Random Thoughts (Political Edition)

They don't posess an intellect they can parade at a circus.
 
It's often said that what I despise the most in the Middle East is Israel. That's wrong.

This is what really makes me mad:

Haaretz: Bomb explodes in central Jerusalem; 1 dead, at least 30 hurt

These idiots are terrorists. This is an act of terrorism. It can never be defended, it's a crime against humanity.

Not only is it wrong, which is more important than anything else, it's a bad move. It doesn't help the Palestinian people, and it doesn't help the 30 people who were injured, let alone the person who died.

Haaretz: But there's more bad news:

"Netanyahu: Israel will react firmly to recent Palestinian violence
PM responds to Wednesday's bombing in Jerusalem in which one woman was killed and over 30 wounded, says government, IDF has 'iron will' to defend the country."

For heaven's sake.. I know Bibi's a fucking idiot, but I hoped he wasn't this stupid. Way to go, escalate it. Bomb someone who might have played a part. Might. And get collateral damage too call home about. Great. So there will be another attack in Israel. And then this idiot of a hauk will beat his chest and repeat that the IDF has an "iron will" to defend the country. So he'll order an attack on someone else. The target might be involved, given experience, that's not always the case. Then some other idiots will bomb a disco or a line at a disco, and before you know it, there's tanks moving into Ramallah.

Let that ball go back and forth between these extremists for a few months, and we can finally cash in the result, Fatah will lose strength and authority, and Hamas will gain popularity. This is tried and tested, it is a fact that that is what usually happens.

Fucking great.

Morons.
 
nomix said:
Let that ball go back and forth between these extremists for a few months, and we can finally cash in the result, Fatah will lose strength and authority, and Hamas will gain popularity. This is tried and tested, it is a fact that that is what usually happens.
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If you don't know history you're doomed to repeat it, right? You'd think that an Israeli or a Palestinian would understand the reciprocal relationship between extremism and escalation better than most.
 
There's an old saying from the Middle East. It's either Drucian, Jiddish, Lebanese, Hashemite or Syrian.

There once was a scorpion that wanted to cross the river. The scorpion asked the animals he saw if he could sit on their backs on the way over.
The animals all said "No, you're a scorpion, you'll just sting us, and then I'll die". At last, when it was getting dark, a frog arrived. The frog agreed to carry the scorpion on his back.
"So what if you're a scorpion? If you sting me, you'll die yourself. There is no reason you would do it. Hop on".

So the scorpion hopped on, and the frog started to swim over the river. Halfway over, the frog felt a strong, stinging sensation in his back and felt his limbs being paralized.
He looks up at the scorpion as he's beginning to sink and asks him:
"Scorpion, why have you done this? As I sink and die, so will you!"
"But my dearest frog.. don't you know we're in the Middle East?"

What's the point? The point is that for centuries, it's been more important to see your enemy dead than to live yourself.

That's the basic problem of the Middle East. Rarely have there been a leader in the Middle East who really wanted peace. Most have wanted revenge, revenge and more revenge.

I love the Middle East. And I hate it. I love the people of the Middle East. And I hate them.

Christ..
 
GENEVA (Reuters) - People who criticise gay sexual relations for religious or moral reasons are increasingly being attacked and vilified for their views, a Vatican diplomat told the United Nations Human Rights Council on Tuesday.

Archbishop Silvano Tomasi said the Roman Catholic Church deeply believed that human sexuality was a gift reserved for married heterosexual couples. But those who express these views are faced with "a disturbing trend," he said.

"People are being attacked for taking positions that do not support sexual behaviour between people of the same sex," he told the current session of the Human Rights Council.

"When they express their moral beliefs or beliefs about human nature ... they are stigmatised, and worse -- they are vilified, and prosecuted.

"These attacks are violations of fundamental human rights and cannot be justified under any circumstances," Tomasi said.
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http://richarddawkins.net/articles/606711-vatican-tells-u-n-that-critics-of-gays-under-attack

The term hypocrite comes to mind...
 
Interesting video on nuclear power and the influence that the incidents in Japan that are effecting development in the USA.

 
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http://www.aolnews.com/2011/03/25/the-lessons-of-triangle-shirtwaist-fire-may-be-lost-100-years-la/

The Lessons of Triangle Shirtwaist Fire May Be Lost 100 Years Later

Screams of "Don't jump!" echoed through the canyons of tall buildings. More than 50 bodies littered the streets surrounding 23 Washington Place, so many that New York City's firetrucks were unable to get close enough to raise their ladders. Even if they had, the ladders from nearby Company 20 were too short to reach the eighth, ninth or 10th floors of the burning Triangle Shirtwaist Co. factory.

New York Fire Department reports say the flames, which were probably sparked by a cigarette tossed into a pile of cotton scraps on the eighth floor, rapidly spread to the floors above. The maelstrom of fire was knocked down in 18 minutes -- brief, but long enough to snuff out the lives of 146 workers who were just minutes from heading home from their 52-hour workweek that sunny Saturday afternoon on March 25, 1911.

The victims of that inferno 100 years ago today were almost all new immigrants, mostly women and girls -- Italians, Russians, Hungarians and Germans. Few spoke English.

The youngest victim was only 11, according to the death reports. Most were in their teens, and a few in their early 20s. There were 500 seamstresses and tailors working in the factory. Many on the eighth and tenth floors escaped. Few on the ninth floor had much chance of surviving.

Some stood on the narrow window ledges, alone or clutching friends, waiting for rescue that never came, then jumped or lost their balance and fell to their deaths. The height of the fall was so great that the jumpers tore through the safety nets that a circle of firefighters were frantically moving up and down the street to catch them.

The 146 lives lost in the fire ignited a passion for worker safety laws and indirectly led to the creation of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Yet a century later, the laws that could have saved lives had they been in place on March 25, 1911, are being threatened by budget cuts proposed by a Republican-controlled Congress.

The Lessons From the Tragedy

Many of the deaths from the 1911 fire were preventable.

A flimsy iron fire escape quickly gave way under the weight of the first trying to flee. The single elevator was immobilized by dozens of bodies falling into the shaft as some tried to shimmy down the grease-covered cables.

But the main route to living another day, the exit doors, were blocked by boxes of trash and fabric scrap, or locked by the bosses to prevent workers from stealing the fancy blouses with puffed sleeves and tight bodices that the Triangle Shirtwaist sweatshop produced by the thousands.

After the tragedy, the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union led a parade of more than 100,000 mourners through the streets of lower Manhattan, and politicians realized that they'd better pay attention to what just happened in their town.

The cry "This shall never happen again" echoed through city halls and state capitols. Officials in many major U.S. cities looked around and found identically dangerous conditions in their factories. Workers in their communities faced the same risk.

Whether it was shame, guilt or genuine concern for the safety of the American worker, politicians promised to do better. First in New York City and then in Albany, lawmakers, ignoring strident objections by the business community, forced through the country's first and strongest worker safety protection laws.

Massachusetts, New Jersey and Illinois soon passed similar safeguards. Fifteen other states tried to do the same, but intense lobbying by industry either blocked the attempts or watered down the legislation to the point of uselessness.

But the fire also produced a champion for a national system of worker safety regulations.

Dedicated to Protecting Workers

The afternoon of the fire, a young social worker named Frances Perkins was having tea with a friend in Greenwich Village when she heard clanging firetruck bells and screams. As she raced toward the noise, she saw black smoke bellowing from the building and watched as the seamstresses leaped or fell to the ground.

Twenty-two years later, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Perkins as U.S. secretary of labor, recalled Hilda Solis, who now holds that job.

Perkins never forgot the fire and the trapped workers, and she did much during her 12 years on the job, including creating what would become the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Solis said in recent speeches and op-ed pieces.

Worker safety advocates cite the painful irony that, precisely 100 years to the month after the fire, the House of Representatives has passed a budget bill that would slash nearly $100 million -- about 20 percent -- from OSHA's current budget. About 40 percent of those cuts will be to the agency's enforcement and safety inspectors -- those on the front line of protecting workers.

"Lives will be lost because of these proposed cuts. They're devastating," Joel Shufro, executive director of the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, told AOL News on Thursday.

"Since its founding, OSHA has been underfunded and understaffed. They currently have enough inspectors to inspect every workplace just once every 143 years. The proposed cuts will cut OSHA's effectiveness even more," he added.

OSHA administrator David Michaels says the House's cutback "would really have a devastating effect on all of our activities."

David Von Drehle wrote what many consider the definitive book on the tragedy in 1911, "Triangle: The Fire that Changed America." He said in the book that history can run backward, and that even much-needed reforms like worker safety gains can be lost again.

"Many of the initial post-Triangle reforms were strenuously opposed by conservative businessmen ... who were soon back in the saddle and able to halt, hamstring or reverse liberal initiatives," he wrote.

The recent GOP sweep has many believing the same thing is happening again.

No Surprise That OSHA Was a Target

When the Republicans swept back into power in the House in January, Rep. Darrell Issa, the newly appointed chairman of the House Government Oversight and Government Affairs Committee, told major industries, lobbyists, trade associations and companies large and small that, as head of the congressional watchdog committee, he'd appreciate their views on what government regulations they didn't like and what he should change.

It surprised no one that the Environmental Protection Agency and OSHA were the favorite targets of the hundreds letters that were hand-carried or express-mailed to him.

The California Republican insists that these changes that big business wants will save jobs, but he hasn't explained how to the satisfaction of even some in his own party. Republicans budget cutters say that environmental regulation is harmful to the economy and that OSHA's worker safety actions are unnecessary and detrimental to businesses large and small.

Those involved with worker safety cringe.

"With conservatives in Congress decrying the supposedly "job-killing" effects of OSHA protections, we could be on our way to becoming a First World economy with Third World working conditions," said Tom O'Connor, executive director of the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health, a federation of local and state committees or coalitions on occupational safety and health.

The U.S. has made progress in worker protection, but, he quickly added, it is 29th out of 30 industrialized nations when it comes to safety and health protection for workers, managing to beat out only Turkey.

"Crippling budget cuts like these can only come from lawmakers who are willing to throw hardworking Americans under the bus once they've extracted a vote," Jennifer Sass, a senior scientist for health and environment with the Natural Resources Defense Council, told AOL News.

Her organization is one of the nation's largest environmental action groups, but Sass's concern for worker safety came from her grandmother, Clara Weinstein, a seamstress who was working the day of the fire in another Garment District sweatshop neighboring the Triangle factory building.

Clara was only a young teenager when she left her parents behind in Russia to work in New York City's garment factories and send money home -- "a story repeated every day by immigrant workers, many of them teenagers like my grandmother was," Sass said.

Her grandmother never went to college, but she spoke and read in three languages -- English, Russian and Yiddish -- and she knew wrong from right, Sass recalled. "She always told me she was a dressmaker, but in fact she was an unskilled piece worker on an assembly line in a loud, dusty and very dangerous factory."

Her grandmother was spared death from fire, but not from the factory conditions that destroyed her lungs, her sight, her hearing, and her back, the scientist said.

The Deaths Continued

Passing laws alone isn't enough to save lives.

On Sept. 3, 1991, 25 workers died from burns or suffocation and another 54 were injured when a 25-foot-long deep-fat fryer burst into flames at the Imperial Foods Products chicken-processing plant in Hamlet, N.C. As with the Triangle fire, the fire doors were locked to keep workers from stealing chickens. The plant had never been inspected -- not by OSHA or any other federal or state safety agency -- during its 11 years in operation, North Carolina accident investigators reported.

The deaths continue today. Just look at what happened during one month last year.

On April 2, an explosion at the Tesoro petroleum refinery in Anacortes, Wash., killed seven workers. Three days later, in West Virginia, 29 miners died when Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch mine exploded. Fifteen days later, on April 20, 40 miles off the Louisiana coast, the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling unit exploded and killed 11 workers and injured 16 others.

These multiple-fatality tragedies garner headlines and cause politicians in Congress to bang their fists on tables, demanding action," said O'Connor.

"Our country suffers from a silent epidemic of workplace deaths that elicit little or no outrage, he said, citing the construction worker with no harness who falls to his death from an unguarded roof. Or the sanitation worker with no protection or training who enters a confined space permeated with deadly chemical fumes. And the 18?year-old kid in his first week on the job who is buried alive in a collapsed trench.

The owners of the Triangle factory were indicted by a grand jury on seven counts, charged with manslaughter in the second degree under the U.S. Labor Code, which mandated that doors should not be locked during working hours. They avoided prison with the help of New York's finest, most prestigious and highly paid lawyers, as well as a judge in their pocket, according to published reports.

To prevent his son from being charged, Emmett J. Roe, owner of Imperial Foods Products, pleaded guilty to 25 counts of involuntary manslaughter. He admitted that he had personally ordered the doors to be locked from the outside. He received a prison sentence of 19 years and 11 months.

OSHA Has Problems Beyond Budget Cuts

Thousands are expected to gather in lower Manhattan and in other cities today to remember the tragic loss of lives caused by uncaring bosses and disinterested politicians. Many of the speeches are expected to talk about Congress's gutting of federal worker safety inspectors and the need to improve the capabilities of national programs.

"OSHA badly needs an upgrade. The penalties are too low to be a deterrent to all but the smallest employers. The criminal provisions are insulting to workers: The maximum penalty for a willful violation that kills a worker is six months, while the penalties for environmental crimes like harassing [not killing] protected animal species are five years or more," Michael Wright, director of Health, Safety and Environment for the United Steelworkers, told AOL News

Wright praises the dedication of OSHA's staff, calling them "dedicated public servants, in a tough job, trying to do more with less," and added that OSHA is significantly under-resourced as it is, so the House-proposed budget cuts would be catastrophic.

Professor David Goldsmith is a consultant to OSHA and an occupational and environmental epidemiologist who teaches at George Washington University's School of Public Health. He told AOL News that workers must be given much more education and training on the basics of health and safety before they enter the labor force.

"There must be a compact between workers and managers to find mutual ways to reduce on-the-job risks," he said. But Goldsmith admits that there are no incentives to reduce risk, only incentives to delay prevention by corporations and industry associations, stopping the adoption of better rules.

Dr. Michael Harbut, an occupational medicine specialist with years of working the front lines of worker safety, says OSHA has enough challenges without the budget cuts.

"OSHA can only operate within the confines of the law, and the law did not adequately contemplate the types of illnesses and deaths which can be caused by chemicals and other potentially harmful agents such as nanoparticles, which have been and will be introduced since the law was passed," Harbut, a cancer specialist, said.

The National Park Service declared the site of the Triangle Shirtwaist Co. a national landmark in 1991. The owners, Isaac Harris and Max Blanck, may have been acquitted of criminal charges, but their notoriety has long outlived them.

Their insurance company paid $400 for each worker who died that day -- about $60,000. According to documents collected by Cornell University, Harris and Blanck doled out just $75 to each family and pocketed the rest.

The final note to this tragic epic is that the remains of six of the workers were so badly charred their names were never known, but this year, a century later, Michael Hirsch, a historian and and amateur genealogist, tracked down the identities of the missing six.

For the first time, their names will be read with the other 140 who died that horrible day.
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Anyone with any sense knows that there are things that companies do that are less than moral, and the Republicans are trying to take away one of the groups within Government that helps keep them honest to the laws that are meant to protect people.

Truly disgusting.
 
Spectre said:
You conveniently left something out. Here, I'll highlight it for you.

Screen-shot-2011-03-17-at-12_39_55-AM.jpg


Can you generate electricity from tidal motion? Yes. But to date, every single tidal energy project that I am aware of has run afoul of issues such as maintenance and replacement of the apparatus as needed running the price up beyond any savings or profit the unit would generate. PG&E in California wanted to construct one just like the Rance installation about fifteen years ago, but the operating numbers didn't work. So, to date, the answer to "can you generate electricity from tidal motion economically" has been "no". And remains no. And therefore it doesn't work as a commercial source of power. Need I remind you that France's electrical generation is all nationalized, with *everything* that implies? Including lack of accountability? They're pushing 'reforms' now, but still...

There are some new and radical tidal projects being tried in Maine and San Francisco (and unless it got swept away in the recent tsunami, Japan) among other places, but until and unless those prove out, the answer is still no. By the way, we've been trying tidal for over a century now, so it's not a new idea in America, and it's not 'the eeeeeeeevil nuclear lobby that blocked it' all these years. Especially not in California, where they tore down a brand new nuclear reactor in about the same time frame and the nuclear industry has next to zero influence.

You would also think that rabidly anti-nuke countries (or countries that are not now and will likely never be allowed nuclear power plants) that have extensive ocean coast line would be all over tidal power tech if it was even vaguely economically sensible, or that more would have been built in those countries that have them.

As it is, there are... Six. Total. Seven if you include the one in South Korea that's been delayed and may never be finished.

Perhaps someday tidal will make economic sense, but until some of the newer concepts prove out (which I have my doubts), the answer is 'no it doesn't work.'
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Sorry been off on hols. ?


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ad/Levelized_energy_cost_chart_1%2C_2011_DOE_report.gif

So I do not have a citation for those figures; but a US report : Estimated Levelized Cost of New Generation Resources, 2016 from Annual Energy Outlook 2011 report. Interesting item to report - that there are so many reports out there all with different numbers on them. Basically I can not 'prove' my point, but no one can deny it either. As far as I can tell there is no definitive answer. I am not surprised to be honest. One thing without this form of power it would have been very difficult for nuclear proliferation to have occurred, when ever a government is challenged they always say - its for peaceful purposes, we need it for power generation.
 
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GRtak said:
Anyone with any sense knows that there are things that companies do that are less than moral, and the Republicans are trying to take away one of the groups within Government that helps keep them honest to the laws that are meant to protect people.

Truly disgusting.
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I work in the electrical industry. There are a few bodies that create rules and regulations that the industry uses. OSHA is one of those. These rules are needed in an industry where one small move and you are dead. A lot of the time companies do not create their own safety rules. Not out of greed either. So having someone tell them to do something is a good thing. This is not a good thing for worker safety if their presence is diminished in dangerous work places.
 
Afgahistan.

BBC News - Gurkha who repelled Taliban attack gets bravery medal

BBC News said:
A Gurkha who single-handedly fought off an attack by at least a dozen Taliban insurgents has been awarded Britain's second highest medal for bravery.

Acting Sergeant Dipprasad Pun used up all of his ammunition and resorted to using his machine gun tripod to repel the attack in Afghanistan in September.

The Gurkha, 31, of Ashford, Kent, said he was a "lucky guy" and very proud to get the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross.

Continues
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Outstanding military action by this solider.

The Ghurkas from Nepal, have well deserved, high reputation for being excellent infantry soldiers, as well as fierce fighters and have served in the British Army with distinction for more than 150 years.

The Conspicuous Gallantry Cross is second only to the Victoria Cross, the UK?s highest decoration.

:|
 
The Scott Walker drama continues.

The Scott Walker drama continues.

Another prosecutor from Indiana has resigned for suggesting in an email that Scott Walker should stage a fake attack to discredit the crazy union protesters.

And the Wisconsin Republican Party can't seem to take a little scrutiny into their ties to a group that is pulling their strings. (ALEC, The American Legislative Exchange Council)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/28/opinion/28mon3.html?ref=opinion

A Shabby Crusade in Wisconsin

Published: March 25, 2011

The latest technique used by conservatives to silence liberal academics is to demand copies of e-mails and other documents. Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli of Virginia tried it last year with a climate-change scientist, and now the Wisconsin Republican Party is doing it to a distinguished historian who dared to criticize the state?s new union-busting law. These demands not only abuse academic freedom, but make the instigators look like petty and medieval inquisitors.


The historian, William Cronon, is the Frederick Jackson Turner and Vilas research professor of history, geography and environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin, and was recently elected president of the American Historical Association. Earlier this month, he was asked to write an Op-Ed article for The Times on the historical context of Gov. Scott Walker?s effort to strip public-employee unions of bargaining rights. While researching the subject, he posted on his blog several critical observations about the powerful network of conservatives working to undermine union rights and disenfranchise Democratic voters in many states.

In particular, he pointed to the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative group backed by business interests that circulates draft legislation in every state capital, much of it similar to the Wisconsin law, and all of it unmatched by the left. Two days later, the state Republican Party filed a freedom-of-information request with the university, demanding all of his e-mails containing the words ?Republican,? ?Scott Walker,? ?union,? ?rally,? and other such incendiary terms. (The Op-Ed article appeared five days after that.)

The party refuses to say why it wants the messages; Mr. Cronon believes it is hoping to find that he is supporting the recall of Republican state senators, which would be against university policy and which he denies. This is a clear attempt to punish a critic and make other academics think twice before using the freedom of the American university to conduct legitimate research.

Professors are not just ordinary state employees. As J. Harvie Wilkinson III, a conservative federal judge on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, noted in a similar case, state university faculty members are ?employed professionally to test ideas and propose solutions, to deepen knowledge and refresh perspectives.? A political fishing expedition through a professor?s files would make it substantially harder to conduct research and communicate openly with colleagues. And it makes the Republican Party appear both vengeful and ridiculous.
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The following links are not a short read, but should be read to understand exactly what is going on all over America.

The blog that started it all.

http://scholarcitizen.williamcronon.net/2011/03/15/alec/

His response a few days after the email requests.

http://scholarcitizen.williamcronon.net/2011/03/24/open-records-attack-on-academic-freedom/

And and article he wrote about the events in Wisconsin.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/o...l=1&adxnnlx=1301230838-7EdHCUxNKYJmw4Pz9qnUJQ
 
FUCK YEAH!!!!!!!!! :yes:

First Green state premier likely to emerge from state elections.

Germany could see its first state premier from the Green Party in Baden-W?rttemberg as early results from state elections emerge. The result represents a huge political setback for Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Polling stations have closed in two German states in elections, with the Green Party making significant gains in the state of Baden-W?rttemberg. The Greens polled 25 percent, an increase of 13.3 percent since the last state elections in 2006. This could mean the first Green state premier in German history.

The Social Democrats polled 23.5 percent, which means a coalition of SPD and Greens is likely. As predicted, Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) took a severe drubbing, polling just 38 percent in Baden-W?rttember, a drop of six percent.

The Free Democrats, partners with the CDU at the national level, polled 5 percent.

The CDU had long been a stronghold in Baden-W?rttemberg, heading the government there for 58 years*. But the long tradition and a booming economy were not enough to keep the Greens from winning elections gains.
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* Which is almost literally forever - the state was created in 1952.
 
A thirteen percent increase for the Greens is pretty impressive. Was that expected or have the recent Japanese nuclear problems had a effect?

:mrgreen: <-- political smiley
 
Heathrow said:
A thirteen percent increase for the Greens is pretty impressive. Was that expected or have the recent Japanese nuclear problems had a effect?
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They have certainly had an effect. For instance, the current and hopefully soon former state MP recently made an executive decision to buy EnBW shares from EDF for several billion ?. That means he never even asked the state parliament about that appropriation of tax money - which would in all likelihood have rubber-stamped it anyway. The second problem with that is that EnBW is big in the nuclear power business - you can guess what will happen to the share price and hence the value of this "investment" :rolleyes: once the shares are traded again (which they are not currently for a reason that I cba to explain right now).

Then, there's the even bigger issue of "Stuttgart 21" which has led, among many other things, to riot police brought in from as far as Bavaria clobbering the protesting middle class of Stuttgart. Those people, you could almost call them bourgeois, are as far from left-wing anarchists as the Pope is from the capability of showing remorse.

By the way, they're currently in a position similar to the one that led to GWB's victory in 2000. The electoral law in the state favours the strongest party (honi soit qui mal y pense), so even though the current opposition has clearly received more votes than the ruling coalition, the race is very much open until all the votes have been counted.
 
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http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/laurie-penny/2011/03/trafalgar-square-police-young

What really happened in Trafalgar Square

Posted by Laurie Penny - 27 March 2011 16:22

Neither mindless nor violent, young protesters were forced into a stand-off with police.


"We're fucked." says the young man in the hoodie, staring out through the police cordon of Trafalgar Square, towards parliament. "Who's going to listen to us now?"

It's midnight on 26 March, a day that saw almost half a million students, trades unionists, parents, children and concerned citizens from all over Britain demonstrate against the government's austerity programme. All day, street fights across London between anti-cuts protestors and the police have turned this city into a little warzone. Barricades burned in Piccadilly as militant groups escalated the vandalism; the shopfronts of major banks and tax-avoiding companies have been smashed and daubed with graffiti, and Oxford Street was occupied and turned into a mass street party. Now, night is falling on the Trafalgar kettle, and the square stinks of cordite, emptied kidneys and anxiety. We've been here for three hours, and it's freezing; we burn placards and share cigarettes to maintain an illusion of warmth.

Commander Bob Broadhurst, who was in charge of the Metropolitan Police operation on the day, later states that the clashes in Trafalgar square began because "for some reason one of [the protestors] made an attack on the Olympic clock." That is not what happened. Instead, I witness the attempted snatch arrest of a 23 year-old man who they suspect of damaging the shop front of a major chain bank earlier in the day.

It starts when a handful of police officers moved through the quiet crowd, past circles of young people sharing snacks, smoking, playing guitars and chatting. They move in to grab the young man, but his friends scrambled to prevent the arrest being made, dragging him away from the police by his legs. Batons are drawn; a scuffle breaks out, and that scuffle becomes a fight, and then suddenly hundreds of armoured riot police are swarming in, seemingly from nowhere, sweeping up the steps of the National Gallery, beating back protesters as they go.

Things escalate very quickly. In the space of a minute and a half, the police find themselves surrounded on both sides by enraged young people who had gathered for a peaceful sit-in at the end of the largest workers' protest in a generation. The riot line advances on both sides, forcing protesters back into the square; police officers are bellowing and laying into the demonstrators with their shields.

Both sides begin to panic. Some of them start to throw sticks, and as the police surge forward, shouting and raising their weapons, others band together to charge the lines with heavy pieces of metal railing, which hit several protestors on their way past. Next to me, young people are raising their hands and screaming "don't hit us!"; some are yelling at the armoured police - "shame on you! Your job's next!"

I find myself in front of the riot line, taking a blow to the head and a kick to the shin; I am dragged to my feet by a girl with blue hair who squeezes my arm and then raises a union flag defiantly at the cops. "We are peaceful, what are you?" chant the protestors. I'm chanting it too, my head ringing with pain and rage and adrenaline; a boy with dreadlocks puts an arm around me. "Don't scream at them," he says. "We're peaceful, so let's not provoke."

A clear-eyed young man called Martin throws himself between the kids and the cops, his hands raised, telling us all to calm down, stand firm,stop throwing things and link arms; the police grab him, mistaking him for a rabble-rouser and toss him violently back into the line. The cops seal off the square. Those of us behind the lines are kettled, trapped in the sterile zone, shoved back towards Nelson's column as flares are lit and the fires begin to go out.

It would be naive to suggest that small numbers of people did not come to London today intent on breaking windows should the opportunity arise. It would be equally naive to suggest that no other groups had action plans that involved rather more than munching houmous in Hyde park and listening to some speeches. Few of those plans, however, come to fruition: however the papers choose to report the events of 26 March, there is no organised minority kicking things in for the hell of it. Instead, a few passionate, peaceful protest groups attempt to carry out direct action plans, plans that quickly become overwhelmed by crowds of angry, unaffiliated young people and a handful of genuinely violent agitators.

Those young people are from all over the country, and when the word goes out at 2pm that something was happening in Oxford Street, they headed down in their thousands. By the time the twenty-foot-high Trojan Horse arrives at Oxford Circus in the early afternoon, a full-blown rave is under way, coherent politics subsumed by the sheer defiant energy of the crowd. Chants about saving public services and education quickly merge into a thunderous, wordless cheer, erupting every time the traffic light countdowns flash towards. "Five-Four-Three-Two-One..." hollers the crowd, as bank branches are shut down, paint bombs thrown at the police, and small scuffles break out.

When UK Uncut's well-publicised secret occupation plan kicks into action at 3.30pm, the numbers and the energy quickly become overwhelming. As we follow the high-profile direct action group's red umbrella down Regent Street, we learn that the target is Fortnum and Mason's - the "Royal grocer's", as the news are now insisting on calling it, as though the stunt were a yobbish personal assault on the Queen's marmalade. The crowd is too big to stop, and protesters stream into the store, rushing past the police who are too late to barricade the doors.

Once inside, squeezing each other in shock at their own daring, everyone does a bit of excited chanting and then down for a polite impromptu picnic. Placards are erected by the famously opulent coffee counters, and tape wound around displays of expensive truffles imprecating the holding company to pay all its taxes. Tax evasion is the ostensible reason for this occupation; the class factor remains unspoken, but deeply felt.

The posh sweets, however, remain untouched, as do all the other luxury goodies in the store, as protestors share prepacked crisps and squash and decide that it'd be rude to smoke indoors. When someone accidentally-on-purpose knocks over a display of chocolate bunny rabbits, priced at fifteen pounds each, two girls sternly advise them to clear up the mess without delay. "It's just unnecessary."

Refined middle-aged couples who had been having quiet cream teas in Fortnum's downstairs restaurant stare blinkingly at the occupiers, who are organising themselves into a non-hierarchial consensus-building team. "I oppose the cuts, I'm a socialist, but I think this type of thing is too much," says property manager Kat, 32. "There are old ladies upstairs. And I just came in to buy some fresh marshmallows, and now I can't."

Outside the building, the crowd is going wild. Some scale the building and scrawl slogans onto the brickwork; others turn their attention to the bank branches across the road. I leave Fortnum's and make my way down Piccadilly under a leaden sky, past the ruined fronts of Lloyds and Santander, to Picadilly Circus, where the riots - and make no mistake, these are now riots - have momentarily descended into an eerie standoff. The police raise their batons; the crowd yells abuse at them. Noone is chanting about government cuts anymore: instead, they are chanting about police violence. "No justice, no peace, fuck the police!' yells a middle-aged man in a wheelchair. I scramble onto some railings for safety as a cohort of riot police move into the crowd, find themselves surrounded and are beaten back by thrown sticks. Someone yells that a police officer is being stretchered to safety. Flares and crackers are let off; red smoke trails in the air.

"A riot," said martin Luther King Jr, "is the language of the unheard." There are an awful lot of unheard voices in this country. What differentiates the rioters in Picadilly and Oxford Circus from the rally attendees in Hyde Park is not the fact that the latter are "real" protestors and the former merely "anarchists" (still an unthinking synonym for "hooligans" in the language of the press). The difference is that many unions and affiliated citizens still hold out hope that if they behave civilly, this government will do likewise.

The younger generation in particular, who reached puberty just in time to see a huge, peaceful march in 2003 change absolutely nothing, can't be expected to have any such confidence. We can hardly blame a cohort that has been roundly sold out, priced out, ignored, and now shoved onto the dole as the Chancellor announces yet another tax break for bankers, for such skepticism. If they do not believe the government cares one jot about what young or working-class people really think, it may be because any evidence of such concern is sorely lacking.

A large number of young people in Britain have become radicalised in a hurry, and not all of their energies are properly directed, explaining in part the confusion on the streets yesterday. Among their number, however, are many principled, determined and peaceful groups working to affect change and build resistance in any way they can.

One of these groups is UK Uncut. I return to Fortnum's in time to see dozens of key members of the group herded in front of the store and let out one by one, to be photographed, handcuffed and arrested. With the handful of real, random agitators easy to identify as they tear through the streets of Mayfair, the met has chosen instead to concentrate its energies on UK Uncut - the most successful, high-profile and democratic anti-cuts group in Britain.

UK Uncut has embarrassed both the government and the police with its gentle, inclusive, imaginative direct action days over the past six months. As its members are manhandled onto police coaches, waiting patiently to be taken to jail whilst career troublemakers run free and unarrested in the streets outside, one has to ask oneself why.

Shaken, I make my way through the streets of Mayfair towards Trafalgar to meet friends and debrief. In the dark, groups of people wearing trades union tabards and carrying placards wander hither and thither down burning sidestreets as oblivious shoppers eat salad in Pret A manger.

By 8pm, there's a party going on under Nelson's Column. Groups of anti-cuts protestors, many of whom have come down from Hyde Park, have congregated in the square to eat biscuits, drink cheap supermarket wine, share stories and socialise after a long and confusing day.

?'These young people are right to be angry. I don't think people are angry enough, actually, given that the NHS is being destroyed before our eyes," says Barry, 61, a retired social worker. "The rally was alright, but a huge march didn't make Tony Blair change his mind about Iraq, and another huge march isn't going to make David Cameron change his mind now. So what are people supposed to do?"

That's a tough question in a country where almost every form of political dissent apart from shuffling in an orderly queue from one march point to the other is now a crime.

"I don't have a problem with people smashing up banks, I think that's fine, given that the banks have done so much damage to the country," says Barry, getting into his stride. "Violence against real people - that's wrong."

Minutes after the fights begin in Trafalgar square, so does the backlash. Radio broadcasters imply that anyone who left the pre-ordained march route is a hooligan, and police chiefs rush to assure the public that this "mindless violence" has "nothing to do with protest."

The young people being battered in Trafalgar square, however, are neither mindless nor violent. In front of the lines, a teenage girl is crying and shaking after being shoved to the ground. "I'm not moving, I'm not moving," she mutters, her face smeared with tears and makeup. "I've been on every protest, I won't let this government destroy our future without a fight. I won't stand back, I'm not moving." A police officer charges, smacking her with his baton as she flings up her hands.

The cops cram us further back into the square, pushing people off the plinths where they have tried to scramble for safety. By now there are about 150 young people left in the square, and only one trained medic, who has just been batoned in the face; his friends hold him up as he blacks out, and carry him to the police lines, but they won't let him leave. By the makeshift fire, I meet the young man whose attempted arrest started all this. "I feel responsible," he said, "I never wanted any of this. None of us did"

Back on the column, a boy in a black hoodie and facerag hollers through his hands to his friends, who have linked arms in front of the police line. "This is what they want!" he yells, pointing at the Houses of Parliament. "They want us to fight each other. They want us to fight each other!

?They're laughing all the way to the bank!"
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calvinhobbes said:
Then, there's the even bigger issue of "Stuttgart 21" which has led, among many other things, to riot police brought in from as far as Bavaria clobbering the protesting middle class of Stuttgart. Those people, you could almost call them bourgeois, are as far from left-wing anarchists as the Pope is from the capability of showing remorse[...]
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This certainly was the main vote-swinging argument. The Green Party has been the only one of the 4 big ones who has from beginning to end stood up against this expensive project. And (on that topic) I agree with them. It is quite a shock still, nobody really expected them to be the senior partner in such a coalition. Well, they will have to go and prove themselves now. It?s easy being in the opposition just being against everything ... and it?s easy to let your senior partner in a coalition take all the blame if stuff goes wrong. Now they will have to take responsibilty ... let?s see how that works out for them ...

It was hilarious seeing the FDP (Liberals) yesterday ... as being a small-ish party with a rather small "base" like the Green one two ... they have NEVER been the senior partner in something as importand as a State-Goverment ... they were like "wut? what just happend?" Shit just hit the fan for them :lol:
 
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Interrobang said:
It was hilarious seeing the FDP (Liberals) yesterday ... as being a small-ish party with a rather small "base" like the Green one two ... they have NEVER been the senior partner in something as importand as a State-Goverment ... they were like "wut? what just happend?" Shit just hit the fan for them :lol:
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You may want to brush up your knowledge on that. Granted they only lasted a year and the situation was somewhat special.;)
 
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