How a Police State Starts 414


On Saturday a small, socially distanced vigil of 18 people for Julian Assange at Piccadilly Circus was broken up by twice that number of police and one elderly man arrested and taken into custody. The little group of activists have been holding the vigil every week. I had just arrived to thank them and was astonished to see eight police vans and this utterly unnecessary police action. There could not be a clearer example of “Covid legislation” being used to crack down on unrelated, entirely peaceful political dissent.

I was myself questioned by a policeman who asked me where I lived, how long I had been in London and why, what I had been doing at the Assange trial and when I was going back to Edinburgh. (You can see me very briefly at 10mins 30 secs trying to reason with a policeman who was entirely needlessly engaging in macho harassment of a nice older lady).

Later in the evening I had dinner with Kristin Hrafnsson, editor-in-chief of Wikileaks. I returned to my hotel about 11pm, did my ablutions and went to bed. Just after midnight I was awoken by an insistent and extremely loud pounding at the door of my room. I got naked out of bed and groped my way to open the door a chink. A man dressed like the hotel staff (black trousers, white shirt) asked me when I was checking out. I replied in the morning, and pointed out the hotel knew I was leaving the next day. Why was he asking in the middle of the night? The man said “I was asked to find out”. I closed the door and went back to bed.

The next morning I complained in the strongest possible terms, the hotel refunded me one night’s accommodation. The duty manager who did this added “It was not our fault” but said they could not tell me any more about why this had happened.

The person at my door had a native English accent. I had been staying in the hotel over four weeks and I think I know all of the customer facing staff – not a single one of them has a native English accent. I had never seen that man before. This was a four star hotel from a major chain. I suspect “do not get sleeping guests out of bed after midnight to ask them what time they are checking out” is pretty high on their staff training list. I cannot help but in my mind put it together with my encounter with the police earlier that day, and their interest in when I was returning to Edinburgh, but there seems no obvious purpose other than harassment.

The hotel incident may just be in the strange but unexplained category. The busting of the Assange vigil earlier is of a piece with the extraordinary blanking of the hearing by corporate media and the suppression of its reporting on social media. These are dangerous times.

I am now safely back home in Edinburgh.

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414 thoughts on “How a Police State Starts

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  • Jack Shaftoe

    I am so proud of my Scottish sliver of DNA because of your heroic court coverage, unique as far as I can detect, about the years torture and humiliation of an Austrailian by the English at the direction of an international police state controlled by the five eyes (NZ, Aus,Canada,UK, USA). The shamelessly poor parody of justice that is taking place in London is in worse than than what happened in the USA to Manning prior to conviction. American Manning was a serving soldier who was court martialed under US military courts and treated horribly but at trial the military court allowed him to present his defense. He is now free. Assange will get a more fair trial here in the USA when he is extradited and it’s better than even he will go free eventually. The deep state does not control the courts here so absolutelty although they hate Assange as much as UK. The video of the London uniformed police intimidating and harassing peaceful people who they outnumber stands im sharp contrast to the same unformed police running and hidding from anyone who fights for BLM or Muslims on the rampage. Bullying the physically weak is risk free after all.

    • lysias

      Assange will be tried in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia (where the grand jury sits that approved his indictment), and he will not get a fair trial. National security cases in that district are always assigned to District Judge Leonie Brinkema, and cases before her always result in a conviction.

      • Jack Shaftoe

        Although what you say is accurate it will still be farier than what is going on in London. Most of the national security cases in eastern Virginia, where I live, are of people who committed at least some of the crimes they are accused of. Assange is totally innocent of crime and may win in Eastern Virginia and if not he will probably win on appeal.

        • David Otness

          John Kiriakou would likely beg to differ. And, lysias, Brinkema gave this case to another judge, btw.

          • Jack Shaftoe

            Kiriakou a CIA analyst caught disclosing a spy’s identity to a newspaper reporter is free and on TV.

            He was sentenced to 30 months in prison on January 25, 2013 and served his term from February 28, 2013 to February 3, 2015, at the low-security federal correctional facility near Loretto, Pennsylvania, in the general population.

    • Stuart

      Sorry Jack but you’re wrong, there is zero chance that Assange will get a fair trial in the USA. Read Craig’s earlier posts reporting the evidence given by the defence’s expert witnesses – lawyers, a former prison governor and others who have direct experience of the courts and prison system. National security cases are tried in a special court in Alexandria Virginia, the region where the Pentagon and many defence contractors are based just across the river from Washington . Consequently the jury pool is largely made up of military personnel,
      government and defence industry employees and retirees or their family members. Quite apart from their inherent bias in favour of the government and against any defendant accused of being an enemy of the USA, they would inevitably suffer retaliation from their bosses and colleagues if a jury they served on acquitted a national security defendant. It should therefore come as no surprise that this Alexandria court has never failed to find the defendant guilty. This is comparable with Soviet Russia or Red China, where the mere fact you have been charged with a crime means you’re guilty.

      An additional form of injustice is the practice of using psychological torture in the form of solitary confinement for months BEFORE trial and the threat of draconian sentences (175 years!) to extort guilty pleas from the defendants. Ask yourself, if faced with the court stacked against you and a guilty verdict preordained, would you confess to a crime of which you were innocent in order to avoid spending the rest of your life in prison? Of course you would, and many of the defendants have including Bradley Manning. From the government’s position this has the added benefit of preventing govt crimes being aired in court.

      The corruption and injustice of the US legal system extends beyond Assange and Manning’s cases to the system as a whole. US prosecutors use their position to climb to political office over a pile of corpses with scant regard for guilt or innocence. The fact that the Innocence Project has managed to prove scores of death row inmates completely innocent of the murders they were convicted of should give any thinking person pause. If a law professor and his students can find the evidence how is it that the police and prosecution with their greater resources couldn’t? Answer: because they’re more concerned with collecting scalps than they are in justice. Then there’s the whole injustice of the Grand Jury system. Most Americans are not aware that Grand Jury proceedings are held in closed court where the defendant not only is not represented and has no right to challenge the prosecutor’s “evidence” but may not even be notified it’s happening. Hence the saying by defence attorneys that “a prosecutor can get the grand jury to indict a ham sandwich”. Even if you’re subsequently found not guilty the expense of defending yourself will bankrupt you. And if you can’t afford a competent defence attorney ……..

  • writeon

    The persecution of Assange is part of a wider degeneration of journalistic standards. Things do change and they do get worse sometimes. It’s wrong to think they’ve always been the same. I think things began to go really badly in relation to the invasion of Iraq. A tiny amount of dissent was allowed, but even that was seen as too much and the sight of millions of people all over Europe demonstrating against the war, especially in the UK, was rightly perceived as a direct threat to the state’s capacity for waging wars when it chose to. The Daily Mirror employed John Pilger to write critically and on Channel 4 the satirical trio of Bremner, Bird and Fortune, successfully ridiculed on a weekly basis the entire grotesque case for attacking Iraq. That wasn’t much, but compared to today, when there is nothing at all, it was significant.

    Anyway, the state and the security services decided that nothing like the mass anti-war demonstrations should be allowed to occur again and threaten the war effort. So a media clampdown happened all over the western world, though especially in the UK. Castrate the UK media and thise has an enormous ripple effect across the rest of the west, as other countries take their lead from the UK media, especially the BBC and the Guardian, because they speak to the liberal mindset so well.

    Since Iraq our foreign military adventures have been carefully managed by the state and a compliant and complicit media. Extraordinary and ridiculous propaganda stories about events in Libya and Ukraine and Syria were presented raw without any proper scrutiny. Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction became the norm. The media learnt not to ask any critical questions at all. Like in the absurd Skripal cas in Salisbury, which has more holes than a Swiss cheese. The faked poison gas attacks in Syria are another example. Or Russiagate in the United States. What’s happening to Assange is part of this great nexus of deceit and manipulation, because the state understands that the public doesn’t want more wars, whilst the state does, if the West is going to keep its dominant position in the world.

    The really big one now is the way the public are being carefully prepared and groomed for the coming war with China/Russia. The US empire won’t just sit by and watch China rise and occupy its traditional position as the centre of wealth and power in the world. It’s a situation similar to the British Empire in relation to the rise of Germany as a major world power. That didn’t end well either.

    • Natasha

      I’d go a step further and say the persecution of Assange is a symptom, merely enabled by the “degeneration of journalistic standards.” The bigger real ultimate goal being global control of fossil supplies for the West.

      What is the “war effort” for, if it isn’t to dominate all remaining easy to extract global fossil fuel supply = 87% of global *energy* consumption and rising, given the thermodynamic reality (see next paragraph) of future extraction projections?

      Why is energy the bigger goal? Because fossil fuels are getting less and less efficient to extract – at c8-10% GDP and rising: crudely 😉 speaking it takes more energy to drill / dig deeper and deeper for the same amount of oil / minerals surplus available for the rest of the economy. This is causing an (almost invisible because nobody’s really looking, see “degeneration of journalistic standards”) energy crisis which is behind the observable financial & economic stagnation and freeze in global living standard average rises we’ve been accustomed too during the first 100years of the oil epoch which is now starting to wind down.
      https://www.thegwpf.com/michael-kelly-a-challenge-for-renewable-energies/
      https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-17928-5

      Meanwhile those behind the “war [energy domination] effort” will happily let the renewable (wind & solar) lobby distract the population away from this reality, and carry on pretending it can expand beyond 1-2% global *energy* supply it currently enjoys, without fossil fuels to make cement & steel, and without massive expansions of mining activity = extractivisim i.e. screwing e.g. Africa & S America etc… for its minerals like lithium & cobalt etc… to make batteries that sit idle most of their c20/30max year lifespan, and without covering vast tracts of land / sea with windmills and solar panels, and brainwashing us to accept energy austerity and veganism to squeeze the faint possibility that a non nuclear, non fossil fuel future is not a mythic tooth fairy / unicorn, into their ‘infinite externalities’ models, that mindlessly ape the fatally flawed mainstream neoclassical economic models, with their all knowing psychopath ‘rational actor’ at their centre.

      What to do to switch from the 9/11 inspired “war on terror” sorry, I meant the “wars to secure fossils fuels for the west for as long as possible until the nuclear penny drops” if its thermodynamically impossible for renewables to scale up the 80+ times needed (i.e. global population is increasing along with average individual consumption expectations)?

      No matter how far into the future we throw the “zero emission” deadline, when saying the word ‘nuclear’ (the only high energy density solution on the table now today, if coupled with hydrogen, that has any prospect of replacing fossil fuels) its like showing a crucifix to a room of vampires – why are humans so irrational?
      https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Nuclear-is-missing-link-to-hydrogen-future,-says-L

      • giyane

        Natasha

        What you are saying is 100% right.
        I can never talk about the Fossil Fuel Fanaticism of the Tory Party without getting heated about the Lying because it is the Lying which triggers my allergy and brings me out in spots.

        I think the Tories understand that they can dissolve truth seekers to jelly by the sheer audacity of their lies.
        What I wanted to say about Bojo’s latest sneezing fit of outright lies about green energy is that they would power the wind turbines by stolen colonial gas to go round and round, just for the sheer joy of lying to the public.

        Political lying has now become so obsessive that our economy is no longer measured by its profitability, but by its ability to deceive the public.

        The great colonial projects from 40 years of proxy savagery and murder are coming on stream soon , Syria Iraq Somalia Libya Brunei Palestine. This what makes Oaf Johnson gurgle with delight and sell the dreamers free green energy.

        The crushing of Corbyn and Assange has convinced him that nobody will ever know how the British economy is dripping with colonial blood.

  • Geoff Reynolds

    ……………….Interesting reading.

    THE POLICE OATH

    English

    I, … of … do solemnly and sincerely declare and affirm that I will well and truly serve the Queen in the office of constable, with fairness, integrity, diligence and impartiality, upholding fundamental human rights and according equal respect to all people; and that I will, to the best of my power, cause the peace to be kept and preserved and prevent all offences against people and property; and that while I continue to hold the said office I will to the best of my skill and knowledge discharge all the duties thereof faithfully according to law.

    NEW OATH (CORONAVIRUS EMERGENCY LEGISLATION)

    Ignore all of the forementioned, put the boot in where necessary and follow the Government of Occupation’s merest whim until the tyranny is finally completed.

  • writeon

    To put it in a nutshell. The old-fashioned bourgeois, liberal, “democratic’ form of the state; is no longer compatible with the requirements of the emerging ‘strong state’, which, increasingly, is forced onto the warpath internationally, in order to protect its economic and strategic interests. For our recent and coming wars, the entire country has to be mobilised, especially when it comes to Russia/China. Therefore, dissent has become tantamount to treason and very dangerous to the war effort. Hence the necessity to destroy people and ideas like Assange’s. It’s a depressing and dangerous era we’ve moved into. It reminds one of the period prior to the outbreak of WW1. Bitter conflicts between rival imperial powers, leading to mass slaughter. In this context the persecution of Assange was inevitable. The media is now fully onboard for the war effort.

  • Doctor K

    I faced a difficult choice a short while ago.

    I could no longer stomach the lies, the monstering of Corbyn and the whole antisemitism scam, the theft of the last election (because I believe it to be so), the pretence of the BBC to provide “balanced” reporting, the torture of the Palestinians unopposed by western governments in thrall to Israel, the takeover of the country by US interests, the treatment of Assange, the censorship of alternative reporting, the hatred being stirred up towards Russia and China, the clownish “intelligence services”, the conduct of the Guardian and the rest of the daily comics, the bullying of the writer of this blog, the total breakdown of competent, humanitarian government directed, if that is the word, by the worst PM in history and a cabinet of ticks such as Patel. I no longer recognise the country I was born into.

    Do I side with the provocations, threats, and invasions of the US/UK regimes, or do I take the side of those bearing the brunt of those harassments? Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela? At 76 I am too old to hope for better. Starmer? Don’t make me laugh. I made my choice. I will be called unpatriotic or worse, a traitor.

    So let it be. Maybe not too difficult a choice. But if the likes of Raab are what it takes to a be a patriot, then spare me while I catch my throat. Get out while you still can, Craig. Tonight after a 17 day journey involving 3 flights including 14 days quarantine, I am drinking a glass of wine and looking out of a window in China and thinking of course, China is not perfect, but when you consider the alternative….

    • Doctor K

      Perhaps, in spite of your pseudonym, you are unfamiliar with the fact that China is in the far east?
      It’s a bit to the east of India, south of Mongolia.
      Happy to be of assistance.

      • Tony Little

        Can you refute any of the things posted? I think not, hence your weak and pathetic response

    • Lord Pakora

      Good on you Doctor K!

      I am a slow learner, but identify with every event you mention.

      My wife is Dutch and believed she had equal status to citizens of the UK and paid 17 years of national insurance contributions. She and my daughter moved back to Holland 2 years ago. It happened very quickly as my daughter needed to be in the Dutch primary system for a year to help get her into her chosen secondary school.

      I was also looking after my Mum (died last March in a care home, thankfully before I was banned from visiting.

      I’m in Holland at the moment and it is better. Nonetheless, we were discussing all the countries of the World, less physically healthy, but happy and just as free.

      Enjoy your wine, and enjoy China??

  • Rich

    Where is Dixon ?

    All we have is a bunch of school bullies.

    Where were they when the BLM rallies.

  • Doctor K

    No. That was then. Tonight I am still here in China, some time later.
    Perhaps like your grasp of geography, English is not your forte either.
    Mods, I think you can delete this pointless exchange,.

  • Mark Golding

    Please refrain from opening a hotel room door in the ‘dead’ of night; it might be Caesarea ‘fighters’ dressed in tennis gear carrying racquets, balls and death. Always phone reception first and make a lot of noise.

    • Geoffrey

      The Mirror was only anti the Iraq war until Piers Morgan was sacked. The only consistent anti Iraq war outlet was The Daily Mail, which you don’t mention.

  • Tucobenedito

    Reading Craig’s coverage of the extradition hearing two names kept coming into my head…Vyshinsky and Freisler. Show trial also springs to mind.

  • Tucobenedito

    I have Foyles Philavery which is a dictionary of unusual words….
    Kakistocracy….a system of rule by the least qualified and least principled citizens.

    We are all Kakistanis now!!

  • Ewen A Morrison

    ‘How a Police state Starts’ is a good title… however, we know that London’s government acts as if their Unrealistic Kingdom (UK), already IS a Police State!

  • Steve

    Thank you once again Craig – for this post and for all your excellent reports from the gallery. This case has been quite an education. The video beggars belief and the comments here comprise a powerful and inspirational witness to the dark and dangerous times developing all around us. You’ve done a great job on behalf of Julian and the right to freedom of speech for millions (the vast majority of whom – thanks to the media blackout – will have no awareness of it). More power to you all the same.

  • Republicofscotland

    The Met police force is one of the most corrupt police forces in the Western world, I’m surprised they didn’t baton a few folk to get the message across. The police state is all but upon us, standing up peacefully for what we know is right and wrong by demonstrating might get you locked up and a few sore bruises to remind you of your ordeal.

  • Aria Mohammed

    Members of the Workers Institute were all arrested in March 1978 by over 200 hundred police for doing completely peaceful work to serve the working class community of all nationalities in Brixton. They were imprisoned on completely trumped up charges for up to 6 months. Few people knew about what happened because there was a ban on any media coverage. That is why members of the Workers Institute call Britain a FASCIST state. Its Director Aravvndan Balakrishnan is at this very moment a political prisoner in Britain for the seventh time and at the age of 80! Like Julian, he is being persecuted by the US-led British fascist state for telling the TRUTH!
    It is only when you stand up to the state as supporters of Assange are now finding, that you can really learn the nature of a state which first of all persecuted its own people before going out to persecute innocent people of one quarter of the world and more.
    Solidarity with the brave struggle of these people in the film who are putting their lives on the line to defend the truth.
    At last people in Britain are in a better position to understand and support the just struggle to free Aravindan Balakrishnan from prison too!

  • ET

    I was going to write that I am astonished by what is shown in this video but I guess I am not that astonished. Instead I am more concerned and saddened. One has to ask at what level was the decision made to clear this protest, why it was made and to what end?
    What weight of responsibility lies on the younger generation who will have to counter all this?

  • bobo rebozo

    Ghastly. With poor Craig’s frightening midnight visit, I think we get an inclination of why David Kelly may have taken his own life. This will undoubtedly just be a start for these fiendish ghouls. The UK deserves to perish as a state and its leaders locked away for life.

      • bobo rebozo

        Apologies. I should have written “inkling”. Nevertheless, I take an agnostic view regarding his death. Whether by his own hand or that of another, I do believe it was brought about by ruthless spooks in service of the British state or the Americans.

    • Tony Little

      I do not think for one moment that David Kelly took his own life. The UK-SS have a long history of “suiciding” people who are seen as a threat to them or the establishment lackies they serve. They do NOT serve the general population.

      • Deb O'Nair

        More likely CIA as it gives MI5 the ‘nothing to do with us guv’ bullshit to the public and politicians. Allies often make use of each others secret services to knock people off.

    • Deb O'Nair

      No one believes David Kelly killed himself; not his friends, not his family and not a single doctor that has half a brain.

    • Mary

      Nobody dies from a cut to an ulnar artery assuming that Dr Kelly’s pocket knife was sharp enough. An ulnar artery will heal over and blood will not flow. Check Miles Goslett’s book – Open Verdict: The Mysterious Death of David Kelly – and also ask why the papers in the case were locked away for 70 years.

  • extremebuilder

    We`ve known the police are not what we`ve been sold them as since their inception, the clues stare us in the face and have always been there.
    Police FORCE, upholding law and ORDER.
    Their fall-back position is FORCE, their ORDERS come from those in power and have no relation to the laws in operation, indeed those ORDERS seen ENFORCED in the video are contrary to the law as it stands.
    Is there a point at which we`ll collectively say enough, or has that point passed? I think it`s long passed and we`re doomed to more of the same and much, much worse. How sad that good people must suffer so much in order that bad people profit.
    Remember Hillsborough, remember Jean Charles Menezes, remember Orgreave, remember all those abused children from council care……
    Remember our police are corrupt from the top down.
    Thank you Craig for your efforts to bring us the truth, stay safe.
    Free Julian

  • Gerald

    Sinister, but somehow totally believable in a country that, day by day, resembles more and more closely the DDR with its STASI infested society of boot lickers and back stabbers, all supported by a security state that has infested itself into every pore of the UKs epidermis.

  • Rhys Jaggar

    Mr Murray

    If that person was security services, they just do what they want.

    I was ‘visited’ by MI5 once in a Manchester hospital, not at my request I might add. There is 0.00% possibility that their presence could have done anything to improve my health, which just shows that hospitals should sometimes tell the Security Services to get off their property or else. In this day and age, they should take pictures of the miscreants and send them immediately all over the media with the title: ‘Who is this bullying gormless creep who thinks he can interfere with health treatments?’

    If I were you I would investigate whether CCTV pictures of the bloke exist. Nothing like dishing out some harassment to those who harass you, after all….

    • giyane

      bevin

      The idea of Starmer whipping his colleagues into supporting the Ultra Right Wing Tories reminds me of the main components of Angel’s Whip, Hydroxypropyl cellulose. Very good for leather on antiquarian books, but not at all nutricious for children.

    • Mighty Drunken

      The legislation for the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill

      https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/58-01/0188/200188.pdf

      When large sections of government can absolve themselves of following the law for such broad reasons the idea of justice is out of the window. As there is no limit to which laws they are allowed to break, could they not simply break the weak provisions within the bill itself? Couldn’t they lie, make false documentation, do anything and it would all be legal? Cover-ups would be easy as you could break the law which makes you document what you are supposed to document.
      I can’t see how this just doesn’t break everything. Like when you hack into a computer system and bypass the security and now you could do anything, no matter what the computer program originally was supposed to do. The law is void.

      • giyane

        Mighty drunken.

        I totally agree with you. One drop of wee makes the whole jug of drinking water impure. Maybe they think their 24_/7 evil eye surveillance will act like chlorine in a swimming pool. It will compensate for the idiots who pee in the pool.

        The PTB only want to cover their own backs. One wonders how many of the Bounce Back Loan fraudulent claims have been made by Tories thinking it was code for public freebies.

  • Dave

    Write to the hotel. Maybe the staffer you asked could not explain it, but if no-one in the hotel can, that raises significant questions.

    • IMcK

      Dave,
      Yes I agree. The hotel have indicated they know more than they are telling Craig. Given the circumstances of one of their guests being hounded in the middle of the night the hotel certainly has a responsibilty (a duty of care to Craig) to reveal what they know.
      I also imagine they have some responsibility to control access into the hotel, especially at night and which compounds their responsibility in the matter.

      • james

        i agree with you both, but it seems craig has enough on his plate at the moment… i think this is the approach the empire is taking – swamp him.. scary shite…

        • IMcK

          Yes I agree and this might have been covered by others but …
          If ‘the authorities’ pursue a court action which itself carries all the hallmarks of harrassment and then further harrass the defendant, the secondary harrassment is indicative of the first and material to the case. In this case the secondary harrassment has been witnessed (or at least is known of) by a third party and on whom pressure appears to have been put not to reveal any details.
          I think the defence team should consider whether to request of the hotel/company what they know and in light of an inadequate response consider summoning them as witnesses. In the meantime a letter of request for info including CCTV footage keeps the matter current.

  • Susan

    There is hope for Julian! There is hope that he will get a fair hearing on appeal.

    The UK Court of Appeals has REJECTED the position of the UK High Court (that Juan Guaido is “interim president” of Venezuela and thus gives him the right to access the country’s gold reserves). And the UK Court of Appeals has ordered a detailed JUDICIAL REVIEW of the dispute.

  • Deb O'Nair

    People in the UK are living in a totalitarian fascist police state run by a bunch of CIA quislings who pretend that they’ve either been democratically elected or democratically appointed.

  • Ort

    I trust that you were especially careful and circumspect when leaving your room, Craig. Your sinister, mysterious midnight visitor might have smeared some “novichok” on the doorknob.

    Otherwise, this appalling report of explicit (daytime) and implicit (nighttime) police/state security misconduct brings to mind an oft-quoted (by me) passage from Joseph Heller’s prescient masterpiece Catch-22 (1961):

    Yossarian… passed them by for an altercation on the next block between a civilian Italian with books and a slew of civilian policemen with armlocks and clubs. The screaming, struggling civilian was a dark man with a face white as flour from fear. His eyes were pulsating in hectic desperation, flapping like bat’s wings, as the many tall policemen seized him by the arms and legs and lifted him up. His books were spilled on the ground. ‘Help!’ he shrieked shrilly in a voice strangling in its own emotion, as the policemen carried him to the open doors in the rear of the ambulance and threw him inside. ‘Police! Help! Police!’ The doors were shut and bolted, and the ambulance raced away. There was a humorless irony in the ludicrous panic of the man screaming for help to the police while policemen were all around him. Yossarian smiled wryly at the futile and ridiculous cry for aid, then saw with a start that the words were ambiguous, realized with alarm that they were not, perhaps, intended as a call for police but as a heroic warning from the grave by a doomed friend to everyone who was not a policeman with a club and a gun and a mob of other policemen with clubs and guns to back him up. ‘Help! Police!’ the man had cried, and he could have been shouting of danger.

  • Deb O'Nair

    20,000 new police officers kissing Boris Johnson and Priti Patel’s arses whilst stamping their boot on the public’s face.

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