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Is it the protestors or the police...

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  • 21-11-2003 8:58pm
    #1
    sovtek
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,485 ✭✭✭


    ...that are a threat to order, people and property. Considering the examples in this article...I get a good laugh out of the new "Fox" attitude that protestors are all communist students that are afraid of showers.


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    #2
    Éomer of Rohan
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,335 ✭✭✭Éomer of Rohan


    There are several inherent points which interest me about this argument and the bottom question which can in turn answer the question of the thread is this;

    At what point does violence become justified in protest?

    This came to me in relation to a different thread - the flame-warred thread about the IRA and the Germans in the North which degenerated into a pro or anti IRA 'terrorist' activity in 1969. It interests me to see whether the pro-IRA 'war' crowd believe that such anti-globalisation / anti-capitalism / anarchist protestors are justified in their sometimes violent behaviour given that many fundamentally believe that the system is illegitimate and that it must be removed for the oppression (cf the South African government cutting off water to the poorest black communities in 2001 at the behest of the WTO structural reforms which demanded it privatise the water service) it wreaks on, in this case, the LEDCs.

    The behaviour of the police surrounding such events is unjustifiable but to be expected; the police forces of all nations are the first line of defence of the state when it comes to political problems - which is why they cannot have extremists within the police, because extremists want to overthrow the extant state system. Tear gas and water cannons are the weapons and the battlefield is anywhere that the international economic fora meet. The police have planted evidence to justify assault, arrest and illegal detention and police authorities such as those in the USA as laid out in the article have been overtly political in forbidding demonstration on rather Orwellian grounds - that they 'expect trouble' and the evidence for this was some coincidental material that could be construed by those who so wished as evidence of 'bomb-making.'

    Surely the question begs to be asked; if so many people are protesting world wide at the global capitalist system - or in any case on this scale, and I do not hesitate to include Hungary 1956 which sparked international protest movements or Tianenmen Square 1991 which did the same - is there not a serious issue which governments are simply ignoring in favour of branding all the protestors a 'mob' and pointing to, as shown, over-emphasised evidence of violent behaviour in order to discredit the credible and peaceable behaviour of the rest? IF the police were not there so overtly and were not dressed and armed as they are (which is designed to intimidate and in my opinion instead incites), surely protestors might not be so easily led into attacks on them, or attacks on private buildings which are designed to draw them in? People may say this is naive, but I would point out that instances were there is severe violence in a popular protest (dating all the way back to India during the British Raj) always seem to occur only when there is already a large and very visible police presence as opposed to a few bobbies along the route or watching over businesses; in Genoa and Seattle, the riot squad were already at the sites to block marchers progress.


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