The American tourist who captured on video what may have been the second assault on Ian Tomlinson by the Police, has done us a great favour.
I have been on several demonstrations in Central London in the last few years, and like everyone else who has done that, I have got used to the experience of being constantly filmed. Central London – and particularly the area around Bishopsgate – is fully covered by CCTV. In addition you had at the G20 demonstration scores of police cameramen filming from every vantage point at a demonstration. I have no doubt that on the recent huge Gaza demo I was filmed every step for two miles.
Let me be quite plain. I do not believe that there was no official footage of the police assault on Ian Tomlinson. Just as the security cameras in Stockwell station and on the train were “Not working” in the Jean Charles De Menezes case, I accuse the Police of subverting the video evidence.
So thank God for that American tourist – and thank God he went to the Guardian rather than to the Police. If unanswerable video evidence had not now been produced, what lies do you think we would now be being told?
A lie can be delivered by innuendo. The so-called “Independent Police Complaints Commission” – whose investigations in this case are being conducted by the City of London Police – had put out a statement saying that “it appeared that Mr Tomlinson had contact with the Police.” If we had not seen the video, what image does that conjure up in your mind?
Mr Tomlinson did not have contact with the Police. He had contact from the Police – they came up behind him when he was just walking down the road, and without warning hit him with a baton. This was in fact Mr Tomlinson’s second contact from the Police – he had already been turned away from his route home by another police cordon, and it is possible he was mishandled there too.
New Labour trolls are active all over the web – including in comments on my earlier post here:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/04/brutal_murder_o.html#comments
We will see more of these attacks on Mr Tomlinson in the next few days, just as Jean Charles De Menezes’ character was slurred (illegal immigrant, drug addict – all untrue).
The claim that Tomlinson died of a heart attack brought on by alcohol is pathetic.
I hope that the family are now getting good advice, and I for one would be happy to donate to a fund for an independent autopsy. Under New Labour we cannot trust the official one.
We also need a radical reconstruction of a police force which thinks it can attack and kill members of the public with impunity, and of the legal framework in which they operate. The legal system has ruled in terms that police may kill people and then may lie about it in court.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2008/12/the_disgraceful.html
We have reached the stage in the UK where we need a revolutionary change. We have to sweep out the old order of corrupt politicians whose one guiding principle is to keep their own snouts in the trough: of City bankers who are multi-millionaires from their bubble scams and whose lifestyles and jobs the ordinary people are now supporting by a massive tax and debt burden, while nobody guarantees the jobs of those ordinary people who fund it all.
We have to realise that the end of the centuries old prohibition of torture by agents of the state is of a piece with the freedom of the police to maintain the system of power by fatal force, in both cases without consequence. You cannot separate this brutalisation of power from the illegal war that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and thousands of our own soldiers, on the basis of a lie but really to secure oil.
The whole system stinks from the head like a fish. And people are starting at last to understand where the smell comes from.
‘Freemasonry plays a BIG part in government and police.
And the legal establishment.’
Hand on heart, I think they are just a bunch of big kiddies with a lack of individual identity to boot if I may be so bold. I’m sure they claim differing reasons for their existence though. I deem them unhealthy for democracy. Baah…
I nominate you as our country’s next prime minister, Craig. But then, I have an inkling that you probably wouldn’t take the job. High personal integrity tends to distance itself from dishonesty and corruption.
The sort of corruption we’re looking at here – a fudgy mess of obfuscation, half-truths, foot-dragging and ‘dependent inquiries’ – has reached new depths of all-pervasive epidemic under this administration. Absolutely NO-ONE employed or funded by gvt takes responsibility for anything now, no-one is accountable, there are always loopholes through which they can slither.
Every profession has been infested. And NuLab has even invented new ‘professions’ to keep this societally-devastating irresponsibility going – quite apart from spin-meistering, what about the huge phalanx of NHS managers whose twin and only aims in life are to silence staff and patients and to reduce costs in any way possible, including murder?
You’ve clearly connected the dots between the licence to torture and the more mundane (but nonetheless treacherous and even murderous) attacks by petty bureaucrats in most people’s daily lives. It seems to me that most folks are just not up to speed yet – maybe they don’t want to consciously acknowledge the fascist horror that is building before our eyes.
Anyone who has had any significant contact with the police in the last five years or so will recognise the veracity of your assessment and and the urgent necessity of your proposals, as I understand them, for a return to decency, integrity, democracy, the genuine rule of law and authentic parliamentary representation. Otherwise the country will indeed find itself not just in a manufactured ‘summer of rage’ but in years of flaming turmoil. But, as other posters have indicated, for perverse and sinister reasons those pervasive ‘dark actors’ and their largely unwitting henchmen are working to set this almost inevitable scenario up…
“TAKING LIBERTIES” is an excellent documentary showing how far down the road we are with respect to becoming a police state. Individual police officers will always be heavy handed – it is the lack of accountability of these officers that is so worrying.
Jess, I’m calling you a troll.
Do you deny that you post as Mike on Lenin’s Tomb?
Jon
We’re not that far apart. I agree that the necessity for policing IS a societal failing but one that, short of the perfection of human nature, I fear we are unlikely to be ever able to dispense with. I am a firm believer that the police should not enjoy either powers or legal/procedural considerations different to any other citizen. They should be made absolutely accountable to the communities they serve and any alleged supra-community activities (ie regional or national) made rigorously and transparently accountable to Parliament. All policing trends since I can remember have moved us further and further away from that ideal. All too often now the police behave as though any and every member of the general public is a potential enemy to be pre-emptively dealt with as such – and ‘never mind the niceties because we know we can get away with just about anything’
That should read “Neither powers Nor” – I’m becoming a bit dyslexic I fear.
Jess:
“That he was drunk is what the autopsy said.”
You must be a cop if you have access to the autopsy report. Nah – you’re just a wee troll pal.
A little anecdote about the general fractious and fearful state of the general public and the way it is played upon. On a R5 phone-in a couple of hours ago a ‘Frank Gardiner’ type (you know one of those Security-Services clones fed information so they can pose as ‘independent experts’) was berating a Phoner-in who was arguing for the police to be more open and honest. I think the prog was about the ‘terrorist arrests today but it doesn’t matter. The ‘Expert’ interrupted sharply and rudely to the effect “5 years ago 55 innocent Londoners were killed by the sorts of people the police have to face every day, so lets get our priorities right here shall we? …” (or words to that effect). It was intended to be an argument clincher – as such things usually are.
Had I been on the other end of that line, I would have shot back more sharply something like ” YES – and since then no fewer than 15,000 people have been killed on our roads. You have a vastly greater chance of winning the National Lottery than being harmed by a terrorist so YES INDEED LET’s START SORTING OUR PRIORITIES OUT”
But he got away with it as always – a bit like shouting ‘Anti-Semite’ at someone arguing against Zionism. – or ‘Conspiracy theorist’ against someone questioning the official narrative of epoch-changing events. It’s intended to shut down debate and leave people fearful – and it does.
There have been people in government and the bureaucracy pushing for a National Police Force for some time. The idea that the police constabularies were local forces administering the Common Law on behalf of the citizenry whose job it was seems to have been lacking in something for these types – perhaps they hanker after some Compagnies Republicaines de Securite of this Police Nationale?
Among the issues that drove the Civil War in the 17th Century (apart from “no taxation without representation” which seems to have gone by the board, too) were the Supremacy of the Common Law over all with no exceptions, and the hostility to a standing army. Oh, and also the abolition of Star Chamber Courts. This wannabe Police Nationale seems to have stepped into the ‘standing army’ shoes at war with the citizenry.
A question I have frequently in the last couple of years asked of politicasters, and not simply Neo Labour ones, is “Is England a more dangerous place now than in 1215 that we need you to behave in this way?”
Sabretache,
Thanks for the link to the ‘STOP BLAIR’ petition. I just signed….
——————
This man Blair is connected with around a million deaths in Iraq. It is unthinkable that he should hold office – anywhere.
——————
Plenty of room for more signatures ….
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/stopblair/sign.html
Sabretache
Some rhetorical questions.
Do we know exactly what happened in London on July 7th. NO
Were there any inquests? NO
Has there been an enquiry? NO
Nearly four years have passed and we are none the wiser. Was it a false flag operation? Who knows? No wonder conspiracy theories abound. There is a comment at the end of the post.
http://j7truth.blogspot.com/2008/06/proposed-counter-terrorism-bill.html
I look at it like a big jigsaw. If you fill in enough pieces you can see what the picture is. You don’t need all the pieces. I clearly see a flying pig. They can say ‘no, it’s a dog’ a million times over, but I do clearly see a flying pig.
9/11 – Spectacular coordinated attack followed by restrictive legislation on the population.
7/7 – Spectacular coordinated attack followed by restrrictive legislation on the population.
Well, now we are all safe because of the restrictive legislation there have been no other spectacular coordinated attacks. Pull the other one! I reckon Blair knew about 7/7, but I can’t be certain. He might just be a complete idiot being used by them. He is definitely in amongst them though. ‘Them’ is a secret group. You can debate and speculate about exactly who is involved and why they did it, but they did it. Any openminded rational individual should be able to figure that one out. They are self-deluded and wrapped up in their own power trip I reckon. Whatever their motives it didn’t have to be like that. How would they have liked their mothers, fathers, sons or daughters being blown to bits or slowly roasted and forced to leap from 200 floors up? The C word springs to mind. Could stopping us realy breaking their shackles be a big part of it? After all, democracy has many aspects and shades of grey. Maybe a lot of it has been an illusion and we are approaching a crossroads? We have come a long way and they want us back in our closets?
As I understand it, the officer in the videos has come forwarded but not been suspended. (Latest BBC news).
Imagine for a moment, you’re an ordinary chap earning an ordinary living, with ordinary standards of decency. You go to work, and you find you have to work next to someone whose picture has been on the TV as contributing to the beating to death of one of your customers. Your bosses don’t suspend him, your other colleagues know about this person, and know you are working with him and maybe others trying to protect him. Maybe your only option to keep your sanity is to go off sick. But that would probably be rumbled, and you take your responsibilities for your wife and children seriously. How angry would that make you? How well will you be able to do your job and keep your temper dealing with tricky or unknown situations comprising upset and emotional, but innocent, citizens (really, customers)?
This is how ordinary policemen are treated these days, anything to make them angry and demoralised.
Sabretach above is dead right. The argument needs to be made loud and clear. We all have far more chance of meeting an early and violent death on Britain’s roads than ever being harmed by terrorists. And every day the police face the sorts of people (that is, arrest them, search their houses and take their DNA) that the government try to pretend will do us harm. Right now, there are more-or-less NO police daily facing the sorts of people who will kill 3000 of US every year on our roads. That is left to a few cameras that have had no effect on the 3000 dead per year figure, year in year out.
Time to sort the priorities out, and stop using the police to prop up corrupt administrations.
Mary
It was J7 and 9/11 I had in mind when I made that ‘Conspiracy Theory’ comment – though God knows there are plenty of others out there too. I do not know what accurate narratives of those events would reveal; what I do know – as surely as I know anything – is that the official narratives of those events are so full of holes as to render them absurd. Not only that but the way that any questioning of the official narratives is dealt with by The Establishment guarantees to anyone with half a brain that what is being hidden would be devastatingly damaging to those narratives. It is natural to draw damning conclusions.
The problem is that they are now so embedded in the collective psyche; so central to our entire foreign policy and the phoney ‘War on Terror’ with its appalling domestic Police-State-like consequences (not to mention millions of dead and displaced by our self-righteous war-mongering, that the prospects of finding out what really happened are practically non-existent.
I may indeed be labelled dismissively as a ‘Conspiracy Theorist’ but rather that than a gormless, indignant, fearful, authority-trusting ‘Coincidence Theorist’
“Will you open fire on UK citizens’ Army personnel being asked”…
http://tinyurl.com/agu9r6
“Will you open fire on UK citizens Army personnel being asked”…
http://tinyurl.com/agu9r6
As expected, no CCTV footage apparently.
IPCC: CCTV wasn’t working
http://tinyurl.com/cl5tyl
[Channel 4]
What a surprise.
“Ahead of G20 summit, council told to switch off illegal £15m CCTV network”…
http://tinyurl.com/ct8do8
Oh dear. Must these comments on our creeping authoritarian state always descend into conspiracy theories regarding 7/7?
Just because Peter Power’s Visor security company was running multiple terror drills at exactly the same location at exactly the same time as the ‘real’ bombings doesn’t mean we have to start thinking something fishy is going on.
And just because the alleged bombers were upstanding members of their communities, loving fathers, volunteer schoolhelpers etc certainly doesn’t give us license to imagine that these people were in fact actors hired by elements deep within the intelligence services to take part in ‘mock’ terror drills and shoot ‘supporting’ videos all for a princely sum on condition of absolute silence.
Good grief, no.
Next you’ll be finding something suspicious about the government’s absolute refusal to allow a public enquiry into this nation’s worst ever ‘terrorist’ attack.
What on Earth is wrong with you people? Don’t you realise thinking for yourself is dangerous?
Who benefits from violence at demonsrations?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=St1-WTc1kow
I’m surprised no-one has posted the above; police agents provocateurs posing as ‘anarchists’, getting caught out by a diligent (and I have to say, heroic) Union leader at a demonstration in Quebec.
I think the police tactics was exactly the replica of what the british police under guidance of tony blair-war criminal and -di to the demonstratoions in april or may 2001 when the police forced the woemn kidsnad men to be packed into samll squares and lanes and prohibit them from going to proper toilet even.! britian has been a police state for a long time-itis only that british think that police brutallity is for foreiners so they keep quiet about it.
“I’m surprised no-one has posted the above; police agents provocateurs posing as ‘anarchists'”
It’s a clip I’m fond of posting myself. Proof beyond doubt that there is no level the PTB won’t stoop to to get what they want.
It’s becoming reasonably common practice among my circle of friends to approach masked, rabble-rousing ‘protesters’ at demos and ask them for the time, directions etc.
“What”?
“Oh – terribly sorry. Mistook you for a policeman”.
As I pointed out earlier, the idea is to foment as much tension as possible between the public and the police and then play one side off against the other. Fake ‘anarchists’ have proven very handy in the past for achieving this, but the mask is coming off, thanks to people such as the union leader in the above clip. Excellent work, sir.
In this disgusting game, the police are as much victims of the power players as the public are. Although power never willingly gives up power, it will have little choice when both the public and the controllers’ support mechanisms (police, military etc) unite in mutual understanding of how they’ve been duped.
We are supposed to fight the police.
The police are supposed to fight us.
Let’s not play that game.
“britian has been a police state for a long time-itis only that british think that police brutallity is for foreiners so they keep quiet about it.”
When governments cease to fear the people, police brutality is never far behind.
Only when the police identify with the people are governments kept in check.
I find it impossible to believe that none of the CCTV’s were working. I presume the CCTV service provider will loose revenue!!! And indeed who are the service providers? The police?
If the police are out in such force and as we are told always photgraphing demos again this is all too much.
Agent provocateurs have been at it for years – read about the case of _Auguste Coulon_, from 1892:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walsall_Anarchists
note that the Home Office & the Metropolitan Police attempted to conceal the evidence for over 80 years.
Also trumped up ‘terrorism’ charges have historical precedent: read about the case of _Alice Wheeldon_ from 1916:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/dl4th5
again, the truth regarding this case was buried for 60 years.
Hi,
Thought you might like to know that a Lancashire Policeman is currently under investigation for allegedly acting in a similar fashion to the guy who felled Mr Tomlinson. PC Paul Carbery (see Blackburn ‘CCTV Cities’) is accused of suddenly and violently throwing a 65 year old disabled man to the ground from behind. Two further Officers are under investigation for deliberately failing to retrieve the video footage that would have provided evidence of the assault.
They shouldn’t let it rest there. They should demand the service dates of those cameras, their last footage taken, the documented reports of when the cameras malfunctioned, affidavits from the control room operatives that no CCTV from that day was available, as well as from the technicians who last serviced the cameras. Connections between the camera company with 7/7 etc should also be checked out.
The sh1tty police are obviously lying and they can be caught lying by pursuing the matter. If they do things to cover it up, it’s likely the will make themselves more easily exposed.
@ The Cartoonist
The URL you gave says this…
“”We don’t have CCTV footage of the incident… there is no CCTV footage, there were no cameras in the location where he was assaulted.”
Speaking to More 4 News, the IPCC confirmed Hardwick’s comment, saying that the CCTV cameras overlooking the incident were not working
Paragraph 1: “there were no cameras in the location where he was assaulted.” ”
Paragraph 2: “the CCTV cameras overlooking the incident …”
Ummmmmm…..
I’m watching News 24. The headline is ‘MAJOR TERROR PLOT’. What a load of cobblers. Gordon Brown is our saviour? I see all news about expenses and Tomlinson has now evaporated. Instead we now have 10 minute episodes including live correspondents and Gordon telling us we have been saved from a major terror plot. Funny how all that cropped up just now! Quick wanted nothing to do with it? Something stinky and Brown about all this and it’s not just Gordon.
I’m now switching over to Channel 4 to watch ‘The Greatest story Ever Told’ to see if it does outdo what I have just seen.