Talkin Bout a Revolution

[David Guyatt]

In a typically "repressive police state" mind-lock, the police now have other possible means to defeat the protesting students (not counting water-canons).

Democracy? What democracy?

I have to say that I'm reaching exhaustion point in writing complaints to various bodies. I've written more in the last two weeks than I have in my entire life - and now another one to the Metropolitan Police Authority to register my astonishment at the following.

From the Indy:

Student protests may be banned altogether if violence continues
By Mark Hughes, Crime Correspondent
Wednesday, 15 December 2010


Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson

Scotland Yard will consider asking the Home Secretary to ban further student marches should the levels of violence which have marred the recent protests continue, Britain's most senior police officer said yesterday.

More than 180 people have been arrested after four protests in London against the Government's proposal to increase student tuition fees.

The most violent scenes were witnessed last week, when protesters clashed with police in Parliament Square. The clashes left 12 police officers and more than 40 protesters injured. The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall came under attack as they were driven to a charity event nearby.

Yesterday the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson spoke about a "sustained and serious level of violence". He said banning students from marching was a power he had not ruled out using. "It is one of the tactics we will look at and something we will keep under review, and if we think it is the right thing to do then we will do it," he said.

But he added that a ban could cause more trouble. Under the Public Order Act, the police can ask the Home Secretary to ban marches. Sir Paul said: "When you have got people willing to break the law in this way, what is the likelihood of them obeying an order not to march or complying with conditions on a demonstration? Sometimes putting that power in could just be inflaming the situation further."

The NUS president, Aaron Porter, said in response: "Peaceful protest is an integral part of our heritage and it is the responsibility of the police to help facilitate that."

The Commissioner also spoke of his worry that the continued protests are "stripping London out". He explained that almost 3,000 officers are being deployed to police the protests and it is leaving neighbourhoods in other parts of London vulnerable. Speaking about the suggestion that water cannons could be used to control crowds in the future, Sir Paul said that the force had ruled that option out three years ago but that officers were taking advice from colleagues in Northern Ireland about its efficacy in London. He added that currently the Met does not have a water cannon. Sir Paul refused to say whether "snatch squads" will be deployed immediately to arrest the most serious troublemakers. But he did say that, following Thursday's scenes in which monuments were defiled, police will consider boarding up potential targets for damage.

Sir Paul also revealed that he will be off work, possibly until the end of January, as he is due to undergo surgery for what is believed to be a non-cancerous tumour in his femur.

PS, the email of the MBA is: General enquiries email
enquiries@mpa.gov.uk

[David Guyatt]

And then there is this:

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/4/20101215/tuk-...a1618.html

Student Loans Company took £15m in overpayments

Wednesday, December 15 06:38 am

The Student Loans Company took more than £15 million in overpayments last year from graduates who had already paid back all the money they borrowed. Skip related content

More than 57,000 former students were waiting for a refund for the year to March 2010, according to Which?.

The consumer watchdog obtained the figures using Freedom of Information requests after receiving complaints from people who noticed money was still being taken from their pay packets despite the fact they had already paid back their student loans in full.

Under the loan system, graduates pay back the debt in monthly instalments docked from their salary.

HM Revenue and Customs takes the money and passes it to the SLC until the SLC informs HMRC the total has been paid.

Although the overpayments are eventually repaid, Which? said graduates faced "hardship" and "hassle" as a result of the situation.

[Magda Hassan]

Now who is this guy and where is his seeing eye dog? He is apparently a photographer. And he is singing the praises of the police in their 'handling' of Jodi McIntyre. But his picture do not show the story he is telling. Nor does his statement agree with the other eye witnesses to the police brutality. What is his game I wonder?

http://www.mitchell-images.com/jody-mcintyre/4546538655
Jody McIntyre

A series of shots taken during the afternoon of the latest student protest in London. The young man in the shots, Jody McIntyre claims he was assaulted by the police.
This claim relates to an event later in the evening, however, these shots show the way the police dealt with Mr McIntyre in the afternoon.
At the time these shots were taken the police were under a barrage of bricks, bottles and metal fence panels, as well as being involved in hand to hand fighting with the crowd.
Mr McIntyre was in the front row of the crowd and in a very precarious position, especially as he is wheelchair bound.
It was clear from my vantage point that the police moved him as gently as possible and in doing so the officers put themselves in personal danger from the hail of missiles.
Once he had been moved away from the front line to a safe distance, the officers sat him on a low level wall. Mr McIntyre got up and started arguing with an officer. He was so wound up that he eventually tried to strike an officer and was only stopped from doing this due to the intervention of a famale passer-by.

Apologies for the quality of some of the shots. I too was being shoved around by the crowd.

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[Jan Klimkowski]

The rozzers are renewing their calls to ban protest marches:

Scotland Yard will consider asking the Home Secretary to ban further student marches should the levels of violence which have marred the recent protests continue, Britain's most senior police officer said yesterday.

(snip)

Yesterday the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson spoke about a "sustained and serious level of violence". He said banning students from marching was a power he had not ruled out using. "It is one of the tactics we will look at and something we will keep under review, and if we think it is the right thing to do then we will do it," he said.

Meanwhile, on BBC2's Newsnight yesterday, Tory MP Patrick Mercer argued repeatedly that protest was a fundamental British right, and protest marches should be allowed.

I suspect that deep political games are being played.

For allegations that Mercer served in the Force Research Unit in Northern Ireland, see here:
http://cryptome.org/fru-mercer.htm

Mercer vehemently denies the allegations.

Do They believe Khaos will serve their deepest interests?

[David Guyatt]

Now who's asking question they already know the answer to? Really. Tsk, tsk.

It's all about the Hegeian dialectic of thesis clashing with antithesis to create a new synthesis - in this case a new subservient/slave class (or rather the old one reinvigorated with a makeover), to benefit our elite masters (master race?) of wealth and crime.

The Hegelian dialectic in politics was exposed by Prof. Tony Sutton in his book on the Skull and Bones and he further explained how that secret Yale society directly connects to the still very secretive "Oxford Group". And then of course we add into the mix Messrs Cameron, Osborne, Boris Boy and the other members of the (until recently) realy very secret (until recently anyway) Bullingdon Boys Club, which it turn, seem to have old connections that go back to Rhodes and his above "Oxford Group" -- as well as connecting with even deeper and older occult roots of a very unsavoury character?

As I've said before, we all had better get used to tugging our forelock again, or fight like hell to salvage those cherished and civilized ideals we believe in.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Now who's asking question they already know the answer to? Really. Tsk, tsk.

It's all about the Hegeian dialectic of thesis clashing with antithesis to create a new synthesis - in this case a new subservient/slave class (or rather the old one reinvigorated with a makeover), to benefit our elite masters (master race?) of wealth and crime.

The Hegelian dialectic in politics was exposed by Prof. Tony Sutton in his book on the Skull and Bones and he further explained how that secret Yale society directly connects to the still very secretive "Oxford Group". And then of course we add into the mix Messrs Cameron, Osborne, Boris Boy and the other members of the (until recently) realy very secret (until recently anyway) Bullingdon Boys Club, which it turn, seem to have old connections that go back to Rhodes and his above "Oxford Group" -- as well as connecting with even deeper and older occult roots of a very unsavoury character?

As I've said before, we all had better get used to tugging our forelock again, or fight like hell to salvage those cherished and civilized ideals we believe in.

:five:

To expand upon my previous post, the Force Research Unit was far more sinister than its slightly bookish nom de guerre suggests.

In fact, I would categorize it as a Gladio-style operation charged with executing false flag missions as part of the implementation of the Strategy of Tension in Northern Ireland.

[Jan Klimkowski]

The "appalling" kettling video can be seen here, after some irritating advert.

Kettling video 'appalling', police watchdog panel chair says

Victoria Borwick encourages protesters at anti-student fees demonstration to make complaints against Metropolitan police after 'ghastly' incident

Shiv Malik, guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 22 December 2010 14.16 GMT

The chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority's civil liberties panel has condemned video footage appearing to show protesters being crushed by police attempting to contain them in a "kettle" during student anti-fees demonstrations in London two weeks ago as "appalling" and "ghastly".

Victoria Borwick, who is also a Conservative member of the Greater London Authority, encouraged protesters to make official complaints against the Met and said other police forces were making a better job of public order policing.

"Other forces do this much better," she told the Guardian. "They are very clear with protesters and tell them beforehand what they will do… I hope people make proper complaints to the police about this."

The MPA, the body that scrutinises the work of the Met, said it would be calling a senior police officer to report formally on tactics used during the four student demonstrations over the last two months.

Footage recorded on a mobile phone by an Oxford University postgraduate student shows protesters shouting and screaming "there's no room" and "there's no space" as police try to push them back with riot shields.

Someone, believed to be a protester, can be heard shouting: "You're going to fucking kill someone tonight."

Towards the end of the film, shot near Westminster underground station a few hours before protesters were kettled on Westminster bridge, mounted officers can be seeing using their horses to push the crowd back further.

Borwick said: "The MPA civil liberties panel is there to restore confidence in public order policing and then, when you see videos like this, people get very, very angry.

"People can't run rampant around London, but it [the footage] is appalling … it looks ghastly. You can hear in the tone of people's voices that they are distressed."

Musab Younis, 22, from Manchester, who is currently reading international relations at Wadham College, says he started shooting the video not long after the result of the tuition fees vote was announced to the crowd gathered outside parliament.

"A lot of people were trying to leave the kettle and the police were trying to move in, trying to push people further into Parliament Square," he said.

Younis estimates that around 1,000 people were being held next to Westminster tube station, around 20 metres from the bridge, when police began moving in from both sides, crushing those in the crowd.

"We were hemmed in by a wall on one side, vans and horses on another side, and two lines of police moving in on us," he said.

"I don't know [if] I've ever been in a situation where I've been so crushed before. The police didn't care whether you had any space to move, and if they had to trample you to move forward, then they would."

Younis, the deputy editor of Ceasefire magazine, told the Guardian he had been trapped in previous kettles at the G20 protests, during which Ian Tomlinson, a bystander, was killed.

"This was a far more aggressive form of kettling," he said.

"We were pleading with the police on the front lines, saying 'there's no space, you are hurting people, people are in real pain'. There was a girl who couldn't breathe.

"We got no response. And if you didn't move, they'd kick you in the shins. It sounded like serious injuries were occurring because of the insanely small space they'd given us.

"The worst part wasn't in the video. The police knocked my phone out of my hands and they continued to move in tighter and tighter, and there was crying and screaming. I couldn't even hold the camera up because I couldn't lift my arms it was so tight," he added.

David Hough, a 51-year-old supply teacher who was also caught in up the kettle, said: "As at Hillsborough, people were being squashed against a solid object and they were saying 'I can't breathe'."

Jenny Jones, a Green party GLA and civil liberties panel member who also viewed the footage, said: "This kettling incident by the Met is the most disturbing so far in a sequence that gets more risky and threatening with each repeat.

"The use of horses in such a situation is astonishing, and I'll be raising this with the commissioner [Sir Paul Stephenson]."

David Mead, an expert in public order policing and law at the University of East Anglia, said physically restricting the space occupied by protesters was a significant development from previous kettling exercises. "I suspect this is likely not to be a lawful kettle," he added.

A spokesperson for the Metropolitan police said: "Containment and dispersal is a tactic available to us, but it is only used as a tactic of last resort to prevent an actual or imminent breach of the peace.

"We consider the health and wellbeing of those within the containment and will attend to the needs of any vulnerable people, looking to release them at the earliest opportunity.

"Containment and dispersal will always be done in a controlled way to protect those involved and those in the immediate vicinity, but also to protect any evidence and any investigation."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/dec/22...e-watchdog

Here's an article about pending legal action:

Metropolitan Police face legal action for kettling children during tuition fees protest

Human rights group Liberty sues Scotland Yard over violent tactics against teenagers during London tuition fees demonstration

Mark Townsend, home affairs editor
The Observer, Sunday 26 December 2010

Scotland Yard is facing legal action over claims that officers "falsely imprisoned" and assaulted schoolchildren during a tuition fees protest in London last month.

In what is believed to be the first lawsuit taken against police in connection with the violence, lawyers from human rights group Liberty have notified the Metropolitan Police of legal action involving minors who suffered "inhuman and degrading treatment" during a protest on 24 November.

The organisation claims the treatment of children amounted to a breach of their human rights after they were "kettled" by officers during the demonstrations for up to nine hours in cold conditions, without food, and were denied medical help despite some of them suffering injuries, including at least two fractures.

The claim is on behalf of three young protesters, one of whom is a 15-year-old whose foot was broken after allegedly being struck by an officer when trying to leave a police kettle and who claims she was subsequently refused medical help. Another is a 17-year-old London student who became so distressed inside the "kettle" that her father said she came away suffering from shock. The third is Rory Evans, 19, whose ankle was broken during a crowd surge among protesters contained between police lines.

Lawyers believe the Met breached the European convention on human rights on at least four counts. The case is believed to be the first of what many observers believe could be a number against police over the protests.

The 15-year-old claimant, a GCSE pupil who was wearing her school uniform, describes how she became anxious while "kettled" and decided to go home. The teenager was climbing a gate to leave when an officer pulled her down and struck her.

A letter to Scotland Yard's legal team states: "The police officer continued to pull her down, causing her to fall on to the floor. She picked herself back up and the police officer then hit her hard on her foot with a baton. She was then alone in the 'kettled' area and barely able to walk unassisted." "She was extremely cold and frightened and in a great deal of pain," the letter adds.

The 17-year-old, an A-level student, joined the protest and was kettled within 15 minutes of arriving in Whitehall. For six hours she unsuccessfully asked officers to allow her to leave because she was desperate to go to the toilet. At 6pm, portable toilets were delivered outside the "kettle", but after the teenager was allowed to use them she was escorted back inside the crowd. She has described seeing a woman pleading to be released because she felt nauseous. Later she was escorted from the kettle, vomited by the side of the road and was taken back into the kettle without receiving any medical attention.

After seven hours police said she could leave when her father turned up.

The girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told the Observer: "It's disappointing that young people had their opportunity to express themselves taken away. There are not many positive things for young people who are categorised as yobs and will be forced to pay ridiculous amounts for university. The police tactics made a mockery of pluralism in democracy."

The final case involves Evans, a recent school leaver who described how people "kettled" in Whitehall resembled a "large tide" against lines of police with officers pushing back. He said people started to fall and he became trapped, with other demonstrators falling on his ankle and causing it to break. Evans noticed young people in school uniform who had also fallen. In serious pain, the teenager was eventually released from the kettle but, although he asked police, they did not seek medical attention for him nor know where to find assistance.

Emma Norton, legal officer at Liberty, said: "Policing demonstrations is no easy task but the police must distinguish between the law-abiding majority and the handful intent on violence. Our three young clients came away from November's march distressed, and, in two cases, with broken bones.

"The tactic of 'kettling' large groups so that peaceful protesters and passers-by are trapped for hours alongside more troublesome elements exacerbates tensions and creates a risk to public safety."

Scotland Yard has justified "kettling", saying it was crucial to contain people and the threat of disorder while minimising the use of force. Last week the Metropolitan Police commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, said officers had to deal with "unrestrained violence" at the protests. Discussing his officers' actions, he said "things happen in violent disorders" and he regretted any injuries caused. He said any complaints about police conduct would be investigated.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/dec/26...nt-protest

[David Guyatt]

In the darkness the deed was done.

[Magda Hassan]

Aaron Porter is running out of excuses posted by lenin

NUS president Aaron Porter can't go anywhere without being faced by angry protesters, it seems. He's faced no confidence motions, vocal public criticism, and angry meeting halls since he responded so spinelessly, as he put it, to the wave of student protests. Recently, he was pelted with foodstuffs (eggs and custards) after refusing to debate the subject of tuition fees with students at Oxford University. The reply of Porter and his supporters when something like this happens is usually to blame the hard left, the Trots, the SWP, or whomever. They say it's left-wing sectarianism which is undermining a broad movement, just because a few troublemakers disagree with Porter's nuanced position on this highly complex matter. (Lately, that position has included complete surrender on the issue of fees.) In the run up to yesterday's protest, he wrote an article for The Guardian which some have characterised as sectarian, but which I would say was standard red-baiting.

Yesterday, having refused to back the main students protest in London, he turned up at the protest in Manchester and was literally chased off the protest by what I hear was about half of those who had thus far gathered. He was escorted by police into the NUS building, where he remained holed up. Later the NUS Vice-President was pelted with oranges and eggs (another variation on the foodstuffs theme). This resulted in a refinement of the usual script. With the help of the Daily Mail, Aaron Porter's supporters have put it about that he was physically intimidated, threatened and subject to antisemitic abuse. Porter himself said: "Just before the march started, I was surrounded by a particularly vicious minority of protesters more intent on shouting threatening and racist abuse at me rather than focusing on the issues. Instead of standing together and fighting the cuts, they instead chose to pursue me along Manchester's Oxford Road and drive me away from the start of the march. As a result, under the strong advice of the police, I had to withdraw myself from the rally." It is alleged by the newspapers that Porter was called a "Tory Jew", or even "Tory Jew scum".

A few things, then. If this happened, then it's a hate crime, and it would be appropriate for Porter to report it to the police. As members of the public and police officers were present, they can bear witness on his behalf if the allegations are correct. However. The extraordinary thing is that so far there is absolutely no evidence for it. The sole source quoted in any article on this is an unnamed photographer. You will search in vain through the raw footage for any evidence that such a thing was said. This does not mean that it wasn't. There can always be one or two idiots. But I have waited a day since first seeing the first, sometimes contradictory and nebulous allegations, and no evidence has been produced. On the contrary, most of those who were in fact there assert that what was chanted was "Aaron Porter, we know you/We know you're a Tory too". Another extraordinary thing is that the NUS Black Students campaign has apparently felt compelled to issue a statement denouncing something that may not have happened. This is, to my mind, an unwarranted capitulation to what may well be a dirty tricks campaign to spin what was clearly otherwise a very bad headline for a very unpopular Aaron Porter. Labour apparatchiks have a long history of this. Luciana Berger famously resigned from the NUS national executive alleging that the NUS was tolerating antisemitism in its ranks. This was later debunked by an independent inquiry, but she established a reputation on the basis of this and was later parachuted into a safe Labour seat. Similarly, Oona King used accusations of antisemitism against her opponents in Bethnal Green & Bow, though witnesses like Jonathan Freedland disputed her version of events. So, a dirty tricks campaign is hardly out of form.

Alex Andrews recommends that students go to the Press Complaints Commission if this is proven to be a lie, as Climate Camp activists were able to do when they were smeared by the Evening Standard. So, can I just say that this recommendation looks like a safer bet to me than issuing knee-jerk statements denouncing something that may not have taken place?
http://leninology.blogspot.com/