G20 Summit Next Week

Druid, is this you? This chap was a proper druid and very interesting with it. He even had a crystal ball on a stick.

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mid_gen said:
But what do the police do? Leave the big throng of people to smash the place up? They knowingly put themselves between violent thugs and riot police. To complain about getting hurt in such a situation is just ridiculous imo.

Anyway, I know erm...debating style....comes across very direct and inflammatory on t'internet so I shall bow out of this discussion before I get further embroiled :)
:nuts:
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Hey hey! We're all friends here! Or at least, I'm friendly.

"I disagree with what you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to accept that I'm right about everything."

Debating on the internet - good fun, in a special olympics sort of way.
 
Druid said:
By way of example, about a month ago some polling was done which resulted in about a 70% majority of the British people in favour of renationalising the public utilities. Unfortunately, there is no electable political party which would be willing to carry out such a policy. So without any democratic option, the only alternative would be to demonstrate. .
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So have you written to your local mp? Started a petition? Contacted the local newspaper? Started a local support group - no? :rules:

Demonstrating is not the only option :cuckoo:


Druid said:
However, if you demonstrate, the police are going to try to cordon you off, hold you against your will for 8hrs or so while refusing you access to food, water and medical attention, and occasionally attack you with clubs and set dogs on you. Eventually, before they'll let you go they'll want to delete any shots on your camera, get your personal details and photograph you for their files. I think that's a deliberate policy intended to intimidate people into not participating in legitimate political dissent and I think that it's just wrong.
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i have been on some demonstations and had none of the above problems :thinking:


just how do the police "hold" you in an area that you are willingly occupying as part of the protest :lol:

why do protesters not want to be photgraphed? :bang: publicity for the cause??? :bang:
 
Police tactics of containing thousands of people for several hours at the Bank of England protests and using batons against climate camp protesters were condemned yesterday as an infringement of the right to demonstrate.
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Can somebody give the record player a nudge please, it seems to have got stuck......
 
Saw that video, definitely out of order, and they will be brought to justice no doubt.

I find it very hard to trust any of those 'eyewitness accounts' of the incident though.
 
Do you distrust the eyewitness accounts that don't have video (that we've seen) to back them up?

I guess I mean, do you distrust them because they don't have photographic evidence supporting them, or for some other reason?
 
I`d distrust them because most of them have an agenda to keep.

There`s certainly no one that that isn`t biased one way or the other, whether they be plod or protester.
 
The guy who took the damning video of the masked policeman attacking Mr Tomlinson was apparently a visting US investment banker.

What was his agenda do you think?
 
Well, I guess I was trying to make a philosophical point here.

Photography is direct and objective. People who were prepared to make all kinds of ludicrous and frankly pathetic excuses for violent police behaviour during these demonstrations, when confronted with the video of a masked cop attacking some poor guy who died a few minutes later tend to take a more rational position than they might in the absence of direct photographic evidence.

I think this is important, because as you're probably aware, the government has given the police new powers to prevent people from photographing them, which if abused, as seems likely given that they've vigorously abused all the previous powers given to them under the aegis of anti-terror law, and as this video demonstrates being photographed doing their thing is not in their interest, would prevent anyone from capturing photographic evidence of their misdeeds. Which means we're back to 'I don't believe any witness testimony which says the police violently attacked an innocent man, they must be biased lefties ...'
 
I`d disagree with you that photography is direct and objective. It`s a snapshot of a moment in time. Often, there`s no context under which a set of circumstances have arisen. An image seen out of context can be misconstrued and presented in a manner less than truthful shall we say.

This isn`t directed at this case, but in general. For what it`s worth, the plod has definitely crossed the line in this case from my point of view. But I don`t subscribe to this notion of all coppers are here to oppress us bull. Theres stroppy plod, but there`s some bloody good coppers out there too. Just the same as there run of the mill protesters and the more extreme, lets go out and have a punch up protesters.

It`s all ********, frankly.
 
The thing that strikes me, having reviewed a bunch of youtube footage of the G20 demos, and having been on plenty myself in that past is how unremarkable the behaviour of the guy who attacks Mr Tomlinson is.

The cops do that sort of stuff all the time on demos. The big difference is, their victims don't usually die.
 
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