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Democracy’s Last Stand – Dawn Raid

Oscar Beard | 25.05.2006 01:36 | Anti-militarism | Repression | Social Struggles | London | World

3am phone calls, crazed rants of cops and oppression and Oscar Beard jumps a taxi into democracy's last stand.

The call came about 2.45am. I had been in bed for about 17 minutes, the first time my eyes had closed for over 24 hours.

Curses and half-sleep mumbling about “this better be good” spilled from split lips, under blocked nose and clotted flu-ridden lungs.

“The police are here,” said the voice. “They’re doing it now. They’re coming to take us.”

Pink Barbara said some 40 police had appeared with Forward Intelligence Teams (FIT) and a truck with a huge container was being driven into Parliament Square.

I jumped in a taxi and got the driver to break every speed limit to get me there before anything happened.

The rear of Parliament Square was a wall of police vans. Luminous yellow was everywhere. The taxi driver swooped into the side of the protest, skidded to a halt. The driver told me to pay him later: “Save this man,” he said. “Stop them taking the truth away.”

He told me earlier he was from Afghanistan and all his family was dead.

Brian Haw was arguing with a senior officer, the same Chief Inspector in charge of policing the Harmondsworth demonstration on April 8.

By 4am they were starting to dismantle the demonstration. At first it was done with some, if clumsy, care. But when the extent of the sturdiness of the placards became apparent more force was used. Wood was ripped apart, banners torn down and one by one loaded into the large blue metal shipping container. Privately contracted council workers stood by and watched. When asked what they thought about the police action one replied, “no comment”.

Teddy bears, peace flags, even umbrellas were loaded into the container, much to the protest of the peace camp.

“How is an umbrella part of a demonstration?” yelled Barbara. She demanded they be returned, as the Chief Inspector had assured the protestors personal belongings would not be taken.

Barbara became more resistant as the dawn slowly approached, despite regular warnings from one senior officer that she would be arrested if she continued.

“I don’t care,” she yelled. “Arrest me. See if I care.”

She threatened to go into the container and get the umbrellas and other personal belongings back herself. And she tried, at least 20 times in the next hour. Each time a wall of blank-faced police blocked her way. Then they started using more force, restraining her, pushing her away. But this did not deter Barbara, only enhanced her rage. And her rage hit every single officer, the grunts, the seniors, even the FIT squad were sent off with a swift “piss off”. She was great. A true fighter.

In all this commotion of dealing with Barbara the police left the sides and rear of the container unguarded. And before anyone knew it Maria, Brian’s closest support, and another young protestor in a dreaded black hoody jumped on to the truck by the side of the container and climbed on top.

Officers tried to talk them down and Maria, in her usual and wonderful non-aggressive manner, refused.

The banners were dismantled, torn, ripped apart and forced into the cramped container. Even the Banksy paintings, donated by the artist, were rammed in there and subsequently damaged and ripped.

“You’re going to need another container,” yelled Brian Haw. “It’s not big enough.”

Going to need a bigger boat. Memories of Jaws.

And Brian Haw was the shark. Five metres long and hungry for peace. But there was no violence in him. No threat to any local fishing community. No. The only vicious rows of serrated teeth in this movie wore yellow-coats and had no idea of the implications this “operation” had on this country, on its people, on them.

Barbara was finally arrested, arm-locked by two hulking yellow-coat grunts and dragged away to a waiting police van.

Anger rose. In the demonstrators. And in the two Indymedia journalists, who were getting a little sick of the ITN cameraman who seemed to think he was the only one entitled to “getting the shot” and would stop at nothing to get it, including knocking every other living thing out of his way.

I remembered him from before. On the August demonstrations in Parliament Square, when he knocked photojournalist, and my good friend, Blackbee out the way, then did the same to me. That time he got a knock round the head.

“Sorry mate, didn’t see you there.”

By daylight the five-year permanent demonstration was gone, only two banners left, that had been carefully measured by two serious-looking police officers. This action got the response by many: “Get a fucking life.”

Then came the job of removing the two demonstrators from the top of the container. The first tactic, which I overheard two senior officers discussing. Starve them out.

Officers surrounded the container and refused anyone to get in close. Still, protestors threw cigarettes for hoody.

As the traffic piled up around Parliament Square, due to the entire front of the square being barricaded with railings, and the entire place was swamped with every kind of mainstream media, one seriously organised criminal appeared with a bag of coffee, tea and muffins.

He circled the container. Police shuffled nervously. He tried to pass the bag of supplies, they halted him, shoved him, pushed him back, grabbed his arms. This went on for quite some time. Protestors and journalists chuckled at the absurdity of the situation. Twenty officers intent on protecting the blue metal container from the onslaught of muffins and milky tea.

Food was thrown up, and an orange too. But the warm drinks never made it.

Brian Haw loudly stated even murderers and rapists were allowed tea and coffee when imprisoned, yet two peaceful protestors freezing on the top of a metal container were be denied such simple human rights.

The media had indeed swamped the place. The ITN man had got bored and left, much to the delight of most. Gone but certainly not forgotten. The BBC camera team had arrived with a look of “serious journalists” on their faces. They certainly did not want to talk to this journalist with scruffy mohican and ingrained tobacco stains on his fingers. I just coughed over them, hoping my weapons-grade influenza got into their systems.

Japanese media, Chinese, BBC radio, LBC, Press Association, Daily Mirror, Evening Standard photographers, all were there. All calling to Brian Haw, getting him to pose, yelling orders at him like he was some kind of pin-up model for FHM. Gimme more Brian, more. Turn left. Pout. Give us some more breast.

It was kind of sick to see. I have seen sharks at feeding time with more dignity. And these boys were indeed sharks. No teeth, just cameras.

Just after 9am two police officers were given a bunk-up on to the container. They appeared out of nowhere, jumped Maria and hoody and grappled them to the floor. The metal ladders tangled in the crane chains came crashing down. Both protestors hit the container roof hard and the yellow-coats sat on top of them while restraining handcuffs were administered.

In the commotion an elderly grey-bearded protestor smashed open the railings and pushed them into the road of an oncoming bus. He too was grabbed by a police officer, picked up, dragged out the way and arrested.

The seriously organised criminal also received the heavy hand of the law. Obviously intently annoyed by his mosquito-style of interference, buzzing around the yellow-coats for hours on end, the two officers took the chance to put on some strong-arm locks and got him out the way.

It was over. Brian Haw stood by the side of the road quietly looking into the sky. The police slowly moved out. More supporters appeared from Westminster tube station and from Whitehall. Blair was not one of them. Support came from everywhere. UK, Italy, Greece, Spain, Eastern Europe. All nations present and pissed off.

Around midday David Icke appeared, yelled at police officers, called them Nazis, as many had done all through the last nine hours, and then chased the FIT squad away. FIT Neil had finally met his match. Grandstand 1 – FIT 0.

Icke declared the fascist state is not coming, it’s already here, he said. And I had to agree with him. Fascism does not only mean gassing and killing. It comes in many colours. Blackshirts, brownshirts, yellow-coats. And Hitler and Mussolini, both started out as leftwing socialists, remember.

The day was bright, the sun warm. It should have been a good day. But the evening’s events had changed something in the air, in the country. Nazi indeed. Just like them, the raids on free speech and public dissent now took place in the dark and early hours of the morning. When most of the mainstream media was sleeping. A majority of the population too. Although some will argue they are asleep most of the day too. David Icke certainly believed this.

The question on most minds was if this can happen here and now, in England, what will be next? Who will be next?

As I tried to explain to a female police officer, after she took offence at being compared to the Nazis, it was not comparing this police action to gassing an entire race. No. The comparison was from where it all started way back in 1933. The crackdown on dissent. The removal of free speech.

That was how it started there, in Germany 73 years ago, and in Russia under Stalin, for that matter. And now it was happening here, in Parliament Square, across the road from the palace of democracy. But not just there. Dawn raids are going on everywhere now, against drug suspects, against illegal immigrants. Whole families snatched in the middle of the night, handcuffed, abused, beaten, and imprisoned in one of the many detention centres across this country. 25,000 people a year.

No matter whether you agree with Brian Haw and his demonstration or not, it now has to be understood that this is the tactic to silence, to dispose of, to get rid of. And if can happen to him, or to a family from Africa or the Middle East, or to a dope smoking student who has been narked-on by the local neighbourhood watch Hitler – if it can happen to them, it can happen to you. It could happen to me.

And that is a very serious and intensely sad and fearful not too distant future for us all.

First they came for the peace protestors and I did nothing because I was not a peace protestor….

This is only the beginning.

Oscar Beard
- e-mail: oscarbeard@yahoo.com.mx
- Homepage: http://reprogrammingthedesenstised.com

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Here comes Blair's everlasting darkness

25.05.2006 07:01

Very fine report, thank you.

QUOTE
This is only the beginning.
UNQUOTE

No, it is the END of the beginning. This phase is coming to an end. Blair has shattered the post-WW2 consensus with his programs in Kosovo/Serbia, Chechnya, Afghanistan, and Iraq, with the aid of his 911 meme, and a constant barrage of pro-torture, anti-human-rights, anti-muslim propaganda from his Mass Media servants.

The death of democracy and freedom in the UK, and the completion of his police-state is merely a means to an end, and represents as yet less than one billionth the suffering when compared to that inflicted by Blair upon the poor humans in the above mentioned lands.

Blair is NOT Hitler in 1933- we should be so lucky. Blair is Hitler on the very verge of attacking Poland- Iran in Blair's case. This is 1938/39, and our time has almost run out.

The systems that Blair has imposed on the UK are embryonic, and await a full blown declaration of war. When Blair is able to move to the next stage, his mechanisms will be activated fully, and all possibility of effective protest or opposition by the people will be killed. His army of uniformed thugs will have no problem implementing the most vicious and ruthless orders in the name of national security.

Blair does not have to worry about formal political opposition- the Liberal and Conservative parties fell under his control a long time ago. All that is required to suspend (ie., formally make Blair our dictator) democracy in the UK is a suitable state of emergency, and the coming War with Iran is going to provide that.

Blair just needs one thing from us- that we do not take him seriously. He's a puppet- he's a loser- he's a public schoolboy twit- whatever you care to call him, Blair wants you to repeat those pathetic and harmless insults over and over. Anything, but take him seriously. He knows that he just needs a little more time, and then he has all the time he needs without EVER having to worry about our opinions again.

QUOTE
As I tried to explain to a female police officer, after she took offence at being compared to the Nazis, it was not comparing this police action to gassing an entire race
UNQUOTE

Sorry, her action IS in support of Blair's extermination of MILLIONS of brown-skinned Humans (when you take account of those kids murdered in Iraq by Blair's sanctions), given that Mr Haw's protest is focused on bringing to people's attention the scope and nature of Blair's CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY. This uniformed psycho is acting to cover-up Blair's previous and ongoing acts of genocide. As such, she is every bit as culpable as Rose West, or any other convicted murderer in our prisons.

I am constantly amazed at how people here bend over backwards to justify or excuse the acts of the volunteer thugs that carry out Blair's orders. Do you think that Hitler would have done the world any real harm, if the guy had NOBODY but himself to carry out his wicked ideas? Would we care one whit about Blair if he commanded only himself?

The police and the army are Blair's police and Blair's army. They are armed, whereas the ordinary population is not. This is NOT a good situation. This is not a good situation at all. Maybe Blair could not succeed in having them act in the worst way against us from the get go, but then he is most unlikely to need that option. Instead, he merely needs to convince us that he will act in the most ruthless way against any that seek to oppose him, and trust that fear will stay enough of our hands.

TWO OTHER RECENT EVENTS I would suggest should be carefully examined. First, the conviction of a young muslim guy in NY (for conspiracy to bomb a subway) under the identical method used to entrap Winston Smith in Orwell's novel 1984. Second, the breaking story of a crude black-propaganda op concerning the phoney video of a pretend US marine describing war-crimes he claims to have carried out in Iraq (yeah, just like those phoney Iraq torture photos that The Mirror published in a similar 'poisoning the well' exercise).

QUOTE
Icke declared the fascist state is not coming, it’s already here,
UNQUOTE

Mr Icke may be a strange man who describes things in a puzzling way, but beneath his symbolic and mystical language is nothing I can disagree with. We live in truly terrifying times, and it seems that aspects of the terrible fate that awaits us infiltrates the minds of some people, and forces them to become curious and seemingly pathetic prophets. I don't believe in any mechanism that could explain this, but I am able to compare the words from people like Mr Icke with the garbage spewed by tens of thousands of journalists and commentators that lie on behalf of Blair and his war plans.

David Icke may be a madman, but in his words are found undeniable truths. This compares in the most interesting way with the calm, sane newsreaders and pundits, whose quiet words are easily proven to be an endless stream of racist propaganda and falsehoods.

Anyway, Blair's attack against Mr Haw completes a program of police brutality against peaceful protestors of all kinds across the last few years in the UK

- Animal Rights people with their pictures of tortured animals, merely trying to collect signatures and raise public awareness
- Opponents of the Chinese regime, and its brutal prison camps
- hecklers at the New Reich Party conference
- demonstrators against those companies that actively assist Israel with its WAR CRIMES
- actors responsible for appearing in "The Road to Guantamano"
- people with placards attacking Bush

You name it, and Blair has had his police thugs smash it. Of course, all this has gone hand in hand with the creation of the meme that protest = antisocial criminal behaviour that local councils just love to see banned. Local government becomes local tyranny, just like in soviet Russia, or communist China. ASBO's and giving council goons the power to 'fine' people and send the worst of thugs to steal people's property when 'fines' aren't paid extended this beyond the dreams of even Stalin or Mao.

The spider requires a good web. Blair has woven a perfect one, that functions just as well in non-New Reich areas as within New Reich heartlands. The state, Blair's state, can now easily reach out and touch each and every one of us at will. Everything in place, and yet no-one thinks to ask "in place for what purpose?". For instance, Blair will soon fine parents who allow their children to take 'forbidden' food into schools. Dribblers dismiss such actions with Blair's own psyop phrase 'control freak'. This neatly prevents them from reaching a greater understanding of the benefits reaped from a population under such rigid and perverse control.

Were those that ruled Sparta control freaks? Or did they understand the psychological methods needed to mould a population into a living weapon? Blair is anything BUT a control freak. Every act of pain he inflicts is a simple matter of 'cause and effect'. His laws placing state schools in the hands of religious nutters ironically mirror the methods used by, for instance, Pakistan to create its Taliban army. Of course, THAT process is vastly more subtle and diluted in our nation, but it is the same concept.

Blair won't have to wait an eternity for the slow drip drip of change though. He plans something altogether more accelerated, when military conscription is introduced. 'Fat kid' meme? 'Demonise young people' meme? 'Our boys' meme? I have the feeling that the vast majority of you are going to be shocked when it is revealed where all these memes converge. Strange, given that historically, conscription has been the norm, NOT the exception. Europe is to have a grand army, an army whose first task will be to occupy the greater part of the Middle East (securing the lifeblood of the West, oil, even though the previous, and long since nuked, owners of the commodity never showed the slightest reluctance in selling it to us). France and Germany are wetting themselves in anticipation of this new near-Europe World Order. For the kids and their parents in the UK, such militaristic thinking is decades in our past, and will come as quite a shock.

Blair knows that when 'our boys' extends to a large chunk of the young, attitudes with respect to his ongoing wars will be forced to change. Parents will have the choice of morality and principle, or a desire to see their own kids win through, regardless of the genocidal crimes their children are helping Blair to carry out. Not going to happen? Well people said that in each and every pre-war period, when their master was in the final stages of his war planning. And later, historians, considering the vast amount of clear-as-daylight evidence provided by the pre-war activities of their butcher-in-chief, puzzled as to why his population ever doubted their fate.

Remember that today Britain need ONLY provide the manpower. Every mechanical aspect needed by a modern army can be produced cheaply and in vast quantity by the factories of ex-iron curtain countries. It matters not that Britain has a limited manufacturing base (although we do produce vast amounts of certain armaments for sale in the international arms market). A Europe wide conscription army will bear little resemblance to the current pattern of Britain's so-called professional army. Taking and keeping other people's land is all about numbers. Small, highly trained armies are useless for the vast duration of significant occupations.

Which takes us back to Brain Haw. Blair wishes us to believe in the fairytale (pushed daily by the scum of the BBC, ITN, etc etc) that nobody really opposes Blair, and that if WE feel that way, we are lone oddballs going against the wishes of our neighbours, friends, and family. Trust the TV and the Newspapers, Blair says, for if I really were a bad person, wouldn't you see significant protest against me. Blair seeks to prove his 'claim' by seeking out counter-proof, and eliminating it, all the time suggesting people vent their frustration against him by calling him 'Bliar' or any other harmless playground insult.

YES, Blair says that he'll take away the protest pictures from Mr Haw, but allow us to call him 'Bliar' all day long instead!

twilight


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well done Brian !

25.05.2006 09:50

It's amazing how so many of those who have commented on this removal have tried to link it to Nazi oppression. It is of course nothing of the sort. Brian Haw (real name Brian Coopers) was removed because he crossed the line from legitimate protest into the beginings of a shanty town. The SCOPA law which will affect all of us who wish to protest outside Parliment are now denied this because of him and his actions. London was the last European capital were political and other protest was allowed outside of Parlimentry buildings and now we have lost that because of the actions of one self obsessed nutcase.

Now London has become like Paris, Brussles and Berlin before it with all protest banned. Thanks Brian

Amazing


We are all Brian Haw now ...

25.05.2006 11:58

... and if [you] are not ... well, as catholics might say: that is your everlasting immortal soul to deal with then.

Twilight ... whoever you are, I love you as I love Brian and David.

Please please can you give [us] a few clues, links etc as to the origins of your insights and understanding, I'm sure many of them will be familiar, but, just in-case and in hope of pearls, [one] is never beyond a good education ...

David Icke hey ... and all you good barricking indymedia affectionarios like to lambast him at every opportunity ... so many of his predictions and historical pointers have proved to be right on the button ... front line sort of chap as well

... not seen any from those that can dismiss him (or think they can) with one or two lines of yellow journalistic learnt-by-rota insults ...

,,, would like to know more SPECIFICALLY about the numbers, badges, stations, squads, special divisions and origin of orders of these out-of-town goons ... or is that terrorism on my part to enquire?

... want there names in the history books when our children ask us; 'how close were we to total enslavement under fascistic powers?'

What next?

I WILL BE GOING TO LONDON TO CAMP WITH BRIAN ...

... to shout, scream, cry, sit in silence with him ...

... to help build on this rapidly evolving meme ...

... if it dies we die and freedom too ...

... no choice (or very few) now but to put shoulder to this wheel and PUSH

PLEASE JOIN ME THERE ...

... also: these 'journalists'[sic] and camera-people, they have names and organisaions they belong to ... what are they?

... let us make our true feelings known to them, engage them in debate and when that fails to produce meaningful insight (the boot boys of fascism never engage in debate or recognise/admit their part in it) deride them, follow them, question them, sabotage their pathetic boss-driven agendas ...

Redouble and redouble again ... whip ourselves into frenzies of sacrifice and resistance

... "BE YOUR OWN LEADER YOU FEEBLE BURKES" [words found on a london wall in another age]

Subcommander three


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IMC UK is an interactive site offering inclusive participation. All postings to the open publishing newswire are the responsibility of the individual authors and not of IMC UK. Although IMC UK volunteers attempt to ensure accuracy of the newswire, they take no responsibility legal or otherwise for the contents of the open publishing site. Mention of external web sites or services is for information purposes only and constitutes neither an endorsement nor a recommendation.

New Labour is fascism.

25.05.2006 21:11

Roger Griffin's 1991 book clarifies fascism as "palingenetic ultra-nationalism". Palingenesis is rebirth; New Labour promised the re-birth of Britain, and has been ultra-nationalistic. It is perhaps closer to Mussolini's Italy than Hitler's Germany, but either way it is fascism.

You either resist, or you collaborate.

THE BLAIR WITCH CONVICTION PROJECT
 http://blairwitch.typepad.com
 http://www.myspace.com/blairwitchimpeachment
 http://www.myspace.com/cab999
 http://www.petitiononline.com/conblair/petition.html
 http://smallworldpodcast.com/?p=360

Matthew Edwards
mail e-mail: matthewedwards999@gmail.com


I'm Brian Haw

25.05.2006 21:45

Wear 'I'm Brian Haw' badges - shout it in the streets! - spread the word about the death of democracy - ring a bell whenever you get near to an Apparatchik - BE a Peace Campaigner - It is dangerous to be right when those in power are wrong - When Injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty


Voltaire


No, I'm Brian Haw

26.05.2006 09:15

...

Brian Haw


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