Wednesday, 27 April 2011

The babies are out - by Richard... Wednesday, April 27, 2011


Fresh from their victory on the streets of Stokes Croft, it seems that Avon and Somerset Police have scored another triumph. Their quest this time was the villain who had drawn a comic Hitler moustache on an election poster for a Tory councillor and pinned it on the village notice board in the tiny Somerset village of Pitcombe, near Wincanton.

Police have stormed through the village carrying out house-to-house inquiries, knocking on the doors of all twenty houses in what has been labelled an operation of "quite stunning overkill". Strangely, even the wuzzies on The Daily Failygraph noticed something amiss, even though they seemed to find nothing particularly wrong with 160 officers from the same force running amok on the streets of Stokes Croft.

The two incidents, in fact, tell you a great deal about the priorities of this once-great newspaper. To the actual "factual" reporting of the Bristol riot, it devoted 85 words, online. This was under the heading: "Bristol riots: 'Police not heavy-handed'", along with a video of the egregious Supt. Wylie. The "Pitcombe overkill" gets 501 words.

The babies have been let out of the nursery and are now running the newspaper.

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Bristol Stokes Croft riot - the story so far - by Richard...


Adding to the reports on the Bristol riot, we have this from Press TV and this from Socialist Worker. If anyone had told me, say, ten years ago, that I would prefer an account from this latter source to a report in The Sunday Times and I would have thought you mad, but in this case I do.

And then here is a report from the august Grocer magazine which looks to be an outtake from The Sunday Times - there are so many errors in it. The Socialist Worker you would, of course, take with a pinch of salt, but the account marries up with narratives from other sources.

It does, however, add some further interesting detail, but there is still no single, coherent account as to what happened. I've used this post as a framework, however, and build on it to see if we can put together the events to make sensible narrative. The narrative below is as far as I've got, but I will keep adding to it as I find more details.

As to the genesis, there is general agreement that the action started about 9.15 on the evening of Thursday 21 April. Accounts vary as to the precise nature of the action, with the earlier reports suggesting that the police were there to support bailiffs evicting squatters from the property known as "Telepathic Heights" (pictured).

More recent accounts suggest that this is not true. The police were conducting a raid of the premises on the basis of "information received". They claim to have been searching for petrol bombs which they believed were being stockpiled for an attack on the newly-opened Tesco Express store, almost opposite the squat.

The police "intelligence", according to this site appears to have stemmed from the private security guard at the Tesco store who had telephoned the police after a 20-year-old former Irish traveller told store staff he had a petrol bomb and had threatened to use it. The man had recently moved in to the Telepathic Heights squat after being evicted and/or booted out of other local squats. His lifestyle/background is described as chaotic by those who know him, he can barely read nor write. The man is currently imprisoned, and on remand

This account has ten police vans - including a contingent from the Welsh police - forming a "police line" (singular), outside "Telepathic Heights" and a riot squad entering the building. We get separate reports on this, with an estimate of 30-40 police in riot gear entering. There are, according to most reports, only four people in the building. This narrative has the police sealing off the whole of Stokes Croft to create a "sterile area"(pictured below). As the situation gets more tense, they call in back-up, reportedly declaring that a "terrorist situation" had developed.


Access and exit were barred to residents and visitors alike. Residents who came out to find out what was going on often found themselves on the wrong side of a police cordon and were prevented from returning home.

According to this source, initially there were approx forty police and several dozen local squatters and supporters. The police lines pushed everyone fifty yards down the road where a stand off developed. Several bins were thrown across the road to stop further police advance and missiles thrown at their lines. At about 9.30pm, the police baton charged and injured several demonstrators with strikes to the head.

Many reports have a helicopter overhead at this time, its spotlight shining down on the street. Its presence, and the word spread by social networking sites and by mobile phone, attracts onlookers to the site. Thus, by 10pm, a crowd of about 100 have gathered. Much of the police activity then seems to be focused on pushing people off the main road. There are multiple reports of action at the junction between the high street (Cheltenham Road) and Ashley Road, with people being pushed up Ashley Road (away from the main road) and into the very narrow Picton Street.

The crowd refused to disperse and quickly began to swell as people called friends and people drinking in nearby bars came out and joined the crowd. Running battles developed through the back streets of neighbouring St Pauls. The police repeatedly charged but were outflanked by the crowd who began putting up barricades of bins and wire fencing from building sites.

Eventually "what seemed like the entire residence of Stokes Croft emerged" and pushed the police back on to Stokes Croft high street. There are then reports of a "deadlock". People "stood around and shared rumours about the reason behind the army of police that had arrived unnanounced and were terrorising the neighbourhood".

Several fires were lit in the streets and the police were pelted with bottles and rubble and at times engaged in hand to hand fighting. By midnight, there were crowds totalling about four hundred fighting with the police in at least three different locations, and many hundreds more people near to or on the streets in Stokes Croft.


With the main road mostly cordoned off, we are then told that the police started making arrests and "all hell broke loose". Missiles began coming down from Telepathic Heights, which seems to have been reoccupied at some time. Police brought out dogs to clear people from the street, quite a few people got bitten. Meanwhile there are reports of police vans having had their tyres let down.

One local witness reports that about 11.15pm, "we were able to walk through (quickly, holding onto each other's arms) and got into our flat". She continued:
Not long after that, as far as I can tell, was when it became impossible to get through the street, as the police and the protestors became more heavy handed; with batons, bricks being thrown, more glass being smashed and injuries. Back home, we went on Twitter and Facebook and tried to follow what was happening. What was so striking was the utter confusion about what the riot was actually about. One person on Twitter said they were evicting squatters from a proposed Tesco site (I tweeted to say he was about a year late).
This report (Infoshop News) has it that the crowd became more and more angry as police refused to give justification for their presence, pushing or hitting anyone who got close to their lines (there are many independent reports of police violence). All it took, goes this narrative, "was for someone to tip over a glass recycling bin". The police line was then pelted by a barrage of bottles, followed by a retreat into St Pauls.

As people came out their doors to see police marching through their streets, many joined in defending against the police. A routine of the police charging then retreating under a hail of bottles and bricks started to develop. Bins were set on fire and charged into police lines. Others were used to form makeshift barricades.

At about one in the morning after a running battle on City Road, most of the demonstrators were again on Stokes Croft and for a short period contained by police lines on three sides. The police did not have control of their rear and were also being pelted from high up Nine Tree Hill. They were at times visibly shaken. There must have been near to two hundred riot police, many of them black clad TSG, using their vans as weapons.

Here, there is agreement that 1am is the key time. The police having retreated back to Stokes Croft were surrounded. The vans were prevented from moving off as others pelted them from a side street. Eventually the police broke out and sped north in their vans.

According to Socialist Worker, the situation by around 1am had developed with police "kettling" the crowd on the Cheltenham Road (A38), after it had pushed its way back onto the high street. There was certainly free movement by the crowd in the general area of the Tesco store (marked "A" on the map, above). There are also reports of people having been herded north from the City Road junction about 500 yards further south, coming up behind the police shown in the picture below.


The bulk of police had been sandwiched on a section of the road north of the City Road junction up to the Ashley Road Junction. They themselves were being "kettled". In an attempt to relieve the situation, police from higher up the road marched down with dogs and cornered the crowd between a row of riot guards and vans. The public had no where to move go, trapped by growling dogs, with confrontation inevitable.


Then, what seems to be reasonably clear is that, about 2 am, the police in their phalanx of vehicles broke out from their containment and drove north from the Ashley Road junction, opposite the Bristol Credit Union where the crowd was obstructing the main street (pictured above - you are looking south, towards Bristol - the Credit Union building is on the left - see also here).


At this point, the crowd on the main road had been between the main body of police and Tesco - which is behind the line visible, about 200 yards away on the left. But the police, in their rush to escape, drive their vehicles at the crowd, lights flashing in a highly visible display, scattering the crowd and pushing the bulk of the people up the street towards Tesco.

The police reach the Tesco about 200 yards north, ahead of the crowd. But they do not stop. They continue past it and away from the scene. Thus they leave the store and a Wiltshire Constabulary Land Rover Defender and trailer, unprotected. This is what you see them doing in the opening sequence of the video in this post, and pictured below.


Celebrations broke out as the crowd realise they have the streets. Calls of "Smash Tesco!" ring out. Tesco windows are smashed (below) and the abandoned Land Rover Defender is smashed and the trailer full of riot equipment is looted. The trailer is detached and moved south, whence it is overturned and used as part of a makeshift barricade, at the junction of Bath Buldings and Arley Hill, just north of the Tesco store.


Just as suddently the police returned, speeding through makeshift barriers and the edge of the crowd, before jumping out and assaulting whoever was nearby. The crowd retreated south down Stokes Croft again. There are more clashes as police force people back into St Pauls and down Stokes Croft before finding themselves again outmanoeuvred. At that point they again retreat. This time Tesco's windows went all the way through as well as the shutters behind.

When the police returned again the first time, it is claimed that their vans speed straight into the crowd. At least one person is caught behind police lines, unable to get out of Tesco in time. He is said to have taken "a frenzied beating whilst on the floor". Someone else is run over, sustaining an injury to his foot and others are hit by vans. Next time it was made sure vans would not be able to manoeuvre in this way as a skip was dragged into the road. Tesco was entered a second time and objects being thrown from rooftops made it increasingly difficult for the police.

A number of injuries were sustained and nine arrests made including four of the occupants of Telepathic Heights. Police report that eight of their number were hospitalised.

One local resident noted the police had "thrown a quarter century of semi-decent community policing down the drain". Another said: "If they [the police] don't calm down, things are getting tense enough on a range of other issues for a new pattern to develop of poor community relations and repeat rioting against a police force which has chosen political sides".

The police provoked this, says Infoshop News: "Turning up in this area of Bristol with such numbers, attacking Telepathic Heights and blatantly using public money to defend the interests of a corporate giant such as Tesco was always going to get a reaction".


Since so much of the publicity turns on the fate of the Tesco store, however, this should be examined in depth. Effectively, what we see is that, around five hours after the start of an ill-considered action, having retreated from an area that had earlier been the exclusion zone, and having provoked the crowd with their aggressive behaviour, the police leave the store to be wrecked.

However, one commenter declared:
This wasn't a protest and the people involved weren't protesters. Most of those involved were either people who'd been out drinking or kids from the local area. The reason the media and police have tried to make it about Tesco is because it's much easier than admitting that the police were attacked for turning up with OTT numbers and pissing everyone off. This was more an anti-police riot than anything else. For a majority taking part this had nothing to do with Tesco or the squat. Most of the people smashing Tesco were those young kids and their reasons were much varied; certainly the promise of free cigarettes was up there but mostly I imagine because smashing windows is a lot of fun.
Something here seriously does not compute. There seem to be good grounds here for a public inquiry to explore what looks to be an egregious "failure" of policing. If we are not looking at a staggering level of incompetence, I should be very surprised.

COMMENT: BRISTOL STOKES CROFT THREAD

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Time is not on their side - by Richard...


Not three weeks ago we were recording the mess the French and Italians had got themselves into over North African immigrants. But the situation took another lurch into the abyss yesterday when Italy and France jointly asked the EU Commission to have a look at the Schengen agreement. Berlusconi and Sarkozy want reforms which permit temporary cessation of rights to deal with "exceptional" situations like the flood of Tunisian immigrants.

"We want Schengen to survive, but to survive Schengen must be reformed", Sarkozy says. "We believe in free circulation but we believe in a state of law and a certain number of rules." Berlusconi said no one wanted to scrap the treaty but said "in exceptional circumstances we believe there must be variations".

So, like the good little Europeans that they are – when it suits them – they have dumped the problem in the lap of the Commission. What it might come up with has not yet been revealed but there is talk of demands for fully-enforced deportation agreements with African countries, enabling asylum seekers and illegal immigrants to be returned.

Such ideas have not been easy to enforce in the past, and so introduce new rules now would require a whole raft of treaties to be unstitched. There is not going to be an easy or even rapid resolution. But, with the Libyan situation deteriorating, time is not on their side. The Commission is going to be hard put to come up with an acceptable deal.

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And now for something completely different - by Richard... Tuesday, April 26, 2011



"There is no more deadly weapon system in the world than a Russian with two AA-12s. And keep in mind that I'm a professional Russian. Don't try this at home ...!" Awesome!

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Setting the agenda - by Richard...


Now that we are seeing the photographs of the tunnel (above), supposedly used to afford the escape of nearly 500 Taliban prisoners, it is getting a little bit difficult to believe in the story we are being told. The sheer practicalities of passing that many people through in the time claimed stretches belief to its limits and beyond.

One suspects now that the tunnel could have been for show, and the bulk of the escapees walked out of the front door. But, by whatever route they secured their freedom, the Christian Science Monitor puts its finger on it. It cites Ahmad Shah Khan Achakzai, a former member of parliament in Kandahar, who says: "It is impossible for the Taliban to get 500 men out of prison without anyone's help. I believe there are some people from the prison or the government who gave the Taliban support … It's now clear to everyone how corrupt the government is".

Given that the whole coalition policy - upon which we rely in order to disengage – is progressively to hand over power to the Afghan government, that rather drives a cart and horse through our plans. And that alone should drive the issue to the top of the front pages and kept it there, while we explore the implications of this development.

However, this news is sliding rapidly down the running order, barely visible in The Daily Telegraph, with relatively neutral reports about "inside help". There is no discussion of the implications for the UK and the withdrawal of our troops, and there is no comments section to the online story.

This, therefore, is turning out to be a perfect example of that poorly understood phenomena known as "agenda setting". We are seeing the downside aspect. The news is of such importance that it cannot be ignored. But it is not one where discussion is encouraged, so it not given any profile. The last thing the media wants is a debate on whether Mr Cameron's plans to pull troops out by 2015 are moonshine.

By contrast, you can see precisely where "engagement" and discussion is encouraged. Attention is being channelled to the "sleb" aspect of super-injunctions, with hand waver Andrew Marred admitting to his sins. The issue of real importance is this respect is the gagging orders imposed at the behest of social services, to conceal the "stolen kids" scandal. But that is "off-agenda", so the meeja passes it by, and distracts us with another sleb soap opera.

The same can be said of the Bristol riot. The substantive issue is a more than usually incompetentpolice force. But such hard-edged issues are not on the agenda. The meeja is uncomfortable with that idea ... that the police actually caused the riot. So readers are distracted by being invited toshare their concerns about supermarkets. Tesco, rather then police incompetence, thus becomes the agenda item.

So it is that the media is far more than an instrument for delivering information, to the extent that we could even assert that such a pedestrian occupation is not even one of their aims. Essentially, the far more important role is to define the agenda, telling their readers what to think. As importantly, this is about steering them away from off-agenda topics that, in their considered view, should be left alone.

If this appears to be veering into conspiracy theory territory, that isn't necessarily our destination. One very common reason why the media sets the agenda is simply because it can. Editors and proprietors take their enjoyment and their sense of achievement from this. It is the exercise of power for the sake of it. You occasionally hear on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme boasts about setting the agenda – it is the "professional" challenge.

Another reason stems from the same wellspring. All media people – as do we all – have a "world view". Their mission in life is to share, so it is unsurprising that they will tend to push us in the direction of that which they think is important, and play down material which does not interest them. And, in a feminised, corporate, left-wing industry, it is unsurprising that the media promotes a feminised, corporate, left-wing view. This is done automatically, without thinking ... which is just as well because so few journalists can actually think.

There are many other reasons - which perhaps we can explore over time. But the main point is that to concede agenda-setting to the media is to concede power. From that stems another crucial point. Although we are schooled to take the lead from the media, we do not have to accept their agenda, their emphasis, their corralling and their constraints. With equal access to the raw material – the actual news – the technology gives us the ability to define our own.

In other words, we no longer have to buy their definitions of what is topical or important. We can pursue our own agenda, defining for ourselves those issues which we believe are important. And in so doing, we make a statement, one that will eventually percolate to the politicians who are still largely slaves to the MSM. But we also weaken them. Those who set the agenda hold the power. We do not need to give them that power.

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Towards incompetence - by Richard...



With the media of indifferent quality, often misleading and very often plain wrong, it is necessary to go elsewhere for one's information, and then piece together disparate fragments in an attempt to divine the truth (or its nearest approximation).

On the Bristol riot, one valuable source is this one, a blog from the photographer Jonathan Taphouse, who produced many of the high quality photographs of the event.

His narrative very much lends credence to the "cock-up" version of events. What comes over is that police really did not know what they were doing, were blundering into situations over which they had no control, and made multiple tactical errors.

Armed with this narrative, one can revisit the video which I have posted above, where one sees the police convoy, drive into the frame, in a very dramatic fashion. This is after one pm on the Friday morning, but they then drive past the Tesco store and the stranded police vehicle and trailer, making no attempt to protect it. Having provoked the disorder in the first place, they are pulling out.

Listen to the sound track, 25 seconds in. You hear one of the voices ask: "where the f**k are they going?" Where indeed? Only once they have driven past the Tesco store and disappeared out of shot do people realise that it is unprotected and gravitate to that point.

The police are now out of shot, nowhere to be seen. This is a point appreciated by those watching, from the amused commentary on the video. Only then does the violence against the shop and the police vehicle start. And this is the key moment. Conspiracy? Taphouse seems to indicate police incompetence. That is not difficult to believe, as we get from here:
... please step forward Superintendent Ian Wylie, the architect of Thursday night's "Operation Squatsmasher" or the "Battle of Bristol" as all the whole of the attendant national media now like to call his operation.

Wylie, in his wisdom, decided that the best way to set about arresting four harmless locals living in a squat on Cheltenham Road was to send 160 fully tooled-up riot cops, many from Wales and Wiltshire, into the most politically sensitive location in Bristol on the hottest evening of the year just before pub closing time.

To add to the sense of deranged charade, as Wylie's overarmed, poorly briefed and highly aggressive troops hit the streets of the Stokes Croft area, he blithely told the Evening Post he "had decided to go down [to Stokes Croft] to resolve the issue".

And his resolution? Er, one trashed Tesco and eight of his men injured! And yes, that's the very Tesco store that a huge amount of police resources have gone into protecting over the last week or so and yes, they're injured men that Wylie has a duty of care for. The term "disaster" doesn’t even begin to do justice to Wylie's gung-ho and self-defeating conduct. This is ignorance and stupidity on the grand scale.
One has to admit that the combination of police and media incompetence is formidable, but with reports like this, we are getting there. Bristol Blogger adds:
Who seriously believes you can send a tooled-up force of 160 – clearly with orders to use force indiscriminately when told – into a community and not get a reaction out of that community? Either Wylie is a retard who is unable to think coherently and in logical steps or the Avon & Somerset had quite deliberately decided to go to war with the population of this city. If it's war they wanted, well, they certainly got one on Thursday evening in Stokes Croft.
Oddly, we are told, since gobbing off to the Post on Thursday evening, Wylie has gone to ground and has not been heard of since. The question is whether he has been placed in some sort of a secure unit with a copy of "Public Order Policing for Dummies" to read. That, of course, presupposes that the man's reading skills are sufficiently well-developed.

COMMENT: BRISTOL STOKES CROFT THREAD

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The Taliban anthem - by Richard...

Afghanistan will never be the same again. "The escape has made a mockery of the national security forces barely three months before NATO troops are due to hand over control of several parts of the country. Inside help is almost certainly to blame".

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Posted by Britannia Radio at 17:35