Ippoippo

The Dark Side of Dubai.
Ouch… a rather damning article appeared in the Independent today. It was admittedly an opinion piece, so it was a little one sided.
However, if you take on some of the things that were said, it really doesn’t say much about the place.

Oooo, the eco part of my brain is tutting away, but the old petrol head side part of my brain is rather enjoying this years F1.

With the mix up in the new rules, the grid has been shaken up. Whilst it’s disappointing for me to see Ferrari having problems, at least McLaren is too
It’s also great to see some different teams/faces fighting for the top spots.

You can’t have failed to notice on the news that a bunch of world leaders came to London, and that a series of protests by various groups were held.

What I find interesting, and somewhat disturbing, are the various stories coming out from one of the protests.

Things got a bit nasty at the protest by the Bank of England and near one of the big RBS branches. From the sounds of things, and reading between the lines somewhat in the various news reports, it’s likely that the anti-capitalism protests contained a number of people who were there to make trouble and cause a bit of damage. In the case where protesters are causing damage to buildings, then the police should be arresting them. Questions are being asked though, why ‘snatch squads’ were not deployed to get the perpetrators, and instead ‘kettling’ was used instead which effectively punishes innocent, peaceful protesters. Some coverage here.
[Mind you, if I was to put my tin-foil hat on, it is somewhat strange that the RBS building was left unprotected, and that a load of press turned up before they got to take photo's of the 'money shot' of a computer monitor being thrown at the glass windows.]

What is more worrying, from a police action point of view, is what happened at the Climate Camp protest. Now, I happen to think a lot of the protesters there are a bit wishy-washy hippy-like for my liking, but ultimately they were staging a peaceful protest. Which is why the later actions of the police are unforgivable.
There’s plenty of coverage here, here and here. The last of those links has video for both the Climate Camp protests and Bank of England protests.
There’s also some video footage of the climate camp, when the police move forward. What is clear is that the protesters were not doing anything wrong as such before, and it’s interesting to see them all stick their hands in the air shouting ‘this is not riot’.

Finally, I’ll leave you with a message that was posted on one of the comment sections in the garden.

BethMcGrath, 02 Apr 09, 12:37pm
I was held at the climate camp til midnight last night. When I arrived at 6pm to celebrate the creative sight of a camp in london’s grey financial streets, the police allowed me to walk straight into the camp with my bike. As the reports have said, the atmosphere was very warm and positive; school children and old time protesters sharing a space full of colour and music.
Within an hour of arriving, those same police, who had stepped back and let me through, closed in around the camp and refused to let anyone in or out. I then watched the police push forward into the crowd with brutality that was not only shocking but utterly unecessary. All the protesters put their hands in the air and sat down collectively on the road. Yet as the crowd lowered I saw a young man stagger back with his head split open, another boy with a broken nose, a girl next to me had been kicked between the legs. People were badly hurt and the atsmophere spun into a frightened panic. A friend of mine from university who had come from Nottingham to join the camp just put his head in his hands and cried. This was the scene, minutes after people had been allowed to wander into the camp without any warning of
the planned police actions, or any chance to leave peacefully. As they rolled in back up police and black armoured riot vans, and as the police kicked and crushed people’s bikes, the protesters called out to them, and the onlooking bankers, up in their ivory towers, ‘This is not a riot!’. As their battons came down, Legal Observors called out to people to take the police numbers of those who had hurt protesters; on mass the line of police all covered up their
badges. It was a chilling show of a police unaccountable to their own laws, and their own humanity. The police were indeed braced for violence, but most of that young crowd of protesters were not.

Despite our repeated requests to be searched and allowed to leave the space, we were held there for 6 hours with no access to water, food, toilets or medical care. Proudly, throughout all this, not one person in the crowd reacted with violence to any person or property. People shared the little they had and held public meetings about the aims of the G20 summit. There was little show of anger, but much unhappiness.

When finally we were herded out one by one at midnight, I felt cold to the core, chilled by the unprovoked agression of those who I had been brought up to trust. I am deeply ashamed of my state, when reasonable and calm protesters are criminalised and provoked in such a manner.

Their use of section 14 on 800 campers was mindless, their violence was a tragedy and their very presence, with armoured cars and helicopters, a ridiculous waste of public money.
I am writing this today because I grew up in this city and treasure the right to use this city space to speak out to our elected leaders in a peaceful, creative way. There were no harmful intentions in that climate camp, but the harm done by the police last night goes far
deeper that the physical wounds inflicted; it is in the chaos of unnecessary state violence that fear is born and trust is lost.

Taken from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/apr/02/g20-protest-kettling