As regular readers will know Moon has little love of FIT (Forward Intelligence Teams). These people get paid to basically hang around collecting information on people at protests, or when there are no protest harassing chavs on council estates. A sort of bastard latter day Stasi born from Neo-labours war on ‘terror’. The result of this action whether intentional or not is to cause fear amongst activist. This in turn puts people off participating in legitimate political protest, helpfully quashing dissent against our Dear Leader Brown. FIT are also closely linked to the NETCU (National Extremism Tactical Coordination Unit) and other similar teams. NETCU is a concern to me as they blur the lines between legitimate political protest, direct action and terrorism. For example legitimate political protest is listed as the first of three stages leading towards criminal actions and ‘home visits’ on their site. The suspicion is that anyone undertaking political protest is on the first stage of becoming an ‘extremist’. Remember folks political protest is the first stage of a domestic extermism campaign.. They also warn how the ‘target’ could be posted on extermist websites like http://blog.geeklawyer.org/
These teams are also involved in the propaganda of painting political activists as extremists, for example the Observer article that portrays Earth First as terrorists. Since writing that blog articule the Observer has embarrassingly pulled the story after a flood of readers complained at their printing of Police State propaganda.
“Is there a mechanism to check which demonstrations [the defendant] has attended?” asked the defence.
“Not just [the defendant]. Thousands of people” he replied.
“And the system could check on just one individual?”
“Not me personally. But the police could, yes.”
This is the first time that the police have publicly admitted to keeping a database on people who have attended political protests, although in truth such a system has probably existed for some time. As police surpression is nothing new. It raises serious concerns as to whether such a system is in Breach of Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights (at least untill Straw is able to ‘balance’ the act). The knowledge of such a system will also again scare a number of legitimate political activists from engaging in protests for fear of becoming a suspect or being marked as an extremist by the state.
Filed under: Current Affairs
The right to be naked is one that Moon would like to selective apply to portions of the population deemed suitable by a public standard committee. Naturalist martyr Stephen Gough takes a different view. Philosophically I agree with him, the taboo of viewing the naked body is I suspect linked to unhealthy notions of sin and flesh. Anyway Stephen or the Naked rambler as he is otherwise known would like to be walking up and down the country. Instead he has spent most of the past 2 ½ years in Jail for public order offenses. He was arrested for breach of the peace upon leaving a trial naked where he had just been acquitted of breach of the peace. Rather than allow this man to live his live skyclad wandering the breadth of the country he has instead been sent down for 12mths.
The picture below has now been released onto the internet of the Occupation of the Greek Embassy in London. Police have surrounded a group of protestors who appear to have barricaded themselves onto a balcony outside the front of the building. There are reports that people are inside but it is at the moment unclear.
Anarchy in the UK
Rioting has broken out in several Greek cities and there is an unconfirmed report that the Greek Embassy in London has just been occupied. This follows on from the murder of a 16 year old kid by Greek by Police, which is the latest in a string of violent police aggressions. To give due credit to the Greek authorities at least this bastard has been arrested and charged with murder, unlike the met who can murder people with only a minimal fuss. Anarchists have been taking the fight to the police, as this You Tube showing an attack on a Riot Police HQ shows:
A previous planned general strike is to take place on Wednesday, so the Greek state is starting to look in a somewhat precious situation. It’s heartning to know the torch of freedom still burns in the birth place of democracy.
PS It’s a shame that people only associate anarchism with violence, in truth violence is not what anarchism is about, but what people force it to be about.
Filed under: ID Cards / Surveillance
NO2ID has released a new video warning of the dangers the Database state could pose to vunerable women. Check it out.
It seems it’s not just MPs who face the prospect of having their offices searched without a warrant. Recently documents obtained by the campaign group NO2ID exposes plans to allow the Home Secretary to authorize searches of anybody working on the ID card scheme. The non-disclosure document signed by all five companies still in the running to build the intrusive and unwanted ID card scheme removes the need to seek judicial overview for these searched to take place and removes the fundamental civil liberties of anybody working on the scheme. This document alone shows why in a democracy there is a need for the people to know what their government is up to. What kind of sinister scheme requires secretive clauses, putting citizens working on the scheme under a Stalinist system operated by the Home Secretary free from any judicial review or oversight? Some serious questions need to be asked and this sick government that has turned against it’s people needs kicking out before anymore damage can be done. Untill this happens there is no longer any justice in England.
I thought it might be heartening for some of the people who read my blog to have a look at the Jacqui Smith search terms that are finding their way here:
i hate jacqui smith
hate jacqui smith
we hate jacqui smith
jacqui smith is a cunt
jacqui smith rant
jacqui smith cunt
jacqui smith lost the plot
jacqui smith is stupid
Word cannot quite describe quite how much I love the Council of Europe right now. Not only have we recently had a landmark ruling that leaves the Government’s DNA database in tatters but we have now had a report on anti-terror law’s and privacy. Thomas Hammarber, Commissioner of Human Right’s report entitled Protecting the right to privacy in the fight against terrorism. The Government can be expected to wrangle over deleting and DNA profiles, and there is talk on the grapevine that Jackboot Jacqui is seeking to appoint an *independent* chair at an arms length to the government to oversee the NDNAD. There is no way they can keep the physical samples but I suspect they will come up with a code of practice that has a very liberal definition of when someone is proved to be innocent that will allow innocent people’s data to be stored for a fair few years. Anyhow it’s a pretty strong judgement so they will have a hard time trying to wiggle out of it. Back to the other good news, Thomas Hammarber’s report is damming of the Government’s use of terrorism as a justification to create a quasi-stasi Database state. Here are a few choice cuts:
We are rapidly becoming a “Surveillance Society”. This is partly the result of general technical and societal developments, but these trends are strongly reinforced by measures taken in the fight against terrorism.
In the context of the fight against terrorism, this means individuals are at risk of being targeted for being suspected “extremists” or for being suspected of being “opposed to our constitutional legal order”, even if they have not (yet) committed any criminal (let alone terrorist) offence.
“Targets” of this kind are moreover increasingly selected through computer “profiles”. Even if some may be caught, there will always be relatively large numbers of “false negatives” – real terrorists who are not identified as such, and unacceptably high numbers of “false positives”: large numbers of innocent people who are subjected to surveillance, harassment, discrimination, arrest – or worse. Freedom is being given up without gaining security.
In addition, increasing use is made of non-criminal, yet effectively punitive, “administrative” measures against identified suspected “extremists” or new-type “enemies of the State”. This robs them of fundamental safeguards, both against the specific measures taken against them and, as groups, against such discrimination. It leads to alienation of the groups in question, and thus actually undermines security.
In the process, all of us are increasingly placed under general, mass surveillance, with data being captured on all our activities, on-line or in the “real” world. Such general surveillance raises serious democratic problems which are not answered by the repeated assertion that “those who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear.”
Filed under: Uncategorized
People were reassured that he had the correct documents
I honestly can’t belive the Guardian is printing this tripe. It’s disgraceful that legitmate political protesters are being depicted as terrorists. This will further spure on the security services crack down on our civil liberties. The National Extremism Tactical Co-ordination Unit is a threat to all our freedoms and must be stopped.
