¤ milky moon ¤

There's very little to no political discussion on the forum, not, I believe, due to a lack of interest in politics among members, but more because of the whole Scherado affair. Now that that's been resolved and we have active moderators, I'm sure we can be trusted to talk about matters of importance with civility.

Since it's topical, I'll start us off with the royal wedding. What's received very little media coverage in the UK, largely upstaged by the bread-and-circuses spectacle itself, and even less elsewhere, I imagine, is the pre-emptive arrests of activists made by the police, ostensibly to keep revellers safe.
To start with, the police informed activists previously arrested during the recent anti-spending cuts demonstrations in London that entering the City of Westminster (the area of London where the wedding was taking place) on the day of the wedding would be a violation of the conditions of their bail.
One of the first stories of arrests being made to hit the news was a report that three anarchists had been arrested for "conspiracy to cause a public nuisance". "Conspiracy to cause a public nuisance" is police jargon for "we want to arrest you but you've not done anything illegal". They were planning a beheading in effigy of a member of the royal family; police confiscated the effigy and a guillotine and took the 'conspirators' into custody. Around the same time, a story broke that Charlie Veitch of the Love Police had been arrested in his Cambridge home, again for "conspiracy to cause a public nuisance". Veitch's girlfriend told the press that he'd been planning to shout ironic commentary on the wedding through a megaphone. Various other arrests of activists planning peaceful demonstrations to coincide with the wedding were also reported. Police also raided squats in London and Hove, making 21 arrests and subsequently releasing the detainees on bail conditions that forbade them from entering the City of Westminster.
On the day of the wedding itself, police imposed a section 60 order on the whole royal wedding area. The section 60 order permits police to stop and search anyone without discretion. Additionally, they instated a section 60a order, which permits them to remove masks and balaclavas in the course of the search. The reason for this, it transpires, was to deter anarchist protestors who 'mask up' in order to evade identification by the authorities, a practice often condemned by the police as evidence of their intention to do violence; in reality it's more often the case that protestors wear masks so that they can't later be wrongfully arrested for peaceful demonstrations or for activities like occupation. Further arrests were made, one man being arrested for singing revolutionary songs - again, under the spurious justification breach of the peace/public nuisance laws. 43 arrests were made in total, including the ones seen , where Chris Knight, a professor of anthropology, and companions are being arrested, again for "conspiracy to cause a public nuisance", where this time the crime was an attempt to organise street theatre.
In the weeks leading up to the wedding, the Prime Minister David Cameron informed revellers that they should celebrate in the streets regardless of any warnings given by local council authorities, and warned local council authorities against interfering in street parties - that is to say, those supporting the wedding were encouraged to break the law by defying local authority edicts at the same time as the Metropolitan Police were asserting a zero-tolerance approach to 'crime' on the day of the wedding and suppressing protests.

This all seems deeply troubling. When the government at the same time encourages those who support it to violate the law and arrests those who don't but haven't violated the law, there's a problem.
These arrests are all too characteristic of the police's approach to protest recently - demonstrations in London have descended into violence due to the police tactic of "kettling", since judged unlawful by the high court, where the police trap a section of the protest between cordons for hours at a time, letting people out in a slow trickle or not at all. People are often trapped in the cold with no toilet facilities and not permitted to leave for any reason, including injury.
This often leads, understandably, to protestors coming in to conflict with the police, trying to break through their ranks to escape. Spurious arrests for such crimes as breach of the peace and conspiracy to cause a public nuisance have been made.
Police have often hidden their identification numbers in order to avoid identification, and arrested legal aides associated with the protestors whose job it is to photograph the police and advise on the legality of the situation.
Violence has been used against protestors, with mounted police charging a group of school-age children in one incident and arresting their parents when they showed up to try to release them from the kettle; in another incident a wheelchair user was thrown from his chair; in yet another an activist needed emergency brain surgery to save his life after being truncheoned.
Police powers to suppress dissent are out of control, and the Metropolitan Police has continuously abused powers, largely introduced as counter-terrorism measures by the last New Labour government, to suppress peaceful demonstrations and turn them to violence. No loud voice in government has spoken out against excessive policing - indeed, only the unelected high court judges have expressed the slightest concern, aside from a few back bench MPs speaking out against police tactics. By their silence, parliament endorses the use of excessive force to suppress protest. Police powers are badly in need of review, and greater regulation of the policing of protests is urgently required.

Mm I have quite a few anarchist friends who squat in London and they were told that police were authorised to search their buildings whenever (which is bad cuz they're all growing so much weed) and that previously known anarchist protestors even if they've never been violent or arrested or whatever were also basically banned from the royal area. Then there's stuff like this as well - http://www.lesbilicious.co.uk/campaigns ... l-wedding/ .

Ah, are they the zombies who were arrested for going into Starbucks? They just told The Guardian, "It's nice to dress up as zombies," which was quite funny. I intend very much to breach the peace; why have I not been arrested on suspicion of the possibility that I might want to intend to consider attempting to exercise my right to peaceful protest? Where is my minority report?

Milki, if you read this, a post that you recently left on Facebook put me in mind (after being translated by the ever-fallible Google Translate) or a reactionary railing against the 'benefits culture'. I would caution that it's worth remembering how powerless those who depend on benefits are, though: The underclass have less power than the working class, regardless of their economic status, due to the fact that they can't even fight. The exploited worker can strike, withhold his labour and revolt. The benefit-dependent poor can do nothing, however, except accept what comes their way. Circumstances are wholly beyond their control. They become a kind of manipulable political tool, who would benefit immensely from work but for whom no one has any intention of creating work, lest they cease to be the powerless pawns that they are and become a threat to the prevailing system. The reponse is not to be disgusted with the 'undeserving poor', but to ask who with power benefits from their existence and whose responsibility it is to afford them human dignity and power.

i assume that telling riots only due to pure ciminality crave is an absolute stupideness, i guess i'm old enough now to have seen and participe to a lot of official, non official, peacefull, non so peacefull march. I'm deeply socialist and ever think that angryness and violence is always grown on the poverty soil, unemployment, oppressed minority, crisis, taxes, unfair politics etc...don't know exaclty what it's on the road in england now but i really know how we make the same shit in france. I dont' believe in the "casseurs" but sometimes i believe in the black blocks, sometimes revolution have to pass through violence. I'm not very keen of it but we can't avoid it all the time. As i'm this sort of way in my ecological involment, "direct action", i'm going more and more interesting in that way in politics by extension. I'm so dissapointed by democracy it seems the only way, and perhaps cos i'm more and more surrounded by anarchist-autonom militant etc...
"police partout, justice nulle part"
"la police nous protège mais qui nous protège de la police"
are the new tag you put on your eastpak

I have always lived in south east London, my mum and dad live on a council estate and I was raise on a particularly rough counsil estate so I do know how tough it is. But I have never had the urge to go and smash a window! I think its all down to how you are brought up, my parents taught me to be a decent human being,maybe these people don't have a good influence in thirty lives. There is no excuse for behaving that way, we all get an education here, its what you do with that opportunity that counts.

Apparently, the looters were not thinking about the fact that there were surveillance cameras pretty much everywhere that was being looted. Add to that all of the news cameras, and personal cameras carried by ordinary citizens on the street during the riots. Some of the looters were probably among the people who posted photos and videos online, not thinking that authorities could use them to identify looters. Duh! If you are going to riot nowadays, you should at least consider disguising yourself.

Every cell in London was full two nights ago, I heard. The government has promised harsh sentencing, the acting chief of the Met - rather inappropriately, given that his job is to enforce the law, not to moralise, and the police should never have an influence on the courts - ensured the public that he would encourage the courts to come down hard with convictions. Many of the looters, fortunately, are too young to be imprisoned. I say "fortunately" because our prison system breeds social stagnation and transforms ordinary people driven to desperation or caught up in a moment of violence into hardened career criminals. All harsh sentencing will do is make a poorhouse of the (already overfull) prisons and criminalise more than thirteen hundred young people.

There's been much talk of the looters ruining the lives of those whose businesses have been attacked and ruining their own lives. These words, from the mouth of David Cameron, are arch hypocrisy. The Conservative Party, when it's held the country's reins during the last hundred years, and Labour, too, of late, have ensured that these people's lives are ruined to a far greater extent than any riot ever could. There is nothing left to ruin.

It's fruitless to be angry with the looters at the bottom of the pile. They're powerless, they could be shot or praised or ignored and it would change nothing. Make no mistake, when the Bullingdon Club appears on television, each member trying to outdo the others in their mawkish, maudlin outrage and indignity, the wagging of their tongues is only a distraction from their sleight of hand: Who, after all, is thinking about the looters at the top of the pile, the bankers and politicians, the elites of every sort, on whom the blame for the riots truly lies while London is burning? I'm brought to mind of Nero setting Rome ablaze, pinning the blame on the despised Christians, in an effort to salvage his disastrous reign. While this is going on, no one remembers the greater thefts of the men in suits and the untold, undeserved millions they've seized by intimidation.

The aristocrat with the oily charm who makes people listen when he speaks has spoken of a section of our society being not only broken, but sick; but I can't for the life of me work out which he means. Is he talking about the financial elite, who have plundered the treasury and plunged the world into economic depression for the sake of their greed? Is he talking about the political elite who serve them, lying through false smiles to appease the public they're supposedly duty-bound to obey? Or is he talking about the viewer at home in their suburbs surrounded by their top percentile opulence, masturbating to middle class power fantasies of hanging the poor? Which of these is the sickest?

Very well said

Hanging the poor just doesn't do it for me.

I agree with a lot of what you say Jorden but I do believe you have to earn what you get In life. There is no point in not taking responsibility for your own actions and some of these rioters were burning peoples homes, while people where in them. No justification at all. We need to teach our children to be responsible for their own action and not pass the buck.

'There is no innocence' is an idea that I first encountered years ago while reading The Little Drummer Girl by John Le Carre. It seems to be far more common than I had once thought possible. Perhaps I have always been more than just a bit naive.

I am pissed off at the tories choice of cuts too, my family may be effected personally by the cuts on benefits. Both my brother and sister are dependant on benefits and they are being pressured to work even though my sister is clearly not able! The definition of mental illness has become a lot narrower.
Just not sure that the riots have anything to do with anything.

I would say that I am not particularly socially aware I sorta find other people daunting and try to avoid them as much as I can, But it makes good logical sense that others deserve to be here too.

I hate the fact that the Tories are making things harder for lower income families.

Sorry if I'm spelling stuff wrong or sounding a bit dumb! Bit tired!!!:P

Well, would you loot and burn, and if not, why not? What would it take to drive you to that? I'm not sure that anyone wants to, but to say it doesn't have anything to do with anything seems very simplistic, as if a fairy appeared, waved her magic wand and made a riot happen. There are a lot of factors that meant that a riot could happen given the right spark at that moment, and plenty of good articles analysing them.

I would not loot and it would take a hell of a lot to make me steal. The truth is I hear a lot of middle class people say "well it is because they are poor" Somehow poor people make do and I have in the past made do with a lot less than I have now. Infact I have made do without food in the past without going out looting.

I saw an interview recently on the news where one of the looters was saying, "oh I was getting things for my son, cos I have no money" the guy could hardly keep a straight face. He went on to say how he had filled a whole truck with stuff he had taken.

Maybe there was a good reason that this started but I can't see it, I just can't, and it would take a fuck load more than not having an ipod to make me steal from anyone.

Why would it take more than that?

Because you can't have what doesn't belong to you. If someone else worked for it why would you take it? Wouldn't want anyone to take what I worked for.

I agree that the government should provide the basics for people totally. But that is it, no more. My family just never worked towards getting anything more so why should it be given away free