Bagsy the watercannon.

I wouldn't worry too much about the rossers having a demo. They'd be knackered if they ever had to walk more that twenty yards. It's far more likely they'll whizz up the street in a fleet of vans and then piss off to the nick for a brew.
If the do decide to walk, I hope it pisses down non stop, hail, sleet, plagues of bloody locusts, the lot.

Let's have a solidarity march. The police are workers too you know, they deserve proper pay. I know we don't like what they do but they're only obeying orders - exactly what we all do at work every day.

Let's show our solidarity with the police.

That would confuse them and the government!

Yes, they're only obeying orders after all. Just ordinary working class men and women only obeying orders. Ask Robbie Hamill's family. Now, anyone fancy a trip to Diksmuide for the S.S. Reunion? Those camp guards weren't such a bad lot really. Just ordinary working class lads, just doing a job and only obeying orders.
By the way, what colour is the sun on your planet?

No but they ARE only obeying orders and they are ordinary working people.

And those camp guards - them too, and you'd be one of them if you were born in different circumstances.

Like, think of SS for example. They had quite a large membership didn't they. Were they all monsters? So before they joined the SS would you have been able to point them out (hypothetically, given that that was a different age, before we were born) in the street saying, "see those people - they're not ordinary people, they're monsters and in 10 years time they'll be torturing people and beating people up"?...

...NO. That's wrong. The SS WERE ordinary people. THAT, my friend, is what's so scary. The worst crimes against humanty that have ever happened were committed by ordinary people. And everyone else says "oh no, I wouldn't do that, I'm different". Well here's news for you mate. You ain't.




"You take a mortal man,
and put him in control,
watch him become a god...

Just like the pide piper,
led rats through the streets,
we dance like the mirionettes,
swaying to the symphony
of destruction"

Symphony of Destruction, Megadeath.

That song could have been written about Tony Blair.

He's a mass murderer if there ever was one. And he is just a very very ordinary man. It's what happens if you become the prime minister, you end up killing lots of innocent iraqia and afghans. Power corrupts. That's why Gandalf won't go near the magic ring - because he's wise enough to know that it would magniy his already great power, whilst also making him evil. Um... anyway... and tony blair incidentally isn't so much "just obeying orders" (well I guess he is - the orders of george W bush and the orders of the multinationals) - tony is someone who gives orders so it's not quite the same thing.

..but the point is that whether giving or carrying out orders, ORDINARY PEOPLE have the capacity to cause great harm to their fellow human beings. And other ordinary people who, due to their different situation that they're in, aren't doing these things - they always slag off the people who are doing them and demonise them, not realising that it could just as easily be them who is doing them.


As for the specific example of the police, they join up because they need a job and because they believe in the overall aim of what the institution does - which is to stop people from mugging, committing armed robbery, murdering each other, um... fraud, er.. and generally keeping the rule of law. Most of that stuff we don't have a problem with. So they join up, and when they're joined up they have to do what they're told - which doesn't seem like too much of a hassle to them because it's what they were used to at school - it's all they've ever known.

...and occasionally doing what they're told means policing demonstrations. Um... and I can't be arsed to go on about it but when they're out of order it's because they're doing what they're told.

See, I do know what I'm talking about mister what planet am i on.


My idea to have a solidarity march was kind of a provocative joke, aimed at winding up people like yourself.

However, why the hell not? Wouldn't that just be the ultimate un-reactionary un-conservative response to their actions. How righteous and positive would we feel doing that - they always shaft us and yet we turn around and help them when they're the ones protesting. We'd thus be showing them that our movement is about peace and love and unity as opposed to tit for tit mutual hate.

By the way, I forgot to say the following.

There's a well documented psychological experiment that has been repeated many times and what they did was to take a load of people get them to perform a "role play" exercise which was just a game but it lasted for several days.

One group of people are the prisoners, the other group are the guards.

The experimenters just took normal people and randomly divided them into these two groups.

Guess what happened: after a few days the guards were beating the fuck out of prisoners and the experiment had to be stopped.


Another experiment is to get some actors who pretend to be scientists in white coats, and you get some people who believe that the actors are scientists and you have another actor who is being pretending to be given electric shots.

The people who take part are given orders by the 'scientists' in white coats. They're told to turn up the voltage dial and press the button that delivers an electric shock (which is just fake and the actor receiving the fake shots pretends to react to the shots). It's been done several time and it goes something like this:


(half way through)

-turn it up to 7.
-OK
-press the button
-OK
-OUCH!!
-Is he ok?
-Yeah he's fine
-But it looked like it hurt him
-no,really it's fine. turn it up to 8
-OK
-press the button
-are you sure?
-Yes
-OK
-AGGGGGHHHHH!!!
-He really looked like he was in pain just then, shall we stop?
-No, keep going, turn it up to 9


...and so on.

The person is clearly disturbed about the effect the shocks are having on the other person, but he is UNABLE to resist the will of the guy in charge - the 'scientist' in the white coat.

The experiment gives an interesting insite into how the mind of an ordinary person works. Some people are extraordinary - the kind of person who stands up for gross injustice in the world, for example, while other people are just apathetic and let it happen.

We shouldn't blame policemen for being ordinary people.

It may be tempting to demonise our 'opponents / adversaries' but it ain't gonna help us one iota (greek letter i)

It's the system that's bad, not individual policemen.

>Like, think of SS for example. They had quite a large >membership didn't they. Were they all monsters?
i'm disgusted that you even have to ask that question of course they were monsters, you didn't have to join the SS, you don't have to do anything you don't want to. "i killed 6 million jews because someone told me to" - bollocks

Can I have some of whatever you're smoking?

Sorry but are you actually listening to what I'm saying? :-)

It's a *fact* that ordinary people *can* and *do* end up committing monstrosities against other people.


So all those SS people just happened to be psychopaths did they? So Germany at that point in time just happened to have a ridiculously high number of psychopaths did it?

No mate, these were *normal people*. That's the point - ordinary people do these things.

And yes you're right that they didn't have to obey orders. But the point that I thought I had managed to make is that whilst no one has to obey orders it is human nature to find it very difficult to resist the will of authority.

Of course its condemnable what those people did. All I'm saying is that you would probably have done those things as well, yourself, had you been in those people's shoes.

And please don't be so reactionary and dismissive as to dismiss what I'm saying as "offensive". That's not progressive and it reminds me of the authorities - the ones who condemn us as an 'anarchist travelling circus'. You shouldn't be offended by ideas, rather you should seek to prove or disprove their correctness, using rational thought. People who dismiss stuff as "offensive" are no better than tessa jowel, that daily mail reading small c conservative.

I guess you're just scared that it's possible that, in the right (ie wrong) circumstances you could end up being guilty of that sort of crime.


Yes it's terrible that leaders become corrupted by the power that they have, even if they sought out that power to do good.

(compare what happened to Saruman the White (in lord of the rings) to what didn't happen to Gandulf, the wiser wizard who knew that too much power would make him evil).

Yes it's terrible that people - who aren't leaders but who are followers of leaders - can do such bad things in the name of obeying orders.

But that's a result of how the human mind works. It's human nature, it's how we all are (most of us probably including your). That doesn't make it alright - it's not an excuse, just an explanation. And those who seek to condemn but not understand are called conservatives and reactionaries. We on t'other hand are meant to be progressives.


We need to educate ourselves about that (the human nature thing), so that we can recognise when that sort of thing is happening to us and therefore try to resist it. After all, it's entirely possible to resist human urges (for example some (religious) people (foolishly?) manage to resist the urge to have sex for their whole life).

Um... but please do wake up and realise that the worst crimes are committed by ordinary people and not by monsters and that there are no evil people, only fucked up people.

As for can you have some of what I'm smoking...

..well I'm sorry to disappoint you, and I know that taking drugs can give the user interesting philosophical insights into life and the universe and all kind of stuff - but I ain't smoking anything.

I take your point that the SS were mostly ordinary people to begin with, and it is frightening that people can become like that. Who remembers My Lai? But we wouldn't have shown solidarity with them, and we shouldn't show solidarity with the police here (or anywhere else).