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Merrick wrote: [quote="Hunter T Wolfe"]It was also inevitable that the press were going to use any excuse to run their pre-written stories of 'violent anarchist mobs attack the city' etc.[/quoe]
I'm curious about why people who target an empty Royal Bank of Scotland building - at the heart of the financial and climate crises - are thugs to Pooley, but no mention of the cops who waded into people and broke heads for no reason. As usual.
At the climate camp thing on Bishopsgate they tried to spark it off about 7pm and, just like their incursions to the climate camps at Heathrow and Kingsnorth, they failed. As at those other times, people stood their ground but held their hands in the air to show they were unarmed and chanted 'this is not a riot'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlJRi7YR1bU
From my one experience of being caught up in a riot (the 1990 anti-Polltax march, natch) it did look very much like the whole thing was sparked off by police heavy-handedness. The police kept stopping the marchers - ostensibly to prevent over-crowding in Trafalgar Square - which had the predictable (and inevitable) side-effect of fraying tempers and inciting a vocal minority to start throwing a few sticks and stones at the US embassy. This could easily have been controlled by apprehending individuals respoinsbile, but what did the riot police do? Charged the crowd and - as you say - started busting heads for no perceptible reason.
And the right-wing press pretend to be surprised when demonstrators fight back? As your post implies, one man's law enforcement is another man's thuggery. You're also correct that the media reports have concentrated exclusively on the alleged violence of the protestors but have barely reported the police reaction at all. Predictable, depressing and sad.
To watch that clip of climate camp demonstrators resolutely refusing to be alolow the poice or media to stereotype them as thugs despite overwhelming provocation was inspiring, tho.
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