Melting point

Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, March 10th, 2009 - 5 comments
Categories: activism, police - Tags:

The Ecologist Film Unit’s second release documents how espionage, news manipulation, legal threats and even violence have become the knee-jerk response of Government and big business to the increasingly vocal concerns of environmental protesters in the UK. Ahead of next month’s Climate Camp at Kingsnorth power station, this exclusive and powerful film exposes the extraordinary tactics being used to reframe concerned citizens exercising their right to protest as dangerous terrorists.

The link above has a far better quality video than the embedded youtube, which is adequete if you press ‘HQ’.

We’ve been seeing the police and various companies doing similar dubious actions against protesters in New Zealand. This type of activity by police against peaceful protest diminishes the support that that the police receive. It appears to be fueled by misconceptions of what protesters are. In my experience protesters are highly peaceful and heavily legal – just look at how they always turn up at court and generally defeat police charges. Being legal is more than you can say about some of abuses of police powers that have been used on protesters.

Hat-tip: Greenpeace NZ

5 comments on “Melting point ”

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  1. BLiP 1
    10 March 2009 at 12:08 pm

    Never mind the police and the private sector, that’s a given, we’ve also seen government departments spying on citizens. And that was under Labour, it sickens me to say.

  2. lprent 2
    10 March 2009 at 12:25 pm

    I’m aware of state owned enterprises – not government departments. I’d be interested in links

    Put some links in the comments

    • BLiP 2.1
      10 March 2009 at 12:50 pm

      Fair nuff – the Coal outfit I was thinking of – mind you, isn’t the SIS a government department 🙂

  3. insider 3
    10 March 2009 at 3:54 pm

    I wouldn’t be quite so blase about the tactics and intentions of protest groups. As we have seen in NZ, some of them can morph into some pretty unsavoury activities.

    They also can use some very sophisticated intelligence gathering techniques that are similar to those used by terrorists, and those two issues combined is probably the reason some are monitored. It’s not the intent at the time it’s how that could be manipulated in future that is the fear.

  4. lprent 4
    10 March 2009 at 7:17 pm

    insider: Who? I’ve been keeping an eye on protest and activist groups for 30 years and I’ve never seen one go dangerous. Doing civil disobedience is a legitimate tactic. What you’re insinuating is that they move into terrorist level activities. Prove it.

    The short answer is that I think you are simply lying. Put in some links that show what you’re implying has happened, then they can be discussed. Oh and please restrict to NZ examples – one favourite tactic of the police in their bullshit affidavits is to put in material about unrelated groups offshore. Usually that material is inaccurate as well – ie they put in the arrest, but not the discharges. So restrict it to convictions… The police love arrests, charging, but don’t really follow through because it gets thrown out either in the district court or on appeal.

    What I have seen is a massive and persistent level of infringement of the citizen rights by the police. Easy to link to and document.

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