[matilda] monbiot today on protest in britain

[fabian]

hey guys
some very good words by monbiot in today's guardian

The police abuse terror and harassment laws to penalise dissent while 
we insist civil liberties are our gift to the world

George Monbiot
Tuesday October 4, 2005
The Guardian

'We are trying to fight 21st-century crime - antisocial behaviour, drug 
dealing, binge drinking, organised crime - with 19th-century methods, 
as if we still lived in the time of Dickens." Tony Blair, September 27 
2005.

"Down poured the wine like oil on blazing fire. And still the riot went 
on - the debauchery gained its height - glasses were dashed upon the 
floor by hands that could not carry them to lips, oaths were shouted 
out by lips which could scarcely form the words to vent them in; 
drunken losers cursed and roared; some mounted on the tables, waving 
bottles above their heads and bidding defiance to the rest; some 
danced, some sang, some tore the cards and raved. Tumult and frenzy 
reigned supreme ..." Nicholas Nickleby, by Charles Dickens, 1839.

Article continues
All politicians who seek to justify repressive legislation claim that 
they are responding to an unprecedented threat to public order. And all 
politicians who cite such a threat draft measures in response which can 
just as easily be used against democratic protest. No act has been 
passed over the past 20 years with the aim of preventing antisocial 
behaviour, disorderly conduct, trespass, harassment and terrorism that 
has not also been deployed to criminalise a peaceful public engagement 
in politics. When Walter Wolfgang was briefly detained by the police 
after heckling the foreign secretary last week, the public caught a 
glimpse of something that a few of us have been vainly banging on about 
for years.



http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1584140,00.html