 protests appears to have become lost somewhere in the furore though.
And in the midst of it all I happen to spot another (entirely unrelated… probably) interesting little article. One that really deserves far more attention than its likely to receive. About Barack Obama releasing “four top secret memos that allowed the CIA under the Bush administration to torture al-Qaida and other suspects held at Guantánamo and secret detention centres round the world”.
The most interesting thing about it is the revelation that he (Obama) doesn’t intend to pursue prosecutions of those involved, claiming its a “time for reflection, not retribution”. Well well well. So despite all the promise that a glittery new American administration held forth, the reality is its just more of the same old bullshit. And with it bang go their attempts to try to “reclaim” (as if they ever had any) their “moral authority”.
Interesting times we live in.
-- fotdmike
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