No Justice, No Peace

Two years ago on the first of April Ian Tomlinson was struck to the ground by police and later died from his injuries [link]. There is currently an enquiry taking place into whether any charges should be placed upon the offending officer. However I feel as though I should backtrack and outline what actually happened surrounding the death of Ian Tomlinson.

On the first of April 2009 there were mass protests in London surrounding the G20 protests with some violent elements [link]. The reasons for the protests were many, some over the unfairness of the globalised capitalist agenda, some over climate change and some over the war in Iraq and Afghanistan [link] people spread out into the streets and brought London to a standstill.

It's not the actual protests however that are important for this discussion, it is the death of an innocent man and the subsequent cover up that is important. I've always been left and had a small ember of activism in my blood, a gift passed down from my parent, but this single even is something that truly changed my viewpoint on the world. Up to this point I viewed the police force as infallible and as being in the right in all cases. I still hold on the whole the police force is necessary and a force for good, don't misunderstand me as an anarchist and someone who wants the police to be dissolved, it is just my view that the police need to be held accountable for their mistakes.

The first news to hit the headlines was that of a protester dying in clashes with the police [link], this is not malice but shows that when looking at events such as these the news can often be incorrect, especially close to the time. This is when things became ugly.

At first it was claimed that Ian Tomlinson had tried to break through a police cordon as projectiles were being thrown at police [link]. It became evident, however, as amature footage surfaced that this claim was ridiculous [video below] and it became evident later that Tomlinson was not even a protester, he was simply walking back from work [link]. Moreover the footage shows Ian Tomlinson walking away from police with his hands in his pockets, being just about as nonthreatening as humanly possible. Alas this is not the end of the suspicious reports from the police.

Warning: Not for the weak of heart.


The first post-mortem on Ian Tomlinson claimed that he had died from natural causes linked to coronary heart disease, this was later retracted as a further two post-mortems claimed a heart attack [link] which could easily have been brought about from the assault. The pathologist who carried out the first incorrect post-mortem has since been suspended for other such inaccuracies [link] which suggests that the police as a force are not always as thorough as we would hope.

It has come to light recently in the enquiry that when the footage was shown back that the offending officer said "I think that's me" to which he got the reply "No, no it's not", he then said "I'm not chomping, I think that's me". The replying officer has reported to the inquest "I can't remember the exact words I used but he was wrong, he was being stupid" [link]. It has been shown that the offending officer was in fact responsible, these words echo with malice, they make me feel uncomfortable and angry. Now it is possible that the replying officer really didn't think it was him but in the face of such evidence it seems as though this cannot be the case and is evidence of a kind of systematic cover up.

With the evidence stacking up against the offending officer and with shadows of an attempted cover up showing it really makes you think. An innocent man has died and the police force rather than carrying out justice has taken many many steps to cover it's own arse. It has already been stated that the offending officer will not face criminal charges but may lose their job [link]. It is said that criminal charges cannot be pressed due to the conflict in the post-mortem reports which again puts doubt on whether the first post-mortem was mistaken or purposefully wrong. The fact the officer will not face any kind of criminal charges laughs in the face of justice and shows how the police force easily find themselves above the law in many cases. If the police are above the law then we are not free and there is no justice.

Now it would be very wrong and short sighted for me to claim that the police are often above the law and basing this claim on the Ian Tomlinson case. To further this point consider the cases of Jean Charles de Menezes [link], Chris Alder [link],Cherry Groce [link] and Forest Gate [link] to name but a few. There are uncounted cases of rape and abuse to minorities at the hands of police. They are not perfect.

Now as I stated earlier I believe police are very necessary but they need to be more transparent and we should hold them accountable for any crimes they commit. There is no doubt in my mind that the great majority of police work is beneficial to society and that many police people are upstanding citizens but this cannot be used to defend those police that do go to far and do abuse the system. We cannot accept another police murder to go unchallenged for if we want to say we live in a free country then any authority needs to be accountable for it's actions.

I hope for justice for the family of Ian Tomlinson and my heart goes out to them. May he rest in peace and may they get the closure they very much need.

Stay alert, Stay free.

Japan

I shall start off with an apology, I have not been keeping this up at the level I would have liked to but hell I'm not going to complain and moan about why but I will say sorry. A lot has happened recently in the news, what with half of the middle east rising up among other things and there is no way in hell that I will ever be able to even scratch the surface and discuss any where near all of them. This has been daunting alas I am just accepting that I will not cover it all even if it does interest me. Well with the bollocks over I shall make a real start on this post.

On the 11th if March a magnitude 9 earthquake hit just off the coast of Japan. The initial shock flattened houses and torn apart roads but the worst was yet to come. Following the earthquake a huge tsunami struck sweeping away the wreckage. The scenes seen are heartbreaking and no matter what I say it will never give justice to the sheer horror of what unfolded. The country will need to be rebuilt from the bottom up and as the death toll rises it just gets more depressing. At the bottom of this post I'll leave a link to donate money, if you can please do. It's times like these we need to work together to help out our fellow man.

One thing that can be seen through the horror is the strength of the Japanese people. Japan looks like a post apocalyptic waste land yet the people of Japan have not let this get them down, they have come together to help each other out [link]. It is a glorious thing to see how the people have conducted themselves in the face of such destruction, a true testament to the nation.

One thing that has overshadowed the entire disaster is the nuclear "crisis" that unfolded at the Fukushima nuclear power plant [link]. This again however proves to be little more then a scare story hyped up by the media. We were constantly bombarded with messages of impending doom with the anti-nuclear arguments rising over whether nuclear power is ever truly safe. Many were worried of a Chernobyl type disaster [link] which was never a possibility. We were told to worry about the fact that engineers were flooding the reactors with sea water and to fear the steam being released from said reactors.

However Fukushima does not show the failings of the nuclear industry but rather it's successes. What has been commonly misunderstood about the crisis is that people do not realise that all the different steps taken are not out of desperation but have been preplanned. Nuclear power uses a system of safety by redundancy, which basically means that many many different things can fail and the reactor will not meltdown or release any large amounts of radiation.

The first thing that happened when the 40 year old reactors were hit by the magnitude 9 earthquake (much higher than they were designed for) was that the boron control rods were fully injected into the reactor. In a nuclear reactor the boron control rods are used due to their ability to absorb neutrons. It is the neutrons flying around that cause a nuclear reaction to continue (a background on nuclear power can be found here [link]), so by removing the neutrons the reaction will stop. This worked perfectly, however it is not the end of the story as during the generation of nuclear power many by-products are produced which continue to release radiation after the main reaction has stopped and thus need further cooling.

It is here that we run into the problem. The initial motors that ran cooling water through the reactor were broken by the huge earthquake and put out of action. This meant that the first backup diesel motors started up. Alas as the tsunami hit the motors were flooded with water and ceased flowing cooling water around the system. This is when the second backup system went into action, battery powered pumps started. However it became apparent after some time that the level of water was decreasing, there was a leak somewhere allowing the cooling water to escape. At this point it is important to reflect that up to this point the plant has regulated itself to ensure that the plant remains safe. An oil refinery was already in flames [link] and the nuclear power plant, whilst damaged, was doing well.

It was at this point that man power was required to intervene. After the third motors gave out it was then required to pump sea water into the vessel to cool the reactor. It is worth noting that this was a fall back measure that was in place and not an act of desperation as portrayed by the majority of the media. This is the tactic that will be carried out right up to the point the power is reconnected to the reactors [link].

The cooling was not the only problem associated with the reactors however. Throughout the cooling process pressure inside the vessels raised to high levels and steam had to be released from them. This meant that slightly radioactive steam had to be released into the environment, a terribly scary idea if not properly understood. The idea of radiation is something that scares the public and if not properly understood can lead to panic. It is an invisible enemy and it can get to you without you ever knowing. The panic that can be caused with the media reporting on radiation leaks is something Japan doesn't need especially when the facts are known. The reactive isotopes found in the steam have a very short half life (meaning they lost their radioactivity quickly) which meant that the majority of the isotopes would be harmless by the time they ever left the plant. However the plant operators knowing how misunderstood and scary a direct release of steam could be decided that containing the steam temporarily in the reactor building before releasing it would not cause as much alarm.

This in turn was a bad decision. The engineers on the plant knew that the steam at the temperature and due to the slight radioactivity would quite easily deteriorate into hydrogen and oxygen, an explosive mix. It was decided that the explosion risk was small enough to go with. Obviously due to events this was probably the wrong choice as the reactor housing exploded [link]. The explosion looks impressive but the damaged caused was simply cosmetic. As with any building on a process plant one side of a building is designed to be weaker than the others so that if an explosion occurs that side will be blown off and the destructive power of the blast will be negated. The containment around the reactor (huge layers of concrete that prevent any nuclear material to leak from the reactor) was not damaged meaning that other than the physical danger of the explosion nothing became worse.

I could go on for hours about the glorious success of the plant and of the nuclear industry as a whole but I feel this is enough for now, if you want to read up more then click this [link], if anyone wants more of my opinions on nuclear power or if you wish to question any of my view then leave a comment at the end and I will spend more time on this.

The public and media perception of what is happening at Fukushima is a problem for Japan as it causes unneeded panic which does not help the nation to recover. It distracts from the huge humanitarian disaster taking place, only today has the BBC released an article on their website entitled "Fukushima - Disaster or Distraction" [link]. With industry leaders such as the IChemE speaking out in support of nuclear power and it's safety [link] as well as many nuclear physicists providing evidence to show how safe nuclear power is [link], it is hard to see how the media has turned Fukushima into the scare story it has become.

I personally feel that Fukushima has been a fantastic success for the nuclear industry and I support the expansion of nuclear power in the UK in an effort to fight climate change. However the major problem at this time has nothing to do with Fukushima. It is the fact that thousands are dead and many more are still missing following horrific natural events. So rather than becoming terrified over an industrial incident which by all intensive purposes is on the heal and has been dealt with fantastically we should be extending our hand to the people of Japan. Their plight is great and we as people need to come together to help. We must not allow an irrational fear distract us from the real issue in Japan, so please give what you can. They need our help and we must provide.

Thank you for reading.
Stay alert, Stay free.

Red Cross [link]
UNICEF [link]
Save The Children [link]




Sorry no song today, I simply don't know anything that would be fitting.

That Was The Year That Was

It has come to that time of the year again, a time when I reflect on what has been and what I feel is to come!

Wow, 2010, have you been eventful or what? In the UK we had our general election leaving us with the wonderful Con-Dem coalition. This has heralded in a new wave of budget cuts which we will begin to feel in the coming year. We have already seen anger at the way the Lib-Dems have turned their back on their tuition fees promise made in the run up to the election.

This quite nicely bring me onto the topic of the tuition fees protests. It has been many years since a student movement with the size and power we have seen at Millbank [link] and Parliament Square [link]. This year we have seen a reawakening of the student body to the activism of yesteryear. Now in this post I am not going to go into massive detail about the movement but what I will say is this, it has given me renewed faith in this generation. If you had said at the start of 2010 that 10s of thousands of students would march into London under a common cause to show their anger at the powers that be I would have laughed. We are meant to be the apathetic generation, "generation meh", but no more. We have shown that we can still mobilise and be powerful and from here we can build.

However this has also brought with it a darker side to the year. The police retaliation to the multiple protests and the resulting white wash of the media has left a sour taste in our mouths. First people were kettled into an area that they didn't want to be in so they went into Parliament Square to free up space. Then they were beaten, contained and even charged at by police on horseback. The tactics were heavy handed resulting in a man being pulled form his wheelchair twice [link] and one man was even left with brain damage after being hit over the head with a baton, the police even attempted to expel him from the hospital were he required emergency surgery for 3 hours [link].

Needless to say in the days following we were bombarded with stories of how the police were valiant heroes in the face of feral students from all the major media outlets. Some reports went as far as to claim protesters had pulled police from horseback [link], when the truth is very different [link]. This has caused a great number of people, both at the protest and not, to question the validity of the news and with it has woken up more people to the bullshit that we are fed every day.

On the other hand there has been a great change in the nature of news outlets this year with the fabled Wikileaks fiasco taking centre stage. Now Wikileaks has been around for a few years now but it is in this year that they have stepped up their game. The idea of Wikileaks is that officials can anonymously submit leaked documents and after removing personal details and ensuring the documents do not endanger people the documents are placed into the public domain [link]. This has opened up a new era in reporting in which the governments can no longer lie to our faces safe in the knowledge that their lies will stay under cover and never see the light of day. This movement has the power to fundamentally change the way governments operate and their relation with the people they govern. It is this that has so scared the people in power and caused the knee jerk reaction we have seen this year.

Obama stated as he took to office in 2009 that ""Starting today, every agency and department should know that this administration stands on the side not of those who seek to withhold information but those who seek to make it known" [link], oh how things have changed. After Wikileaks released around 250,000 embassy ties the mood of governments both at home and in the US turned sour. Political pressure was put upon websites connected with Wikileaks to force them into abandoning the site. Furthermore Julian Assange was arrested on dubious at best rape charges [link]. This shows to an ever increasing number of people that the powers that be these days only value free speech when it does not put them in a bad light. An encouraging effect of the political pressure is the backlash of DDoS attacks against the websites that have turned their back on Wikileaks and the way in which no matter the pressure applied by governments around the world the website has stayed functional even if it has had to change servers multiple times. This shows that even in the face of adversity free speech will succeed.

A major reason for the backlash of power against Wikileaks is the amount of information released in regards to the lies around the invasions and ongoing occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Videos of indiscriminate murder and destruction were released to an angry public as more and more of our people die over there. This year and last have been the deadliest in the history of the Afghanistan war [link] showing that rather than winning we are in fact losing, and badly. Not only this but the war is spilling more and more over into Pakistan threatening the stability of the entire area [link]. I'm not going to go too much in to depth on this matter but I will add that this again is another area where the reports by the main media should defiantly be taken with a pinch of salt. The "embedded" reporters must only report what they are told to by the army and thus cannot be fully trusted to be telling the true story. Now I wont go through a million examples but I will suggest you watch "The War You Don't See" by John Pilger [link] before believing everything bring said by these "embedded" reporters.

This year my faith in humanity was put into question again by the horrible Pakistan floods in July [link]. The floods killed (directly) thousands and displaced many many more. They resulted in an estimated £30billion in damages. With the war in Afghanistan spilling over resulting in the death of civilians the floods were the last thing Pakistan needed. Whilst this is a saddening event in it's own right it's the response of the British public that was more depressing. As the floods subsided the problems did not, as with any large floods the whole infrastructure was destroyed leaving many with nothing and at risk of cholera and other such diseases. There was a response and some aid was sent but many feel not enough. The TV and radio reports were filled with people saying that they wont support aid because of Pakistan's political stance. Now I understand that some people don't agree with Pakistan but this doesn't mean we shouldn't help their people when they are in need. The fact many turned their noses up at donating any money at all to help the civilians in need makes me sick, it shows the true dark side of humanity but alas I shall not go on too much about this as there is a lot to cover!

This year was catastrophic for the Gulf of Mexico with the Deep Water Horizon oil spill causing the largest environmental disaster for decades [link]. The amount of oil that erupted out of the drilling hole is unprecedented and at such at depth that the effects may not be known for years to come. 13 people lost their lives and many have lost their livelihood due to this disaster. The problems faced by BP were great when stopping the leak especially due to it's depth which resulted in the long time it took to stop the oil spilling out. I'm not going to place blame because this is a very complex issue and rather then pointing the finger this issue should be a wake up call. Our dependency on oil has meant we have had to drill deeper and deeper where the oil is a high pressures. This disaster will not be the last and most likely not the biggest as long as we rely on fossil fuels for our lifestyle, there's only so long they can last.

During 2010 the Icelandic volcano, Eyjafjallajökull, erupted grounding much of the air traffic over Europe [link]. This caused widespread disruption amongst travellers and commuting workers. The issue highlighted the vulnerability of our transport system and of international business in our age. We were lucky that the eruption was not larger and that the cloud did not remain in the atmosphere for longer. It shows a need for backup plans to be in place in case an event like this happens again for it goes to show that even in our advanced society we are still at the mercy of mother earth. However there is an upshot of this eruption, as a volcano erupts it releases CO₂ and other greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. During this eruption though the amount of CO₂ released was less than what the planes it grounded would have released making it the first carbon neutral volcano [NewScientist 25/12/10 pg.23].

As I have already mentioned there is a cyber-war going on over Wikileaks. However this year we have also seen the start of a new cyber-war one that is more immediately threatening than the one oer Wikileaks, I am talking about the Stuxnet computer worm [link]. This was a worm that infected many industrial control systems, most prominently in Iran. For a long time it was unknown what the purpose of said worm was but it has recently came to light that the worm was intended to target centrifuges working at a certain rate required to enrich uranium. Due to the nature of the worm and the fact that it's impact was generally centred around Iran (suspected of enriching uranium for nuclear weapons) suggests that this worm was in fact created by a state in order to hamper Iran's ambitions. If this is correct (which it most likely is) then we have step boldly into the realm of cyber-warfare and this is just the first shot. In this case the damage was limited to simply breaking centrifuges but it is obvious that this could have been a lot worse if whoever programed the worm desired it to be. We have entered a new level of war and there is no going back.

Now I have talked a lot about what has happened in the past year but now I shall set my eyes on how I feel the next year will go. I'll start off with a safe bet and say that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will continue and so will the bloodshed. Combat troops may begin to be removed from Iraq but these will be replaced by peace time troops and more private arms. The war in Afghanistan will get worse and continue to encroach on Pakistan. A lot of civilians and soldiers will die, there is no doubt about that.

Another safe bet is that the Gulf of Mexico will not fully recover for many decades, if ever. The amount of damage caused by the Deep Horizon spill will not fade away over night no matter if the media simply forgets about it. We already know a lot of the claims put in against BP will not be settled as many of the people do not have full financial records (they catch the fish and sell it cash in hand) so I doubt there will be any major reparations on the part of BP. They will continue to be hugely successful and this event will be but a small slip on their radar.

Now as we've already seen I can't help but be doubtful that there will be any major changes to that way the bankers operate. The very people who lost all of the money are getting billion pound bonuses and we already see dozens of adverts on the TV telling you it's easy to get a loan in half an hour, be that at 2000%APR. Indiscriminate lending got us in this mess and I see no end in sight. There will be no long lasting effective reforms in banking and we are doomed to boom and bust for many generations.

Now there is a chance however that due to the huge cuts being made (in many cases unnecessarily) by the Con-Dem government will lead to a double dip recession. We have already seen the growth in the economy slow down and with the cuts in public sector jobs a lot less people will be able to spend to keep the growth going. We will see huge cuts across the board, including the likes of the NHS, meaning these next few years will be very hard, especially for those worse off already.

One thing I do see happening is an increase in the number and the severity of protests. There will be more student protests, more union walkout and more strikes as the Con-Dem government attack everything and anything public they can. The people will not take this sitting down and that means there will be an increase in civil disobedience. We are seeing the dawn of a new pro-active age, or are we seeing a recurrence of the 1980s? Either way it means there will be a lot more action in the coming year.

However that bring with it the fear that the police force, already heavy handed, will continue to increase the level of force used against protesters. We already frequently see police horse charges and people bloodied up. This year we have seen Alfie Meadow's almost die at the hands of police and as much as it sadness me to say it I would not doubt that we see another Ian Tomlinson this year. I just hope that some time some how the police tactics get re-thought and protocols re-drawn.

This year has had it's ups and it's downs. Next year promises to be as exciting as the last. I for one am looking forward to seeing how it will unfold. Comment with your ideas and have a happy new year, let's hope to god it's not our last.

Stay Alert, Stay Free.

PROTIP: V for Vendetta is awesome!

P.S. This is likely to be my last post until after the exam period in January.

Like Pigs To The Slaughter

We are winning! We'll at least that's what they want us to believe.

How many times have you turned on the news to get a story of our progress in Afghanistan/Iraq [link] only to be told moments later that the number of casualties is increasing at an ever faster rate [link]? Now I may not be an expert but that doesn't really make sense. If every day we are making progress then how are we constantly losing more and more troops?

It just takes a look into the history books to see why they call Afghanistan the "graveyard of empires". Not only did the Soviets get defeated there [link] (with a little help from the US funding the Taliban but that's another story) but also us, the British, have been defeated on Afghan soil, not once, but twice [link1][link2]. These are but two states that have been defeated in Afghanistan and there are many many more [link]. It is obvious from the history of this region that any war would inevitably be long and drawn out leading to a large number of casualties, Mission Accomplished indeed.

As the war in Afghanistan continue it is becoming more obvious that this war is not going to be confined to within the borders of Afghanistan. It began subtly with drone attacks starting to edge across the border into Pakistan as early as 2004 [link]. It is estimated that between 2004 and 2010 there have been 200 strikes into Pakistan, 100 happening between 2009 and 2010. This signals a shift in the battlefield. The war is shifting across into Pakistan, a nuclear state[link], which promises to further destabilise the country and the area. Pakistan has been at war and close to war with it's neighbour India many times throughout it's history [link]. This is particularly scary due to the fact that India is also a nuclear power. With conflict possibly spilling further into Pakistan this brings a real threat of war if Pakistan were to become destabilised.

As the Afghanistan war threatens to destabilise yet more of the middle east at least it means we are protecting our own shores? Nothing could be further from the truth, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq raise the risk of an attack if nothing else [link].

We are being sold lies in an effort to continue these illegal wars which are now only causing more death and lowering global stability and security. The people here do not agree with the wars [link] and they are quickly turning into unjustifiable slaughterhouses. We need to get out, how many more lives are these illegal wars worth?

There are many more issues to be covered here but I'm not going to create a sprawling post right now so this is your lot at the moment.

Stay alert, Stay Free.


Any comments are always welcome, keep the discussion alive.

The Lies, The Slander

Now I am unsure as to how this post will go, I have so much I want to say and much of it is in an incoherent mess within my mind but I feel like if I wait too long to post this I feel as though it may never be made and will not be an accurate portrayal of my feelings.

Any way I and around 30,000 other people marched onto parliament square on Thursday the 9th of December 2010 to protest against the increase in student fees, the education cuts and generally against the effective privatisation of the education system within this country.

The measures put forward by the Con-Dem government will put further education out of the reach of many of the young people of this country under the guise of cutting the deficit. However this is not the case, how can increasing fees in 2 years decrease the deficit now and help us get out of the current crisis. A crisis which was caused by people taking out loans that they could simply not repay. How are the majority (not all as some, namely the upper class, student will be able to) of students be able to repay a debt of around £40,000. A lot of this debt will go unpaid which will do no favours for anyone. We already have the highest fees in Europe [link] why should they be any higher? Do we want a system similar to that of the USA were parents need to start saving from the birth of a child in order to send them through education or indeed for people to be completely priced out of further education. We need educated people to build a future for this country.

Furthermore the idea that cutting the funding by 80% or even 100% for the arts is a good way to ensure our education system is well funded and world class is an utter disgrace. Other countries are investing in their future whilst ours is cutting back, I say cutting back more like cutting out. This will cause the closure of many universities which many less well off students rely on again pricing students out of university.

A Con-Dem proposal for paying the first year or two of the poorest 16,000 or so student does little to compensate for those who are just above this threshold who will be left to suffer the full brunt of the fees. Furthermore the fact one or two years is payed doesn't help when the people still come out with more debt then they would previously, some A LOT more.

Alas at the moment I do not wish to dwell on why these cuts and increases in fees are a terrible idea. I would prefer to dwell upon the illegal and out of proportion response of the police to these actions.

Firstly I shall start on the point of police horses. The whole idea of having an animal in this sort of situation is sickening and cruel. Sure these animals are trained but there is only so much an animal can take. An excuse often used for police brutality is that the person gets stressed out. Now we are logical animals and have more of an understanding of the situation, an animal no matter the training will not understand the situation. That amount of noise and violence will stress out a horse and cause it to become dangerous, both to us and the police [link] as well as itself. This is animal cruelty and must stop.

I shall take a step back and explain what I meant by violence in relation to police horses. A tactic used a lot on Thursday was to charge into the crowd of protesters (never mind some were as young as 13/14) in an attempt to separate them. The crowd however is not always able to separate resulting in people getting trampled causing great damage to the person. This causes great fear as people could well die under the hooves of these horses. If a person is faced with the possibility of death or serious injury they may well throw whatever they have to try and stop this. The protesters did not target the horses in a malicious manner and even when something was thrown in a last ditch attempt at self defence it was undoubtedly aimed at the police on the horse. This means that the police by introducing the horses lead them directly to harm which is cruel and should stop.

Furthermore the actions of mounted police aside the rest of the force were also staggeringly heavy handed and illegal. As we entered parliament square we were instantly kettled, few, very few, people were able to leave from that point onwards the majority had no chance of leaving and had no real access to toilets or food and water. This is a direct attack on our freedoms and human rights and is an attempt to anger the masses into escalating the violence. A lot of violence was due to people aiming to leave the kettle, especially near the end when we had been detained for at least 6 hours. The majority of the demonstration were peaceful, no matter what is portrayed in the media, and we were all trapped on Westminster bridge for around 3 hours. This serves no end but as an attempt to scare as many of the first time protesters from protesting again. This is not however the effect it had, if anything it has made many protesters question the establishment and yes the police.

The kettling and the provocation it caused is just the tip of the iceberg. The sheer force that the police used against unprotected people is astounding. Now I can understand some force in order to keep people out of parliament, after all these peoples jobs have been manipulated to mean that their duty is to protect a government that is gong to cut their jobs. However the sights that I saw cannot be fully described by my words but I shall simply tell it like I saw it. People of all ages returned from the front line after clashes literally pouring with blood from their heads and young girls crying their eyes out along side old women hysterical with fear. People with broken bones were sent back into the kettle and denied medial help leaving them to have makeshift slings made until they were aloud out.

The violent methods used by the police did nothing but anger the protesters and escalate the violence. Images of fences being carried across the top of crowds were pounced on by the media and the masses told that they were being thrown at police. This was NOT the case. Fences were being taken to the front line. They were not however, being used as weapons. What actually happened was that the fences were being placed between the protesters and the police in order to protect the protesters from the truncheons of the police.

A person was nearly killed after being hit by a truncheon to the head. As a result of this he got bleeding on the brain, he was then denied medical assistance by police officers before an ambulance worker intervened [link]. Another protester was dragged from his wheelchair multiple times. We are expected to be thankful that they did not open fire? What has happened to this country? It is disgusting but it will not stop us. As long as the government acts to destroy out country we will continue to fight.

Now the point of this post is not to be anti-police because in most situations the police are necessary and a force for good but I fail to see how nearly killing people is for the people. We will hold solidarity when you are cut if you march. We will march for the more general cuts then just in education. This is our fight, this is your fight. Rise together and win together, solidarity until the end.

I'm sorry this post has been a lot more opinion and first hand experience than being backed up by sources as usual but this has made me very angry. I will endeavor to make a post supported by more factual sources next time but I hope this has made you question a few things said by the media and at least entertained.

Stay alert, stay free.

We Are Free

The governments of this world are growing out of touch. They do not understand the internet and it's culture at all. This is shown by their attempts to close down Wikileaks [link for now at least].

Wikileaks as I have said before is a website that enables people from around the world to release documents detailing lies fed out by their governments, effectively allowing whistle blowing without the immediate threats encountered if they were to approach a more conventional outlet. This has allowed us to begin to level the laying field. It allows us to know if we are being lied to and the real motives behind the governments actions.

However for obvious reasons this has not gone down well with the powers that be. How can they claim to be for the people if there is a constant stream of documents being released that states otherwise? For this reason the US and European governments have been making attempts to shut down Wikileaks without taking into account how this wonderful thing known as the interenet works.

Firstly there are the relentless DDOS[?] attacks, an attempt to overcrowd the server and cause it to crash. This was successful in temporally bringing down the site [link]. This however is as said a temporary thing and after some time the site was back up and operational after all the attacks.

However the game then took a step up, international governments began applying political pressure on the companies owning the servers that Wikileaks was hosted, such as Amazon [link]. This caused the site to be taken down but alas again this was only temporary. The beautiful thing about the internet is that it is based on free speak and this means that there are a great number of able people out there that believe in this cause. This has lead to the site being "mirrored" and hosted in numerous places all over the world. As one is shut down another opens, it's like a game of cat and mouse but this time as the mouse is caught another 5 appear.
Another attempt to end Wikileaks has been made recently with the arrest of founder Assange [link]. This will not in anyway bring an end to Wikileaks as this site is not a single man, it is not a collection of men, it is an idea. An idea of freedom and liberty that cannot and will not be extinguished no matter how many arrests are made. Once something like this is out on the internet there is no way of stopping it, Wikileaks has already stated categorically that it will not stop due to Assange's arrest [link].

It is now that we see that the governments are out of touch with the internet culture and are genuinely scared. This Wikileaks battle has shown that we can make them accountable for their lies and misleadings. It shows that whilst they may try with all their might that the internet will remain free, that whilst it may not be the most direct form of action that whilst we have the ability we can remove the veil over our eyes on the internet. This is truly a wonderful time. I hope that this Wikileaks escapade will encourage others to whistle blow and not be scared, for it is now that we know we can be free.

Stay alert, Stay free.

Zombies!

The Government is wanting more and more of our information but don't worry they will be able to keep it 100% secure shouldn't they? I mean surely our security and governmental organisations have some sort of defence against known viruses don't they? Well apparently they don't. Manchester Police have recently been hit by the "Conficker worm" virus (link). This virus got into the system via an officers memory stick and spread quickly throughout the system. The virus itself has been around since at least November 2008 with the most recent variant being found in April 2009 (link), this to me would seem like ample time to set up some sort of defence to detect the virus before infection. With such sensitive and valuable data on the system a scan of any external memory devices should be run to ensure our information is safe, this is obviously not a priority of the police force.
In this case the infection was caught fast and the system was isolated meaning that the damage caused was minimal. If the virus had gone undetected for long it would open gateways for other more damaging viruses and hackers to enter through, this is very worrying considering what information is held on these types of systems.
Even though the damage was minimised the system still had to be taken down for three days. During these three days police couldn't access information to check for criminals and suspect vehicles effectively crippling the whole system. Now this may appear as a small and negligible problem in the long run but what happens if this kind of thing happens on the now developing National Identity Register (NIR)? If the NIR went down for a few days people would not be able to access any information on the system, effectively removing them from the planet for those few days. Any checks that need to be ran would be impossible and all transactions for that time would be halted.
This however, would be a best case scenario, one in which the virus was not detected early allowing it to spread could be so much worse. If a similar virus was allowed to mature and spread through the system peoples information would become readily open to attack from hackers and other viruses. This could lead to peoples information being effectively lost from the system, this person would then have to prove themselves against a system which is apparently fool proof in order to restore their identity. Furthermore peoples information could be easily stolen and sold on or used for identity fraud, with the amount of information held on the system this could be devastating.

This is not adequate protection.

The way that this system is designed to be interconnected across the entire country leaves many openings for some sort of virus to enter through. Unless their are thorougher checks on every device added to the system (this is neglecting any viruses picked up via other methods) an infection is inevitable. If a system the size of Manchester Police can fall prey to something like this what hope does a national system have? Sure, there may be a raised sense of security about it but an infection is inevitable.



Keep alert, stay free.

Fear

Fear is no longer an emotion, it is a product. A product being sold to us everyday without us even noticing. It is the fuel of this capitalist dream and those dispensing the fear hold the power over the terrified masses. Fear is what is controlling us and it is the fuel burning away at our freedoms. We need to reinstate fear as an emotion and not a product in order to be truly free.
Fear is a natural response to a threat and is perfectly natural and healthy. That is as long as the threat actually exists. However more often then not we are being lead to be fearful of threats that simply do not exist simply in an attempt to control. You watch the TV and see images of death and destruction, the news shows us engaged in another futile war whilst the soaps get involved in large murder plot lines. All to remind you that you are indeed mortal, something that instills fear into most people. This is however, not the end. We are then bombarded with advertisements for products we don't need telling us that we wont get laid if we don't buy there new wrinkle cream or anal bleach. By ensuring the consumer is scared the companies can manipulate this to sell their worthless products. There is money to be made out of fear.
It is not only the corporations that can profit from fear but also those who are instated to protect our best interests, our governments. The buzzword this past decade was terrorism, any news article could be sexed up with the words terror or extremist and result in the audience lapping up what ever spews from the newsreader. In a state of fear the people become sheep. The staggering number of CCTV cameras and the simply deplorable ID card scheme are both products of fear. The threat of terror is amplified to simply ridiculous levels in the media to create this level of fear in order to produce enough flag wavers to allow the government to have it's way. The fear created clouds people's judgement and makes them more susceptible to manipulation.
To illustrate the amplification of the threat from terrorism I give you the fact that almost 400 times more people die in car crashes in developed countries than from international terrorism (link). What does this tell us? Is it that we should be petrified of driving? No. It is simply that the threat of terror is so small it is almost negligible. The fact that road accident are so frequent and terror isn't results in the skewed view of the world we see on the news. To put it simply drama sells and terror attacks are dramatic. The whole idea of a terror attack is to create fear and due to the way the news portrays terror the attacks often have their desired results. What happens when we realise that a certain terror group isn't as scary as we first were lead to believe? After all isn't terror a new thing to the 21st century. Well the faces and names simply change. The people we are told to fear varies over time, I mean weren't the reds meant to have killed us all by now?
However terror is not the only thing we are taught to fear. If you were to take the threats printed in the news all seriously life would be impossible. Every other day there is breaking news that causes cancer or if toxic or can kill you in any number of ways. People buy into fear so if you can print a story with a scary headline people are going to buy your paper or magazine or even watch your show. So by increasing the fear in peoples lives the media companies increase their profits which intern allows the advertisers to pick up on the fear and take it running. A scared society is a stupid society.
So as this has dragged on for a while and I am positively knackered I shall round it up here. Basically a lot of what we fear is not scary. It is often blown out of proportion to fit others needs. Threats are not always as overt as those posed by politicians discussing terror, some are much more covert. The media paints a picture of a terrifying world in which everything must be feared, the advertisers then pick up on this and offer their products as the only solution. We need not fear the entire world, we need not fear each other. I believe in the intrinsic goodness of man despite the atrocities we have committed, I believe people are good. The more we succumb to this state of fear sold to us the darker the world becomes. No wonder the depression rates are always increasing, we are taught to be scared of everything and everyone. Once we see the true beauty in life, the beauty obscured by fear, we will be free. You need not be afraid simply think next time a politician or a news article or whatever tell you you need to be scared because most of the time, they are wrong. We live in a wonderful and beautiful world, too often is this forgotten. Stay happy, stay free.
Also if you enjoyed this post you may enjoy this mans work:







P.S. I realise this article has a lot of my own views as apposed to factual content but I feel this blog belongs here. If anyone has any thoughts or arguments to do with what I have written then simply comment below and I shall expand upon this.