Posts by Russell Brown
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Just for the record I'm not trying to paint you as any sort of apologist for anyone Mr B, not at all. It just seems that there seemed to be a double standard in the way different groups were dealt with at the time. Although again the demeanour of the crowd must have been a contributing factor. Rent-a-crowd aren't doing their various causes any favours at all
No worries. And Margaret:
yet you haven't addressed the actual crux of my argument Russell, which was about the broader context of the relationship here between activists and police at the moment. Yesterday's protest has not come out of a vaccum (vacuum? I can never spell that word).
I wasn't trying to have a go at you, but I don't see the validity in behaving violently to one group of officers because you believe police command have acted dubiously towards your friends -- and then claiming that you've been "provoked".
Some of the protesters' behaviour towards Jill Ovens, who was prepared to go into that conference and put up remits that directly embodied their grievances, was moronic.
They now have some self-destructive war (with the inevitable "class traitor" accusations) when they could have had their cause right in the middle of that conference. I really think there's a danger of this protest being about nothing other than protesting as a lifestyle.
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I mean seriously. There's people sitting there at that protest in orange boiler suits, claiming some kind of parallel with the goings on at Guantanamo Bay. That doesn't stand up to even a second of rational consideration of the facts. Is there any rational engagement to be made with people who, not to put too fine a point on it, are acting so stupidly and irrationally?
It's probably also worth noting that two of those who were denied bail, Tame Iti and his nephew, were on Friday granted permission to apply for home detention. That's not exactly the stuff of police states.
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Now let me preface what I am about to say with the fact that I have always found you to be level headed and even handed in your commentary but,
If at least one of those police personel less than 5m away didn't see that then I'm the next All Black Coach, a New Zealander will land on the moon before the decade is out and Global warming is a hippy conspiracy.Sure. I wasn't looking to justify them not apprehending Richards. I don't give a toss about him.
It may very well be that they weren't going to haul away the old bloke from the conference, but were happy to grab the protester who grabbed him.
It might also have been that Richards was heading away from the action, while the guy who got arrested started wrestling with Richards right under their noses. They had to do something there. It just probably shouldn't have been a full-blown arrest.
But a lot of other people did things that would have had you or me arrested on most days of the week, and weren't arrested.
I just don't buy the "we were provoked by the cops" line, because the 3 News video makes it pretty clear that the police showed great restraint in the face of some very shitty behaviour.
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Why? Michael Cullen sez we rock, the Tories are Blue Meanies, vote for us or the puppy gets it - what a shock.
Yeah, but you would say that ;-)
I thought it was a good, vigorous speech, and and interesting one, in that it looks to embody the 2008 messages.
And I was particularly pleased to see this one in here:
Let’s pretend he didn’t know what his views were on the 1981 Springbok Tour.
Score for Public Address! And, of course, for Matt Lawrey at Fresh FM, who had the nous to ask the question ...
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No it wouldn't have, but just to play devil's advocate how the hell does someone with Ovens' experience in the union movement read a crowd that badly?
It's easy to say that with hindsight, but I don't think she did anything wrong, apart from muttering the words "you stupid ..." when she realised they weren't going to stop chanting at her.
Of course, if she hadn't tried to talk to the protesters, the narrative would have been that she scuttled away to the safety of the venue, afraid to face the crowd. Or something.
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I thought Margaret's analysis was spot on. And I thought it was oriented to explanation, not excuses.
I fear the difference is in the eye of the beholder. I really don't think one incident justifies all the subsequent stupidity and aggression; and it certainly doesn't justify all the self-serving whingeing after the fact about having been "provoked".
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Read the comments on Indymedia, and you can see they're like a sort of theatre criticism. You looked great at that demo, darling! There doesn't seem to be any sense of what is to be accomplished outside of presenting a spectacle.
Sigh ... I spent several hours on a Sunday trying to nail it down -- and you just put it much better than me.
This is what I found so bizarre: that they had people there who were emphatically on their side: who were going inside to put their grievances. But they couldn't stop protesting long enough to actually co-operate and achieve something.
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I've just posted Graeme's third guest post: Not quite everything you ever wanted to know about bail.
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It was good popcorn, thank you very much.
I was going to pop in and wish you well with it. If ever there was a prime schadenfreude opportunity ...
However what is intriguing is why Clark is now getting more robust in her defence of the Police. She absolutely refused to comment for the first week or so. Has she been briefed by the Minister (who gets briefed by his Police secondee) as to the strength of the evidence, and she now thinks there is less risk in backing the Police?
That's one theory. It's certainly a notable shift of tone from her.
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Richards behaviour is explicable, but not excusable. And it's very hard to escape the impression that because Trevor Mallard has more-or-less gotten away with it (sure, he's been somewhat demoted and he's lost his favourite toys - Sport and RWC - but he's still in Cabinet with heavy hitting portfolios), that there's a level of tolerance for a bit of biffo in the Labour party.
Quite. Which applies a thick layer of extra badness to what he's done. I just find it a bit ironic that this was a nasty little scrap that basically took place some way to the Left of the Labour mainstream, amongst former comrades. As Craig pointed out on another thread, it's a family squabble.
But if we're going to agree that there was no excuse for what Richards did, I'd have to take issue with Margaret when she makes excuses for the abusive and aggressive behaviour of some of the protesters. The fact that they're whingeing about "police provocation" is farcical. They, too, need to own their own shit.
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