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Police Aggravate Peaceful G20 Climate Camp in the City of London

Patrick Henningsen | 04.04.2009 14:17 | G20 London Summit | Analysis | Repression

The relationship between Police and public demonstrators continues to be strained, as events surrounding London's G20 Summit boiled over. With little or no real dialogue over public safety between law enforcement and the public, one can only ask- is this the shape of things to come?

Location Reporters: Patrick Henningsen and Brian Viziondanz

Authors note: There were approximately 4,000 peaceful protesters at the City's second main demonstration area at Bishopsgate dubbed the "Climate Camp" yesterday afternoon. This was a relatively mild affair compared to the larger and more pressurized gathering outside the Bank of England.

From the morning onwards, Climate Camp was clearly a festival atmosphere complete with live music, food, street theatre and dozens of small camping tents erected on the road in front the European Climate Exchange building on Bishopsgate.

From approximately 5pm, hundreds of auxiliary police in riot gear began to seal the entire encampment, including all entrances and exits along this city block. Any peaceful protester who requested exit from the area were flatly refused. What ensued after 7pm can only be described as a total 'Lock Down' of the public, after which protesters were hounded by a series of random forward surges by riot police, including incursions deep into the gathering. Note that by this point in the evening police forces had successfully "penned-in" approximately 4,000 peace protesters from both sides of this city block.

READ FULL STORY AT OpEd News (LINK BELOW):
 http://www.opednews.com/articles/Police-Aggravate-Peaceful-by-Patrick-Henningsen-090404-791.html

Patrick Henningsen
- e-mail: pj.henningsen@gmail.com
- Homepage: http://www.gunghomedia.co.uk

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Our options are becoming ever-more limited

04.04.2009 16:09

The tried and tested ways of expressing dissent don't work (if they ever did). The capitalist system has shown that it doesn't work, despite all of the promises of trickle down economics and the like, the majority are getting worse off while the minority are getting fatter and richer. The latest "solution" is to use more public money to pay people who are already fabulously wealthy to carry on with business-as-usual (literally). These are precious funds diverted from needed social programs.
The industrial system is also showing that it doesn't work: anthropogenic global warming/ climate change is destroying the habitability of the planet. The industrial system also depletes future resources and contaminates the soil, water, air and trophic networks. Yet the governments will not endorse a change in the industrial system.
The political system is not working: international law is a joke, the so-called "good guys" have been shown to have transgressed international law by invading a sovereign nation, disposing of the leader they originally installed and supported. We export "democracy" although even locally it is a broken, hollow shell of ritualised ceremonies without substance or public representation.
The rule of law is also broken: police are political thugs paid to maintain the status quo, like attack dogs, without any accountability, and go out of their way repeatedly to incite and provoke reactions so they can justify their over-bearing aggression and over-zealousness.

In light of all of this, a few broken windows in some bank are minor issues, but are swooped down upon for media-fuelled attention to make a big fuss over. The banks should have been burnt down, the cops should've been beaten up, the state should've been dismantled and the industries stopped. But none of this happened, out of restraint, only out of restraint. The time will come when such restraint no longer applies because we are each gradually becoming enemies of the state, regardless of how we may have initially started out along this road of dissent.

The state reserves its sole right to use violence, but then they call it enforcing law and order, or engaging in warfare for just causes or other such nonsense. When the public refuse to support that idea that the state reserves the right to use violence as its sole mandate and takes back their power to use violence as one tactic of many, the state had better watch out. We have pretty much run out of our options, no thanks to the police and the politicos. Perhaps it is to violence that the system will listen, in which case the time for the state to listen is almost upon them.

At the end of our tether