Who talks in riddles, who talks in reasons?

Planet Angel art project - driver needed!

2009-11-20T13:25:26Z

The Memory Glow lantern installation for the Planet Angel X-Party continues apace. Here's the blurb in case you missed it:

It's been ten years of connecting, chatting, meeting brilliant new people, dancing all night to awesome tunes. Planet Angel isn't just about having fun at the best Party in town - it's about old friends and new, getting involved, unexpected coincidences, forging new connections, sparking new ideas, giving creativity and friendship a chance to flourish. No wonder so many of you have amazing stories to tell.

For the X-Party, Helen Lambert and Deirdre Ruane - both longterm PA regulars - are turning your memories into a constellation of hanging lanterns for you to explore and enjoy. Wander among slowly spinning planets of all shapes and sizes, each glowing with its own inner light, and see if you can spot your own favourite moments from Planet Angel's history. Text and art will intertwine to commemorate the most special and magical moments of the last ten years. Chill out under the rainbow light display, point out familiar scenes to your friends, discover new stories and remember old ones.

Every community has its own folklore - the stories that share our collective experience and offer inspiration for the future. Memory Glow celebrates some of those stories.

Our 'studio' has been relocated from the living room of bard's house (many thanks to him, strongtrousers and cyrus_ii for putting up with us imposing for quite so long) to my parents' new house in Chigwell, because it has All The Rooms and my parents are lovely. We're not used to being close enough to do this kind of favour for each other. It's marvellous and I'm immensely grateful for it.

So today, Niamh and I are moving into one of my parents' spare rooms for a week, so I can devout my every spare waking hour to finishing decorating lanterns without leaving my cat abandoned and starving in Tottenham. It's going to be a bit strange being away from my comptuer and commuting to OG from there, but it's the only option. This would be massively easier if I had a studio, or a bigger house, but while I'm still earning my fortune I'm really lucky to have parents who are willing and able to help out.

As well as the inevitable last-minute finishing-the-lanterns crisis, entirely unhelped by bluedevi's and my chronic perfectionism, at the moment I'm trying to untangle a whole heap of last minute logistical crises. The lantern-making workshop we're running on the night is now sorted in terms of designs and materials. The LEDs for the installation have been ordered and we've got a plan for how and when we're going to rig them. bluedevi and I will head to the venue on the morning of the Party to spend the day rigging and getting everything right (and dealing with the inevitable last minute things going wrong). We're running the craft table until midnight and (I think!) have the rest of the evening off to party and enjoy ourselves :) Then we're staying on Saturday morning to de rig, and we have a tentative plan for where the lanterns go after the Party.

But we're stuck on how to get them there. This isn't really a last-minute panic - we've known all along that we didn't have a transport solution, and were relying on Planet Angel to help out. But various options have fallen through, and we're getting to the stage of Desperately Asking Everyone We Know On The Internet. Hi, internet! We can offer free tickets to the Party, petrol money, pints of your favourite tipple and probably more - if there's something you'd like in return just ask and we'll see what we can do :)

There are twelve lanterns of varying sizes. Half of them are stackable cuboids and cylinders; a few are awkward round shapes. Three of them are BIG round shapes - the biggest is 3ft across. It's a bit tricky because they're bulky and fragile (although very lightweight) so ideally we are looking for someone with an estate car or people carrier.

At the moment they're in Chigwell in Essex, at my parents' house. We need to get them from there to the Colosseum in Vauxhall on the morning of Friday 27th so we can rig the installation. We know they just about fit in a car because strongtrousers drove them to Chigwell, although it'll be a tight squeeze and there won't be space for passengers.

Now there are two ways of doing this...

If someone is able to drive to Chigwell on Friday morning, we'll help you pack the lanterns into the car, then you drive to Vauxhall while bluedevi and I get on the tube (carrying the biggest two/three lanterns by hand if necessary) and meet you at the venue. Easy!

However, we know that most people are working during the day Friday ... so if necessary we can do the journey in two stages.

If anyone is able to drive up to Chigwell on Wednesday or Thursday (in the evening maybe?) and drop the lanterns off somewhere in South/Central London a bit closer to Vauxhall, we can leave them there until Friday morning and then collect them in a cab to take them to the venue.

So... is anyone able to help out with the driving? And if you don't drive, do you have a house within affordable cab distance of Vauxhall where you could store our lantern project for a day or two next week?

Thanks so much in advance to anyone able to volunteer. We are A Bit Stuck so any help you could give would be massively appreciated.

CCTV-inspired icons

2009-11-13T14:18:19Z

I made some cheeky icons based on this gallery of CCTV-inspired art. Also one based on a graffiti from the G20. Feel free to use them if you like! It would be courteous to credit me/the source gallery/the original artist (if known), but if you only do one the latter two are more important.

your handy DNA database 101

2009-11-13T00:39:29Z

The Home Office has just announced its revised plans to keep the DNA profiles of innocent people on the National DNA Database, despite an EU ruling that this constitutes a breach of human rights. The new policy, under which DNA samples can be taken from any individual stopped by police for an arrestable offence, permits retention of these samples for six years regardless of whether the individual was convicted or released without charge.

This directly contravenes the decision made by the European Court of Human Rights in the S and Marper case last December, in which all 17 judges unanimously ruled that the UK policy of indefinitely retaining DNA samples from people who had not committed a crime was illegal under EU law.

The Association of Chief Police Officers claimed that this ruling would seriously limit their use of DNA technology. They therefore advised chief constables to ignore the EU decision, and since the Strasbourg ruling, while the Home Office drafts new legislation in response to the EU's decision, police have added DNA profiles of over 90 000 people who have never been convicted of an offense to the database. Various proposals have been submitted, condemned by human rights organisations, rewritten, resubmitted - and no response to the EU ruling is yet to pass through Parliament. The current set of plans, if passed, are likely to be in contempt of the EU court, and will no doubt provoke another long-winded round of litigation. The Home Office is clearly making every attempt to avoid the strongly-worded recommendations of the ECHR, and while the UK legislators drag their feet, every day more innocent people are added to a criminal database.

But what's the problem?

According to the European court, the "blanket and indiscriminate" retention of DNA samples practised in the UK contravenes human rights law. Innocent people whose details are held risk being criminalised and stigmatised by police.

The judges added that the fact DNA profiles could be used to identify family relationships between individuals, meant its indefinite retention also amounted to an interference with their right to respect for their private lives under the human rights convention. (source)

The problems with the national DNA database as it currently stands are as follows:

1. No distinction is made in the system between people who have been arrested but not charged, charged but not convicted, or convicted of a crime. In addition, no distinction is made between type or severity of crime.

David Sweeney from Manchester told the BBC about his experiences when he was given a parking ticket by police. When asked if he was "known to the police", he said no, since he had no criminal record.

But when they then heard over the radio that I was on the DNA database, they treated me with total contempt - as if I were a serious criminal.

"You lied to us", they said. "You're on the database. So you've obviously done something wrong. What are you trying to conceal now?"

DNA for the database is collected indiscriminately, but this data is treated as if it were indicative of someone's criminal status. While some police may treat the database as if it were an innocuous list of names and addresses, others clearly see a person's presence on the database as an indication of past, present or future guilt.

The Home Office claims that six years covers the likely period in which someone might offend after having their DNA taken. (source)

This statement is meaningless unless you read offend as re-offend, indicating that the Home Office assumes that anyone who has been arrested is guilty of an offence - even if they were never charged, let alone tried and convicted.

In UK criminal law defendants are considered innocent until proven guilty. The DNA database treats arrested individuals as guilty until proven innocent; their details are stored on the basis that since they have attracted the attention of a police officer, they are likely to go on to commit an offense. A national coordinator for ACPO is on record as saying "everyone who has got a criminal record did not have one once." This sort of pre-emptive profiling is morally suspect and risks being self-fulfilling.

2. The DNA Database is not actually very useful in solving crime.

Most crime has nothing to do with DNA and less than half a percent of recorded crime is resolved using DNA evidence. Despite the expansion of the DNA database in recent years, the rate of crime detection using DNA has actually decreased during the past year. (source)

The majority of crimes solved using DNA evidence match DNA from the crime-scene against fresh DNA samples taken from suspects in the case - so the percentage of crimes solved using the database to make a match is even lower.

Although "300,000 crimes have been detected with the aid of the Database" (according to the National Policing Improvement Agency), this does not necessarily mean that the perpetrator of a crime was identified by their presence on the database. The database is much more frequently used in an investigatory capacity, to put police in touch with people who may be useful to their enquiries. DNA is taken from a crime scene and compared with profiles in the database. When DNA matches between the crime scene and, for instance, someone on the database who had a legitimate reason for being at the scene, but who is able to help the police in their investigation, the NPIA still count this as 'solving a crime with the aid of the database'. As they say in their FAQ, "Even if there is no direct link to the offender, this can still be useful to the police, as it produces further information and speeds up the investigation."

Using such cases to justify the current retention policy is problematic. It has the effect of encouraging police to expand the database as swiftly as possible, since the more DNA profiles they have, the more connections they are able to make. In many cases, these connections could equally be made using standard police work; and yet a growing preference for relying on DNA boosts the stats for the usefulness of DNA evidence.

Whether someone has ever been arrested is irrelevant to the database's investigatory usefulness; a database of every UK resident's DNA, collected at birth or immigration, could be used in the same way. However, legislation enabling a universal database would be highly controversial and difficult to pass through Parliament. The Home Office is seeking to bypass this process by expanding the national criminal database to cover more of the population.

3. Keeping "the right people" on the database

The Home Office's consultation on this issue is entitled keeping the right people on the DNA database - which immediately begs the question, who are the 'right' people?

The demographics of the database show disproportionately high percentages of black people - particularly young black males.

At the moment, 27 percent of the entire black population, 42 percent of the male black population, 77 percent of young black men, and 9 percent of all Asians are on the database, compared with just 6 per cent. of the white population. If someone is black, their details are three times more likely to be stored on the database than if they are white. (source)

57% of DNA samples taken from people in London who were neither charged nor convicted of an offense are from the black population. One might think that this was an error of scale, based on the assumption that black people are more likely to commit an offence for socio-economic reasons. However, this assumption has been strongly challenged, and in fact a negative correlation can be found:

In spite of the over-representation of black people in the CJS, there is evidence to suggest that black people have lower offending rates than white people: 42% of white people commit an offence in their lifetime, compared with 28% of black people; 21% of white people commit a serious offence in their lifetime, compared with 14% of black people. Thus, should the conclusions of the JDI institute be valid, we should expect an under-representation of black people on the database. (source)

This discrepancy derives from widespread institutionalised racism in the criminal justice system, rather than specific racial bias relating to the collection of DNA samples, but it has unpleasant implications. The disproportionate DNA profiling of black people is especially worrying in the context of the border control human provenance pilot project, which uses DNA samples to determine the country of origin of asylum seekers - a method both scientifically imprecise and extremely morally dubious.

4. Right to privacy

Many people consider the right to genetic privacy fundamental to their civil liberties. Human rights organisation Liberty lists the national DNA databases as one of the key privacy issues in the UK, and state on their website that "stockpiling the intimate profiles of millions of innocent people is an unnecessary recipe for error and abuse. Politicians need to show us that they care about the presumption of innocence."

While some may feel that the innocent should have nothing to hide, this does not stand up to the reality of individuals facing discriminatory treatment based solely on their presence on the database, regardless of whether they have ever been charged with a criminal offence. Moreover, there are many perfectly legitimate reasons (such as those relating to family, health and identity) that people may be concerned about their genetic privacy.

The right to privacy becomes more significant when considering that it is not only law-enforcement who have access to the genetic details contained on the database. To date, at least 25 private companies have been granted access to DNA profiles from the national database by the NPIC, without the consent of any of the individuals concerned. Tellingly, the police rejected requests to use police DNA samples for research purposes. The Liberal Democrat's shadow minister for home affairs said that "the 25 projects that have been approved by ministers include some sinister explorations into ethnic profiling. It is appalling that these Big Brother practices have been allowed to go on unchecked for so long and with extremely limited ethical standards."

Same shit, different day

In the new policy the retention period for DNA profiles of people who are arrested, but not charged or convicted, of most crimes remains at six years. The maximum retention period for 'serious crimes' (which in the previous set of proposals referred to violent, sexual or terror offences) has been reduced from twelve to six years. Many of the plans remain unchanged, despite the fact that the Council of Europe released a damning response to the previous set of proposals.

This is consistent with the Home Office's usual strategy of announcing a 'review' when glaringly bad policies are exposed in the media, thus effectively shelving the issue for another few months while waiting for all the fuss to die down. UK policy consistently regards data retention as not engaging Article 8 of the Human Rights Act. The European Court of Human Rights consistently disagrees with this view. Any legal challenge on this issue is likely to fail in UK courts, which "will force litigants to take a long march through the legal institutions that ends in Strasbourg at the European Court of Human Rights". If the UK continues to disregard EU human rights law so blatantly, what authority does the European Court actually have?

As if to balance the reduced retention period for 'serious crimes', the personal data of terror suspects faces a life sentence in the new policy. Previously the Home Office proposed a twelve year retention period for this group, but under the new proposals the DNA of people arrested under counter-terrorism legislation can be retained indefinitely. This is particularly concerning in light of the broad and increasingly inappropriate applications to which anti-terrorist legislation has been put in recent years. Fot instance, police have routinely used counter-terrorism legislation to prevent activists from reaching demonstrations or conferences, or or to interfere with journalists or members of the public taking photographs of police.

At a panel discussion last night, Sir Alec Jeffreys, who pioneered the science of DNA profiling, condemned the government's new proposals. Both he and Dr Phillipson, professor of law at Durham, agreed that the Home Offices' response to the EU ruling was illegal.

(crossposted from Police State UK)

wikipolitics

2009-11-10T17:51:08Z

I've been thinking about online democracy a lot since my post the other day. Some of it's pretty exciting.

Mostly I'm just overwhelmed at how big the conversation is. I'm seeing new stuff everywhere I look. I think these next few months, the closing months of the failed New Labour project when no-one really wants Cameron to be Prime Minister, are going to be key for the conversation about democratic reform. I don't think there's time for anything to happen now but the energy is now, before the change happens, when everyone's excited by the possibilities. After the Tories get in I expect the fire will go out of the talk for a bit, but then we have the next four years to actually make something happen.

Anyway, so I've talked about Open Up, and linked a couple of the huge number of blog posts in the wake of the success of the Trafigura/Jan Moir temporary collectives. Seriously, these articles are everywhere. Here's another one. This isn't new, of course: people have been talking about reforming democracy online since Usenet, and I still think of MySociety as the pioneers in using online technologies to improve the quality of our democracy.

But recently ... I dunno, maybe I've just been getting more involved, but it feels like in the last twelve months it's really been gaining momentum. Our Kingdom has an ongoing conversation about democratic reform, and Guy Aitchison, the dude who runs it, is also heavily involved with the Power 2010 campaign.

Then there's 38 Degrees, and Louder, The Downing Street Project ... and that's just in the UK: worldwide it seems that new social innovation campaigns like The Girl Effect and the World Appreciative Enquiry Conference are springing up all over the place. Then there's thinktanks like IPPR which seem to overlap a surprising amount with the grassroots movements. It's inspiring and hopeful - so many people agreeing things need to change, and pouring so much ideas and energy and time into working towards that! - but also chaotic and dizzying. There's just so much of it! To what extent are all these different groups even aware of each other? Are they duplicating each other's work, are they all trying to reinvent the wheel? If none of this has any effect on the current system, is it so much shouting to the void? Are the messages reaching the people who need to hear them, or is it just a big echo chamber? With so many diverse groups, all with their own agenda, won't they just drown each other out? Do we need to get together and find points of commonality? Is that even possible?

Probably not, but today I've been thinking not about campaigns but about the tools they use. Yesterday I was utterly thrilled to read The Future of Politics is Mutual, which is by an awesome person I hadn't heard of before, called Hannah Nicklin. It's on the differences between the traditional press and online media, narrative vs information and the information economy, and the concept of wikipolitics.

What is Wikipolitics?

It is a starting point. It takes the open-source ethic and applies it to government. I don’t propose that we edit policy documents. I do believe that parliament should be opened up, demystified, and the power taken back. How do we do this? We’ve already started, look at projects such as Louder, 38 degrees, look at the Trafigura backlash, the Iran election, the G20 protests.

We now live in a world where we construct our own media consumption, where we pull together, build our own stories. Politics and the mainstream media are clinging on to old methods of distribution and delivery.

Whilst still acknowledging that at least 2/3 of the world does not have access to the internet (the UK figure is something like 30%, with a further 7-8% only having narrowband access – source) and those who do are likely to be from more affluent, developed backgrounds, we also need to be aware that instant publishing and access to our own media channels is incredibly empowering.

We also need to pull ourselves out of the luxury of political disempowerment. It is our responsibility to be involved in politics. If it is not one with which we wish to be involved, then we need to change it.

You should read the thread, because there's some really good stuff in there. I've been spamming the thread with comments and thinking lots. Like,

You don’t have to be good looking or charming to speak powerfully online. It not only makes it easier for more people to engage on a more level playing field, in text, but it also would reduce the amount of verbal faff that goes on so much in BBC politics. All the “And I’m going to tell you why that is, that’s because …” methods of answering questions, all the automatic verbal filler that gives the speaker more thinking time.

and

Think about the potential of online conversation. Previously, this sort of live conversation has been between a small handful of people, with a passive audience. Interaction takes place in the form of solicited questions from the audience, or phonecalls – that’s not a real exchange of ideas.

Compare this with the comment threads on the big political blogs, where a single conversation can include 800 or more people. When have that many people ever, in the history of the human race, been able to simultaneously and actively engage in the same conversation?

and

First we need to fix the problems with candidate selection (what do you think of the ideas put forward in Open Up, such as open primaries?), then we need to facilitate direct public engagement between representatives and their constituents – a wiki format would be ideal. Representatives who didn’t engage would face consequences – if they persisted in refusing it might have to lose them the seat. The wiki format would facilitate fact-checking, research, comparing differing reports and bringing in the opinion of experts. It would be chaotic, possibly a much bigger and messier project than Wikipedia, but I think wikipedia is a testament to what the public can achieve. Sort of like a counterpoint to the comments on Have Your Say.

You’d need language support, of course. Accessibility is an issue, but there could be free-to-use terminals in all public libraries, schools, universities, public centres – perhaps they would only connect to this system, to prevent people hogging the terminal to use Facebook.

MySociety have already pioneered online tech to facilitate engagement … I think something like this is the next step. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think that you want something like Google Wave, with built-in live language support, live chat and playback features, rather than a traditional wiki. Wave’s still in beta (although if you don’t have an invite and want one, we have some spares), takes a lot of memory and a fast connection, and still has lots of bugs. But I think it has a lot of potential in this context.

and

There’s a connection in my mind between the idea of Wikipolitics, the Open Source movement, the social consultancy method of groups like Tuttle… The common threads are decentralisation and collaboration, and I think that MySociety-inspired consultation might be the seed that could take root in our present system. Tuttle is more a coalition of experts which filters down to a relevant group: the Wikipolitics idea is more hierarchical, if we’re talking about improving dialogue and information exchange between the people and their representatives.

The open source movement’s hierarchy is informal, based on expertise and experience. Getting our elected representatives to listen to those with expertise and experience of specialist issues would be a good start.

and

Rather than only being able to find out the politics going on behind a decision I disagree with if I turn up and badger a politician in person, I want that politician to have a mandate to explain their process publically, online, where it can be read and queried and challenged if we find it inadequate. We may not like the answer but if we can see their reasoning we may become more aware of the complexity of the issue. Or we may continue to disagree, having found the counter-arguments lacking. Either way, more information and transparency can only be good.

This sort of system would work best if it was completely universal: if you could access it anywhere, in any language, if kids were taught to log on at primary school and there was a kids section on the wiki where they could have their say and ask questions.

I don't think we've come close to hitting on the answer on it yet. I don't think a wikipolitics project as described would be likely to have wings: it would probably just turn into a community of hypergeeks bickering over details. I think Wave has the potential to be useful in the longterm but it's not ready yet, and neither is society.

There are a couple of "unconferences" on this stuff happening this week: Open 09 and £1.40. I can't get to either, but I'll be interested in hearing if the discussions went anywhere useful.

I don't know how to harness the energy of this conversation into action. I don't know how to get the disparate online groups to work together. But I think there's something in this, I really do.

I think the only way to fix our current broken democracy is to decentralise it to some extent. I think the internet not only offers strong models for governance in the form of open source ethics and the open source community, but also a unique opportunity for discourse, collaboration and development.

Anyway. This is me brainstorming. Feel free to join in.

public order policing

2009-11-09T21:16:37Z

Police State UK have just run a special series of articles on public order policing, surrounding the inaugural public meeting of the new MPA Civil Liberties Panel last Thursday.

Holding the Met to account - by me on Wed 4 Nov 2009 at 23:40
The key issue in the wake of the G20 is accountability. Of the 276 complaints made to the IPCC, very few cases have been investigated or upheld. The IPCC has instructed the MPS to discount any complaints where the officer in question cannot be identified. This is enormously problematic: in what appeared to be a deliberate and calculated effort, hundreds of officers removed their identifying numerals during the policing of G20. This alone constitutes grounds for complaint - Paul Stephenson has called it "completely unacceptable" for police on duty not to wear their numerals - but it also allows the IPCC to dismiss any allegations of excessive force made against officers who removed their ID. Any police inclined to use disproportionate force in a public order situation is thereby given a "get out of jail free" card. Read more »

A mandate for change? - by me on Thu 5 Nov 2009 at 18:17
"Today is all about listening to you - we're not here to speak for the Met, nor to defend them," said Victoria Borwick, chair of the MPA's newly convened Civil Liberties Panel, opening this morning's public meeting. The scope of the meeting - an evidence gathering session on public order policing, and more specifically the G20 demonstrations in April - had been unclear to some. Many people had brought questions demanding immediate answers, but instead their concerns have been 'noted', with no clear idea if answers will be forthcoming. Read more »

Whatever happened to peaceful protest? - by Anna Bragga on Fri 6 Nov 2009 at 14:04
After yesterday's inaugural public meeting of the panel, I am left with an all pervading sense of gloom that no matter how well presented our arguments, no matter how much documented evidence we produce (from citizen journalists to accredited professionals), and no matter how many lawyers and experts we bring in, little will change. Read more »

Deterring Peaceful Protest - by denny on Sun 8 Nov 2009 at 20:33
There's been some good news lately as far as the policing of protest is concerned... the well-established public-order policing policy of 'hit them until they stop, then hit them a bit more' seems to be going out of favour. This is certainly a good thing. Nobody likes being hit over the head, and any reduction in such violence is to be celebrated. However, one of the important concerns such violence raised was that people would be (and have been) put off attending protests due to the possibility of police violence - and while this one issue is now being addressed, there are still plenty of other factors being used to deter protestors from showing up to any given protest. Read more »

Damned if they do, damned if they don't - by me on Mon 9 Nov 2009 at 19:16
Anonymity is increasingly difficult to maintain in the UK. We are tracked and recorded everywhere we go, and the police have access to national databases. The basic precautions necessary to try and slip through the net of police information-gathering require a level of personal inconvenience which many would find off-putting. And yet the alternative is being entered into the FIT/NECTU/etc system of harassment; I can see how facing a choice between the two would put people off attending demos at all. Read more »

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We've also updated the site design a bit to add our Twitter feed and hopefully make the articles a bit easier to read. We're still working on the changes - we eventually want fluid width articles, I'm nagging Denny for the option of longer lead text on the homepage, and I want to improve the usability of the sidebar links. But we're at the "it'll do" stage with a lot of this due to having no time at all.

Please do create a free account on the site so you can post comments and submit articles. We welcome all contributions from anyone interested in civil liberties in the UK.

expert advice

2009-11-02T14:55:05Z

Couple of good articles on the sacking of David Nutt, which I find abhorrent for all the obvious reasons, plus those articulated by JQP in his two "Expertease" articles written at the start of this year.

This isn't the first time this issue has been on our radar. Drugs legislation is one of the easiest targets. Then there was the debate about Green Party science policy earlier this year. Now this, which some commentators have compared to the way policy on ID cards continues to ignore expert advice. Detecting a bit of a theme?

[Democracy] relies on one very important variable, which British society has utterly failed to deliver: accurate information.
In theory, democracy works for the benefit of mankind because the government responds to public demands. This requires two things to be fulfilled. The public have to be rational, which sometimes pertains, and it has to have access to reliable information, or else its demands rest on false assumptions. But the media, its main source of information, does not deliver. It provides truth, yes, but it also spews out myths and nonsense to substantiate its editorial agenda.

(Drugs policy and the death of reason, politics.co.uk, Monday, 02, Nov 2009 12:00)

Ah, everyone's favourite rant about democracy and the media! Excellent: I always enjoy having someone else do this one for me. It even includes references to Plato, if not to the process of Athenian democracy itself.

You all know this already, but just in case: Athenian democracy worked because it was tiny. Something in the region of 60,000 adult male citizens had the right to vote at any one point in the mid-5th century BC - a figure that dropped during wartime. Start with a small city-state and then exclude women, children and adolscents, immigrants, slaves, criminals and anyone who hasn't completed military training. The result is a direct democracy, where those involved are small enough to sit in a single assembly, watch political speakers and satirical theatre as a single audience, and participate in the same big debate. More oligarchy than democracy by modern standards. (Is more complicated than this, but you get the idea. Feel free to comment if you think I'm misrepresenting.)

Modern democracies which aim at representing the demands of the whole population - including, even more recently, women - can't be directly representational (until we develop secure tech for remote voting) and they can't be directly informed. Our representation is a mess, and so is our information. I mean the internet is great and all, but so far it mostly seems to be resulting in more people sharing opinion than data. (Peer-reviewed science has massive class and accessibility issues - is wikipedia the closest thing we have to democratic information?)

Anyway, so I'm sure you all know my feelings on policy and the meeja. What I found kind of interesting reading the post-Nutt-sacking commentary (har) is the fact that no-one's thought to relate this issue to climate science. Which seems a bit odd. Look at this paragraph from that Nutt vs ID cards article:

That's not to say politicians should blindly and slavishly heed scientific advice without any other considerations. Of course not. The whole nature of politics is about balancing various constituencies of interest. But politicians should be able to explain the reason for their decisions when they choose to ignore independent expert advice and press ahead with proposals that potentially put the UK population at greater risk.

O RLY?

Governments have been ignoring expert advice on climate change for, gosh, several decades now. I'm outraged about that, but I'm not surprised. It's not even really news, apart from in the "shit continues to hit fan" sense - but that's not unusual either.

If the outrage over the Home Office not only disregarding the recommendations of its chosen experts, but actually punishing those experts for telling the truth, leads to it happening less, well, great: perhaps they'll start listening to expert advice on environmental policy. Drugs legislation is a relatively quiet issue - you don't get many people willing to protest about it, and most public figures avoid speaking out on it unless they're happy to be branded a filthy munter.

Climate change should be a considerably less risky thing to talk about: surely most people believe that saving the human race from extinction is a generally good thing, even if they're not willing to act personally to help the cause. I mean, to oversimplify dramatically, this is one of the reasons we have laws, right? To encourage people to do the right thing even if they might not always want to?

Not only does policy fly in the face of scientific evidence when it comes to climate change, those who complain loudly about this are treated far worse by the state than those outraged at scandal of David Nutt's illegitimate sacking. Climate change doesn't seem to make it into any of the commentary on governments ignoring their experts. Is the issue becoming so marginalised that no-one's willing to include it in their analysis? Perhaps they're all just trying to avoid being labelled domestic extremists. In which case, the re-branding of climate activists as a marginal, undesirable group by the police is clearly starting to take effect.

online democracy

2009-10-20T17:48:14Z

The Defend Peaceful Protest meeting last week was exciting. People are still talking about policing and protest: the so-called "media storm" following the G20 looks like it might turn out to be a shift in consciousness after all. And, of course, the police and the state are still struggling with the issue of accountability as it applies to them, so there's work to be done there. dennyd is running a mailing list for discussion, news and updates - let us know if you'd like to be added to it (there's also a facebook group).

I seem to have volunteered to write up the public MPA meeting on November 5th for PSUK/LibCon/OurKingdom etc, so I want to get my head properly around the issues in advance of the MPA meeting, and if I'm linking people to PSUK it would be nice if there was some recent content on it. (On which note, anyone want to talk about civil liberties, dissent, privacy, surveillance, or policing in the UK? We'd really really love to hear from you - it was never intended to just be me and Denny.) So I'll be at the meeting in the morning, writing in the afternoon, and then then there's a civil liberties protest that evening in Parliament Square: what better way of remembering the fifth of November? Anyway, you should come to the protest if you care about such things, it'll be good.

All of which has motivated me to get back into political blogging again. It was one of the things to be sacrificed this summer in the name of Not Being So Exhausted All The Time, which was fair enough, but now I have an enormous backlog of issues I want to talk about. I've literally spent the whole day sorting through my open tabs, filing links and articles into topics, jotting down thoughts, running ideas past dennyd and romauld and getting them to fill in the gaps for me. (JQP calls me his Chief Research Otter, but I reckon they're both mine.)

So now I have a big pile of Things To Write About, which is a bit overwhelming but I feel better for organising it all a bit. Quite a lot of it doesn't really fit on PSUK, so I might end up shoving stuff on here unless I can write something good enough that I wouldn't be ashamed to submit it to the news sites.

I won't always have lots to say about stuff, in which case it'll end up linked here as well (although the best way of following what I'm reading/interested in is my twitter, which sees far more activity these days than this journal). Like the three excellent articles I've read today on the role of the internet in democracy:

How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Internet by the late Adams, Douglas Adams. Originally published in 1999 and still relevant and true.

‘Interactivity’ is one of those neologisms that Mr Humphrys likes to dangle between a pair of verbal tweezers, but the reason we suddenly need such a word is that during this century we have for the first time been dominated by non-interactive forms of entertainment: cinema, radio, recorded music and television. Before they came along all entertainment was interactive: theatre, music, sport – the performers and audience were there together, and even a respectfully silent audience exerted a powerful shaping presence on the unfolding of whatever drama they were there for. We didn’t need a special word for interactivity in the same way that we don’t (yet) need a special word for people with only one head.

I expect that history will show ‘normal’ mainstream twentieth century media to be the aberration in all this. ‘Please, miss, you mean they could only just sit there and watch? They couldn’t do anything? Didn’t everybody feel terribly isolated or alienated or ignored?’

‘Yes, child, that’s why they all went mad. Before the Restoration.’

‘What was the Restoration again, please, miss?’

‘The end of the twentieth century, child. When we started to get interactivity back.’

The end of Adams' article dates it somewhat, so here are two articles from this week, continuing the theme in light of the recent events surrounding Trafigura and Jan Moir, to bring you up to speed:

Poles, Politeness and Politics in the age of Twitter by Stephen Fry, October 19th, 2009

A tweet is a 140 word expression of what’s on one’s mind, what one is doing or dreaming of. No one, not Biz Stone and the other founders of the service, not you nor I and certainly not anyone in the mainstream or techno press, ever had the faintest idea what Twitter would become. We still do not know what it will become. Some of those who dismissed it as it rose in popularity will now be slinking embarrassedly to the sign-on page, while political ginger groups of all kinds, right left, religious secular, fanatical and mild, will be sitting around wondering how to harness its power. ‘Political consultants’ who had never heard of the service six months ago will be hiring themselves out as experts who can create a ‘powerful, influential and profitable Twitter brand’. And the moronic and gullible clients will line up for this new nostrum like prairie settlers queuing for snake oil and salvation.

“If a twazzock like Stephen Fry can wield such influence,” the mainstream parties and their think tanks will be saying, “just imagine what we can do if we get our Twitter strategy right.”

Well, I contend that I do not wield influence. I contend that Twitter users are not sheep but living, dreaming, thinking, hoping human beings with minds, opinions and aspirations of their own. Of the 860,000 or so who follow me the overwhelming majority are too self-respecting, independent-minded and free-thinking to have their opinions formed or minds made up for them in any sphere, least of all Twitter.
[...]
Perhaps the foregoing is the most fatuous and maddening aspect of the press’s (perfectly understandable) fear, fascination and dread of Twitter: the insulting notion that twitterers are wavy reeds that can be blown this way or that by the urgings of a few prominent ‘opinion formers’. It is hooey, it is insulting hooey and it is wicked hooey. The press dreads Twitter for all kinds of reasons. Celebrities (whose doings sell even broadsheet newspapers these days) can cut them out of the loop and speak direct to their fans which is of course most humiliating and undermining. But also perhaps the deadwood press loathes Twitter because it is like looking in a time mirror. Twitter is to the public arena what the press itself was two hundred and fifty years ago — a new and potent force in democracy, a thorn in side of the established order of things.

And, published today, Can't stop the blog: what the internet has done for ideas by Laurie Penny (aka steerpikelet):

The American abolitionist Wendell Phillips once said that '"What gunpowder did for war, the printing press has done for the mind." The internet has had the equivalent impact of the advent of atomic warfare on the world of ideas, making individual thinkers part of a chain reaction whose power can be immediate and devastating. Marshall McLuhan observed in 'The Gutenberg Galaxy that "societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate than by the content of the communication". The British are desperate to see our creakily ancient institutions - newspapers and political parties dominated by wealthy Oxbridge graduates and a parliamentary system where official communication between the two houses is still overseen by the hereditary figure of Black Rod - reshaped by the internet.

Which leads me neatly to the two new ideas I've seen this week to ise the internet as a tool to "reshape democracy". The first is PartyStarter.org, an as yet embryonic idea rejected by the 4ip call for ideas, but published to see if anyone else wants to pick up the baton.

Membership of the main UK political parties has steadily declined since the 1970s. Disaffection with parties and politicians is at an all time high. Yet despite this, the big parties have hardly changed their structure since being formed in the 19th and 20th centuries (see http://www.paulmiller.org/partypoopers.htm for background on the slow demise of political parties in the UK and internationally).

Rather than focusing on getting more people to join the existing parties, PartyStarter will encourage and help people to set up their own political parties. It is based on the belief that innovation in the way that parties organise and operate is more likely to come from new ’start-up’ parties than from existing parties.

dennyd has pointed out that we already have lots of political parties (including enthusiastic and lively new parties like the Pirate Party), but they don't stand a chance of gaining power under the current first past the post system. So perhaps not that useful, although it's good to see ideas being shared, and I think this sort of thing is indicative of the general mood for electoral reform and grassroots political change.

Open Up Now is an exciting new campaign for just that, based on small steps which seem fairly credible.

The way Parliament is run and government does business must change - and getting the best possible people into office is the starting point.

That's why we want the people, not the politicians, to select who stands for election. That's why we want Open Primaries in every constituency, where the people select their own candidates, and where anyone can put themselves forward to be a candidate. That's why we want all current MPs to agree to stand for re-selection in an Open Primary. We want this before the next General Election. And this is what Open Up is calling on every political party to do.

You should read Heather Brooke's excellent article on transparency, MP nominations and party whips. I don't know if Open Up will acheive their aims - it seems a stretch, although I've signed the petition and it seems to be gaining a decent amount of momentum for a new campaign. But I seem to be seeing an increasing number of calls for reform, and they seem to be getting increasingly credible. Or am I just looking properly for the first time? Either way, it's exciting. Now we just have to make a few of them start to stick.

10:10

2009-09-01T13:22:48Z

Thanks to denny for pointing me at 10:10, a scheme through which individuals and businesses pledge to reduce their emissions by 10% in 2010:

Everyone's looking for something to do about climate change. What’s needed is something straightforward, immediate and meaningful. I think I've found it.

Today I joined thousands of individuals and organisations from across the country to unite behind one simple idea: that by working together we can achieve a 10% cut in carbon emissions during 2010. It’s called 10:10, and everyone can be a part of it.

Cutting 10% in one year is a bold target, but for most of us it’s an achievable one, and is in line with what scientists say we need right now. By signing up to 10:10 we’re not just promising to reduce our own emissions – we’re becoming part of a national drive to hit this ambitious goal country-wide. In our homes, in our workplaces, our schools and our hospitals, our galleries and football clubs and universities, we’ll be backing each other up as we take the first steps on the road to becoming a low-carbon society.

To find out more and sign up go to www.1010uk.org
To read coverage of the campaign from the Guardian go to www.guardian.co.uk/10-10

I just signed up; it's all stuff I'm trying to do anyway, and if enough people join the scheme, it will help put much-needed pressure on politicians to start meeting targets. The UK started the industrial revolution, we should be the first to visibly start reducing the problems its caused. A lot of political will and an enormous shift in the public consciousness is going to be necessary, but I think it's achievable. And the more countries commit to reducing carbon emissions, the greater a chance we have of persuading the big multinationals to follow suit.

things I should have linked by now

2009-08-28T17:27:11Z

Climate Camp:

"Climate Change Casino" set up in the City - with at least one police officer joining in!

Climate Camp Day 2 live blog

Climate Camp in pictures

Labour Mayor of Lewisham condemns the camp as "patronising and selfish" ...

... whereas the local Lib Dem and Green councillors are supportive.

(photo by dennyd!)

Corporate lobbyists sow doubt about science in their clients' minds. Climate Camp is teaching the skills to expose them.

Contrary to popular belief, Climate Camp is not about fighting the police – it's about fighting climate change - the article I would have written yesterday if I hadn't been distracted by trying to make this point in the comments on LibCon.

Revolting Peasants - Whitechapel Anarchist Group's version of their clash with police in the camp on Wednesday night.

As a result of this, the WAG were politely asked to leave the camp, and the camp decided it would be less disruptive to meet with police outside the camp in future, given how many of its members are victims of police brutality. Click here to read their press statement.

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Feminism links, via various people, but most of them from jacinthsong. Sorry if I've posted any of these before; between IRC, facebook, twitter and here it's sometimes hard to keep track what goes where.

A Few Things To Stop Doing When You Find a Feminist Blog by Fugitivus, whose writing I am devouring at the moment.

Misogyny: up close and personal on CiF, originally posted as The terrible bargain we have regretfully struck" on Shakesville. Delighted to see it on the Guardian, but I'd recommend not reading the comments.

No more Mr. Nice Guy - analysis of the Sodini shooting by Kate Harding.

Standing Out in the Crowd: on women in open source; and in a related note, click here if you feel like explaining to a clueless open source dude what that's like.

Women in fiction: why more awesome women in fiction makes for better fiction as well as gender equality.

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Random stuff:

18th Century humour by the inimitable cavalorn. E.g. "AMERICAN: Yonder House is Tiny & we have Thrice its size at Home ENGLISHMAN: No doubt Sir for 'tis the BEDLAM-HOUSE."

A giggle-worthy tale of Dragons, Knights, and the cancellation of Big Brother by John Q Publican

Men at their most masculine: a photo-essay

Inspirational Blind Photographers and their Portfolios

Can the Met change their stripes?

2009-08-20T12:16:27Z

Last August, thousands of people camped out at Kingsnorth power station to protest against the continued use of coal power in the UK. Despite eye-witness reports and video evidence that police abused stop and search powers, removed their badge numbers, employed sleep deprivation tactics, harassed journalists, arrested any protesters who tried to demand their legal rights, and engaged in unprovoked violence against peaceful protesters and their private property, the police were not meaningfully challenged by anyone with the authority to do so. In fact, it wasn't until after events were repeated at the G20 protests in April 2009 that official questions were asked about the policing of dissent in the UK.

Early this year, cyber-liberties activist Cory Doctorow wrote an article for the Guardian about the Kingsnorth camp.

We've known about all this since last August - seven months and more. It was on national news. It was on the web. Anyone who cared about the issue knew everything they needed to know about it. And everyone had the opportunity to find out about it: remember, it was included in national news broadcasts, covered in the major papers - it was everywhere.

And yet ... nothing much has happened in the intervening eight months. Simply knowing that the police misbehaved does nothing to bring them to account.
Transparency means nothing unless it is accompanied by the rule of law. It means nothing unless it is set in a system of good and responsible government, of oversight of authority that expeditiously and effectively handles citizen complaints. Transparency means nothing without justice.

Ironically, the article was delayed due to an administrative error, resulting in its publication shortly after the G20 protests. It was already true, even before the same mistakes were made all over again: and in April, it could just as easily have been talking about the events earlier that month. The Met have lied, again and again, about events on the day and the strategies that led to them. The Commissioner and Assistant Commissioner have placed blame solely on 'rogue' individual officers, denying all knowledge of deliberate and systematic use of violence. Hundreds if not thousands of officers were pictured engaging in unprovoked and disproportionate violence, but almost none have lost their stripes or their jobs. The senior officers in charge of the operation have got away scot-free. No officer who illegally detained or criminally assaulted a member of the public has been arrested or charged.

Next week, the Camp for Climate Action is returning to London for a week-long gathering of sustainable living and activism training. The campers are braced for the worst; Legal Observers, MPs and journalists will be present, and you can bet that if the police engage in unprovoked violence, YouTube and Flickr will instantly be flooded with evidence. But will that transparency lead to justice?

For a host of reasons - the death of Ian Tomlinson certainly, changing media attitudes towards police seen to have 'got away' with shooting Jean Charles de Menezes perhaps, or even that battering articulate middle-class liberals rather than working-class black teenagers is always a more high risk strategy - whatever they may have been, the political landscape had clearly changed.

The events of the G20 were a turning point in public opinion. The press has largely abandoned its original campaign of misinformation, and the Evening Standard, which published some of the worst of the pro-police propaganda, has officially changed its colours, and recently ran a ssympathetic story about a woman whose complaint was upheld by the IPCC.

Although the various committees (such as the new Civil Liberties panel formed by the MPA, which seems to be more interested in future policy than justice for past wrongs), investigative bodies and reports commissioned since April have not resulted in any substantive consequences for the Met or TSG, the former does seem to realise that all eyes are on them this time.

The police's new, all-smiles approach to the August camp, conspicuously lacking any apology or admission of previous guilt, has been called a "charm offensive" by journalists. The Metropolitan Police's PR campaign includes a twitter account (presumably in response to the Campers' successful use of live social media to co-ordinate their event), a change in senior personnel, and meetings with Climate Camp legal advisors. A bitter pill, one suspects, to the police liaisons who tried repeatedly to engage with the Met before the April camp, and were not only rejected, but subsequently blamed for the "lack of dialogue" cited as a factor in the escalation of events.

Common sense suggests that the police are going to behave next week. The camp will probably not obstruct a major road or airport, and nor is it likely to take place in the heart of the City. Of course, similar circumstances didn't help the Kingsnorth protesters, but the Met are doing their best to convince the activists - and the world - that "the policing will be reasonable if the Camp is reasonable". But if it isn't, nothing we've seen so far suggests that those responsible will be brought to account.

If the Met's PR campaign extends to not engaging in mindless violence, as well as just saying they won't, then the August camp could be seen by some as an anticlimax. But the primary narrative for activists is not one of a street war between protesters and police, but one of raising awareness about the issues of climate change and sustainable energy. When the media isn't pretending that nothing happened, coverage of protests gone wrong generates more discussion about policing than it does of these issues. The police have proved themselves keen in the past to silence inconvenient dissent; next week's activists can only hope that the greater public scrutiny focussed on the Met will enable their voices to be heard.

(originally posted on Police State UK)

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I'll be joining the Climate Camp swoop next Wednesday with a few friends. I'm not camping (work, boo), but we'll aim to stay until the camp is established, and defend the location if necessary. I'm going half as an eco-activist, half as an amateur journalist/observer. Click here for details of how to be involved on the day, and sign up for text alerts.

paella, and butternut squash and goats cheese risotto

2009-08-19T12:11:33Z

I've had a couple of people round for dinner lately, and have been rocking the rice-based dishes.

Paella

I made this for my parents on the grounds that I first ate real paella when on holiday in Spain with them, and liked it so much I ordered it the following night as well.

This serves 4, but if I was making it again I would make more, because there wasn't enough for seconds and we all wanted some.

1 onion
1 red or green sweet pepper
crushed garlic
risotto/arborio rice (I used pudding rice from the cornershop, and it was grand)
vegetable or chicken stock
assorted seafood (mussels, clams, prawns and squid rings are traditional, crab also works, or anything else you can get easily. I tend to use the mixed, pre-shelled and peeled packs from Tesco, which are dead easy and also 2 for £5 at the moment)
a couple of fillets free-range organic chicken
bacon or pancetta
couple of tomatoes
frozen peas or veg
white wine
saffron
paprika
thyme
fresh chilli to taste (I used a big green chilli from the garden)
fresh parsley

Chop the onion and saute in the biggest wok or paella pan you have, in plenty of olive oil. Before it gets crispy, toss in as much crushed garlic as you like, and give it a stir. If you're putting fresh chilli in, now is the time to add it. Add the bacon/pancetta and chopped chicken pieces, and seal the meat. When the white meat is white and starting to go brown, start adding the rice. Give it a good stir to coat it in the oil and meat juices. When it starts to stick to the bottom of the pan, start adding stock. Continue adding stock and rice until you've got as much rice as you want to eat. Turn the heat down and leave it for a bit, stirring occasionally to make sure it doesn't stick to the bottom of the pan.

When the rice has started to swell, throw in the seafood and let it cook in the stock. Add white wine, a good pinch of saffron and plenty of paprika and black pepper. Chop the sweet pepper and thyme, and throw that in. When the rice has nearly absorbed all the liquid, stir it and taste. Add more water/wine and let it simmer. Taste for seasoning - you can't really have enough paprika or black pepper in this. Add some fresh chopped parsley. When the rice is nearly ready, throw in the chopped tomatoes and frozen veg, and let it sit until all the liquid is absorbed.

Serve with a squeeze of lemon, more black pepper, a handful of fresh chopped parsley, and a huge glass of dry white wine.

Butternut squash and goats cheese risotto

I dreamed this up, having never heard of it before, but when I looked on the interwebs, lo! Many people had made it before, which was helpful in working out the best way to do it. Clearly great culinary minds think alike. It is simple and ridiculously delicious.

Serves two to bursting, although having nommed it all last night I do wish I had some leftovers for lunch.

1 onion
crushed garlic
risotto/arborio rice
vegetable or chicken stock
1 butternut squash
a couple of different kinds of goats cheese
fresh leaf spinach
pine nuts
white wine
fresh sage
fresh thyme

Peel and chop the squash. This is the hardest and most time-consuming bit of the whole process, especially if like me you have a naff peeler and instead have to attack it with an over-sized kitchen knife. Scoop out the seeds and pulpy middle and put it in the compost. Chop the meat of the squash into inch-sized cubes. I only used 2/3 of the squash to feed two of us, but use the whole thing, you'll be glad to have seconds.

Chop the onion, saute with garlic, and add the squash when the onion has gone soft. Cook it with lots of olive oil until it starts to change colour. Then start adding the rice, stock and wine. Season with black pepper, chopped fresh sage and fresh thyme. Don't use too much rice - the squash, spinach and cheese will bulk it out.

Toast the pine nuts under the grill, or dry-fry them in a separate pan. Don't let them burn, they go brown pretty fast. When the rice is nearly soft, start adding spinach by the handful. This wilts really fast so just keep adding it until you have the balance you want. I used about half of one of those big bags, but more wouldn't have gone amiss. Add the pine nuts, more black pepper, another smattering of chopped sage, another splash of wine, and chop the goats cheese. If you have hard goats cheese, cube it and add it to the pan to melt. If you have soft, just stir it through at the last minute, and save a few bits to crumble on top.

The result is packed with nutrients, and a sublime balance between the fresh-tasting veg and the sinfully delicious salty rich crumbly goats cheese. NOM.

Since I moved into the Snug, I've taken great pleasure from making my own stock. Someone on LJ (ailbhe?) shared an as-you-cook way of doing this which is pleasingly non-wasteful. When cooking, you save all your vegetable peelings, onion skins, carrot tops, pepper seeds, unused leaves in a bag in the freezer. This keeps for ages, so you can just keep adding to it. It starts to break down in the freezer, so when you open it it already starts to smell like stock. When you have enough (a bag the size of a bag of frozen peas), tip the lot into a stock pan and cover with boiling water. Add a quartered onion, a couple of sticks of celery, fresh rosemary, parsley and thyme if you have them, black peppercorns and salt. Boil it until the liquid is brown, then leave to simmer for an hour or so. The longer you cook it the stronger the stock will be. If you want stronger stock, leave the lid of the pan off and boil it to reduce. When you're happy, drain the stock into tupperware tubs and put the puply vegetable mash in the compost bin. The stock can then be frozen in tubs or ice-cube trays to make stock cubes.

shiny ideas

2009-08-07T16:20:49Z

We can has website!

I'd planned to chill out a bit after Glastonbury, but then Denny and I decided to take over the world, so this had to happen. I'm pretty damn pleased with it. And who knows, it might even help us find clients! Because more work, yes, that is exactly what I need. ;)

And now, I sleep.

... Actually I help bard move house and go to a celebratory TG with the denny. That's almost the same thing though? Right?

All's Well at the National

2009-08-04T15:08:42Z

I have one spare ticket for All's Well that Ends Well at the National Theatre tonight at 7.30 (meet 7.15) if anyone wants it! Free to a good home :) It's in the side stalls with a small group of lovely theatre-goers including roz_mcclure, who will deliver your ticket to at the theatre. Have had two interested people so far today, both of whom have fallen through, which is why I'm posting this so late in the day - please only ask if you can actually make it!

I'm not sure, but unless she's advertising my ticket, roz_mcclure has another spare, so there may be opportunity for a couple to take mine plus her extra one.

webdesign: UR DOIN IT WRONG

2009-07-23T14:04:32Z

fire_brand and The Register have already offered much incisive commentary on Be (an ISP owned by O2)'s new rebranded website. HOW WRONG IS IT? LET ME COUNT THE WAYS. Not only does it look like it was designed by a group of bickering 13 year olds who can't decide which of their MySpace page backgrounds to use, but it contains my new favourite image on the internet.

Go to the "Personalise" drop down menu below the main navigation menu on the left. Select the second option. What is it? It's hard to tell, what with the awkward tiling and clashing colours, but do you know, I believe it is a KNIGHT IN ARMOUR RIDING A PSYCHEDELIC MAGIC CARPET WHILE PLAYING THE GUITAR.

WHAT.

As if that horror wasn't enough, check out the pink pixellated balloons that look like breasts a little further down. Because that's appropriate for a national ISP! Ho yus.

In honour of this piece of internet history, I have made an icon of the acidhead rockstar space knight.* Feel free to steal it!

*The filename is "beknighted.png". I crack myself up.

the ubiquity of sexual harassment

2009-06-11T13:07:22Z

I should know better than to open up this can of worms again on LJ, but there are two really worthwhile discussions going on which you should read:

On rape and men by cereta, challenging the non-sexist or non-sexist-identified men who always protest that "not all men are like that" to stop telling women they're wrong about their own experiences, and start actually challenging sexism where they encounter it.

You're the guy who would never rape a girl passed out on your bed (who, for that matter, knows that such an act would be rape), or the woman in the village your battalion/troop/whatever is overrunning. You're the guy who wouldn't do such a thing even when his buddies were heckling him, telling him he's a fag and a pussy if he doesn't. Even more, you're the guy who would stop his frat brother from raping that girl, and get her home. You're the guy who would stop his comrades, or at least report them.

Now, here's my question: where the fuck are you?

It's a challenging post, and the thread is full of heart-warming stories of men who didn't rape someone, which didn't particularly surprise me. I know an awful lot of men who are prepared to be decent when in a situation with a drunk or vulnerable woman; who will not only fail to rape her, but will look after her and make sure she gets home okay. That's not really the issue, for me. The issue is that I also know an awful lot of men who aren't prepared to be decent in those situations, and most of my friends have been raped or sexually assaulted once or multiple times, because no-one is prepared to challenge the sexist fuckwits. To tell them to shut up when they make rape jokes. To get them to chill out when they're drunk and yelling at strange women. To tell them to their face that they were out of order when they groped a woman in a club, or pestered someone for sex after they'd already said no, or carried on messing around with her after she passed out.

Before you join in the next conversation about rape protesting that "not all men are like that", think about how much you've done lately to challenge the idea that men are entitled to look at/comment on/touch/fuck women's bodies and if the woman objects or resists she's a stuck-up bitch; as cereta put it, "the idea that if a woman is not actively preventing a man from sticking his penis into her (and even then, if she's an enemy), he is doing nothing wrong, and hey, who can blame him?"

The second post I want to point you at is Perusing Penises in the Park (no, seriously) and some street harassment stories, khalinche's response to cereta. This is not so much about sexual violence or living in fear of rape, but the ubiquity of sexual harassment, especially if you live in the city:

I suppose the point of this long, long post is to do what I always try to do - tell a story. Today it's the story of what it's like to live with the constant possibility of having your appearance or person commented on, loudly, by strangers, and of being on your guard many times a day. It is not about my fear of being raped, because that doesn't figure in my life as much as in those of some of the commentators at the linked post. It is about men feeling that they have a right to talk and shout to me about what they want to do and what they think of my body. It is about trying to get through to the men who don't do this quite how common it is and how it affects the lives of most women.

I had limited success expressing this a year ago; and the number of men who told me then that I was wrong, that this was nothing to do with gender, that if I'd only been more sensible I could have avoided it, only proves how necessary this conversation continues to be. khalinche's post is excellent, and deserves a wide audience.

Edit: Talking about this in IRC, I ended uo looking up this post by Kate Harding, which has a lot of practical suggestions on how men who aren't like that can act to confront harassment and sexism where they encounter it, and why it's important that they do.

Victorian outfit?

2009-05-13T09:41:10Z

Does anyone have a Victorian/Edwardian outfit I could borrow for Thursday or Friday next week (21/22 May)? We're doing a two-day shoot in Greenwich and I've got custom-made costumes sorted for most of the scenes, but it would be really good to have a different one for me to wear at the beginning of the film when my character arrives at the house. It's about 1900, my character is a governessy type of young aristocrat, a bit like Jane Eyre but obviously later. Costume doesn't have to be perfect for the period, it wouldn't be out of character for her to be wearing something old-fashioned. Unfortunately our budget doesn't stretch to hiring something just for one 2 minute scene, and I should have sorted this out months ago but I've just had too many other things to think about.

Most of my Victoriana is either lower-class (maidservant etc) or a bit goth; plus I wore my black silk taffeta in the previous film and it would be nice if it wasn't totally obvious how limited our wardrobe is ;)

I don't need a whole costume necessarily - bare minimum would be a hat, and a coat or travelling cloak which I could wear over one of my long skirts. But if anyone has a suitable dress or skirt suit in a size 8-12 that would be amazing. I can travel within London to collect on Mon-Wed next week, or cover postage costs. If you can help, I'll happily buy you something off Amazon or Play.com to say thankyou. :)

invitations round two

2009-05-04T11:48:30Z

I have two more DW invite codes - leave a comment if you're interested.

Not first come first served this time, I'm afraid. I'd rather give them to people who actually intend to use the service to blog, not people who just want to squat the username. I reserve the right to give preference to people whose blogs I am particularly interested in reading.

Edit: All taken now - to the writers of two of my favourite LJs, hoorah.

today's beautiful things

2009-05-01T12:06:01Z

Stephen Fry's letter to himself: Dearest absurd child
"Yes, you will grow to be a very, very, very, very lucky man who is able to express his nature out loud without fear of hatred or reprisal from any except the most deluded, demented and sad. But that is a small battle won. A whole theatre of war remains. This theatre of war is bigger than the simple issue of being gay, just as the question of love swamps the question of mere sexuality. For alongside sexual politics the entire achievement of the enlightenment (which led inter alia to gay liberation) is under threat like never before. The cruel, hypocritical and loveless hand of religion and absolutism has fallen on the world once more."

Filament Magazine
"A new magazine for women. I felt the world was in desperate need of one with:

Intelligent, inspiring articles, and no fashion, celebrity gossip or diets

Erotic photography of men based on research about what women think is sexy.

It's hard copy, quarterly and the first issue will be posted out on 1 June.

(Reviewed by Erotica Cover Watch and featuring photography by the talented Ara Maye McBay)

Dreamwidth invite codes

2009-05-01T11:12:27Z

I have four shiny Dreamwidth invite codes. Any takers?

Edit: All gone :)

This entry was originally posted at http://helenic.dreamwidth.org/322149.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

policing and civil liberties

2009-05-01T10:41:51Z

I've written a couple of articles this week for Police State UK:

Connecting the Dots

While some writers have linked the policing of the G20 to the history of policing and political dissent, even the independent media have mostly failed to situate this connection in a wider context.

How about this for context: The last couple of years has seen a stream of increasingly repressive legislation, denying the conscience of the individual moral agency and responsibility, and curtailing the rights of the many to protect the few. (So the excuse goes; but do we, the public, really need legal protection from people who look at kinky porn or photograph policemen?) Scare-mongering propaganda urging people to report suspicious behaviour among their neighbours. Ubiquitous surveillance enhanced by new technology; endless strategies designed to make it easier to keep tabs on people, such as centralised databases; internet surveillance; making Oyster cards the cheapest way of using the Tube. Exaggerating the threat of an illusory enemy as an excuse to treat the general public as guilty until proven innocent. Terrorism is less dangerous than bird flu or sunbathing; and yet Section 44 uses it as the excuse to grant the Met stop and search powers which intimidate and inconvenience countless members of the general public.

Call me paranoid, but there's a pattern here. And it's getting worse.

MPA defend peaceful protest

Tim Godwin and Chris Allison accepted responsibility in vague terms for events, while denying any specific culpability, and persistently washed their hands of the actions of "individuals". They couldn't give detailed answers on the subjects of any pending investigations. But they were also reasonably conciliatory, and accepted the need for a review of police strategy, to "learn lessons for the future".

However, I'm cautiously optimistic that if the Members of the MPA have anything to do with it, the investigation will be sympathetic and conscientious.

Police State UK

2009-04-29T12:35:17Z

Police State UK.

This is what Denny and I have been working on for the last couple of weeks. It's still a bit buggy, and we haven't fixed the theme in IE 6 or for the subpages yet, but it's functional. Readers, commenters, and contributors are very much welcomed. Please, if you care about civil liberties and human rights in the UK, have a look and pass on the link.

There's an RSS Feed here; feel free to syndicate it. DW feed is police_state_uk_feed.

Thanks.

Dreamwidth

2009-04-15T13:45:05Z

I'm excited about Dreamwidth, for all the reasons listed here and more. Denny has been involved with the beta phase of the site, and has been trying to get me to submit some site designs or journal themes. I'm well up for this in principle, but time is sadly the limiting factor. I'm still hoping to send something to them, but I haven't had the chance yet.

Either way, Denny has very generously let me have his first invite code. I need to use it soonish, as he can't get any more til I've signed up. I don't think I want to disembark to Dreamwidth entirely. I've got a permanent LJ account and an awful lot of history on this site. My first LJ account was created in 2001, and I've been writing in libellum for over six years. When I post publicly, my readership is quite impressive, particularly once people start linking my posts. It's a very useful forum if I want to say anything important.

On the other hand, I haven't used it for personal journalling for over six months now. That wasn't a deliberate decision. It was a combination of two things: lack of time, particularly once I started the Job of Doom, and then entered the current crazy career phase I'm now in, juggling five or six simultaneous work tracks per week. The other factor was the extent to which I used libellum as a professional blog when I was still trying to live off my art. After using it as a marketing tool, it was harder to go back to using it the way I used to.

So I'm not abandoning LJ. But I do want to support the Dreamwidth project. At the moment, it looks like it would make most sense to continue to use libellum as a public blog, for political debate and advertising my art and design work, and use a new Dreamwidth account for private journalling.

What I'm stuck on is username. Libellum has never been a 'nick' - it's the name of this journal, exactly as if I'd named a paper journal. Calling a new journal the same thing would be pointless. I don't really have a constant nick for use online, but the closest thing to it is helenic, which was my original idea for the Dreamwidth account. (Pun on "Hellenic" and "Helen nick", geddit?)

However, I've just discovered that helen is still available on Dreamwidth. Which would be really cool, in an early adopter sort of way. I doubt I'm going to get the chance to be Helen on many sites, so I should probably grab the opportunity. But bizarrely, helenic feels more "me". I've never been "Helen" online, mostly because it's never available but partly because I know a few Helens and I'm rarely the default one; if friends refer to me it's usually as "Helen L" or "Helen (libellum)". I don't identify with the name particularly, and I don't feel I have more right to it than any other Helens who might want Dreamwidth accounts.

This is coming out sounding far more foolish a question than it did in my head. Ah well. I put it to you, o wise flist:

View Poll: Dreamwidth username

sent to my MP and London Assembly Member today

2009-04-10T15:36:13Z

FOR THE ATTENTION OF
David Lammy MP
Labour MP for Tottenham

Dear Mr Lammy,

I am sure by now that you are aware of the allegations of police brutality against demonstrators during the G20 last week. This week, enough evidence has come to light surrounding the death of Ian Tomlinson that an independent inquiry has been launched, a fact for which I am very thankful.

I remain concerned, however, that the case of Ian Tomlinson's death may drown out the other incidents which took place on April 1 and 2 2009. This case has already demonstrated the willingness of the Metropolitan Police and the IPCC to cover up the truth. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/09/g20-police-assault-ian-tomlinson-g20 provides a good summary of the many attempts by the police to close down the investigation, prevent crucial evidence from being published, and deflect blame away from themselves.

Since the protests last week, eye-witness accounts have flooded online media with convincing and consistent reports of police brutality. The tactic of kettling protesters has already, quite rightly, been publicly questioned. Batons and shields were used aggressively against peaceful protesters inside the Bishopsgate kettle on April 1. Even police medics joined in the fray, enthusiastically hitting demonstrators with full-arm swings from a position of safety behind police lines.

Around midnight on April 1, teams of baton-wielding riot police with dogs were sent to clear hundreds of peaceful protesters from the climate camp in Bishopsgate while the national media was absent. Not only were demonstrators injured and intimidated, but the police wilfully destroyed their personal property - a particularly hypocritical act given that the police used the vandalism of RBS by protesters to excuse police actions earlier that day.

All these eye-witness reports have, over the last week, been substantiated by an ever-increasing number of independent sources, including photographs and video footage. (http://london.indymedia.org.uk/articles/1068 provides some useful links.)

Contrary to the narrative presented by most national media, most protesters were peaceful, and the police response was violently disproportionate. I have been appalled by the biased reporting of this case in the BBC and other national media, which I assume can only be the result of police pressure. I am concerned that this suppression will allow the bigger picture of police conduct and strategy to go unchecked.

I hope that justice is met regarding Ian Tomlinson's death, and that not only the individual officers, but also their superiors, will be brought to account. I also hope that the countless incidents of unprovoked police brutality against hundreds of peaceful demonstrators will be publicly accounted for. Ian Tomlinson was not the only innocent person to be assaulted by police, and the survivors of aggressive policing deserve justice as much as the victims.

I urge you to raise this matter in the House of Commons, and put pressure on the police for an independent inquiry into the wider issue of police conduct and strategy during law-abiding demonstrations. Police should enable peaceful protest, not impede it. The strategy of kettling is more likely to cause violence than contain it, and the use of riot shields and batons against peaceful protesters is unacceptable.

Many people in this country are unhappy with recent decisions made by this government, and have legitimate fears for the future. Personally, I am concerned by a pattern of increasingly repressive legislation curtailing our civil liberties and personal agency. In a party system our power to effect change is limited, and public demonstration remains one of our best options for making our voices heard. If exercising our democratic right to protest results in us being intimidated, unlawfully detained, and physically assaulted, then this country is more police state than democracy.

Yours sincerely,
Helen Lambert

Sent via Write to them. Given David Lammy MP's track record, I'm not particularly confident that he'll speak out on this, so I've also sent letters to Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer and Lord West of Spithead, who debated the use of force against protesters before the G20 last week.

I've also signed this petition against the use of kettling at peaceful demonstrations. And I'll be at the Memorial Protest tomorrow.

G20: new evidence

2009-04-09T13:21:08Z

I've been continuing to add links and quotes to my previous post, trying to keep everything in one place. I do want to call attention to a couple of things though.

You probably all know by now that yesterday evening, additional footage was released of Ian Tomlinson's assault, clearly showing the full-arm swing with a baton which was directed at him from behind. The officer in question has now handed himself in.

This is positive. It means that people are beginning to accept the undeniable reality of disproportionate and unprovoked police violence on that day. It means that the individual accepts culpability, perhaps even feels remorse - although that seems unlikely given the late hour of his confession. And it means that justice, of a sort, will hopefully be served.

But it's also worrying, because if all the blame falls on a single officer or officers, it may deflect attention from everything else that happened. Ian Tomlinson wasn't the only person to be assaulted and injured by police. The peaceful protesters who were assaulted were no less innocent. Hell, even the protesters who started shouting and shoving might have had a point, after being threatened and unlawfully detained for hours with no food, water or medication.

Ian Tomlinson's death, while tragic, is not the whole story. I am glad that this case is being given the attention it deserves. But it's not the only case. The problem here is systemic.

Every time photos or video is released which corroborates the eye witness accounts, which have been many and consistent since April 1, it makes the rest of those accounts seem more plausible.

Eye-witnesses claimed that Ian Tomlinson was shoved and batoned by police.

Eye-witnesses claimed that police made free with their batons, attacking unarmed people who were protesting peacefully.

Eye-witnesses claimed that in the Bishopsgate kettle on the afternoon of April 1st, police medics were among the most violent with their batons, reaching over the front line to attack protesters.
"We turned to see the police hitting people. A whole line of them lashing out indiscriminately again and again. Two officers close to me who had “Police Medic” written on their back were walking up and down behind the line of their colleagues, protected from direct assault, reaching over and thrashing with the most gusto of all."
(from Indymedia, Saturday 04 April 2009)

Police medics doing exactly this can be seen in this video, 2:07-2:09. (Look out for the green patches they're wearing.)

Also in this video can be seen police baton-charging seated, unarmed protesters - at the Bishopsgate demonstration on April 1st (05:30-05:44). Climate Camp had not been charged yet; this was in broad daylight, in the middle of the kettle outside the Bank of England. This was people responding to the police assault passively and peacefully by choosing to sit down, have a smoke and look them in the eyes. They were attacked with batons and shields.

So, while I haven't yet seen any video evidence confirming the stories from Climate Camp on the evening of the 1st (beyond the footage of the initial swoop), an increasing number of independent sources are telling the same story about Climate Camp. And thus far, the eye-witnesses have been proved more right than wrong. Their accounts need to be taken seriously by the press, and by an independent investigation on the G20 policing.

I'll be at the G-20 Meltdown memorial and protest this Saturday, marching for our democratic right to protest without fear of police brutality. It'd be good to see you there.

the G20 protests: truth and mirage

2009-04-08T12:07:34Z

Everyone in London has been following the saga of the G20 protests and the police response to it. But I keep finding things other people haven't seen, and other people keep finding things I haven't seen, and when I told my mum and dad about this at the weekend they hadn't heard about any of it, so I'm not sure how far this has spread in the national press yet.

And even if you're in London, if your sources are the BBC, the free papers or the Evening Standard, you've probably got a distorted version of events.

I wasn't at the protests; I was at work, and the evening was romauld's birthday, so I was spending time with him instead. I'd been invited to the Climate Camp by various hippie friends, and considered going to it, but I had mixed feelings about using the G20 as a vehicle for general protest. The G20 was convened as a financial summit to sort out global recession and world trade. I'd read up on it a bit and had a sketchy understanding of quite how complex the whole messy business was, and I felt that the world leaders would have their work cut out to curtail protectionism, and keep trade links from breaking which might take years to rebuild. Never mind world peace at the same time. President Obama has been criticised for trying to fulfil his progressive campaign promises at the same time as sort the economy out, and not really achieving either; critics argue he should fix the economy first and then deal with the rest of it. And while the Copenhagan summit is arguably too late to deal with climate change, it's only in six months' time, so I was sort of disinclined to tell the G20 they should be sorting out Jobs, Justice and Climate Change at the same time as all the complex financial stuff.

Since then I've rethought that. Not only because we should be thinking about environmental and financial crises holistically if we want to solve them, rather than compartmentalising - I don't think that's realistic with our present governmental system, but I still think it's true - but because the police response to the protests was shocking, and I wish I'd been there with a camera, been there non-violently, so I could have added my voice to the eye-witness accounts flooding the internet over the next few days and insisting that the media representation of what happened was wrong.

Okay, there's a lot to get through here, so I'm going to attempt it in roughly chronological order.

Early reports

These are the first reports I saw:

Police clash with G20 Protesters BBC News on Wednesday, 1 April 2009, 15:46 - putting the instigation of violence squarely on the heads of protesters

G20 protests: Riot police, or rioting police? - George Monbiot for the Guardian, Wednesday 1st April 16:16

G20: The strong arm of the law - Rowena Davis and Sunny Hundal for the Guardian, Wednesday 1 April 17:36.

Hobby horses of the apocalypse! Penny Red, Wednesday 1 April

Added 09/04/09: G20 - The best press photos - April Fools Day - April 1, 2009

On the night of Wednesday 1st April, I followed friends at the protest through facebook, texts and twitter. Reports were that they had been kettled for no reason, the police were being very heavy handed, stopping people leaving with batons and shields. Some protesters were angry and fighting back. It was all very ugly but no-one could get out. People were frightened and angry. No-one knew who had thrown the first punch but there was a general consensus that if it was a protester, it was a case of a rogue individual rather than a united group initiative.

Meanwhile the London papers, the Metro, the BBC are full of stories of violent anarchists, destroying property and breaching the peace, and forcing the poor police to rein them in. I don't have links for those because they made me so pissed I closed without saving. Some of the following articles link back to them though.

Eyewitness accounts

On Facebook I am surrounded by people who were there, linking to blog posts and eyewitness accounts. People started to talk about the kettles; they started to talk about the events after police tried to close Climate Camp down on April 1.

By GreenerBlog: Kettling: the tactic that backfired and Kettling: How should we respond?

The Guardian continues to be the only paper corroborating the eyewitness reports I'm receiving through blogs and personal accounts on social networking sites.

Did the handling of the G20 protests reveal the future of policing? - Duncan Campbell for the Guardian, Friday 3 April

Since Climate Camp is where I would have been, had I been there - if I'm going to protest anything it's climate change, there's no point protesting about the recession in my opinion - I am fascinated and horrified by the reports coming in of police behaviour after dark, once they've cleared all the journalists out of the area.

The siege of Climate Camp by Stuart White, April 2, 2009

What I saw - Various eye-witness accounts of police brutality when they cleared out Climate Camp on the evening of April 1, organised by a medic who was baton-charged by police.
At 7:10 I was sitting around near south end, north end had a bicycle-powered sound system up and people dancing, there were a few (<10?) drunk idiots slumped round being incoherently rude to the police but absolutely no threat or sign of violence. It was just turning too dark for TV crews and commuters had left. Then this happened (link to youtube video). Riot police turned up maybe 6-8 deep south end (video I don’t think shows lines behind the two front lines who were actually charging), two deep north end, started kettling us (no-one in or out). Then the south end baton-charged. They charged us sat down praying, they charged people sitting round eating tea, they were hitting people faster than they could run away, and going for heads rather than legs. At first people tried standing in front of them hands in the air (to show you aren’t holding weapons), but they were getting beaten up so people ran, and they were still getting hit. I saw three people throwing fruit, but as far as I could tell that was as violent as resistance got. You can see on the video people chanting ‘This is not a riot’ and ’shame on you’, no-one hitting the police back.

Greens protest formally over G20 police tactics - "The protesters' stories of police brutality and the police's story of complete professionalism just don't stack up," says Jenny Jones

These two posts by Bristle are good collections of photos and eyewitness accounts:
Watching the police: Attack on the G20 Climate Camp (part 1)
Watching the police: Attack on the G20 Climate Camp (part 2)

Let's refresh our memories as to what these violent, anarchic protesters actually getting up to that was so provocative:

Climate Camp in the City

The Calm Before The Storm - With the world watching Climate Camp 2009

Ian Tomlinson

The mainstream press still hasn't picked up on the unprovoked brutality of police against protestors on the night of April 1st. They are, however, starting to question the original "evil protesters, professional police" narrative, because of the investigation the Guardian ran this week into the death of Ian Tomlinson, inside the kettle near the Bank of England on the afternoon of April 1.

Video reveals G20 police assault on man who died
and accompanying articles:
Police 'assaulted' bystander who died during G20 protests
Ian Tomlinson death: G20 witnesses tell of dogs, batons and an attack by police

De Menezes taught the Met nothing by Duncan Campbell

Extended Youtube footage - including of a single bottle being hurled at police as they shielded Tomlinson from the crowd. (A far cry from the rain of bricks claimed to have been thrown at polce medics by protestors in the Evening Standard.)

Ian Tomlinson: What happened? - by GreenerBlog with links to eyewitness accounts.

Added 17:56 "Krishnan Guru-Murthy of Channel 4 News says that ITN have exclusive footage that 'shows police clearly striking out at him with a baton.' Will be on the news tonight at 7 PM." (thanks to cavalorn)

Added 09/04/09: G20 Police Attack Protestors Causing Severe Injuries (Youtube video)

Added 09/04/09: Sousveillance notes by Denny on Thuesday 9 April on the use of batons by police medics in the Bishopsgate kettle.

Added 09/04/09: And this is finally getting international coverage:
Questions About Police Tactics During G-20 - NY Times, April 6, 2009, 6:26 pm

Media propaganda

What we have here seems to be media propaganda resulting in a mirage, and victim-blaming on a grand scale. This means that most people in the UK still believe the protesters were the original instigators of violence, that the police only responded to force once a riot had already begun, and that the police response was restrained and legitimate. This propaganda needs to be challenged.

Correcting the media narrative of the G20 protests on April 1, 2009, from CeaseFire Magazine, Tuesday, April 7, 2009 21:21
“Anti-capitalist protesters embarked upon a wrecking spree within a City branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland today,” shrieked The Times on April 1, “and engaged in running battles with police as G20 demonstrations turned violent. Police were forced to use dogs, horses and truncheons to control a crowd of up to 5,000 people who marched on the Bank of England, in Threadneedle Street, on the eve of the London summit.”

This narrative of events is entirely typical. Under the headline “Police clash with G20 protestors”, the BBC reported that “protesters stormed a London office of the Royal Bank of Scotland”, later adding that: “officers later used ‘containment’ then ‘controlled dispersal’” (BBC, April 1). The Guardian reported: “The G20 protests in central London turned violent today ahead of tomorrow’s summit, with a band of demonstrators close to the Bank of England storming a Royal Bank of Scotland branch … [S]ome bloody skirmishes broke out as police tried to keep thousands of people in containment pens” (The Guardian, April 1).

What is interesting about this narrative is that it precisely reverses the events of the day.

Media quietly admits smearing G20 protestors by Sunny Hundal for Liberal Conspiracy, April 3, 2009 at 1:10 pm

As of today, the BBC are finally starting to catch up with events: G20 death man's son seeks answers

Added 04/09/04: The BBC is still behind everyone else: How should the police handle protests? on Have Your Say, Wednesday, 8 April, 2009, 16:55

added 16:13: G20 policing caused man's death: police coverup and media lies (lots more coverage at Indymedia London)

added 09/04/09: Did Costumes and Props Undercut the Seriousness of the G-20 Protests?
Is the media to blame for focusing so much on what is most visually arresting, or are the protesters at fault for spending too much energy attracting attention and not enough articulating practical steps that might actually change the system?

Added 09/04/09: G20 assault: how Metropolitan police tried to manage a death - The Guardian, Thursday 9 April 2009.
It began with an anodyne press release from the Metropolitan police more than three hours after Ian Tomlinson died. It ended with a police officer and an investigator from the Independent Police Complaints Commission asking the Guardian to remove a video from its website showing an unprovoked police assault on Mr Tomlinson minutes before his heart attack.

Stay balanced

Okay, so. I don't want to join the hyperbolic brigade screaming that the police are murderous pigs. Eyewitness evidence can build a compelling case, but it's not proof, and there is already a counter-mirage being thrown up by over-excited liberals making uncorroborated claims of police violence. People saying Ian Tomlinson was beaten to death with police batons, etc. Lots of people have been angry with the police since 1991 and some of the myths springing up around the G20 are frankly unhelpful. But this doesn't mean eye-witness accounts should be dismissed out of hand, and this doesn't mean the press coverage is any less fanciful.

I wasn't there. I can't work this out just by browsing the internet; there should be an independent inquiry (rather than by the police watchdog, who as a point of policy use police reports as evidence rather than taking any independent interviews from witnesses!). All I'm trying to do here is raise awareness. This is more complicated than the BBC would have you believe. Stay sceptical. Ask questions.

--

Edited 18:05: People are engaging with this, getting angry, reposting it. That's great. Some of you are writing blogposts or to your MPs; even better. I do want to re-iterate the warning above, though.

For instance, a few people have already started circulating the claim "the police baton-charged a prayer meeting". This claim derives from the accounts given at What I saw. These reports make for powerful reading, and I was very emotionally affected by them. Thus far, however, they appear to be the accounts of a small group of acquaintances, who would have re-inforced each other's version of events before posting. They match some reports outside the group (linked above) but so far I haven't seen video or photo evidence of the police charging seated protestors, or the attacks by police getting bloodier than what you can see here.

The prayer meeting claim seems to be corroborated by the fact that a 'Buddhist meditation circle' and 'prayer for peace' were scheduled to take place at around the same time as the police charge shown in the above video - between 6-7pm on April 1st. However, this would have been taking place inside Climate Camp, not at the edge where people were standing up as the police approached.

That's not to say it didn't get nastier after dark, or that the eye-witness accounts posted to blogs are fabricated. However, I think it is important when writing about this, particularly to MPs, to focus on the evidence that is backed up by several independent sources. If you care about this, I would advise you to put the sensationalistic headlines down and concentrate on the stuff we can make a strong case for. There is more than enough of this to make a point.

I am anxious that the protesters and their supporters are in danger of shooting themselves in the foot by getting over-excited and making exaggerated claims. The meme of violent police is as catchy as the meme of violent protestors. If we pounce on the most dramatic claims, and they are subsequently disproved, it may weaken any remaining case we try to make.

--

What the Met have to say

Here are some articles covering the police point of view of events:

Operation Glencoe policing and security for the G20 London Summit - Metropolitan Police Service - offical Met reports.
Police are now effecting a slow dispersal of the remaining group of protesters who formed part of the Climate Camp demonstration at the top end of Bishopsgate. These people have now been demonstrating for over 12 hours. While this has been peaceful, they are being moved because Bishopsgate is a main arterial route. To allow them to stay would cause serious disruption to the life of the community in this area. Police are using powers under section 14 of the Public Order Act to do this. They have made every effort to tell protesters they would need to leave, warning them several times through loudhailers. (evening of April 1)

Blogs by police officers who were working at the G20:
Stressed Out Cop: Apathy in the UK and Any one of us

G20: Sheepdogs and Wolves - Friday, 3 April 2009

Most officers were on extended shifts (12 hours minimum though most did 16+ each day) and when things went properly pearshaped we had no relief and were just kept on, regardless of when we were due to start the next day. On the 1st for example, most of the serials were on an 0800 start, they didn't finish until 0200 and were then due back on for 0430 - so much for a minimum of 11 hours between shifts. After spending 14 hours getting battered with bottles and poles in one of the cordons in the City we were retasked to clear and take the climate camp.
(romauld points out: "There is no evidence that anyone on any police barricade spent '14 hours getting battered with bottles and poles'. Since that would have involved non-stop violent assault onthat picket from 10am onwards right up to the moment climate-camp was finally wrecked circa 1am." The first charge on Climate Camp happened while it was still light.)

Whose Street? Our Street!. (There are more links in the sidebar to other police blogs. I haven't had time to go through those yet but looks like there's quite a lot of material if you're interested.)

added 17:13: G20: The upside of 'kettling' John O'Connor for the Guardian, Thursday 2 April 2009 16.30

added 09/04/09: Sigh by mummylonglegs on April 1, 2009.
Fools pretending to be protestors. Terrorists pretending to be protestors. Vandals pretending to be protestors. Greenies, Beardies, Trots, Commies, Scroungers, Losers and Wasters all pretending to be protestors. They are not protestors, they are fuckwits.

Under surveillance: police target environmental protesters and journalists This Guardian video was found by Denny - it was filmed last year, but the commentary clearly illustrates police attitudes towards the free press and the right of the public to protest.

Context and commentary

Okay. There's more, but that pretty much frames the picture that has formed for me over the last week. Here's some analysis by people who have more time to write about things than I do.

Some historical context: A Brief History of Violence by cannons_at_dawn

Directionless Bones, a militant radical, on violence and police strategy:
Put People First, Psychological Biases, and the Role of Violence
G20 Protests: Perspectives on Police Tactics, Part 1 - Liberal Moralism
G20 Protests: Perspectives on Police Tactics, Part 2 - Militant Strategy
Machiavelli for Anarchists, Part 3 - Public and Private, Contracts of the Powerful and the Powerless

JohnQPublican, commentating on eye-witness reports, media management and hypocrisy:
Feast of Fools
They predicted a riot - containing a useful critical analysis of some of the eyewitness accounts.
Feast of Fools II: Foot in Mouth

I still blame police brutality by Sunny Hundal for Liberal Conspiracy, April 2, 2009 at 4:21 am.
So who will excuse police brutality now? by Sunny Hundal for Liberal Conspiracy, April 8, 2009 at 4:38 am.
Sunny was one of the four journalists who were present during the protest on behalf of the Guardian; hence that paper's sympathy with eyewitness reports even when they contradict the official version of events.

Added 17:40: G20 death is a sign of systemic problems in the policeby Ian Dunt for Yahoo News, Wed April 8 at 11:01am.
Picture the scene: it is around 14:00 BST. A group of peaceful protestors around the Bank of England are kept about 20 metres apart from another group of peaceful protestors on Mansion House Street. Much has been written about the effect this has on demonstrators - namely to make them more irritable and rowdy than they were previously. But it must surely have an effect on the police as well. At best, the people they are policing are treated as cattle. At worst, they are treated as a public disorder event which hasn't happened yet.

They are not, of course. They are British subjects exercising their democratic right to protest. But police behaviour is influenced by the words of their commanders, and the operational basis on which the policing is conducted.

Added 09/04/09: G20: Police turned my dissatisfaction into anger - Saturday 04 April 2009 15:17 by Longdancingboy
A moment before the clashes started, when the crowd had started to push forward against the police line I thought to myself, ‘God, those cops must feel pretty scared’. Their line of a few dozen was trapped in between two groups of many hundreds. They had no way out. I was honestly worried for their safety if there was a crush.

Then a strange thing happened. The instant the officers started raining down blows the heads of anyone and everyone I lost all sympathy for them. In a flash they had gone from being on my side, there for my protection and safety, to causing harm to innocent people. I actually became afraid of being hurt by the police.

And this when I had been a Special Constable for eighteen months when I was at university. I know from first-hand experience that it’s a tough, dangerous and mostly thankless job, even when they’re not on the front line of an angry crowd. Yet suddenly my perspective shifted. Now they’ve lost my respect. This makes me extremely sad.

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It has been suggested to me that it is possible that the mainstream press was so slow to point blame at the police because of the stringent legal regulations in place which restrict this. I have been informed that the police can, and will, sue journalists for slander if they make claims about the police or individual police officers that cannot be proved in court. I don't have any sources for this, but would appreciate them.

Okay. I should do some work now. Feel free to add links in comments. I'll keep this entry public; you're welcome to link to it.

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Edit 14:18: Denny has posted the letter he sent to his MP this morning here. It's a good letter. If you care about this at all, you should write to yours.

Edit 18:54: dennyd and I will be at the G20 Meltdown protest this Saturday. See you there?

EDIT 22:01 Wow this is moving fast...
Ian Tomlinson death: New video footage from G20 protests gives fresh angle on attack - Wednesday 8 April 2009
Footage originally released on ITN Channel Four News at 7pm this evening, showing the police office who attacked Tomlinson drawing back his arm and hitting him full swing with the baton from behind.

Ian Tomlinson death: Police officer comes forward to IPCC - Wednesday 8 April 19:50

Riot police officer comes forward as Ian Tomlinson death investigation begins - April 9 2009

Good, the individual has accepted culpability and police use of batons against protestors will hopefully be called into question.
Clever, the individual handing themselves in deflects culpability from higher up the chain of command - where responsibility for police strategy and conduct still lies.

I hope this doesn't close the whole story down. I hope it paves the way for more revelations. Because this was a big deal, but it was by no stretch of the imagination the whole deal.

Edited 22:41: John Q Publican apparently agrees with me: Feast of Fools III: Guilty.