Civil liberties

‘A Liberal’s A Wingnut Who…’ *

Civil liberties, US politics, War on Terror, Wingnuts
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Wingut

Remember the police violence at the Countryside Alliance demo and all those formerly rabid Tories who said they’d never trust authority again? Glenn Greenwald has a great post up about the US version of the phenomenon, at Salon:

The ultimate reaping of what one sows: right-wing edition

(updated below – Update II)

Right-wing polemicists today are shrieking in self-pitying protest over a new report from the Department of Homeland Security sent to local police forces which warns of growing “right-wing extremist activity.” The report (.pdf) identifies attributes of these right-wing extremists, warning that a growing domestic threat of violence and terrorism “may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single-issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration” and “groups that reject federal authority in favor of state or local authority.”

Conservatives have responded to this disclosure as though they’re on the train to FEMA camps.

The Right’s leading political philosopher and intellectual historian, Jonah Goldberg, invokes fellow right-wing giant Ronald Reagan and says: “Here we go Again,” protesting that “this seems so nakedly ideological.” Michelle Malkin, who spent the last eight years cheering on every domestic surveillance and police state program she could find, announces that it’s “Confirmed: The Obama DHS hit job on conservatives is real!” Lead-War-on-Terror-cheerleader Glenn Reynolds warns that DHS — as a result of this report (but not, apparently, anything that happened over the last eight years) — now considers the Constitution to be a “subversive manifesto.” Super Tough Guy Civilization-Warrior Mark Steyn has already concocted an elaborate, detailed martyr fantasy in which his house is surrounded by Obama-dispatched, bomb-wielding federal agents. Malkin’s Hot Air stomps its feet about all “the smears listed in the new DHS warning about ‘right-wing extremism.'”

[…]

I don’t recall Glenn Reynolds or Mark Steyn complaining that the FBI, for virtually the entire Bush administration, was systematically abusing its new National Security Letters authorities under the Patriot Act to collect extremely invasive information, in secret, about Americans who had done nothing wrong.

Read the whole thing

I see the whiny ass titty baby contingent of the flying buttmonkey brigade are still around, and still whining.

[* “…been arrested“]

Eating ‘Umble Pie

Civil liberties, Crisis? What Crisis?, Gordon Brown, Internet, IT is not magic pixie dust, liberalism, Manufacturing consent, New Labour, Socialism, UK elections, UK politics
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uriahheep

Pity Labour’s decent left, poor loves; reduced as a result of Smeargate into trying to Uriah Heep themselves into another glorious 12 years of Labour rule. Frank Field MP:

Darkness at the Heart of the Labour Party

Harold Wilson asserted that the Labour party was a moral crusade or it was nothing. The McBride affair has left Labour members looking at nothing. That is the reality check that McBride has wrought on the party.Labour supporters are left bewildered and wondering what happened to the moral crusading side of our mission.

Poor old Labour party.

So very very ‘umble.

Nothing’s illustrated New Labour’s complete lack of clue about the wired world – and their own legislation – more than the way they still think they can hide things they’ve done online.

But Gordon Brown and his new media minister/guru Tom Watson are learning fast that things a politician or his aide might have done online (or ordered to have done), no matter how anonymous or pseudonymous it was at the time, can come back to bite said politician in the ass:

A bogus applicant using the name “Ollie Cromwell” paid £8.99 to set up The Red Rag as a campaign blog. The buyer had to provide only a name, address, telephone number and e-mail to create the site on November 4 last year. The address given was the House of Commons, The Times has been told. The site was registered for two years, ensuring that it would be in place throughout the general election campaign, which must be called by June next year.?

I’d laugh if it wasn’t so fucking tragic: a discredited PM and a corrupt cabinet are teetering on the edge of implosion, not because of one of the any number of other, more substantive offences they might’ve been convicted for, but for internet cluelessness.

Meanwhile the traditional political media are off with the fairies, self-obsessing (as is their wont) about the way Smeargate illustrates their own imminent demise -“Why wasn’t I in the loop? Why was I scooped by a blog? Oh shit, will I have a job tomorrow? I’d better get a blog…” – rather than using their leverage as the fourth estate to help oust a dangerously incompetent and deceitful government that those of all political persuasions loathe.

No help there then.

And public trust in government, the police and in civic life in general continues to erode almost to invisibility. The authorities are scared shitless of public anger.

Declaring a Civil Contingency event looms. But hey, that’s just civic society falling apart as a result of Chicago School economic policies, as filtered through Brownian endogenous bloody growth theory. Brutality’s a feature not a bug.

Pity the decent left. They’re in a terrible fix – wanting nothing more than to get rid of this shower of incompetents, not least for their own political ambition, but reluctant to let go of a jot or a tittle of power despite recognising their party’s government is a shambles. They surely must recognise that they’re first up against the wall when it all goes to shit. After all, they’re party members too, they enabled these people. But no, they still think they can recover a shred of credibility, hence the mass outbreak of humility this morning.

We see and hear a trio of Blairites making ‘I are serious elder statesman’ expressions at the media and condemning this dreadful, shocking behaviour in outraged and unimpeachably moral chapel elder tones. Frank Field’s spreading oleaginous humility – it’s the best butter- on his blog just to pound home the point that it wasn’t us, guv, it was those nasty Brownites, and Alex Hilton written a condemnation cum mea culpa for The Scotsman:

Politics is the means by which a country is run and good politics means a country is run well.

But politics is also the name of a silly game played by silly boys in the Westminster bubble.

It’s a fun game, I fully admit, and sometimes it just has to be played. But when playing a game is your ambition and your daily motivation, it’s time to grow up.

Mr McBride and Mr Draper suffered from being in the Westminster bubble where all they saw was the game; where a lie here or a smear there are just bishops and rooks on a chessboard.

Somehow they had lost sight of that other politics – that which is concerned only with delivering a secure, fulfilling and sustainable society for its citizens.

Pass me the sick bag, mother.

I know many Labour figures who shun these silly games. There are many more who, like me, enjoy playing a game from time to time but who don’t let it get in the way of more noble, long-term objectives. But this week, until this embarrassment dies down, every single one of us will look like a duplicitous, power-mad fool.

If Labour party members are still able to believe that despite everything they’ve done, every illegal war, every torture, every police murder, every fake enquiry, that Labour has any right or mandate to govern Britain, the ‘decent left’ are duplicitous power mad fools.

No matter how bloody ‘umble.

What Did I Tell You?

Civil liberties, creative direct action, Life under Capitalism, Manufacturing consent, Policing, UK politics, War on Terror
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This is just one of the reasons why I’ll never live in England again if I can help it.

london-police

Remember those student activists in Plymouth I posted about a week or so ago? The teenage graffiti artists arrested under terror legislation ahead of the G20?

Guess what, they’ve been released without charges:

All five were detained for a number of days under the Terrorism Act as police carried out a number of searches. At the time it was suggested those arrested were planning to travel to London to protest along with thousands of others at the G20 summit.

All five have now been released without charges under the Terrorism Act. One of the women must answer police bail pending inquiries regarding a drugs offence. The other woman was also on police bail pending what police have called “other criminal matters.”

The schoolboy was on bail until May “in connection with a separate criminal investigation” while the 19-year-old was released with no further action to be taken against him.

As I said at the time it hardly matters to police that no charges resulted. They’ve got what they wanted – potential dissidents intimidated and plenty of ‘intelligence’ against anyone else who might be so foolish as to protest:

“Computers have also been seized for examination.” say Plymouth police. ).

Yes, multiple computers with multiple users, not to mention multiple mobile phones, in 2 shared student houses. Since when have students been guilty of what their housemates read online or text to their mates?

But how very handy for the police to be able to hoover up who knows how many innocent yet politically inconvenient email or facebook friends or bloggers or LJ readers for Jacqui Smith’s handy little database of dissidents (if her husband hasn’t left the USB stick at Spearmint Rhino already

Late edit Sunday am:

I’ve been a bit absent lately and only just realised I’d put the blockquote in the above para in the wrong place. Changed it. Mind you, it’s not as though anyone noticed .

Coppers, Cock-Ups and Provocateurs

Capitalism, Civil liberties, creative direct action, Life under Capitalism, Manufacturing consent, New Labour, Police Murder, Policing
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urbanwarfaresegwayMartin was working at home last week, so I broke my invariable rule on no sinful daytime tv and we watched the G20 demo live for several hours on both News 24 and Sky.

I mentioned at the time that I thought the supposed ‘black bloc’ looked very well-equipped and well-dressed; I mentioned too that from overhead shots it seemed that police cordons were being placed so as to force the front of the crowd – those suspiciously smart anarchists, conspicuous in their new black hoodies – right into the plate-glass windows of the only unboarded-up RBS branch in the City of London.

This story from last year, via Ten Percent, might shed some light on exactly how it was a small group of masked people bent on violence found themselves perfectly placed to attack a symbolic yet oddly unprotected building and potentially provoke a riot :

The man in the T-shirt was tall, well-built and handsome, smiling but with a hint of menace. He pushed aside children and elderly people. He continued to shout slogans such as: ‘Pigs Out.’

On his back was a black rucksack and he carried a professional-looking camera with a large telephoto lens. Hardly the sort of kit for a few snaps of his day out. My friends and I, standing a few rows back, asked him a couple of times to calm down, but he ignored us.

I wondered why I was drawn to him. Was it his dark good looks or was I worried for the safety of my 70-year-old friend and children nearby? Then it dawned on me. I had met this man at a party. I tapped him gently on the shoulder and said: ‘Have we met before?’ Instantly he recognised me. ‘Hi, how are you? It’s really nice to see you here.’

My puzzlement grew. This chap wasn’t really the sort you’d expect to see shouting abuse at police officers at an anti-war demo. He was, after all, a policeman himself – and a high-ranking one at that. I’d met the police inspector at a party around last Christmas. The local mayor was there, along with councillors from other parties and journalists. I’d been asked along by a friend.

Later, we went to a local gay club, where I danced with him and a few others until 3.30am. He had a bolshie charm, was cocky and a little manipulative. He was also highly entertaining, bragging about his work in the police and how important he was.

I remained bemused about his presence at the demo. I asked if he would send me copies of his demo photos. He replied: ‘No, they’re to put on my bedroom wall.’ I then casually asked why he was shouting anti-police slogans. ‘Funny you chanting that,’ I said, ‘when you’re a policeman.’

‘They don’t have my sort in the police, love,’ he said camply, so I would assume he was referring to being gay. A few seconds later, he melted into the crowd. I wondered whether he was at the demo undercover, deliberately whipping up trouble that he could capture on camera. That would then be used to malign anti-war protesters as dangerous and violent subversives. Of course, it is possible he was there off-duty to support the anti-war cause, but it is hardly likely he would enjoy chanting slogans against the police.

More…

Of course the protestors at the G20 didn’t riot, despite deliberately targeted overt (and covert) provocation. There was no mass riot, even though a man was killed. The police, wound up to a fine pitch of nervous anticipation by their political masters in ACPO and the Labour government, had to get their jollies later elsewhere.

When the cameras are gone no provocateurs are required, just fists, boots and batons.

Deborah Orr in the Independent says that the Met is dangerously out of control, but negates her own point by saying that:

…the foul-ups of the Met have one thing in common. The police go into a situation with their minds made up, their strategies already laid out, and their justifications rehearsed in advance. They never acknowledge their mistakes, but always protect the officers who make them. So they never, ever, learn anything. The amazing thing is that they keep on getting away with it.

Police nationwide, not just the Met, certainly appear out of control – but they aren’t, as much as nicely brought up newspaper columnists might think so. Police harassment and violence against dissenters is not abberation, it’s policy; so why be amazed that violent police get away with it?

British police are the paramilitary wing of the political and economic regime. Their continued existence is predicated on the maintainance of the status quo. A lot of undereducated and otherwise unemployable plods, rank and file and senior officers alike, would have a lot of future mortgage payments to lose should the system that supports them in maintaining a compliant populace ever be successfully challenged, so they’ll do whatever it takes to protect that, human rights be damned.

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…