Activism

Ian Tomlinson, killed by kettling

Activism, Policing
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Salfordonline has an eyewitness account of the death of Ian Tomlinson, who was on his way home from work when he was caught up in a police kettle during the G-20 protests.

Ian Tomlinson, 47, was apparently on his way home from work as a newsagent, and allegedly collapsed and suffered a heart attack during the protest.

The allegations were made after the widow of the man today lead a march for her partner who she said “died for the crimes of capitalism.”

One female witness who wished to remain anonymous talked of “police brutality and heartlessness” and directly implicated members of the police force in the “murder” of the protester who, in tributes left outside the Royal Exchange in the city, was described as a “hero.”

She spoke of the “unwarranted” attack made by “masked policemen in riot gear.” After being struck in the head by a police baton she said the man was then bloodied and left unconscious on the street.

An article on kettling at Comemnt is Free largely focuses on the legal aspects of this “controversial” tactic to keep order, without going into why this tactic is used. Supposedly this bunching up of protesters in small groups that are then kept standing in a controlled location for hours on end helps avoid violence and the police losing control. What it actually does is disrupt demonstrations by preventing large number of protestors from actually marching, keeping them irritated and on edge, punishing people for having the audacity to protest.

It’s a tactic which according to veterans, was first used on the “Stop the City”protest of the eighties but was only fully adapted after the May Day protests of 2001. The Metropolitian Police is somewhat ..selective… in its use of this tactic, largely keeping it confined to demos of a certain political character. Kettling doesn’t just disrupt demonstrations, it also changes the focus of media attention, form the demo itself to lawandorder. It helps delegitamise protest. And now it has killed.

G-20 demo: contained / police kill protestor

Activism, Civil liberties, Policing
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the advantage of being stuck working from home with a bit of manflu (as Palau oh so sympathetically calls it) is that I got to see an awful lot of the coverage of yesterday’s G-20 protests on the various newschannels (BBC1, Sky News, BBC World, Al-Jazeera undsoweiter). What struck me was the discrepancy betweent he images shown and the commentary. the talk was all about the challenges the police faced in “containing” the demo and the calm and mature way they responded to “provocations”, while the images showed a largely peaceful demo, enlivened by the occasional bit of police violence.

one protester, twenty journalists

Once the RBS windows were smashed the focus changed to speculation about whether or not this would be a “controlled” riot or become “as bad as the May Day riots”. Meanwhile the images seemed to show something that looked suspiciously like the police herding a group of black Bloc meatheads (agents provocateurs?) towards the RBS brach, oddly enough the only bank in the area nmot in lockdown, as if they wanted these demonstrators to smash the windows in…

The police was praised for the way in which they kept control over the demonstration, keeping groups of protestors locked in and only letting a trickle go through; no thought was given to the irritation and anger this caused other than noting that “things got grim”. The assumption that this was at all necesarry was of course never challenged.

From what I saw of police tactics it seems Craig Murray called it:

The Metropolitan Police now have a well rehearsed system for dealing with such events. Each demonstration will be split up into several separated groups. Each group will be tightly corraled, penned in with barriers in an uncomfortable crush that feels threatening to those inside. Occasionally groups will be shuffled between pens. Most demonstrators will not be allowed to the destination point to limit the appearance of numbers at the rallies. Once it is over, people will be kept corralled for several hours, with no refreshment or (this is critical and no joke) toilet facilities.

The tactic appears designed to create confrontation as people try to get out of penned areas to hear the speeches they came to hear, to escape the crush or just to find a loo. At the same time the argie-bargie thus deliberately sparked is confined to small numbers the police can contain.

Dave Hill’s liveblogging of the demo again confirms this.

UPDATE: police tactics of containment get a man killed. Police says that water bottles were thrown at first aid workers. But eye witnesses deny this. Who to believe…

The G-20 protests: Cointelpro’d?

Activism, Policing, UK politics
Published on 1 Comment on The G-20 protests: Cointelpro’d?

Lenny talks about the media hysteria surrounding the G-20 protests and where this is coming from:

A great deal of this scary material is apparently coming from one website, G-20 Meltdown. This website is described as an “umbrella group” for protesters, supposedly representing 67 different protest groups, although there is nothing on the website to show that this is so. The only indication that it might be is a list of organisations supporting the protests, but a disclaimer at the bottom of the list rectifies a previous ‘error’ which implied that these organisations were supporters of G-20 Meltdown. (This error has lead to some statements in newspapers implying that the Stop the War Coalition among others are in some sense affiliated to G-20 Meltdown, which I don’t think they are). And far from being run by hotheaded anarchists, the website is run by Camilla Power, an anthropologist based at the University of East London, a trade unionist, and a member of the CPGB. Another source for these scarifying articles is Chris Knight, cited as a member of the protest group ‘The Government of the Dead’. He is another CPGB member, and a professor of anthropology based at UEL. His frankly bombastic statements include the suggestion that the army and police might lose control of the City of London. If he were serious about this, he wouldn’t say such a thing either to the press or in any public forum where it could be accessed by police. Such statements, whatever the intention behind them, are foolish. They allow the press to imply that there is violence planned (there is not), and they give the police carte blanche to claim that the city is under extraordinary threat, thus mandating severe repression.

The question now is, who are Camilla Power and Chris Knight and why are they allowing themselves to be used to discredit the protests? Yes, there are sometimes young hotheads impressed by reading their first subversive books who think the best way to fight the power is to smash up a McDonalds, but this whole operation smacks of
Cointelpro. Veterans of sixties and seventies leftist causes (civil rights, disinvestment of South Africa undsoweiter) say you could always tell the FBI or Special Branch infiltrants: they were the ones calling for violence and “radical” action, preferably as publically as possible.

Don’t ….

Activism, creative direct action, Internet, IT is not magic pixie dust, New Labour, UK politics, War on Terror
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jslo

It could be just a ploy to entrap UK civil liberties activists into committing a crime.

A Facebook Group a fan site, a website and an email being circulated suggest that recipients do just this by overwhelming the Home Office – since they plan to read all our mail and take dominion over everything we see and do online – with an influx of cc’d email on June 15th.

The general gist is ‘see how they like it up ’em in practice’:

“No government of any colour is to be trusted with such a roadmap to our souls”: Ken McDonald, former head of the CPS.

The government has unveiled plans for a private company to run a
“superdatabase” that will track all our emails, calls, texts, internet
use and so on. This is an immense infringement of civil liberties, not
to mention a major risk to our private data – but it won’t make us any
safer. The sheer amount of information that the Government intends to
collect will be impossible to analyse properly and will undoubtedly turn
up false positives while missing potential security threats amongst the
morass of spam emails and private chat.

Read more at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/dec/31/privacy-civil-liberties

So, for one day, we should send a message to the Home Office – “you want
to see our emails? Ok then, here they are then!”.

The date has been set for June 15th. However for legal reasons, please don’t go ahead with the protest of your own accord. Please enter your details below and we will keep you up-to-date from time to time – and you’ll get confirmation closer to the time that the protest is going ahead. Alternatively, you can become a fan at our Facebook page.

I can see a number of problems with this. To begin with something blindingly obvious – why on earth would anyone want to willingly subscribe to any potential ’round up the usual suspects’ list of political dissidents, whatever their politics? Perhaps the author(s) haven’t quite thought their plan through.

Or maybe they have. Maybe this is a uk.gov fishing expedition.”Please enter your details below”, “Please invite your friends if you have joined and spread the word!”, indeed. Well they would say that, wouldn’t they?

Which brings up another problem, forwarding incoming email ‘regardless of importance and content:

We do this by simply cc’ing or bcc’ing every email we send (and if you like, forwarding every email you receive), regardless of importance or
content, to public.enquiries at homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk.

That way Jacqui Smith and the Home Office will be able to see how
difficult it will be to get on with their actual work – keeping our
country safe – when they’re trying to monitor every harmless private
thing we say and do.

***Please invite your friends if you have joined and spread the word!***<

I really don’t think so.

It’s outrageous even to suggest forwarding received emails as a form of political protest. In doing so you’d be subscribing the identities of all those people who’ve emailed you to the same potential database of political dissenters as you, but by proxy. Nice.

Also politically yet not quite so technologically aware readers might take this to mean that they should send the entire contents of their in and outboxes, since forever – and virtually labelled ‘seditionist’ too – to Jackboot Jacqui on the 15th June. It does seem a foolhardy course of action to suggest, as does the idea to that we forward all the emails we send and receive only on the 15th of June, which is what I think was actually meant.

Of course what the (possibly somewhat naive) authors may have envisioned is just that protestors might perhaps register a disposable email account, use it at a few of the more interesting sites, sit back, watch the reconstituted pork product that pours into the inbox get cc’d to Jacqui. Voila, enough spam to supply police canteens for a century. What larks.

But whatever the authors actually meant, there’s no getting round the fact that what they’re suggesting their fellow citizens do by way of an act of supposed civil disobedience is to overwhelm the Home Office and other UK.gov network resources with traffic – otherwise known as a denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) the organisation of or participation in which carries a hefty 10 year prison sentence under UK law.

Why would any activist, however naive and well-meaning, incite that others (albeit unknowingly) participate in conspiracy to commit a crime?

It all smells of entrapment to me.

Who is this ‘Martin’? Who registered the website? Where did this email originate? So far it’s not taking off that well there’s little I can find mentioned about it except on a libertarian/far-rightwing blog (which refers approvingly to the BNP), which inclines me just to say sod it, let them get themselves banged up and good riddance.

But I would hate for anyone who’s not an incipient nazi, who’s just concerned about civil liberties but who feels powerless to be heard, to take this as a legitimate call to action. I don’t trust it a bit.

Please don’t cc your email to Jacqui Smith on June 15th.