Thank the Goddess I’m not a Palestinian – cos the Israeli “defence” forces are wiping them out!

First, a truly incomprehensible attack on innocent Jewish men, women and children, using the excuse there are a lot of Israelis “in danger” from “Palestine officials”.

Let’s examine the charges by Israeri concerning the “oh-so-dangerous Militants”:
Here’s the low-down on why Netenyahu is overseeing these brutality. The Israelis have state-of-the-art firearms, whereas the Palestinian community have virtually nothing left.

Sling vs helicopter gunships, automatic rifles, grenades, the rape of Palestinian women and children… how can any sane person see the Israeli response as proportional???

An example (thanks to the Guardian: after Palestinians allegedly killed in a terrorist attack on a Jerusalem synagogue, 2 PFLP suspects (note that word: suspects) killed “in retaliation by Israeli “security” forces. Netenyahu ordered the destruction of the homes of alleged suspects (no judicial oversight, no rule of law, Netenyahu decides these men did the attack, and not only killed the “suspects” but also ordered the demolishment of these so-called “suspects” homes. Was that proportionate action? Making families homeless, even though the people living there would have had no idea of what, if anything, the “suspects” may have been up to. This is not justice: it’s a bare-faced landgrab, designed to make Palestinian families homeless and leave the way clear for more Kibbutzin and other illegal “settlers”.

US leader Obama criticized the attack on the Synagogue, which killed four innocent people, including US citizens Aryeh Kupinsky, Cary William Levine, and Moshe Twersky, and injured several more. He said:

There is and can be no justification for such attacks against innocent civilians.

“The thoughts and prayers of the American people are with the victims and families of all those who were killed and injured in this horrific attack and in other recent violence. At sensitive moment, it is all the more important for Israeli and Palestinian leaders and ordinary citizens to work cooperatively together to lower tensions, reject violence and seek a path forward towards peace.”

So you can see, Obama deplores the attacks on the Jews in Synagogue, but didn’t make any mention of the fact that the families of the alleged killers have had their homes demolished. Isn’t there something in American society about the right for private, family life? Oops, I nearly forgot: Any provisions in the US constitution only apply to US citizens. Palestinians being forcibly removed from their homes is okay as far as Uncle Sam is concerned. Plus Israel is an important ally of the USA’s. Whereas the USA, like Israel, consider Palestinians to be the enemy. Even the children are viewed as terrorists-in-waiting. It’d be funny, if you didn’t realize it was about actual living human beings. Fucking Netanyahu, fucking Obama.

This is a public service announcement… with wrecking balls!!!

Why oh why doesn’t someone put an end to the Israeli’s war on innocents and its seizure of Palestinian property? Can someone explain to me: let’s assume one of the “suspects” did something wrong. Surely the suspect should be arrested and face a fair trial. But no, the “suspects” are killed, or tortured, or similarly disappeared. And an entire family is made homeless. Is this right? I’d love to hear a rational argument from pro-Israeli figures on this subject.

The Israeli government is despicable. Collective punishment, ghettoization, arrest and murder of innocent people. That’s the kind of crap the Nazis got up to. And now the Israelis are up to it. Makes me feel disgustingly sick. I hate the authorities in Israel, and I hate the Western powers (eg USA, UK, France) who support them. Leave the Palestinians alone FFS! Even the Nazis didn’t keep up their war of terror for this long!

Cop cleared for using taser on suspect in cell?

Well, what a shock (pun intended)!  A police officer tasered a naked man in a cell because the suspect threw his underpants at him… and his brutality has been vindicated by a court!

Wiltshire PC Lee Birch, the cop who shot the man was cleared of assault and misconduct.  He must have acted in self-defence, as everyone knows that underpants are dangerous weapons… And the victim, Daniel Dove, hadn’t even committed a crime.  He had been arrested for being “drunk and disorderly” but was later released with no charge (except for the electrical charge he got from the stun gun of course). Which makes me wonder: if throwing his underpants at PC Birch was such a vicious attack that warranted use of a taser, how come he wasn’t charged for that attack?  And why was Dove being strip-searched anyway?  He was arrested for being drunk and disorderly, not suspicion of possessing drugs or carrying concealed weapons.  It’s not routine procedure to strip-search suspects.

My guess is that Dove was pissed off for being nicked for no reason.  He probably got mouthy, so the police decided to put him in his place and humiliate him by strip-searching him.  Dove was naked when he threw the underpants, but police rules state that during a strip-search the suspect should never be completely naked at any one point.  He should have been wearing a shirt or t-shirt when removing his underpants. Birch was deliberately humiliating him.  If it happened to me, I’d probably throw more than my underpants at the cop.

Cop about to taser a suspect in Burnley police cells

 

Unfortunately, police are using their tasers without proper reason all over the country. Lancashire Police constable Scott Fairclough used the electro-shock weapon on the 20 year old man after he had refused to be strip-searched.  The whole incident was captured on CCTV.  And Fairclough’s colleagues thought the whole thing was funny! One PC was heard saying the 50,000 volt weapon would make him “glow in the dark” and produce “blue flames coming out of his eye sockets. ” And another officer commented: “Ahh did you make him cry? Couldn’t happen to a nicer person.”

The Mirror reported:

In an interview, PC Fairclough said he asked the man to remove his clothing and was met with the reply: “Don’t come in here, you’ll regret it.”

He then said that he heard a deep inhalation of breath from the man and took that as a sign he was about to attack him and activated his Taser.

However, in its report, the IPCC said the CCTV footage it had seen showed the man arrested was not showing signs of being volatile towards officers before the Taser was used.

Guidelines state officers may use the weapon “when faced with violence or threats of violence of such severity that force is needed to protect the public, themselves or the individual concerned”.  I don’t see how any of these cases meet that criteria. And there are cases where taser use has been ridiculously cavalier.  Another Lancashire Police officer Stuart Wright tasered a63 year old blind man, Colin Farmer, because he supposedly mistook Farmer’s white stick for a samurai sword!  And Farmer clearly posed no danger to PC Wright at the time, as Mr Farmer was walking away from the cop and Wright shot him in the back.

The home office has reported that the police also use their tasers on children.  Every  day kids as young as 11 are being tasered!

Rachel Baines, chair of the Lancashire Police Federation, said there were “always lessons to be learned” where tasers were involved. She said: “The public still find it odd. We are under a lot of scrutiny, but it’s worth remembering that it is a less lethal option than using a baton and causes less injuries to people. We are pleased with the IPCC findings which say the uses were justified.”

Baines is missing the point here, even though she said it herself: tasers are allegedly “less lethal” but they have a horrific effect and can kill. Wikipedia says:

Tasers and other high-voltage stun devices can cause cardiac arrhythmia in susceptible subjects, possibly leading to heart attack or death in minutes by ventricular fibrillation, which leads to cardiac arrest and—if not treated immediately—to sudden death. People susceptible to this outcome are sometimes healthy and unaware of their susceptibility.[citation needed]

Although the medical conditions or use of illegal drugs among some of the casualties may have been the proximate cause of death, the electric shock of the Taser can significantly heighten such risk for subjects in an at-risk category. In some cases however, death occurred after Taser use coupled with the use of force alone, with no evidence of underlying medical condition and no use of drugs.

 

The taser is an  awful weapon.  The British police allow only highly trained officers to use firearms, but cops have to do little training before being issued with so-called “stun guns”.  Can you imagine what it would be like if the British police were armed with guns?

Plebgate: ‘lying is good’, say the police.

Remember when Andrew Michell, the then-Government Chief Whip in the House of Commons, was forced to resign in the aftermath of the “Plebgate” row, where police officers claimed he had called them “fucking plebs”. The insinuation was that Mitchell was a liar: after a meeting a year after the Plebgate affair with Police Federation representives from the West Mercia, West Midlands and Warwickshire forces, Ken Mackaill, chairman of the West Mercia federation, said Mitchell’s position was untenable. He resigned a week later.

But it was later alleged that they lied about what went on in the meeting – which had been taped – in order to support their colleagues in London. They were accused of deliberately misrepresenting the meeting and calling Mitchell’s integrity into question. There are even murmurings about a conspiracy to get rid of Mitchell.

IPCC deputy chair Deborah Glass said on Tuesday (15 October) the officers should face disciplinary panels to decide whether they lied. She said:

“In my view the evidence is such that a panel should determine whether the three officers gave a false account of the meeting in a deliberate attempt to support their MPS (Metropolitan police service) colleague and discredit Mr Mitchell, in pursuit of a wider agenda.

“In my opinion the evidence indicates an issue of honesty and integrity, not merely naive or poor professional judgment.”

If the IPCC has elected to investigate the case themselves, they would have the power to direct the forces to convene misconduct proceedings but have chosen not to exercise these powers. The Crown Prosecution Service is to review the relevant proof; but no officers are going to be prosecuted, are they? If the police can get away with murdering innocent bystanders (think Jean Charles de Menezes or Ian Tomlinson, or any victim of police brutality) what chance does Mitchell have? Very little. Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions, said at the weekend prosecutors would come to a decision on whether any officers or members of the public should be charged “as soon as we can”. I think we can all assume what that means.

Please comment on this story, it would be good to know what public opinion is about police dishonesty. There’s a Comment button below. 😉

Camover revisited…

Previous readers of I HATE HATE!!! may have seen my post of 27 Jan about the German sport “Camover” – an multi-player offline game that consists of destroying CCTV cameras. It’s a good idea, but unfortunately the puny, cowardly ISPs have been closing down sites thst are connected to it.

But never fear: here is a FAQ on a site about Camover: http://camover.noblogs.org/faq/faq-in-english/. Unfortunately, vlosing date for the original Camover game’s closing date was in February, and as far as I can tell, it’s now gone.

But why can’t we resurrect it? Make it international. CCTV is evil, and I live in the UK, a police state with probably most cameras in the world. So let’s do it!! Anyone interested, leave Comments or get me via Contact Form. CCTV is EVIL. So let’s kill the thing!!

Do as I say, not as I do.

Tory Chief Whip Andrew Mitchell: why don’t they put 50,000 volts up his ass?

In the first Prime Minister’s Questions session since Tory Chief Whip swore at police officers and called them “plebs”, Cameron has defended Andrew Mitchell against calls from the Opposition that his position is now untenable.

Ed Miliband, leader of the opposition Labour party, said in PMQs that Mitchell should be sacked. After all, as London mayor Boris Johnson said in last year’s Conservative convention, anyone who swears at a police officer must expect to be arrested as part of a zero-tolerance approach. One rule for the yobs, another for the elite, pointed out Miliband (though he didn’t really need to point this out – the elite have always enjoyed a cosy relationship with the forces of law and order, as well Ed knows, having been a member of tha t elite for quite some time).

It will be mildly interesting to see what’s done about Mitchell. Only mildly, because whatever is done ain’t gonna amount to a hill of beans. Slapped wrists, grudging “apologies”, then a donkey in Blackpool will bray the National Anthem or something and Mitchell’s tribulations will be yesterday’s news. No one cares, cos everyone knows there’s no point in caring.

Another mildly interesting story in the Guardian today is that a copper shot a blind man in the back with a 50,000 volt taser because he apparently thought the man’s white stick was a samurai sword. WTF? Ch Supt Stuart Williams, of Lancashire police, said the force deeply regretted the incident, in an apology as grudgingly given as Mitchell’s, then went on to explain:

Police had “received a number of reports that a man was walking through Chorley armed with a samurai sword”.

A description of the offender was circulated to officers and patrols were sent to look for the man. One of the officers who arrived in Chorley believed he had located the offender. Despite asking the man to stop, he failed to do so and the officer discharged his Taser.

Colin Farmer, the 61-year old victim of this electrocution said he was taking a slow walk to meet some friends when he became aware of some shouting. Next thing he knew, he had been zapped to the ground and forcibly restrained by an anonymous officer (anonymous cos the police ain’t telling and Farmer can’t identify the dickhead since he’s blind).

Ch Supt Williams said that as soon as officers realised their mistake, they took care of Hunter and gave him a lift to meet his friends. That was big of them, considering they could have killed the guy. Hunter, obviously not a young man, has already had two strokes and lives in fear of a third. And how in heck does a police officer mistake a blind man’s white stick for a samurai sword? I thought the whole point of the white stick was so people would realise its carrier was blind. But now, if I were blind, I’d be too scared to take my stick out with me. Who knows, maybe it’ll be a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachinegun used on the next unfortunate victim of mindless police brutality. Insanity.

British police can kill whoever they feel like killing – no one’s going to punish them

PC Simon Harwood, a member of the Met’s infamous “Territorial Support Group”, is a killer.  Nothing libellous about that claim: he dodged the bullet that was the charge of the manslaughter of Ian Tomlinson during the G20 demo in London (and remember, Tomlinson was not a demonstrator but merely a member of the public trying to get home after a day’s work), but the jury for the inquest into Tomlinson’s death found that he’d been “unlawfully killed” by the police officer – and the inquest jury came to this conclusion after seeing and hearing evidence just like that used in the subsequent trial.  So PC Harwood is a killer, who unlawfully killed Ian Tomlinson by way of a cowardly attack from behind.  Coward and killer – I foresee a successful career for him in the police.  How come he hasn’t been promoted yet?

Of course, Harwood is just one of a great many police officers who have killed people and gotten away with it scott free.  According to a Guardian article today, no police officer has been convicted of manslaughter for a crime committed while on duty since 1986, though since then hundreds have died in police custody or soon after contact with the police.  It was only because of Tomlinson’s family’s tenacity, the accumulation of evidence against Harwood and, perhaps most crucially, the video of the attack made by an American tourist, that Harwood was taken to court. And still he got away with it.  Many many people have been killed by the police, but these slayings are never even investigated, never mind prosecuted.  In her piece for the Guardian, Nadine El-Enany goes on:

Harwood’s actions were not exceptional. Not only have hundreds died in police custody, but also police violence at public events is commonplace, most recently during the student demonstrations of 2010, during which anti-fees protesters were charged at by officers on horses, atacked with batons and kettled late into the night. In a statement today, Defend the Right to Protest has highlighted the importance of “supporting all those in their struggle to hold the police accountable for their actions, whether on demonstrations, in our communities or in custody”.

Until the pyschopaths and thugs, potential killers, or actual killers like Harwood, are sacked from the force, until the police abandon such brutal forms of crowd control tactics like kettling, and accept that the right to free assembly and to demonstrate are clear-cut human rights, trust in the police will continue to fall. How can we trust and respect people like Harwood to defend us?

Police officer Harwood gets away with killing Ian Tomlinson

I’d like to say I’m surprised, but I’m not.  Police officers in Britain get away with this kind of thing all the time. No police officer has been found guilty of manslaughter in 25 years, despite hundreds of cases in which families have alleged wrongdoing. The “Independent” Police Complaints Commission initially refused to look into the allegation against Harwood – a serious allegation that a cop had killed someone – and it changed its mind only after the Guardian released video footage, recorded by a US businessman, showing Tomlinson being struck with a baton and pushed to the ground by a police officer. An IPCC report found its investigators had not been told about three police witnesses who, it was discovered 48 hours after Tomlinson’s death, confirmed they saw a colleague strike the news seller with a baton and push him to the ground (obvious cover-up… but by the IPCC or the Met? Or both?) There’s also the fact that Harwood has a very bad history of misconduct (not revealed to the jury until after the verdict).  This history includes the fact that Harwood retired from the Met “on health grounds” in 2001, shortly before a planned disciplinary hearing into claims that while off-duty he illegally tried to arrest a man in a road rage incident, altering notes retrospectively to justify his action – then the Met let him join up again making him a member of the infamous Territorial Support Group.

But hey, I’m just going over old ground here – read the Guardian’s excellent coverage here.

One more thing I have to mention here though: last year, after hearing similar evidence, an inquest jury ruled that Tomlinson was “unlawfully killed” by a police officer. They did so on the same standard of proof – beyond reasonable doubt. Neither jury was told about Harwood’s chequered disciplinary background.  So what’s that all about? If Harwood “unlawfully killed” Tomlinson but it wasn’t manslaughter… then surely that means it was murder? But I’m not a lawyer,so wtf do I know?

Police shoot unarmed Aboriginal teenagers in Sydney – New South Wales police minister, Mike Gallacher, defends the action

The Guardian tells us: “Civil liberties groups have called for an independent inquiry into the shooting of two Aboriginal teenagers in Sydney’s busy Kings Cross nightlife area at the weekend.”  They’d been joyriding, and mounted a crowded pavement in the early hours of Saturday morning, hitting two women.  But they were unarmed, surrounded by cops with guns, they weren’t going anywhere.  So why shoot them?  Well-known Aboriginal figure, Anthony Mundine, said: “I feel that it’s brutality at its best. Who shoots teenage kids, unarmed, cornered, trapped, ready to be arrested?”  But the New South Wales police minister, Mike Gallacher, retorted:

“Cops had seconds to make a decision. If someone’s not going to stop the car … and you’ve got a young woman on the front of the vehicle, you know, until such times as shown otherwise, I’m going to back the cops.”

Australia is one of the most racist countries in the world.  Even the USA try to appear as if they’re sorry about what they did to their indigenous population.  But Oz politicians seem to regard “black fellas” as legitimate targets for full-on violent tactics.  And the white Australian population as a whole aren’t much better, treating Aboriginal people as second or even third-class citizens, making them feel like illegal immigrants in their own country.

Okay, you can’t change the past.  What’s done is done.  But you can change what you do about the past.  And you can learn from your mistakes, quit treating Aboriginals as somehow less than human.  If Australia doesn’t sort its act out pronto, they’re gonna reap the whirlwind.

A demonstrator at a rally outside the New South Wales parliament protesting against the shooting of two teenagers in Sydney. Photograph: William West/AFP/Getty Images

It’s that pesky Territorial Support Unit again…

…but this time TSU officers have been acquitted of breaking into a man’s home and battering him.

The jury at Southwark crown court took just one hour to decide that police constables Mark Jones, Roderick James-Bowen and Nigel Cowley and detective constable John Donohue not guilty of assault occasioning actual bodily harm against Babar Ahmad. But they were told only half the story. They were deliberately kept in the dark about a civil case in 2009 in which the Met conceded Ahmad had been the subject of a “a serious, gratuitous and prolonged” attack – and paid him £60,000 in damages. Why was that kept from the jury? Usually, confessions are used as evidence of a defendant’s guilt.

The jury were also not informed of the fact that two of the officers on trial Jones and James-Bowen – had 40 separate allegations of assault against them between 1993 and 2007, the majority involving black or Asian men. These complaints were dismissed as “unfounded” at the time; but it’s hard to see how those officers had been accused of assault again and again, by unrelated citizens,if they were as lily-white as they’ve been portrayed.

Some people in authority are going to use the manslaughter charge against PC Steven Harwood as proof that the Met and its violent Territorial Support Unit have changed, and are no longer the vicious scumbags they used to be. Will you believe that? Look at the photos of Ahmad after his arrest, and consider the TSU’s reputation, before you make up your mind.

Ahmad after the Territorial Support Unit had finished with him

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Ian Tomlinson was unlawfully killed by Met cop Harwood – and that’s official!!

Today an inquest jury delivered a verdict of “unlawful killing” in the case of Ian Tomlinson, the newspaper seller who died after being attacked by a Metropolitan Police constable.  And the copper in question is PC Simon Harwood, a member of the Met’s infamous “Territorial Support Group”.

This blog has covered this case a couple of times – like here, and here – but here’s a quick recap.  On 1 April 2009 there was a demonstration in central London where the G20meeting was taking place.  Some demonstrators had gotten a bit rowdy, as had a number of the coppers policing the event, and the “Territorial Support Group” was out on the streets to restore “order”.  At about 7.20pm by the Royal Exchange Building, Ian Tomlinson was making his way home after a day’s work selling newspapers.  There were protesters nearby, and TSG officers, but Tomlinson was categorically not involved in the protests so it’s not at all clear why he attracted the attention of police officers.  But he did\get the attention of PC Simon Harwood.  There is CCTV footage of Mr Tomlinson walking past Harwood and other cops: then, for no apparent reason, Harwood is seen to run up behind Mr Tomlinson and shoved him forcibly in the back. It later transpired that Harwood had hit him with a baton.  Mr Tomlinson fell heavily to the ground and died.  There were a total of 4 postmortems carried out on Mr Tomlinson’s body: the first pathologist, Dr Freddy Patel, found that he died of a heart attack caused by coronary disease; but 3 other pathologists contradicted him, saying the cause of death was internal bleeding in the abdomen.

The Met tried hard to sweep this tragic event under the carpet: first of all he was painted by them as a violent protester; then, when it was made clear that he wasn’t involved in the demonstration, it was suggested that he was injured by protesters, and that he died because protesters prevented the heroic efforts of police officers to render first aid.  But of course, the CCTV footage put the lie to that bunch of crap.

Still the authorities tried to cover up for one of their own: the Met and the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to charge Harwood with any offence, even though the video and the testimony of witnesses attested to the cop’s vicious attack.  They tried hard to hide the truth; but public outrage finally forced them to hold  a public inquest into Mr Tomlinson’s death.

And that inquest has now found that Ian Tomlinson was unlawfully killed.  The jury declared that Tomlinson was, beyond reasonable doubt, killed by the baton attack and the shove.  Harwood’s attack was “unreasonable”.

The jury went on to say:

“As a result, Mr Tomlinson suffered internal bleeding which led to his collapse within a few minutes and his subsequent death.” The jury decided that at the time of the strike and push Tomlinson was was walking away from the officer and “posed no threat”.

The verdict was “unlawful killing”.  The killer was officer Simon Harwood.    So now Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions, is going to have to decide whether or not to charge Harwood with the killing; and his decision last year not to charge Harwood with manslaughter is going to be reviewed.  Maybe, just maybe, the family of Ian Tomlinson will see justice done.

A still from the CCTV footage showing Harwood deliver the fatal blow

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