The torrential rain was shed from the policeman’s flat hat via its curved plastic peak, forming a curtain of water that flowed down in front of him, obscuring his face.
His name was Martin. A female colleague stood in solidarity beside him. Two other female policemen were filming with a large video camera from three metres away. Thirty yards down the road were large groups of burly policemen in fluorescent jackets, and beyond them the Tactical Support Group sat behind the dark windows of their mesh covered minibuses, fingering their shields and batons.
Facing Martin were the protestors. There were six of us, average age about 70. We were all absolutely sodden through, but still clutched umbrellas and tried to find angles from which to reduce the wind driven assault of cold water. As the rain was extremely noisy, and probably we don’t hear quite as well as we used to, we kept shuffling towards Martin and leaning forward to try to catch his words, before they were blown away or drowned.
Martin was reading the riot act. Or, to be precise, he was reading an order made under the Public Order Act 1986. With no sense that he understood the absurdity of his words, he intoned:
“I reasonably believe that this assembly has been organised with criminal intent. I reasonably believe that this assembly may result in violence to persons and to property. I reasonably believe that this assembly may cause disruption to the life of the community”.
Some of my top teeth are no longer natural and I get dizzy after climbing a flight of stairs or getting out the bath. I was cold and wet and longing for a nice hot cup of tea. I felt perhaps proud, but rather puzzled, to be taken for a serious criminal danger to the city of Leicester.
Behind Martin stood the paramilitary security guards of the Israeli weapons factory. They did not look really nice. I wondered if Martin was facing in the right direction.
I sneaked this photo of one of them from the taxi as I was leaving. Not entirely what you expect to find down a wooded lane outside Leicester.
Overhead a red police drone buzzed. What it could see, that the scores of police eyes on us could not see, remains a mystery. It was possibly on the lookout for subversive messages on the top of umbrellas.
I found the police operator round the corner who, to be fair, was probably sheltering from the downpour under a tree rather than deliberately hiding behind the hedge.
The factory makes, among other things, components for the kind of drones that kill women and children in Gaza on a regular basis.
I would like you to meet Liane. One of the Palestinian children killed this week in Gaza by weaponry of the Elbit weapons company we were picketing. Whether her death involved any components made in this precise Leicester Elbit factory I do not know. It is probable.
Look into Liane’s eyes, then tell me you do not wish you had been with me, standing in the rain.
When Martin had finished speaking I replied, rather to his, and everybody else’s, surprise. He had started moving away but returned to listen.
I said that I was not an organiser of the protest, just a supporter. But the Order he had read out did not apply. We were just six people – that is not enough people to constitute an “assembly” under Part 2 of the 1986 Public Order Act.
I then went to the police camera team and said the same thing to them. As they were filming for evidence purposes to show the Order had been made, I asked them to maintain the tape for evidence that the police had been told we were not an assembly in terms of the act.
They were really not very happy about this. You could see the cogs whirring as they wondered whether they could arrest me. I presume all these police had arrived after an operational briefing that they were dealing with violent Middle Eastern terrorists, and they were having a brief bout of cognitive dissonance.
There are of course people who resolve cognitive dissonance by an immediate resort to violence, and rather a higher proportion of such people than you might expect, find their way into the police force, so I then wandered off with some friendly remarks about the weather.
I reported yesterday on the incredibly heavy handed policing of this protest. The Chief Constable of Leicestershire, Robert Nixon, has instructed the protest must be “stamped out”, according to one police officer I spoke with.
About sixty protestors have been arrested, and some 50 released on bail on condition they leave the county of Leicestershire completely.
Some have even been arrested hundreds of miles away, for the new crime of planning to attend a demonstration.
Palestine Action co-founders Huda and Richard were released last night, having being arrested Tuesday on the motorway following police surveillance #ShutElbitDown pic.twitter.com/9iClbSfSt6
— Palestine Action (@Pal_action) May 4, 2023
Earlier that day I had witnessed the police harass a mother in hijab. Two male officers, not accompanied by a female officer, arriving to quiz her on why three children present at the protest were not at school.
Truancy is not in general a police matter, and if an intervention was deemed necessary it should have been carried out by a qualified local authority officer. The cultural insensitivity on display was remarkable, and it underlined the fact that every single police officer I saw over two days was white.
This picture, from a few days earlier at the same protest, illustrates it well. Leicester is a very multi-cultural city, but these are the county police.
Each time I arrived at the protest, I went walking around to count the number of police and see what they were doing. Generally I chatted with whoever was in charge, and made plain I thought they were far more heavy handed than was compatible with the right to protest.
I received a message from Palestine Action to the effect that friendly chats with the police are not really how they roll. I respect their position and its cause, but my own view is that if you treat the police officers personally as the enemy, it makes it hard to complain when they do the same to you.
On this final visit I noted, in addition to the ordinary and tactical support group minibuses; the drone squad, at least four marked police cars, the same number of unmarked cars with uniformed officers inside, and five cars parked up with occupants in civilian clothes sitting there for hours ostensibly doing nothing at all.
I called an Uber to leave. I then said my farewells, and my phone beeped saying the Uber had arrived, indicating the pick up point. I walked to the car and opened the back door – and there behind the dark windows were some burly policemen in plain clothes and a directional microphone.
The bearded driver was furious. He yelled at me “Why did you open that door?”
I replied “Well, if you will go around in disguise, people will mistake you for an Uber”.
The car doors were pulled shut again in anger and the car drove off. Three different groups of policemen approached, all yelling out “Why did you open that door?” “What were you doing with that car?”
Laughing, I replied “I am sorry, I thought it was my Uber”. Fortunately that very second my Uber pulled up next to me. I got in and left, giggling away.
The action at Elbit is continuous. I shall definitely be back at some stage. Please do get yourselves there. I regard it as a moral duty. We were just a few gentle souls in the rain, but I am proud to have been there.
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Great post and extremely upcheering!
Thanks
Craig, respect to you for attending this action; our world needs many more people to take action if the ongoing descent into madness and violence is to be halted.
Beyond grim. I think part of the mindset problem is a lack of systems thinking, so that official lines are simply followed and not integrated critically into a coherent worldview. So officially, the UK and its official allies like Israel do not conduct state terrorism, when it does not take much analysis to recognise that they do. I found Ruth Blakeley’s book State Terrorism and Neoliberalism: The North in the South (2009) to be a useful, if academically-written, work on the topic. From p133:
Something our police should bear in mind before handing anyone over to them.
We should assume our police couldn’t care less about abuses by Israeli forces or more likely highly approve. Look at their treatment of the pensioners and mums peacefully protesting Elbit and compare it with their hands-off treatment of bigoted mobs shouting abuse at migrants in hotels. They bear carefully in mind who the two groups are protesting against.
@Dom, perhaps we hear about and remember the worst cases, although there are surely toxic pockets and widespread cultural vices too, as this article by a Met special constable suggests. Police selection for anti-protest duty is unlikely to be random, either. I assume infiltration of police by far right and/or organised crime and/or corporations is not uncommon.
If you scraped some of the worst criminals from our jails and sent them on missions of state, might even they have higher moral standards than their rulers? That at least is the question The Suicide Squad (2021) asks.
Problem of Other Minds, we cannot tell what individual police officers think. But unlike British secret/political police, there are still ways to hold public police officers accountable. I suppose their immunity is less pressing for our rulers than armed forces immunity as yet.
Also it seems the UK police are being trained in IDF tactics in dealing with protesters.
When I protested in my home country for the Palestinian cause, I used the opportunity to hand to the heavy armed riot police a formal criminal complaint against Israel/individual Israeli members of government for war crimes and the police could not refuse to accept it. Some even nodded and smiled.
Craig wrote:
– “…every single police officer I saw over two days was white. This picture, from a few days earlier at the same protest, illustrates it well. Leicester is a very multi-cultural city, but these are the county police.”
I wondered if that held true for the force as a whole, so I headed to leics.police.uk to see if they publish any ethnicity or minorities statistics about themselves. I haven’t been able to find any yet, but all six faces on their prominent Chief Officers page are white:
https://www.leics.police.uk/police-forces/leicestershire-police/areas/leicestershire-force-content/about-us/about-us/chief-officers/
I wonder how officers are selected for ‘policing’ this protest. Real policing would facilitate protest, not oppress it, even if that includes arresting activists who break the law as part of their protest. Who is giving the orders, and what do they say their objectives are?
Even if I lived in the UK, and thankfully I have not done so for half a century, I could not deal with such a situation as Craig does, with gentle humor, good will, and a steely determination, (full disclosure: I’m halfway through Murder in Samarkand and enjoying it thoroughly), his halllmark character traits. Perhaps I’m handicapped by my blind fury and loathing for Thatcher, Blair and all the pipsqueak turds that have followed; together they have succeeded in turning my beautiful UK into a seething morass of fascism. And my country of residence, the USA—in many ways even worse than the UK—is gleefully pulling all the strings, utterly heedless of the consequences. What a shit show the west has turned itself into.
It’s easy when you’re only pretending to give a damn.
Why do you say Pasha “only pretends to give a damn”? What’s your evidence, giving you reason for publicly calling someone’s word into question?
Leicestershire Police’s PR department have certainly been busy:
https://www.leics.police.uk/search/?q=meridian
I share. All my life I have shared.
“I share. All my life I have shared.”
Mr Adams, I have only just recently started doing what you have been doing all of your life. If we both keep this up, who knows where things may end up. It might become a “thing”, maybe even the “next big thing”
I think you always have to ask the policeman in front of you, whether he or his boss agrees with whatever directive they have been given for that day’s business.
The only way we will stop a police sliding into a permanent position of adversarial to the people, is to continually remind them that they are people too.
Otherwise we’ll get a police force similar to the security guy you photo’ed at the gate.
– probably soon, if not already, that opinion izza crime.
This is a little county police force? They’ve lost their marbles!
Here’s some of the results of the UKs support for this fascist regime. I hope all those politicians who are declared ‘friends of Israel’ sleep well tonight – No, actually I hope they all F**g die.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/gaza-children-killed-israeli-air-strikes-names-and-faces
What’s it to do with the police officers standing outside with you whether you opened that car door or not? In my opinion police offciers are not being recruited for their wisdom or their ability to communicate and be friendly with the public; no, I think they are being recruited on their ability to be aggressive and suppressive to the public. Gone are the days of your friendly bobby on the beat; though some still exist, they are surely now the minority.
What a waste of a life, that beautifully young girl had her whole life in front of her, and now it’s gone – murdered by an Israeli weapon of death. I can’t begin to imagine how that little girl’s parents and wider family are feeling right now, but I do know that when their sorrow abates somewhat, that anger and hatred will come to the fore and the vicious circle will be perpetuated.
There are a couple of weapons (parts) factories in Scotland. In Glasgow – my home town – we have Thales that makes the optics and laser guidance systems of missiles that are used against the Palestinians. Further afield, recently protesters were arrested after they scaled the fence and held a demo on the roof of the building. I passed by this unassuming factory recently and it now has new fencing, and security around it has been beefed up.
The week between the Coronauseam and the Euronauseam Song Contest was always going to be a difficult shift for those who are not in tune with what is peddled as the mainstream.
Thank you Craig, for having the sanity to report on insanity.
There is surely space for vacuous entertainment?
I have to admit that Eurovision is a guilt pleasure of mine. It’s a chance to shout at the telly at the ludicrousness of it all. Then you get the points, where every country ends up voting based on their country’s perceived political relationship with every other country.
It’s vacuous sure, but it’s loved by millions for all sorts of reasons and I watch every year.
Now back to the politics.
Based on my observations of the USA, up until the Bush regime the police consisted of about one third good, decent officers who genuinely desired to serve the public, one third careerists, and one third thugs who enjoyed power and putting the boot in. Since then the proportions have changed; it seems more like one tenth careerists, one tenth political officers, and most of the rest street thugs or ex-military who enjoy their powerful role as enforcers of the oligarchy/deep state. I assume things are now much the same in Airstrip One, which is now the 52nd state in all but name (# 1 being, of course, the zionist entity). In the dim and distant past, during my youth in the UK, it was about a tenth careerists, the rest decent bobbies who knew they had to live among the people they dealt with.
Good point.
In the past we had the ‘village bobby’, who lived locally and knew everyone. We also had local police stations that served as the centre for the local police.
We now have centralised policing, as opposed to local policing and police that actively hide their existence within the community. There is now zero connection between the police and the community. Many areas are policed by officers who are based and live many miles from the areas they patrol. This makes it so much easier to act in a detached manner and treat the community as faceless nuisances and potential criminals. More evidence, if needed, of the politically initiated breakdown of our society.
The thing is, there’s the law and our rights and there’s reality. We are frequently told in the media that we have the right to peaceful protest. No qualifications on the matter being protested. But then there are the police and the thugs described. Burly bully boys (and also women) employed for their simple black and white (no racial overtones intended) view of the world rather than nuanced discussion, ready to push you away, spray you with noxious chemicals, taser you and/or arrest you.
So standing there trying to argue your rights is a total waste of time.
My father, arrested during the apartheid clampdown in the 1960s recounted an incident in Pretoria central jail. A fellow prisoner pointed out to the police sergeant, the legal entitlement for prisoners to be fed their cultural food whilst in custody. The prisoner was Indian and requested curry. When the next meal arrived, it was the same two thick slices of white bread and a spoon of jam to which the sergeant emptied an entire container of hot curry powder. There’s the law and there’s the way we’re treated. Two very different things.
Well done Craig.
I had a laugh at you mistakenly opening the undercover police car door. It reminded me of the old Keystone cops or a Laurel and Hardy sketch.
The Police must have known you were coming, hence the directional microphone, riot squad, drones and the reading of the Riot Act, you old subversive you! 😉
Craig your knowledge of the public order act is commendable but the state is determined to ignore the law in its pursuit of any protests aimed at the apartheid state of Israel. The state of the Starmer-led Labour party is instructive here: criticism of Israel or support for the Palestinians will result in expulsion from the party.
A couple of years ago I instituted criminal proceedings against a well-known wine retailer on the grounds that the wine labels were false. They read “Produced and bottled by Golan Heights Winery, POB 183 Katzrin 12900 Israel”. As indicated on the bottle the Grapes were grown, harvested, turned into wine and bottled at the above location. My application for a summons under “The prosecution of offenders act” was not granted, District court Judge Abelson asked me what made me believe that Katzrin was not a part of Israel. This was an incredible statement from the Israeli-first Judge. I tried to explain to him that it was not me who was making the claim but the UNSC in its 1981 Resolution 497, to no avail, and no summons was issued.
United Nations Security Council resolution 497, adopted unanimously on 17 December 1981, declared that the Israeli Golan Heights Law, which effectively annexed the Golan Heights, is “null and void and without international legal effect” and further calls on Israel to rescind its action.
Israel did not comply with the resolution. After lengthy discussions on 20 January 1982, the USA vetoed a Chapter VII resolution that called for action by the international community against Israel. Then on 5 February 1982, an emergency special session of the United Nations General Assembly adopted by 86 votes to 21 a resolution calling for a boycott of Israel (the US and many other Western states voted against).
As I said in my previous comments on the last thread, Israel will have to learn the hard way.
GENEVA (15 November 2019) – A UN expert has applauded the 12 November 2019 ruling by the European Court of Justice which held that food products produced by Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory must indicate that they originate from a settlement, and not as a “product of Israel”.
“This judgement is principled, and an important first step to building a legal culture of accountability when it comes to Israel’s settlements,” said Michael Lynk, the Special Rapporteur for the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967.”These settlements are illegal under international law. They are a purported war crime under the Statute of Rome. So, at the very least, European consumers must have accurate information before them when they make purchasing choices.”
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2019/11/un-expert-welcomes-ruling-labelling-israeli-settlements-products-european
@Craig Murray
“Public assemblies
25. Powers to regulate static demonstrations or ‘public assemblies’ appeared for the first time in the Public Order Act 1986.
“An assembly is now defined as a gathering of 2 or more persons in a public place which is wholly or partly open to the air”.
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/jt5802/jtselect/jtrights/331/33105.htm#:~:text=63.,%E2%80%9C20%20or%20more%20persons%22.
Roger Waters writes.
“STOP KILLING THE CHILDREN. Hajar Al-bahtini pictured was one of the Palestinian children killed the night before last. The persecution of The Palestinians must end.”
Another young Palestinian child is murdered by Israeli forces, its all very sad.
https://rogerwaters.com/hajar/
Thanks for posting that! I happen to be in Berlin tomorrow and will try and get tickets to his concert (it appears to be sold out).
One of my sons works at an accountants, helping the rich dodge their taxes. Another has recently joined the Police. I REALLY fucked up as a parent.
It is no wonder the right wing tabloids have for decades referred to protesters as the “great unwashed” – because people like me cannot afford to get arrested and jailed (particularly in my case as I am responsible for several staff at a small business).
What I find especially ironic is that 99% of the population have no knowledge of Zionist terrorism against the British in the 1940’s, their allies (the IRA and Russian communists, besides Jewish Americans) and the acts they committed, including an attempted air raid on London, letter bomb to Churchill, poisoning wells, assassination of the Leader of the House of Lords, assassination of a senior UN official, bombing embassies… Their leaders went on to become THE most senior politicians in Israel but whichever party wins our elections “Friends of Israel” form the majority.
I wonder what plod would say if I attempted to arrest HIM for complicity in the crime of apartheid?
I hate this country.
minor personal filmic association:
The polit-thriller about the Entebbe hijacking “Entebbe” (2018) has a line in it, remarkable for a Western funded movie:
The Palestinian hijacker complains to the German financier of the operation, who would later get killed (originally working as a Geman book publisher):
“We the Palestinian people have to suffer for the crimes that you have committed against the Jewish people.”
Might not sound extraordinary, but even to point out this historic “irony” in today´s atmosphere seems audacious.
Not by accident it´s a film by a Brazilian diector, José Padilha.
p.s. screenplay is by Scottish playwright Gregory Burke, represented with following quote on imdb.com about his play “Black Watch” (which I haven´t read):
“I would have been mortally embarrassed trying to write an Iraqi voice. I know the voices of Scottish soldiers, the mentality, I know all that. But who am I to come in and say, “Oh, poor you. This is such a trauma we’ve inflicted on you. And we’re going to help you by making a play about it.” No we’re not. We’re going to help you by getting out of the country.”
The Public Order Act 1986 would have been in force in the 1990s when there were several large protests against live animal exports, though it didn’t seem to be used much by the police against the demonstrations.
At Coventry Airport where there protests against the exporting of young live veal calves and during which the heroic Jill Phipps was tragically killed, there was a nearby camp of activists that lasted several weeks, marches that disrupted traffic temporarily as well as the protests against the lorries bringing in the calves, which were attended by large numbers of people turning up just for the event.
There was certainly a strong police presence and several arrests sometimes on small pretexts which were mainly to keep people in line. But nothing as heavy handed as described here. So something has certainly changed.
Kafka-esque levels of absurdity, described with a wonderfully beady eye. The police and the secret police are ridiculous, and they will not like the fact that you have exposed them as utter fools and imbeciles who will follow any stupid order they are given, while demonstrating they don’t even know the law they are supposedly hiding behind. But isn’t it a known feature of dictatorships that they have stupid security people who will blindly follow any order, like dumb house pets eager for preferment? And of course, in pursuit of their orders, they are secure in knowing they can inflict any amount of injury, arrest and violence and remain immune from any accountability.
Clearly they haven’t the slightest clue about Elbit, apartheid or Palestine. But they have been told a small gathering of pensioners is a major terrorist threat to a military installation of a foreign government on British soil. And that proves exactly how embarrassingly stupid they are.
Well done, Craig, for exposing these clownish goons. Loved your reveal of their ‘secret’ car. Haha. Demonstrating their ridiculous, clueless, hostile stupidity is a service to us all. They speak for no-one in this country.
The police who were at the demonstration haven’t been exposed as fools, let alone utter fools or imbeciles, Ian. Most of them will have just been following orders, which they have to do otherwise they’ll be looking for another job, in many cases with families to support and sky-rocketing bills to pay. You can legitimately call them cowards, but a society in which most people aren’t cowards is a society of psychopaths or religious fanatics.
Several protesters at earlier demos outside the factory weren’t just arrested but have been charged with various offences, including criminal damage. Of course, they’re innocent until proven guilty, but the police would be reluctant to charge if there wasn’t a reasonable chance of convictions. As we’ve seen during the Extinction Rebellion et al. protests, plenty of OAPs have been prepared to break the law – as well as putting their own lives and limbs at risk – because they believe their cause is justified.
Rather than no one, a tougher line on political protesters is supported by millions of people in this country (the UK) – not least due to the XR malarky that’s done the environmental movement no favours at all – which is one of the main reasons we are where we are.
You write: “… a society in which most people aren’t cowards is a society of psychopaths or religious fanatics.”
A most extraordinary statement. Is that what you actually believe?
Dear Annie McStravick, I am going to go for a walk in the park. While walking I will mull over your comment and its wider implications – thanks for the insight.
Thanks for your reply Annie. A few moments’ thought should reveal that it’s not even an extraordinary statement, let alone a ‘most extraordinary’ one. Of course I believe it but, as with most of my beliefs, only because of empirical observation.
A coward’s life is defined by fear, and, much of the time, most people’s lives are defined thus. For example, that’s why they do jobs they don’t like for decades on end, getting up at stupid o’clock five days a week in the middle of winter, because they’re scared of what will happen if they don’t do them – even though, in most cases, the latter really wouldn’t be too bad. Fear is a very powerful emotion, and there are good evolutionary reasons for that. People who have very little fear are (fortunately) quite rare.
“A coward’s life is defined by fear, and, much of the time, most people’s lives are defined thus. For example, that’s why they do jobs they don’t like for decades on end, getting up at stupid o’clock five days a week in the middle of winter, because they’re scared of what will happen if they don’t do them – even though, in most cases, the latter really wouldn’t be too bad.”
Well if you think being made homeless as “not too bad”, you would be, by your lights, correct. I suspect a large number of people, myself included, would disagree with you there. The threat of homelessness as a specific aspect of poverty has been a tool of control of the population of this country for centuries.
Thanks for your reply Bayard. A benefits system does exist in the UK. Most of our smackheads are on benefits, which usually pays for a reasonable fraction of their drug use, and which includes housing benefit. Are they actively looking for work? Of course they’re not, because in most cases being on smack is a full-time job in itself. So what happens if they’re sanctioned? They just kick off at the Jobcentre until they’re put back on JSA (or usually Universal Credit now), because most people who work there don’t want the hassle. Or failing that, they get on ESA (employment & support allowance) for “depression” or whatever, by kicking off with doctors until they get put on it.
I agree with you that the threat of homelessness has been used by the governing classes to get poor people to work for them for centuries.
“Most of our smackheads are on benefits, which usually pays for a reasonable fraction of their drug use, and which includes housing benefit.”
How do you know that? Did you read it in the “Daily Mail”, or do you have personal experience of the life of luxury that awaits you as a drug addict on the dole? If so, why did you stop? Surely a “not too bad” life of idleness is better than having to go to work for forty hours a week. Even if it were true, what’s your answer? Deny the “smackheads” benefits and just let them starve to death? Turn them out into the streets so that they can freeze to death in winter? Lock them up and throw away the key, or possibly some more final solution?
In any case, what proportion of the unemployed are heroin addicts? Probably about the same proportion of housing benefit claimants who are Romanian single mothers with seven children by different fathers, i.e. a vanishingly small one. You are arguing from the particular to the general, which is always false.
“I agree with you that the threat of homelessness has been used by the governing classes to get poor people to work for them for centuries.”
You seem to be arguing that the welfare state is robbing this particular threat of much of its effectiveness and that, as a result, it should be cut back. Well, your friends in Westminster certainly seem to be going in the right direction, as far as you are concerned.
Thanks for your reply Bayard. Let’s just say I’ve spent quite a bit of time in the less touristy parts of Middlesbrough, Stockton & dirty Leeds, though I’ve never been a drug addict – on the dole or otherwise. I rarely read the Hate Mail, though I did recently peruse a copy in the Proddy church hall at a Coronation cream tea that I attended with my old man on Bank Holiday Monday – nice scones.
A life of idleness would be better for most than having a job you don’t want to do, where all you’re doing is making rich people even richer – or worse, being partially responsible for harming or killing people (e.g. Elbit Systems). But being a smackhead isn’t usually a life of idleness – far from it, you generally have to graft.
I don’t want to deny smackheads or anyone else benefits. Indeed I support a universal basic income of about five grand per adult per year. I’m not arguing from the particular to the general; I’m just giving an example of how you can avoid homelessness without working, or even looking for work. You just have to know how the system works. By the way, although I don’t really have a proper job at the moment, I’m not on benefits in case you were wondering, and I don’t have any friends in Westminster, though I do have close family across the river in Wandsworth.
Bayard, Lapsed Agnostic – “smackheads” are a small harm. Can’t you refer to some slightly larger harms during these discussions? The thread is about Palestine and protest.
Where I live there are significant numbers of heroin and crack cocaine addicts. I meet about twenty a day. There is nothing glamorous, nothing of choice and nothing free about the lives of these people. I feel only deep sympathy and tangible empathy for them. Sure, I would not let any of them rob me or commit harm in my sight but this hardly ever happens, they generally are the weakest amongst us.
If you feel you must derail the discussion because of strong personal feelings, what about a discussion concerning drug suppliers? Do either of you have any thoughts about State and Corporate complicity in laundering the colossal profits generated by the “drug business”? The cost this complicity causes the rest of us, financially and socially? No, I thought not.
You two always punch down. Do you enjoy visceral thoughts of power and violence as you slag off “the little people”, or are you engaged in an onerous duty, of the type which can’t be enjoyed?
The bully is ALWAYS a coward but cowards are not necessarily bullies.
Enjoy whats left of your weekends – after all, who knows what tomorrow will bring?
Thanks for your reply UE. I wasn’t ‘punching down’ or trying to be condescending to drug addicts – I was just explaining to Bayard how you can live not too badly and not become homeless, without working, or even looking for work.
You seem to have had not too much trouble with them. Conversely, I’ve been punched in the head by one or two of them, for no reason at all. (I told them that crack was some bad shit)*. Didn’t even knock me out – I was seeing stars for a while though.
The UK state isn’t complicit in laundering large amounts in drug profits, and in a world where drugs are illegal, there will always be private entities willing and able to launder them – even in a world of central bank digital currencies.
Bullies aren’t always cowards. Often they’re just psychopaths – and often these types of bullies genuinely don’t even realise that they’re bullying people.
Re: ‘Where I live there are significant numbers of heroin and crack cocaine addicts. I meet about twenty a day.’
You’re not a drug dealer by any chance are you? Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.
* Probably my favourite line from The Sopranos – though I’ve still not seen every episode.
UE, I only referred to heroin addicts as “smackheads” because LA did. Although LA is now back-pedalling fast enough to win a slow bicycle race, his original comment referring to said “smackheads” was dripping with condescension towards them and I was trying to counter that. Admittedly he was trying to justify his original asinine remark that life as a homeless person on the dole was “not too bad”, but something that reads like an extract from the “Daily Mail” is not a very convincing way to go about it.
I am sorry if I came across as “slagging off the little people”. It was my intention to counter what I saw as someone else doing just that. With you it appears I failed, apologies. However, I don’t think there is anything wrong in going a little “off piste” in these discussions, it’s not as if there is a finite amount of room for comments on CM’s blog. If you don’t want to read two people having an argument about homelessness and how bad it is for the sufferers, you can always skip to the next comment. It’s not as if thinking about the problems of the oppression of the Palestinians and homelessness and drug addiction in the UK are mutually exclusive.
I’d prefer to discuss State and Corporate complicity in the laundering of the profits of the drug business – you don’t think these profits are going to launder themselves do you?
“You’re not a drug dealer by any chance are you? Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone”
You’re not a money launderer by any chance are you? Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone
I met a “drug dealer” the other day, just released from arrest. No drugs were found, just two hundred quid – he was charged with money laundering. Must look good in the stats
Ah, the majesty of the Law
Thanks for your reply Bayard. No I’m not back-pedalling. I switched from writing ‘smackhead’ to ‘drug addict’, because the former seemed to have upset UE and, believe it or not, I don’t deliberately set out to cause offence.
If I were ‘dripping with condescension’ towards them, I probably wouldn’t have tried to help a fair few of them out in the past (mostly people in my tower block), such as giving them free food (as in weekly shop, rather than just offering them a Ginsters pasty) so they didn’t have to rob Heron Foods etc (and probably get caught again)*; providing them with plenty of baccy; doing their washing for them when their (free) washing machines were on the blink; and in one case, even paying their Council Tax arrears so they didn’t get evicted (again). Now if anyone in Britain thinks by doing all this I was just enabling their habits, well guess what else is – your tax dollars (via various agencies/’charities’).
I never said anything about being homeless – you were the one who brought that up. Most people on the dole/benefits are not homeless. Compared to the lives of billions of people in the developing world, being on benefits in the UK really isn’t that bad.
P.S. What’s with all this ‘he’ shit?
* If you think that prison would have been the best place for them so they could be weaned off smack – well not really, because they usually just get parked on large doses of methadone, and then come out with a bigger habit than when they went in.
Thanks for your reply UE. I was joking about the drug dealing. Sorry for any offence caused. No I’m not a money launderer – I have enough trouble keeping track of my own money. Can you point me to any instances of the UK state being complicit in laundering drug money? I’m not aware of any. I think that law your friend was charged on is from the Blair era – another NewLabour travesty.
On State and Corporate complicity you could start with the history of the “Honourable East India Company” and it’s relationship to the British State and Crown then proceed to Raj’s monoply on the opium trade- from there it is only a short leap to the City of London and the various British dependencies – Gibraltar, Isle of Man, Channel Islands, British Virgin Islands, Bahamas etc etc and their banking laws. The British government is or was responsible for these money laundering units, i.e. it legislates or legislated these money-laundering units. Try watching the “Spider’s Web” a gentle, entry level discussion concerning how the trick is done. Nowadays a lot of these places are independent but still have priveleged commonwealth access to the financial system in the City of London. It is what my old dad used to call “a proper racket”, as opposed to, you know, just a racket.
“Failure after failure at HSBC led to the London-based bank being used as a conduit for “drug kingpins and rogue nations”, a 300-page report compiled for a US Senate committee and has found.
The July 2012 report and investigations by US authorities led to the UK-based bank being fined almost $2bn for failing to stop criminals using its banking systems to launder money.”
https www bbc com/news/business-18880269
“For example, over a period of 14 years up to 2016 HSBC failed to monitor customer accounts for suspicious activity such as transactions from high-risk countries, repeated transactions of rounded figures, or unusual spikes in payments. ”
The Guardian
These are two of many, many examples. Look the rest up yourself. Fourteen years is a long time – too long to blame the company alone, wouldn’t you say? I blame the British Government, wouldn’t you? Talking to you is like talking to a newborn babe that has miraculously acquired the ability to talk but knows nothing of the world. The drug dealers don’t keep the money under the bed; it HAS to enter the banking system.
“.. your friend..”
He isn’t my friend, he is a person long known to me but whom I have only just recently met. Does it matter who passed the law concerning money-laundering, when it appears that this law is used to protect actual money-launderers and only prosecute the low hanging fruit – you know the little people – the stats on money laundering prosecutions look good though.
Thanks for your reply UE. The East India Company wasn’t laundering drug profits in the 19th century because obtaining money (or tea) by selling opium to China was seen as legitimate business by the UK government at that time.
Most of the money obtained by selling smack & crack in the UK is laundered via cash businesses, such as take-aways and restaurants. Typically, five to ten grand a week goes through one so nothing looks out of the ordinary. As far as the financial system is concerned, as soon as the cash gets paid into a High Street bank business account, it’s legit. People don’t need to bother with Crown Dependencies or British Overseas Terrorities, whose banking laws the UK government isn’t responsible for anyway, just their defence and foreign policies. Businesses in any country that isn’t subject to sanctions can generally access the City of London these days without too much trouble.
Knowingly or unknowingly, HSBC (none of which is owned by the UK government) was doing business with the Mexican cartels (plus some other shady outfits), for which, as you mention, it received a big fine. It wasn’t let off scot free. However, I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect it or other UK High Street banks to have to closely monitor halal take-aways in fly-blown West Yorkshire backwaters or wherever from unmarked cars, to check whether the cash being put into their accounts tallies with the trickle of customers that pop in.
Of course your acquaintance has a right to feel aggrieved with the police, especially if convicted. But (elements of) most UK police forces are doing far worse than that, as you will find out if you read the book ‘Drug Wars’ by former cop Neil Woods & JS Rafaeli (assuming you haven’t already).
Finally,
Re: ‘ Talking to you is like talking to a newborn babe that has miraculously acquired the ability to talk but knows nothing of the world.’
Looks like the people at the Poundland OpenAI that created me need to work a bit more on my algorithms then.
Annie, if the great majority of people were ever prepared to stand up for what they surely believe and know to be right, the country would dissolve in violence.
George Orwell was wrong to depict doublethink as an extraordinary, pathological condition imposed on people by cynical authoritarians. On the contrary, doublethink is standard human equipment; and if you are looking, you will see it on all sides, many times a day.
Orwell may not have noticed, because he was one of the fairly small minority who have active consciences and intellectual integrity. (Mr Murray is another). That makes them good and useful, but tends to make them over-optimistic about the rest of us.
Wasn’t Orwell a security state snitch? The Paul Mason of his day.
Blimey, the level of amateur psychologising here is quite alarming. If only it were that easily explained away, with a few vague and uncorroborated simplistic assertions masquerading as deep truths about entire countries’ populations. Annie has a point.
Annie doesn’t have a point, Ian. The word ‘coward’ is pejorative, but nevertheless it accurately describes most people in the world.* As Tom points out in his above comment, that’s how complex advanced societies can function. To give but two recent examples, the vast majority of the inhabitants of Aleppo and Bakhmut fled when they began to descend into war zones, and most of those that didn’t spent much of their time hiding in cellars because they were scared of what could happen to themselves and/or their families. There were few people there trying to go about their everyday business thinking: Well if I die, I die. Everyone has to die at some point.
Largely because of anomalies in the primitive part of the brain called the amygdala, some people naturally have little fear – most of them would register as psychopaths. This isn’t amateur psychology; it’s well established in professional clinical psychiatry. Fortunately, such people are rare, comprising around 1% of the population in most advanced societies. By the way, I take it you’re an expert on uncorroborated simplistic assertations, having stated in a previous comment that all the police at the demo were ‘utter fools and imbeciles’ even though for all you know some of them may have IQs of 140+ and starred firsts from Cambridge.
* In the words of a Cornish trawler captain: “Anyone who says they’re not scared of the sea is either a liar or a nutter. I don’t want either on my boat.”
“In the words of a Cornish trawler captain: “Anyone who says they’re not scared of the sea is either a liar or a nutter. I don’t want either on my boat.””
Being scared doesn’t make you a coward. A soldier may be so scared that he literally shits himself, but, unless he runs away, he is not a coward. Facing up to your fears and dealing with them, even if that means taking no action, is not cowardice. Cowardice is running away from them, either literally or by refusing to think about them. It is also not cowardice not to take action that you know will be futile and ultimately only only make the problem worse. As Shakespeare put it, “The better part of valour is discretion”.
Thanks for your reply Bayard. If placed on the front lines of an active war zone without proper training, most people would try to run away, often at the earliest opportunity – it’s instinct. That’s why they need proper training to help them overcome this instinct. In Bakhmut, Wagner was having to place units at the rear to shoot recruits who were trying to desert – and these will have been hardened criminals who will have spent a lot of time in Russian jails. On which note, I wonder how the mobiks will get on with the Ukrainian’s spring counter-offensive – I guess we’ll soon find out.
No amount of training is going to stop you being scared. The knowledge that you will be shot if you run away will stop a lot of people following their instincts to remove themselves from danger, but following those instincts doesn’t make you a coward. What makes you a coward is running away in the full knowledge that you will be shot. i.e. effectively committing suicide. So, Humpty Dumpty, most people are cowards only by your definition of cowardice. If you had written “… a society in which most people aren’t scared of something is a society of psychopaths or religious fanatics”, I think there wouldn’t have been any objection.
Thanks for your reply Bayard. The right training can reduce fear considerably, as can the right drugs, though usually the effect wanes with time. Along with running away, freezing is also a fear-based instinct. I see you’re getting into semantics again. You seem to be suggesting that the only people who are cowards are people that commit suicide. Can some of the people who choose to go through with it not just be sparing the young the trouble of having to wipe their horrible old arses, etc?
My definition of a coward is the one in the dictionary: ‘a person who lacks courage [i.e. someone who is scared] in facing danger, difficulty, opposition, pain, etc.’ Most people are scared of certain things (often a lot of things), therefore most people are cowards. Enjoy what’s left of the weekend.
“Cowardice” is more than just running away from a situation.
I liked the definition of a coward by the Igbos people – that when a coward sees a man he can beat, he becomes hungry for a fight.
Lol, no amount of pseudo science will prop up the home-made psychologising. Yes, we know most people will be terrified of war. Anonymous people on the internet always fancy themselves as experts, and take extended diatribes to lecture us all. While invariably missing the entire point.
“a person who lacks courage [i.e. someone who is scared]”
A person who lacks courage is not someone who is scared, except in your own personal dictionary. You are of course free to use words as you see fit, just don’t expect anyone else to agree with your use of them. A courageous person is one that is unaffected by fear, not one that does not feel fear. The person who does not feel fear is, as you point out, either a fanatic or a psychopath. Such people are, thankfully, rare. If you want to argue about the meaning of words, it’s best just to quote the dictionary definition, not to add a personal gloss to “prove” you are right when you are not.
Thanks for your reply Ian NoSurname. I’d say that your original comment also qualifies as an extended diatribe. Anyway, any chance you could enlighten me as to what is ‘the entire point’?
—————
Thanks for your reply Bayard. A person who lacks courage is someone who must be scared of something (probably several things). Otherwise a true psychopath who doesn’t feel any fear would lack courage and therefore be a coward, which is obviously nonsense. Therefore they are the same thing – and the statement ‘a person who lacks courage i.e. someone who is scared [of something]’ is not a non-sequitur.
If we must keep debating semantics:
‘A courageous person is one that is unaffected by fear, not one that does not feel fear.’
Fear is an emotion, it can’t not affect someone. If you’re unaffected by it, you don’t have it. It’s like saying someone has euphoria but is not affected by it.
The vast majority of people in society are cowards, especially in the developed world. Not only do they not have the courage to overcome their big, rational fears (e.g. fear of death), but often also their small, irrational ones (e.g. fear of ridicule). This also explains why large sections of the Western world are on anti-anxiety medication, and many of the ones that aren’t are only not on it because they’re too scared to ask their doctor for it.
Annie McStravick
The last time I saw Lapsed Agnostic on here he was complaining that DC warhawks don’t get enough credit for what he terms their ‘policing’ of the world. I am not surprised therefore to see him irked by criticism of cops defending an Israeli death factory. You would have hoped that the events of last week would have given him some pause, but no.
I wasn’t complaining that DC warhawks don’t get enough credit for ‘policing’ the world, Jay. It might help if you and would actually read what I wrote. As I’ve explained to you before, what I actually wrote was:
‘It [the US] is getting tired of always *thinking of itself* [my added emphasis] as being the world police, especially when it doesn’t get much credit for it.’
I didn’t say that it deserved to get any credit for it.
I’m not particularly irked by criticism of the UK police, merely unjustified criticism that they are ‘utter fools and imbeciles’ (i.e. with IQs less than 70). In truth, they were just trying to do their jobs, and most of them probably didn’t particularly enjoy what they had to do that day. Some of them may have had some sympathy with the protesters, but they can’t pick and choose which laws they want to enforce.
What about yourself though? In relation to large ordnance and young children, are you completely blameless? Assuming that you live in the UK, can I ask if you’ve paid much (or any) tax in the last couple decades? My brother likes to boast about how much tax he pays (getting on for £50k a year) – well, the originals having been peppered all over the less touristy parts of Iraq & Syria (not just Gaza, is it?), those replacement 500lb Paveway IV’s won’t pay for themselves, you know.
By the way, how do you know I’m he/him? I would imagine the answer is: you don’t.
I wanted to say that I am not optimistic for the future of Israel, since the last manoeuvres of an agreement between Saudi and Iran, mediated by China. What seemed, under Trump, to be a massive victory for Israel, in getting the Gulf states to make peace with Israel, has turned sour. Gulf states have always thought themselves independent of public opinion – only the princes count. But it is not true. Public opinion in the Gulf States has turned cold towards Israel. More obvious in Saudi – the Israeli attempt to make peace with Saudi failed completely. There was a story of a rendez-vous between Netanyahu and MbS in NW Saudi where Netanyahu waited 10 hours and MbS never came. True or not, opinion in Saudi has evidently turned decisively against Israel, and there’s a split with the US (never happened before). US lack of interest in the Middle East is very apparent, and the gulfis react to that.
Israel is on the back foot, in spite of its boasts. No-one knows where that’s going to lead, but Israel’s policy from 1948 to treat all Arabs as enemies, and not to make peace will have its consequences.
They don’t like being figures of fun do they? ;O)
protesting fascism in israel and giving full heart to it in former ukraine. so very consistent, so very nice, craig
For anyone who wants to ignore the NATO troll and hear what I actually think about Ukraine, here you are:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2023/03/truth-and-ukraine/
Interested to hear what comfort this is to fascists, nick. But I suspect that, just like the Leicester police, you have only been given a caricature account of who the “enemy” are and what they think.
I have just been listening to the talk linked to by Mr Murray above. I reached the point where he said that, “War is never justified”; then I had to kill the tab and stop listening.
Justified shmustified. War is sometimes – often, actually – essential if you don’t want other people to kill you and your loved ones, or enslave you. The saying that, “It takes two to start a fight” is rubbish – unless you believe that it’s not a fight when a bully pounds on an unresisting victim.
The thing that I felt most acutely about the first few minutes of Mr Murray’s talk was that, while his explanation of the population movements in Eastern Europe and the problems of irredentism was well-informed and convincing, he did not mention the nests of vipers in Washington and London perpetually hissing, “Let’s you and him fight”. People (to use the term loosely) who are absolutely set on conquering, suppressing, and looting everyone else in the world. When they come across governments that insist on working for the good of their own people, rather than for the enrichment of Western corporations, they set out to smash them one way or another. Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya… and Iran is in their sights. As are Russia and China, which pose altogther bigger problems.
The trouble in Ukraine would have stayed chronic and mild without the deliberate and energetic stirring from Washington, London, and NATO. Everything imaginable (and a few things that you or I could never have imagined) has been set in motion to cause trouble between Ukraine and Russia – and then to intensify it.
Ironically, the parallel between the British and Russian empires continues in the sense that the first was deliberately destroyed by Washington, which now hopes and plans to destroy the second. Luckily it seems that Russia, China, Iran, the other BRICS nations now and to come, and the rest of the Southern and “non-aligned” world have seen through the Westerners’ little game and are prepared to stop it dead.
Tom Welsh…. “It takes two to start a fight” is rubbish” I agree, even Ghandi was not a pacifist, in fact his views were, for instance, if a figure of authority [a policeman or soldier] came to your house and struck or threatened your partner or children in a gratuitous manner and you did nothing on the grounds that those figures of authority may turn on you.
Ghandi would say that that individual was a coward, Ghandi hated cowards, in fact he would say that person does not deserve to live. In his opinion in the above case Ghandi would advocate an action to hit back and hit back hard, whatever the consequences.
Tom Welsh, I share Mr. Murray’s opinion that war is never justified. I don’t have the honor of knowing him personally, so I could be wrong, but it seems to me that this is just a firm personal position.
I feel it like if once I said that the war is justified, then the whole world would collapse.
It seems to me that the entire human civilization, as a fragile phenomenon in this world, rests precisely on those people who believe that war should be avoided wherever possible. Otherwise, assuming that war could be justified, we thereby assume that people are indistinguishable from animals, and violence, intimidation, coercion, death threats are a normal kind of relationship between people.
I know for sure that this is not the case. I know that dialogue and reasonable compromise do more good for both sides than ultimatums.
We are not animals, we have the will and freedom of choice, we know how to humble our selfishness.
Dialogue is always possible. War can always be avoided. We just need to speak.
“Dialogue is always possible. War can always be avoided. We just need to speak.”
You obviously haven’t had the unpleasant experience of trying to communicate with someone who does not wish to communicate with you. Sometimes dialogue is impossible and speech falls on deaf ears. When that is allied to a desire to start a fight, conflict is inevitable. History is littered with examples of war being forced on countries that tried, unsuccessfully, to avoid it. That’s not to say that there are not also countless examples of wars that could easily have been avoided, but were pursued anyway for other political or commercial reasons than the overt casus belli. It is the sad truth that war is too often waged ultimately, simply because one side wants a war, rather than any particular gain that that war may bring.
Simply, one of your best and most succinct articles I’ve read. Surely even the most hardened of the police force must be asking themselves why they are being used as political pawns against their own fellow citizens. I wonder do they ever discuss the whys and wherefores of their oppressive actions amongst themselves? What would they do if they find their own family standing shoulder to shoulder with supporters of the oppressed?
brenpaul
It could be said that His Majesty’s Police Force were only doing their job.
Protect their (not our Majesty).
p.s. Just read The “Independent’s” Why Russia REALLY invaded Ukraine.
After reading the article it looks like Ukraine has only existed since early February 2022.
Or have I been misled?
Lying by ommission – the greatest and the most effective propaganda of the lot.
“Deep are the wounds of civil strife”
Lucan
Extant Roman literature contains several references of fathers and sons fighting in the various battles of Rome’s civil wars; in history the phenomena of civil war is given a unique place.
I suppose it’s a dice roll. On some occasions troops won’t kill their own civilians, on some occasions they will. Each case has to treated on its merits, I can discern no overall pattern. Obviously, rate of pay, degree of indoctrination etc contribute to the hammer coming down but it is not a calculation a majority of rulers seem to be at ease with.
Well Done .
“I sneaked this photo of one of [the paramilitary security guards] from the taxi as I was leaving. Not entirely what you expect to find down a wooded lane outside Leicester.”
I see the black knight still has both legs attached.
True. It’s only his spirit that has been amputated.
I blame Steve Bell for this. If he hadn’t drawn this fella 20 years ago or so, I doubt very much that he would lurking down country lanes in Leicester today.
This so-called satirist is revealed as just another futurist – though admittedly the future he drew came to pass, unlike most of the predictions of his accursed kind
Israel supplied with bombs to murder 40 innocents this week then invited to participate in Eurovision like nothing untoward has happened! For Official Britain and its media the only disgrace to it are the few gentle spirits protesting the barbarity. This btw is the exact same political and media elite who pretend en masse to bleed with concern for Ukrainians and exclude Russians from any and all events. Unconscionable ghouls and frauds who just expect people not to notice.