I've just watched this piece, interesting in terms of exposing the Guardian.

After attending Saturday, I was having a discussion with an Irish anarchist friend about the differences between The Independent and The Guardian in in relation to the The Guardian's sporadic support for British wars and turning feral on Julian Assange.

Assange has been effectively isolated it seems and The Guardian seems to have worked hard to accomplish that. Thier motives go beyond trying to sell a book (biography character assasination..."he smells" etc) on the back of guaranteed free world media publicity in the week of the February extradition hearing week...on the back of Assange spending a lifetime in jail once the U.S. garnd jury finishes its work.

The U.S. extradition wil override the Swedish one (which has never been more than a holding action). The British state opposed bail in the hope of keeping Assange offline in solitary in HMP Wandsworth. British Panorama hen did a job on Assange. The woo hoo self flattery shite that accompanied The Guardian selling the movie rights to a crap book to Spielberg was embarassing. And I don't embarrass easy, but I'm generally empathetic to people making complete tools of themselves. I cringe for them

I had put it down to class tensions between the public school liberals if The Guardian and the hippy kid Australian Assange. A journalist pointed out to me recently it goes beyond that...Guardian (all) journalists see themselves as the high priests of elitest access. They like secret knowledge and dealing with it, playing gatekeeper, fashioning the secrets before release. Along comes WikiLeaks and pulls the rug from under their status and possibly their income. Interesting.

They have declared Assange their enemy and have moved ginst them.In The Observer's piece on Sunday covering the demonstration they circled the wagons around MilibRand and have declared the kids the enemy.

In this piece they atempt to rehabilitate a police force that killed Ian Tomlinson and carried out brutatlity in the kettles of December's student protest...they were lucky not to have killed the kid whose skull they fractured. I was caught in the Decembe kettle in Whitehall with a majority of fluffy first time students last year I tried initiatiig a chant as they batoned people "You killed Ian Tomlinson" to remind the cops they had killed someone they didn't mean to kill and might do the same that night. The kids had never heard of Ian Tomlinson, they were first time fluffy and their was no basis in the own cop terms of reference for the attack I witnessed. The police violence was brutal. What the cops looked like the night as they batoned recklessly was the worst stereotypes of the paramilitaries in the north of Ireland, when they come a calling to your door for a punishment beating...overwhelming numbers, masked up and carrying big sticks. I was going to make that point, but thought better of it at the time.

The Guardian has done an effective job isolating Assange from street support, there was no mention, sign or vocal (that I heard or saw) on Saturday in support of Assange as he faces present death threats from, and probable rendition to, the U.S.

I am at loss why the British anarchist scene, and in truth it is no more than a scene here, has not offered solidarity to Assange. So it's all guess work!
GUESSES
- the @ scene is crap at solidarity, they are as individualist an atomised as mainstream British society. I attended the very small prison solidarity workshop at the London @ bookfair 2010 (a good chunk of us attending were ex-prisoners and already commited ABC folks..a network that is now been reduced to 2 hubs in Bristol and Brigthon).
- they find Australians distasteful, the "other", too blunt, too direct for their British cultural tastes
- they confuse direct democracy with collective mediocrity and hate Assange because he's on T.V. a lot

My friend reflected that in comparison to The Guardian, The Independent, is well, more independent. The Guardian sees itself as producing the party line for the liberal/social democratic left in Britain...like Pravda was or An Phoblacht or the SWP rag. Interesting. Anyone got any other takes on The Guardian?

...bizarre piece of embedded journalism from the Guardian. I can't work out whether it's faux naiveite on the part of the two coppers or whether the fluffiest riot cops ever to be deployed on the streets of London have been specially selected for PR work. Either way, this is a truly revolting propaganda piece for the state, with all aggression directed towards the police looking totally unwarranted and the cops coming off like sweet and innocent little dears.

Its true that for a lot of the day the Met were the most hands off I've ever seen them on something like this - but it doesn't square with their previous behaviour on big demos (ie; being indiscriminately violent, aggressive and rude). The way the officers acted on the video suggests that there is no history of this whatsoever.

There seems to be a big PR exercise taking place to restore the image of the police after all the criticism over kettling and undercover coppers. I hope people aren't taken in by it.

they've been ticking off their post g20 list of stuff to do - the final summary point was:

"Policing Public Order :An overview and review of progress against the recommendations of Adapting to Protest and Nurturing the British Model of Policing

- Is there value in making the experiences of officers in the front line at these events available to the public?"

Answer - yes. Cheers guardian pr bozos...