Christopher La Jaunie, who shot film of PC Simon Harwood shoving newspaper vendor to ground, gives evidence Ian Tomlinson was “not confrontational at all” when he was “violently shoved” by a police officer at the London G20 protests, the man who filmed the incident told an inquest. Christopher La Jaunie, from New York, on Thursday said he was in the City for a conference and decided to take a colleague to watch the protests. Once the police brought dogs out on the streets he took out a compact digital camera and commenced filming. La Jaunie later passed his film to The Guardian, casting doubt on earlier police claims that Tomlinson, a 47-year-old newspaper vendor, who died within an hour of being struck by a police baton and pushed to the ground, had suffered a heart attack unrelated to his treatment. La Jaunie told Alison Hewitt, counsel to the inquest, that he was about 10ft from the police “frontline” when tension began rising shortly after 6.30pm on 1 April 2009. “There was a bit of a frontline with the police and protestors. One protester had obviously had some kind of altercation, he was bleeding from the head and so I went to see what was going on.” He said that police started kettling the protesters towards the Royal Exchange building in Cornhill after bottles were thrown. “Once the police had brought the dogs out there was certainly more an air of fear and people started to back away from that line. A few people dared to go close and I saw Mr Tomlinson just sort of wandering very close to that line. He was obviously trying to get through. That’s what caught my attention. “It looked to me as if he was trying to get through. They let a few people through but once they cut the line off no one could get through. “My impression of him was that he certainly was not involved in what was going on, he was not a protester. He was caught in the crowd and just wanted to get somewhere.” Asked about his impression of Tomlinson, he said: “He was moving slowly but nothing more than that. “I am not sure he was really engaged with the protests itself. I think he was more determined to just be on his way. Anyone who got too close to the line I think risked some type of action by the police. “Mr Tomlinson piqued my interest because he was getting very close to the police and they did not look accommodating to someone approaching them. “He was facing the police and basically trying to negotiate, like he was just trying to get there and being turned away. Just by hand gestures it looked like he was trying to explain to them, ‘I need to get over here’ and then was obviously refused.” Asked again about Tomlinson’s demeanour by Hewitt, La Jaune replied: “So you are asking me if I thought he was intoxicated? No, not particularly. “He was not confrontational at all, he had his hands in his pockets, it was clear now he wasn’t going to get through so he turned his back to walk away. “Once his back was turned, I mean a push is a very polite term. He was rather violently shoved. His hands were in his pockets so when he flew forward he was unable to break his fall.” Describing the film he was shooting he said: “His head goes out of the frame but I saw it. He hit the ground, his head hit the ground.” La Jaune said he saw the police officer responsible “with no badge and a balaclava and riot gear. I saw who it was, I couldn’t see his face”. He added that he saw the officer pull out a baton, which he used to strike Tomlinson before shoving him. Although the officer had his baton out, from where he was standing he “mostly saw the shove”. And he admitted that he was afraid to draw attention to himself by focussing on the officer with his camera in case “he would come after me”. La Jaune said Tomlinson “eventually sat up and someone came to his aid and from what I could tell … he appeared to ask ‘Why did you do that?’ The police didn’t respond and he eventually got up and stumbled away.” Shortly after, La Jaune saw a man lying on the pavement some distance away. “It was further up Cornhill, don’t remember, it was quite chaotic. I saw him lying there on his back. He looked very unwell, somewhat ashen, he looked like he was about to pass out.” La Jaune said it was clear to him that it was the same man he had filmed. Tomlinson died after being struck with a baton and pushed to the ground by Metropolitan police officer Pc Simon Harwood in the City of London at around 7.20pm on 1 April 2009. Earlier, PC Andrew Hayes, who was working alongside PC Harwood as a carrier driver in the Territorial Support Group on the day, told the inquest that PC Harwood had not told him about striking and pushing Tomlinson when they were writing up their notes on the day’s events. Matthew Ryder QC, counsel for Tomlinson’s family, asked Hayes: “Did he at any time tell you that he had made baton strikes on what appeared to be a middle-aged man?” Hayes replied: “No.” “Did he at any time tell you that he had pushed a man to the floor?” “No.” “Or that the man had been helped by a younger person, or anything of that kind?” “No.” The inquest continues. Ian Tomlinson Police David Sharrock guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
Justice secretary says contingencies in place as he confirms private security company G4S is to run Birmingham prison The justice secretary, Kenneth Clarke, has confirmed that he is willing to call in the army should “serious trouble” erupt over his decision that the private security company, G4S, should run Birmingham prison – making it the first public sector jail to be privatised. “We have to be prepared should anything go wrong,” he told MPs. The Prison Officers’ Association (POA) said it would not rule out industrial action in protest at the decision, despite the fact that such action may be illegal. Clarke said the military contingency plans, involving up to 3,000 trained regular soldiers, were needed because industrial action involving prisons “can rapidly become far worse than an ordinary strike”. The justice secretary told MPs: “Nobody is contemplating a military takeover of a prison; the governor will still be in charge. But it is only proper that we have made military preparations that would be required if serious trouble erupts.” The justice secretary also announced that G4S is to run a new “supersized” prison with 1,600 inmates next to the existing Featherstone prison at Wolverhampton. A third prison, Buckley Hall, at Rochdale, will remain in the public sector. The 752 staff at Birmingham were told at noon that G4S will take over the prison in October. About 250 prison officers, a third of the staff, immediately walked out. They held a short meeting outside the prison before branch officials asked them to return to work. Clarke could not reassure them that they would not face redundancies. Instead he hoped they may find jobs at the new Featherstone prison, which is due to open next April. The POA has a mandate from its members to take industrial action if any existing public sector prison is taken over by the private sector. The decision will bring the number of private prisons in England and Wales to 13 out of the 140 existing jails, with G4S running six of them. The contracts will run for an initial 14 years with the option to renew for a further seven years. The decision to “market test” Birmingham – formerly Winson Green, which has 1,450 inmates and is one of the largest in Britain – was taken by Jack Straw when he was justice secretary after it was branded a “failing prison”. Clarke said staff at Birmingham had made “considerable efforts” and that the public sector bid, which cost £2m to prepare, had been of a good quality. “But this is an objective process and the private sector bid was better and less costly,” he said. The justice secretary also announced that private sector company Serco would continue to run Doncaster prison, but that 10% of the contract will now be on a “payment by results” basis. He also confirmed that a fifth jail, Wellingborough, had been withdrawn from the competition process because its 1960s buildings were in such a poor state it needs massive capital investment to remain in use. During his Commons statement Clarke repeatedly told MPs that the military contingency plans were necessary “should anybody be so foolish as to go into industrial action”. It is believed that up to 3,000 regular troops based at the army’s military glasshouse at Colchester and elements of the RAF regiment have been trained in control and restraint techniques and jailcraft such as how to lock down wings and move inmates safely around a jail in preparation for a POA dispute. The POA held a successful ballot in favour of industrial action two years ago when the market test of Birmingham was announced by Straw. Colin Moses, the POA chairman, said earlier this week that mandate still stood. It is expected that the union will ask its branches to hold a gate meeting tomorrow when their shifts start to decide what action they should take. The only POA national strike happened in August 2007, when 90% of prison officers walked out for 12 hours, causing chaos in prisons. The action was ended only by a court injunction, which could have led to the union’s assets being seized and its officials jailed. A reserve power putting a legal ban on prison officers taking industrial action was reimposed by Straw in 2008. Clarke told the Commons the changes would deliver savings of £21m for the three existing prisons over the next four years and deliver the new Featherstone 2 prison £31m cheaper than originally planned. He said “cumulative savings over the lifetime of the contracts for the three existing prisons are very impressive at £216m”. He added: “This process shows that competition can deliver innovation, efficiency and better value for money for the taxpayer, but also that it can do so without compromising standards.” The Prison Governors Association said it was dismayed by the Birmingham decision. It also raised concerns that the former director general of the prison service, Phil Wheatley, was now an adviser to G4S. “This is a decision which is unprecedented and will have a resounding effect on the prison service.” Steve Gillan, general secretary of the POA, said: “This is a disgraceful decision. Prisons should not be run for the benefit of shareholders nor for profit. The state has a duty to those imprisoned by the criminal justice system and this coalition government has betrayed loyal public sector workers for their friends in the private sector.” The POA has already launched a judicial review regarding Wheatley’s employment by G4S. Moses added: “Both a Labour government and now this coalition government have demonstrated their love affair with the private sector. This decision is wrong and immoral. The POA will continue with its long campaign against private prisons.” Prisons and probation UK criminal justice Kenneth Clarke Military Alan Travis guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Traces of radiation from Japan have been found in a sample of milk from Washington state, but the EPA and FDA stress the level is far below that which would affect humans, and there is no need for consumers to worry. The March 25 milk samples showed levels of radioactive…
Continue reading …
Cyclist groups condemn plans to allow the length of articulated lorries to increase by 2.05m Road safety groups are warning that government plans to allow longer lorries in the UK will increase the number of fatal road accidents. In a statement to parliament on Wednesday, the roads minister, Mike Penning, announced that the government is considering allowing the length of articulated lorries to increase by 2.05 metres, to a new maximum total length of 18.75m. At that length, HGVs would be longer than bendy buses which are currently being phased out in London after they were reported to be the cause of twice as many injuries as other buses. Penning told the Guardian: “There may be a case for a small increase in the overall length of articulated lorries with a single trailer from 16.5 to 18.75m – this would not make these lorries any longer than vehicles already being used on UK roads. I am considering the economic, safety and environmental impacts of any potential change and plan to announce my decision shortly.” Government research published on Wednesday said lengthening the lorries is “not expected to result in a noticeable increase in road traffic accidents. Although the risk per vehicle may be marginally higher, the reduction in the number of vehicle movements means that the overall number of HGV accidents is expected to fall.” The Freight Transport Association (FTA) welcomed the proposals, also arguing that longer vehicles will equate to fewer journeys. Andy Mair, FTA’s head of engineering policy, said: “Increasing the length of semi-trailers makes business sense and environmental sense, as it will improve logistics efficiency and reduce carbon dioxide emissions from the freight industry.” But the Freight on Rail partnership said that the same arguments were made prior to the last increase in lorry length, and the promised reduction in journeys didn’t happen. Philippa Edmunds, Freight on Rail manager, said : “Previous increases to lorry dimensions have led to more HGVs driving around with less cargo causing more pollution and road congestion – currently one in four lorries on our roads is empty. The proponents of longer HGVs are using the same flawed arguments again to justify the increased length. Therefore, before even considering increasing lorry dimensions, existing vehicle efficiency and compliance with existing road regulations should be improved. Already we are seeing demands for even heavier as well as longer lorries, showing that this length increase won’t be the end of it.” Cyclist groups vehemently condemn the proposal. Christopher Peck, policy co-ordinator at CTC , the national cyclists’ organisation, said “CTC is already deeply worried by the danger posed by large vehicles – across the UK they represent just 3.7% of traffic yet account for 19% of deaths. In urban areas it is even worse: whereas just 2% of traffic is HGVs, they are involved in a quarter of all cyclists’ road deaths. Allowing longer vehicles on to our roads will create even greater threats to cyclist safety, particularly at junctions, where nearly all these crashes occur. Longer vehicles will have even less visibility and need even more room to make maneuvers – putting all other road users at risk.” Former HGV driver turned London Cycle Campaign (LCC) development officer, Charlie Lloyd, said: “The London Cycling Campaign is strongly opposed to longer artic trailers. We don’t see it as at all possible for those to operate in urban areas and Britain doesn’t have the infrastructure that allows them to be separated from urban areas, so we consider them not to be suitable at all for UK roads.” A study released last year found that HGVs were involved in 43% of cycling deaths in London. Its authors called for HGVs to be banned from Britain’s cities. The LCC organised a day of action on Wednesday to collect signatures for their No More Lethal Lorries campaign . Campaign for Better Transport’s chief executive, Stephen Joseph, said: “Introducing longer HGVs will further damage this government’s green credentials and undermine efforts to adopt rail as a more sustainable, safer and environmentally sensible way to move freight. Rather than making HGVs longer and more dangerous to other motorists and cyclists, the government should be doing more to promote rail freight and enforcing existing road regulations to reduce accidents involving lorries. If the government allows this increase it could be the tip of the iceberg with so-called mega trucks just around the corner.” This proposal is at the consultation stage . Interested parties have until 21 June 2011 to make their views heard. Cycling Travel and transport Frederika Whitehead guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
The former Smog man is back with a new album, Apocalypse, that deals with America, emotions and the ‘cattle inside you’. Just don’t tell him it’s a change of direction … Just as Bill Callahan is pondering which seat to chose in a half-deserted London hotel lobby, a news item about the sex offenders register comes on the TV in the corner. “If my name comes up,” Callahan requests – deliberately turning his back to the screen – “please let me know.” As beginnings of interviews with Callahan go, this is about as good as it gets. And not only because the laconic one-liner with a sleazy undertow is one his lyrical calling cards. Alongside the resonant baritone and mordant wit that have – in the course of a career now stretching into its third decade – earned him the right to be considered the post-punk Leonard Cohen, this most saturnine of American troubadours has also built a fearsome reputation as a uncommunicative and sometimes even malevolent interviewee. So his decision to kick things off with a gag certainly bodes well. Recently, there have been welcome signs of Callahan’s stern public visage cracking into a smile. “A couple of years ago,” he explains, “I realised that I was an entertainer” – he pauses for a moment, as if waiting for an unseen drummer to round off a punchline – “and that helped me immensely. From the first time you can look in the paper and you accept that you’re the entertainment for some people that night,” he continues, “it becomes so much more enjoyable to play live. Before that I was always wondering, ‘What am I?’” Callahan’s moment of clarity has benefited both audience and performer. First, he abandoned the wilfully off-putting stage name Smog (on the characteristically gnomic grounds that “hanging on to it any longer didn’t seem healthy”). Then 2009′s Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle – the second album released under his own name, and one of his most accessible records to date – struck a chord with a wider audience. By an irony that will not be lost on its writer, the song which did more than any other to bring him a new audience was Eid Ma Clack Shaw – a hilariously unsparing depiction of the vanity of the artist, in which a lovelorn Callahan “dreams the perfect song”, then wakes to find the lyrics are gibberish. For those who are already devotees, it will suffice to say that Callahan’s new album, Apocalypse, bears roughly the same relation to its surprisingly accessible predecessor as 2005′s blues-tinged A River Ain’t Too Much to Love did to 2004′s unexpectedly palatable Supper; while less accessible, it flows with a sinuous unity every bit as captivating. For those not yet properly acquainted with this man’s compendious oeuvre, a riveting encyclopedia of human frailty awaits your exploration. I think Callahan’s best work – any of the three albums named above, as well as earlier creative highlights Wild Love, The Doctor Came at Dawn, Red Apple Falls and Knock Knock – ranks alongside that of his friend and Drag City (and formerly Domino) labelmate Will Oldham (aka Bonnie “Prince” Billy) as the finest English-language songwriting of the last 20 years. And while not so explicit a departure in terms of subject matter as, say, Sonic Youth’s Dirty or PJ Harvey’s Let England Shake, Apocalypse registers an intriguing shift away from the forensic self-examination that has been his traditional stock-in-trade towards a more external, geopolitically rooted brand of lyricism. Callahan – who once observed that his tendency to instinctively refute all statements made by interviewers was “natural in any exchange between someone who has the answers and someone who doesn’t” – is having none of this. Apocalypse’s opening number is a thrilling frontiersman’s lament called Drover, which switches viewpoints from cowboy to herd with a generosity of spirit not seen in Callahan’s most celebrated previous excursion into extended animal metaphor – the exquisitely heartless Smog classic I Break Horses. When asked if the line, “The pain and frustration is not mine – it belongs to the cattle”, signals a more empathetic, outward-looking approach, Callahan demurs with some force. “I think this is a really inward-looking record in a way that I haven’t really done in the past,” he insists (I thought everything was going a little too smoothly). “The cattle in that song are things inside you, so I suppose it’s about corralling the emotions.” Is it possible that he could write something which seemed more inward-looking than usual to him, while having external ramifications other people might see more clearly than he did? “Yeah,” Callahan admits grudgingly, “I guess that’s possible. To me, this record is like a lot of mirrors, and I suppose if you hold up a mirror to yourself and then you turn it around, it reflects outwards … also, if you look in a mirror you might see someone standing behind you who you’d didn’t know was there…” Like Uncle Sam, for instance. America! – the song on Apocalypse that most leaps out at the listener on first hearing – is partly a touring performer’s yearning for the land of his birth (“I watch David Letterman in Australia”), and partly a defiant celebration of cultural imperialism, in which Callahan seems to be enlisting “Captain Kristofferson, Bucks sergeant [Mickey] Newbury … Sergeant Cash” into an imaginary army of patriotic singer-songwriters. “Those are the ranks those people actually achieved in real life”, Callahan corrects me sternly, “I did research.” America! seems to be looking on almost enviously at his musical forbears who had the opportunity to serve their country. “It’s more like an observation: these people made great music and they did that other thing as well … so maybe I should’ve too.” Some might think that the global reputation of the US military is at a low enough ebb already, without Callahan bearing arms, but that, in a way, is exactly his point. “I know that since 9/11 the world has sort of turned against America,” he explains, “and America turned on itself too – ‘everyone hates us, and maybe we do kind of suck’. But with the election of Obama our self-esteem almost came up again. Then that kind of fizzled out too – even though it wasn’t necessarily his fault – so the song was concerns the thinking that America could still actually be a good place to come from.” The pioneering tone that Drover sets seems to carry through the whole album, and the suggestion that Apocalypse might have been conceived – and can certainly be listened to – as a Western meets with a surprisingly favourable response. “Maybe because it starts with a cattle drive,” Callahan nods. “Then the second song, Baby’s Breath, is about what happens when you finally choose where you’re going to settle down and get your own plot of land. After that comes America!, which is looking at the bigger picture of stuff that’s gone before in terms of the whole country.” Before the shock of Callahan collaborating in an analytical discussion of his own music has had a chance to really take hold, he’s run through all seven tracks. He graciously concedes that Apocalypse’s “most inward-looking” song, Universal Applicant, could best be described as a metaphysical boat ride, and identifies the ecstatic Riding for the Feeling as “the point where the searching stops and everything is much freer, to the point where you’re able to just … experience”. The strangely titled Free’s, the shortest song on the record, is, he explains, “supposed to sum up the whole thing in the broadest possible terms – that’s why there’s no character in it”. And the tear-jerkingly transcendent 8:45 finale One Fine Morning seems as close as a Bill Callahan album is ever going to get to a riding-off-into-the-sunset moment. “I wanted that open feeling Westerns give you,” he almost enthuses. “They’re kind of minimalist because the landscape is so blank and stark, which means that when people appear, they stand out, and their personalities are magnified because there’s nothing much else around.” That is pretty much how Bill Callahan interviews used to play out – the long pauses were like the mythic expanses of Monument Valley, and the songs he was so reluctant to talk about were the isolated lawmen. Anyone nostalgic for the inscrutable enigma of the Smog era will find him elegantly memorialised in the pages of Callahan’s recently published “epistolary novelette”, Letters to Emma Bowlcut. This slim and discreet volume will be a great disappointment to those hoping for prurient insights into the exact circumstances of his real-life romances with alt-country pin-ups Joanna Newsom and Cat Power, but its glimpse of the inner Bill could hardly be more revealing. “I don’t fill the silences often” the unerringly Callahan-esque writer of Letters to Emma Bowlcut’s titular missives warns at one point. “About our visit,” he advises at another, “I’m not mild-mannered, but you may want to bring a book.” Taking advantage of the new mood of glasnost to pose a question few would have dared to ask the remorselessly closed-off Callahan of 10 or 15 years ago, I wonder if this creator of so many memorable equine-themed lyrics can actually ride a horse? Callahan dissembles nervously for a few moments before seeing the opportunity for a suitably provocative and salacious last word: “There’s nothing like riding an animal,” he maintains, totally deadpan, “it doesn’t even have to be a horse …” Apocalypse is out Monday Bill Callahan Pop and rock Indie Folk music Ben Thompson guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
Labour leader’s announcement of wedding to Justine Thornton comes as marriage rate in England and Wales falls to lowest level since 1862 Ed Miliband and his partner, Justine Thornton, are part of an ever-decreasing number of people tying the knot, according to statistics that show the marriage rate in England and Wales has fallen to its lowest level since 1862. The Office for National Statistics attributed the decline to a rise in people cohabiting rather than getting married and an increase in the number of people delaying marriage. Others have suggested that financial concerns may be at the root of the change. Only 231,490 couples got married in England and Wales in 2009. In the UK overall, the provisional number was 266,950, in line with a downward trend after a peak of 480,285 in 1972, and around half the all-time high figure of 533,866 marriages in 1940. Marriages in Scotland fell 4.8% from 28,903 in 2008 to 27,524 in 2009, while in Northern Ireland the number of marriages decreased by 6.8% to 7,931 in 2009. In England and Wales in 2009, the average age of people marrying for the first time was 32.1 years for men and 30 years for women, but many are leaving it much later. While just 6% of women born in 1931 were still not married by the age of 40, this figure rose to 27% for 40-year-olds born in 1969. Of the marriages that took place in 2009, 150,600 (65%) of weddings saw both partners in the couple married for the first time, compared to a remarriage for one (19%) or both (16%). The ONS stressed that the figures, published on Wednesday, are provisional. It estimates that a further 1% of marriage returns from 2009 are yet to be received, but the final figures for England and Wales are still expected to remain slightly below the final 2008 figure of 235,794. “The number of people available to marry, the unmarried population aged 16 and over, has been increasing over the last few decades, so this is not the reason for the drop in marriages in 2009,” an ONS spokeswoman said. “In contrast, there has been a long-term decline in the marriage rate since the early 1970s and this is the driver of the fall in the number of marriages in 2009.” The relationship service Relate said the trends could be a symptom of money getting tighter rather than people being turned off the idea of getting married. Jenny North, the head of public policysaid the continued fall in marriage rates was “worrying” in the light of research which suggests that the aspiration to marry is still high among younger people. “There is evidence that couples are setting themselves a ‘to do’ list before getting married – perhaps buying a house, getting the perfect job or buying the dream car,” she said. “As money gets tighter, these things get harder to achieve, and we could see less couples tying the knot as a result.” Iain Duncan Smith, the secretary of state for work and pensions and an advocate of marriage providing a stable family life and averting social breakdown, reiterated the case for financial help from the state in the belief that many are holding back from marriage for financial reasons. It remains to be seen whether government plans to introduce tax breaks for married couples and civil partnerships will turn the tide. A treasury spokesperson said proposals that recognise marriage and civil partnerships in the income tax system will be brought forward by the chancellor, George Osborne, “at the appropriate time”. Ed Miliband Labour Iain Duncan Smith Marriage Hélène Mulholland guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
Two participants in the black bloc protest at Saturday’s anti-cuts rally tell Stephen Moss why they’re the true face of protest “Meet us outside the British Library. That seems appropriate.” I’m due to interview two men in their late 20s who were part of the “black bloc” direct action wing of last Saturday’s anti-cuts protest . We’d originally agreed to meet at a bar in King’s Cross, but they tell me later it was “too media” for their security concerns. I conduct an interview of sorts, but they are reluctant to tell me much about themselves other than that one is a “low-paid public sector worker”. In any case, they have come armed with handwritten answers to questions they have posed to themselves. Anarchists like to be in control. I agree to edit those answers for length, then show them the edited version. Their “self-interview” appears below. I never do learn their names. The media, police and other sections of the left have called the black bloc “criminals”, “hooligans” and “cowards”. How do you respond? In the legal sense, those who damage property or fight the police have committed crimes, so yes they are criminals. But in everyday language, a criminal is someone who lives by criminal means. We saw plenty of nurses, education workers, tech workers, unemployed workers, students, campaigners and charity workers on the bloc on Saturday, but we didn’t see any criminals. As for being hooligans or cowards, the black bloc formation is used for tactical purposes. We aren’t trying to be “hard” or to give ourselves a thrill. We are trying to give uncompromising opposition to capitalism an appropriate image on the streets – and not end up in jail. True cowardice would be not fighting an economic system that wants to destroy us. The black bloc is not a group or organisation; it’s something that happens on marches or actions. It’s not pre-planned; it relies on people turning up with the same ideas and clothes. That is why there is a “uniform”: people who want to take direct action and resist containment arrive on the day in black and identify people with the same ideas this way. We had no idea of the numbers before the event on Saturday, and no idea it would be so radical in its actions. The black bloc idea spread like a ripple through the march. As people saw others in black, they changed into black themselves. Some marchers even left the protest to buy black clothing. Is it not fair to say you hijacked the TUC march? No. To hijack it would have meant taking the front of the march and leading it away. What happened was that thousands of marchers left of their own accord to support our direct action and do some of their own. The black bloc largely avoided the march route, only dropping into it twice, briefly. We support the other marchers who didn’t take direct action, just like many of them supported us. Don’t you think the violence has invalidated your message? Our only collective points were the promotion of a confrontational attitude and the use of symbolic direct action to show that direct action in the wider society was both valid and possible, and that there is a radical movement in this country that’s going to put up a fight. We made these points. Anyway, you cannot be “violent” to property. The police chose to attack and arrest people in their defence of property, and got themselves hurt in the attempt. If they had acted rationally, and decided a cracked window was not worth a protester’s cracked skull, they would have been fine. Is the black bloc a reaction to police heavy-handedness? We don’t do “good cops” versus “bad cops”; whether they smile or snarl while they do it, their primary function is to defend the rule of the wealthy. We do not want the police to control us “more justly” in the interests of capitalism. We want them to stand back for a just society to be created. If they don’t, they have picked their side, and they will have to be opposed. Was the bloc anarchist? From the red and black flags in the crowd it seemed to be, but there is nothing inherently anarchist about masking up. By the evening thousands of people had left Hyde Park and were taking action all over central London; the open class warfare of the cuts has convinced far more than the UK’s minority of radicals that only actions count. Do you consider the black bloc to be the most radical part of the new movement? No. Occupations of universities and town halls are far more important, and this is where the anti-cuts movement has been heading. To develop, it needs to spread into workplaces next. The black bloc tactic was appropriate to give the day a confrontational edge, and to target the real enemies: the rich. The aim was to make people realise this is not an abstract struggle between “the economy” and us, but between a group of super-rich exploiters and those they are exploiting – the workers. There is now talk of a “mask law” in response to Saturday’s action. Don’t you feel responsible for that? Introducing a mask law would be a serious misjudgment. Already we’ve seen how the tactic of kettling has backfired on the police, creating a desire among the crowd to be mobile and in effect unpoliceable. A mask law would probably just make more people wear masks. If last Saturday is anything to go by, they already are. Protest Public sector cuts TUC Public services policy Public finance Trade unions Stephen Moss guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
Two injured after parcel bomb explodes in offices of Swissnuclear Two people have been injured after a parcel bomb exploded in the offices of the Swiss nuclear lobby, police said. The two female employees of Swissnuclear were taken to hospital with superficial burns and hearing damage, a police spokesman said, adding that it was not yet known who sent the parcel. Police cordoned off the office on the fourth floor of a building in the northern town of Olten. The police spokesman said forensic specialists were on the ground. Earlier this month, Switzerland suspended the approvals process for three new nuclear power stations so that safety standards could be reviewed after Japan’s earthquake and tsunami damaged the Fukushima nuclear plant. Swissnuclear says it works to promote the safe and efficient use of nuclear power and represents Swiss utilities Alpiq, Axpo, BKW, CKW and EGL, which run the nuclear plants that produce about 40% of Swiss electricity. Olten is home to the headquarters of Alpiq, where about 50 Greenpeace protesters held a demonstration on Thursday calling for the company to withdraw its application to build a new nuclear plant. A police spokesman said they were investigating whether there was any connection between the explosion and the demonstration. Greenpeace said it had nothing to do with the attack. “We are shocked that such action can be used for political purposes. Greenpeace is committed to non-violent protest,” said energy campaigner Florian Kasser. The centre-left Social Democrats and the Greens are calling for Switzerland to abandon nuclear power after the Japanese disaster. However, the energy minister, Doris Leuthard, has cautioned against a hasty decision, warning that abandonment would mean more gas power stations and a subsequent rise in carbon emissions. In 1990, Swiss voters backed a 10-year moratorium on the building of nuclear power plants but they rejected extending the freeze in 2003, opening the way for the government to consider new plants to replace those that needed to be retired. Last month, voters narrowly approved the building of a plant in Muehleberg to replace the old one there, which is 20% owned by Germany’s E.ON. Switzerland Nuclear power Europe Energy guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
Revolutionary leadership wants defector returned and tried for crimes against humanity once Gaddafi is toppled Libya’s rebel leadership has called for Moussa Koussa, the former Libyan foreign minister who has defected to the UK , to be returned for trial for murder and crimes against humanity after Muammar Gaddafi is toppled. Mustafa Gheriani, a spokesman for the revolutionary council in its de facto capital, Benghazi, said the rebels were not bent on revenge against the regime’s officials but some of Gaddafi’s closest associates “have a lot of blood on their hands” and must stand trial. The British foreign secretary, William Hague, has said Britain is not offering Koussa immunity from prosecution . Hague called for other regime figures to abandon Gaddafi. Gheriani alleged Koussa had been partly responsible for assassinating opposition figures in exile, murderous internal repression and the Lockerbie plane bombing. “We want to bring him to court. This guy has so much blood on his hands. There are documented killings, torturing. There’s documentation of what Moussa Koussa has done,” Gheriani said.”We want him tried by Libyan people. I believe once we have our government 100% in control in Libya, things are normalised, we want him tried here. I think international law gives us that right.” Gheriani said it was up to Britain to decide whether to arrest Koussa in the meantime. Koussa’s arrival in London was evidence that Gaddafi’s regime “is starting to crumble”. He expected other senior officials to follow. “He is a very very major person to defect. Gaddafi trusted him more than some of his sons. Now Gaddafi doesn’t even trust his own people any more,” Gheriani said. Gheriani said a senior military official in Cofra, Colonel Saleh al-Zaroug, had defected to the rebels. He had served in an army division commanded by one of Gaddafi’s sons. The defection was impossible to confirm. Hague said Koussa was not being offered any immunity from British or international justice. He had come to the UK on a private plane from Tunisia having left Libya of his own free will. “Gaddafi must be thinking to himself: ‘Who will be the next to walk away?’” It would not be “helpful to advertise” whether or not other senior members of the regime planned to quit but he believed many likely privately opposed Gaddafi’s actions, Hague said. Koussa was in a secure place in the UK and talking voluntarily to British officials, including staff at Britain’s Tripoli embassy now based in London. Koussa’s defection provides Britain with an unparalleled source of intelligence on state of the Libyan ruler’s inner circle. But his arrival in the UK has also led to expectations that he will be questioned about his possible involvement in or knowledge of atrocities including the Lockerbie bombing and the murder of PC Yvonne Fletcher. Koussa was expelled from the UK in 1980 and became the head of Libyan foreign intelligence for 15 years, including the period of the Lockerbie bombing, which happened in 1988. He has always denied Libya was involved. Jack Straw, a former foreign secretary, has described Koussa as a key player with a “fundamentally important” role in negotiations to bring Libya back into the international fold. “Moussa Koussa’s apparent defection, certainly his unscheduled visit here, will be a very important factor in just adding to the weight against the Gaddafi regime and tipping the balance against him,” Straw told the BBC. “From a distance what’s clear is that there is unlikely to be any military victory for either side. So it does depend on which side psychologically collapses.” Alongside Koussa’s defection, it has emerged that Barack Obama signed a secret government order authorising covert US help to the Libyan rebels . Opposition fighters are trying to recover some of the territory retaken by a government counterattack that has brought Gaddafi’s forces once again within striking distance of Benghazi. The revolutionary leadership has called for more of the air strikes that allowed it to surge forward towards Gaddafi’s home town of Sirte. But after their tanks and artillery were destroyed by the coalition, government troops switched tactics, using armoured pickup trucks to outflank and ambush the ragtag opposition forces. Rebels trying to recapture the town of Brega came under rocket and mortar fire early on Thursday. Libya Middle East Arab and Middle East unrest Chris McGreal guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
Digital channel orders three hour-long episodes of comedy drama based on Douglas Adams novel BBC4 has recommissioned Dirk Gently, the adaptation of the late Douglas Adams novel starring Stephen Mangan. The digital channel has ordered another three hour-long episodes of the comedy drama, following the pilot broadcast in late 2010, for later this year. Adapted by the Bafta-winning writer Howard Overman – who is also behind Misfits, Vexed and Merlin – Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency follows the exploits of Adams’s chaotic character as he uses his unusual methods to solve crimes. The Dirk Gently books have formed the basis of a play and a BBC Radio 4 series, but this is the first time they have been adapted for TV. Dirk Gently is being made by ITV Studios in association with the Welded Tandem Picture Company. The executive producers are Saurabh Kakkar for ITV Studios and Eleanor Moran for the BBC. The drama was commissioned by Ben Stephenson, controller of BBC drama commissioning, and BBC4 controller Richard Klein. •
Continue reading …