Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Provacateurs: G20 Police 'Used Undercover Men to Incite Crowds'
Liberal Democrat Tom Brake says he saw what he believed to be two plain-clothes police officers go through a police cordon after presenting their ID cards.
Police and protesters clash in London on 1 April 2009. Photograph: Chris Ison/PA Brake, who along with hundreds of others was corralled behind police lines near Bank tube station in the City of London on the day of the protests, says he was informed by people in the crowd that the men had been seen to throw bottles at the police and had encouraged others to do the same shortly before they passed through the cordon.
Brake, a member of the influential home affairs select committee, will raise the allegations when he gives evidence before parliament's joint committee on human rights on Tuesday.
"When I was in the middle of the crowd, two people came over to me and said, 'There are people over there who we believe are policemen and who have been encouraging the crowd to throw things at the police,'" Brake said. But when the crowd became suspicious of the men and accused them of being police officers, the pair approached the police line and passed through after showing some form of identification.
Brake has produced a draft report of his experiences for the human rights committee, having received written statements from people in the crowd. These include Tony Amos, a photographer who was standing with protesters in the Royal Exchange between 5pm and 6pm. "He [one of the alleged officers] was egging protesters on. It was very noticeable," Amos said. "Then suddenly a protester seemed to identify him as a policeman and turned on him. He legged it towards the police line, flashed some ID and they just let him through, no questions asked."
Amos added: "He was pretty much inciting the crowd. He could not be called an observer. I don't believe in conspiracy theories but this really struck me. Hopefully, a review of video evidence will clear this up."
The Independent Police Complaints Commission has received 256 complaints relating to the G20 protests. Of these, 121 have been made about the use of force by police officers, while 75 relate to police tactics. The IPCC said it had no record of complaints involving the use of police agents provocateurs. A Metropolitan Police spokesman said: "We would never deploy officers in this way or condone such behaviour."
The use of plain-clothes officers in crowd situations is considered a vital tactic for gathering evidence. It has been used effectively to combat football hooliganism in the UK and was employed during the May Day protests in 2001.
Brake said he intends to raise the allegations with the Met's commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, when he next appears before the home affairs select committee. "There is a logic having plain-clothes officers in the crowd, but no logic if the officers are actively encouraging violence, which would be a source of great concern," Brake said.
The MP said that given only a few people were allowed out of the corralled crowd for the five hours he was held inside it, there should be no problem in investigating the allegation by examining video footage.
21 Comments so far
Show AllThis is what we knew would happen.
The major body of the force is not aware of these operations or out of their "need to know"... That is how it is covered up and it is a common tactic in War profiteering... protecting the Big Jolly Bankers and their paid politicians by making the people out to be the criminals instead of the open secret powers of the establishment to keep the secrets of the Temple.
Like Poppy Bush confessed to White House reporter, Sara, "If the public ever found out what we were doin they would hunt us down and lynch us... by our thumbs in the public square"..... a freudian slip of the closest kind.
The good thing is these tactics are bein exposed by our own open secret agents.
In Baghdad, there were two British soldiers driving a local car and dressed as Iraqis........They drove through Baghdad shooing at civilian bystanders....They were arrested. .........However the British military rode their tanks through the jail and rescued their two comrades....
Do I believe that the police would provoke their own? No ! Do I believe the British Government would set up such a scam? Yes
Remember the shut down of Heathrow Airport because alleged terrorists were going to mix liquids for bombs and how everyone can not carry a bottle of water on a plane now. Guess what, the shutdown was a SCAM !!!! No terrorist had any tickets nor were they near the airport, as a matter of fact, no one has been convicted of such a plot..
I beieve the "Swine Flu" was another government idea to get the attention off the "Torture Memos" and the Department of Justice`s decision that those memos only showed, "Bad Judgement" !!!!......So much for the "Rule of Law"........Over 100 detainees disappear and at last 27 die after being tortured which all sounds like murder to me,but that's ok there were probably many more incidents that were shredded along with Nancy Pelosi's memory.
Protecting the "Power Elite" has been government's responsiblity since the Kennedy Assassination......Obama will follow orders.
but of course there was no conspiracy.
only the village idiot would suspect that.
and were the CCTVs even switched on?
prior to the summit/demo there were reports that the resolution was not up to newly decreed minimum standards.
Amos added: "... . I don't believe in conspiracy theories but this really struck me. ... ."
Mr. Tony Amos, photographer, where have you been, honey? Why would you think that since history reveals thousands of political/governmental/extra-governmental conspiracy theories AND ACTUAL CONSPIRACIES, that somehow in this first UNACCOUNTABLE-GENERATION of the first decade of the 21st Century,and with the dismantling of a U.S. Constitutionally-based government, with a partnership with England, Israel, the Arab monarchs, other European nations, and with wars and bombings and a 9-11 and Gazans, Pakistanis and Afghans dying by the score and OIL & GAS & CORPORATE GREED, and MONEY BROKERS controlling the rise and fall of countries, why would you think there are NO Conspiracies with police and secret service, and corporations and governments to CONTROL THE MASSES OF PEOPLE who are not happy with lost jobs, lost homes, starvation, getting killed in various wars, and an environment that is being exploited and trashed to its demise?
For anyone to dismiss conspiracy theories nowadays, that person has to have a dulled-down, sheeple brain with a Pollyanna weltanschauung.
Unfortunately, that's still most people.
/cm
Bang on. These actions have been documneted on Video, admitted to by police forces once outed, and we STILL have people who claim that any that subscribe to such are somehow conspiracy theorists.
It beyond me as to how stupid some people can be but then I suppose that is exactly what these thugs and liars count on.
Excellent post CM. That word, "conspiracy theory", is used by so many people as an ad-hominem attack on someone who has done their research, and is meant to discredit that person immediately with no further debate. And it's effective, too. For instance, when a nationally-acclaimed magazine like "Popular Mechanics" runs a simple-minded and pathetic whitewash of a story to discredit the 9/11 "conspiracy theorists", the American sheeple buy it all lock, stock and barrel, and believe that is end of story . . . 'cuz dude, like, ya know, those are the "experts".
Never mind the fact that the story didn't adequately address the majority of questions some people have about the events that day. The desired effect was reached: people who question the official story of 9/11 are "conspiracy theorist nut jobs".
I see that word "conspiracy theory" as a prime example of mind control on a mass scale.
The use of agent provocateurs in demonstrations is not a "conspiracy", it is SOP for the police since at least Haymarket. This article isn't even news.
But the facts are that a group of people really did commandeer airliners and fly them into occupied buildings in New York and Arlington, resulting in their collapse, on Sept 11, 2001. They did it in order to give the USAns a small taste of what they have been inflicting on other people since the end of WW2. Were the airliners and the crashes star-trek style holographic images? Were the people on the airliners, and their next of kin, and their next of kin's next of kin all hired in some kind of grand hoax? Please THINK for crying out loud!
It is no accident that Bin Laden in one of his communique's, recommended Blum's book "Rogue State - A Guide to the World's Only Superpower"
SaboCat: A best advice from the director of a state investigative agency on human rights when I was a fledgling investigator was "that the devil was in the details." I learned. I listened very carefully to those I was interviewing/asking questions by phone or in person; I read files, researched background materials and other relevant information. I put my own "thinking" away and very dispassionately wrote down the facts with all the details or references to relevant details.
What happens is that the answers emerge because this connects with that, and that connects with this, and etcetera, and WHAMMO, when the intelligent computer-like brain processes the information, WHAMMO, and there is no escaping the conclusions and the mind and the gut become congruent, WHAMMO.
You sound sincere in your conclusions, SaboCat, but I suspect your own research and information comes more from the Mainstream info all of us were given than not.
Read all the 9-11 truth sites, and spend a week or two with:
www.scribd.com/people/documents/2169400-ep-heidner
Take a look at the available 9-11 videos that are readily available free or for small dollars.
Steep yourself in information; get yourself, your own wishes, and your own conditionings/belief systems out of the way [big order], and then let it all stew. Your computer brain will work it out as you sleep. And do review events/decisions by "authority" after 9-11 to the present.
Our government is badly wounded from dishonesty, criminal intent and actions, unholy alliances, and such traits in its leading figures as unmitigated greed, cowardice, stupidity, egocentricity, self-servingness, rigidity of mind, psychopathic lying, heartlessness, and other nasty qualities that are doing all of us in and the planet itself.
Finding out and facing the truth is a very difficult thing to do on a very personal level and certainly on the level of the desire to believe in the information "authority" conveys to us. Most of us are raised to believe in the goodness of authority regarding the well-being of our own nation and those of us who are citizens of our nation.
Do the work. The Devil is always in the details.
peace, cm
SABOCAT,
I DO think. That's exactly why I know the official story of 9/11 is a load of crap.
I am a civil engineer and stay in practice thinking on my job. It also gives me the technical concepts needed in this particular case.
Neither of you answered my question. All the theories' I've heard so far involve the the buildings being brought down by explosives, even though a review of the movies of the initiation of the collapses look absolutely nothing like an explosive demolition and in every way, like a structural collapse.
What were the planes for? I presume the theorists posit that the airliners were used just to make the show more spectacular...or something. Do you relly believe someone working for the CIA would be so dedicated as to commit suicide? The scheme would have required the complete cooperation and coordination of thousands in and outside of government. How could it be that not one of these thousands came forward with information on the scheme. Note that in all the websites, none of the theorists have any testimony from anyone coming forth about the theory.
I could continue writing out questions like this - each one demolishes the "theories".
But worse, the "theories" belie a complete ignorance as to the nature of US imperial foreign policy and a refusal to acknowledge the agency in some peoples resistance to it. If a grieving father of a family wiped out in the latest atrocity in Afghanistan attempted to settle the score by driving an explosive-laden van into the Empire State Building, would you also dismiss this as US government conspiracy theory?
"I am a civil engineer and stay in practice thinking on my job. It also gives me the technical concepts needed in this particular case.
Get your own thinking and your self out of the way,SaboCat, and be zen mind.
"Neither of you answered my question. All the theories' I've heard so far involve the the buildings being brought down by explosives, even though a review of the movies of the initiation of the collapses look absolutely nothing like an explosive demolition and in every way, like a structural collapse."
Architects and Engineers for 911 Truth ... close to a thousand ... disagree with you, along with many expert demolition experts and similar professionals in other countries.
"Do you relly believe someone working for the CIA would be so dedicated as to commit suicide?"
And what if no one from the C.I.A. or the particular alleged hi-jackers were on those planes? Do we not have unmanned drone aircraft now, dropping bombs on Afghans and Pakistanis, evidently controlled by "joystick junkies" watching satellite pictures on computer screens in Nevada and Virginia?
But let's go to "older" technology available in 2001, when the computerized controls of an aircraft could be taken over by a master computer's programming. You might want to check out some of the plane crashes within a few-year period of that time and who was on board when the planes went down and how they suddenly went down.
Pilots for 911 Truth, among others, take issue with the flight paths and expertise that would have been required for highly experienced pilots to pull those manuevers off to neatly target the specific patch of the Pentagon, and to fly so on time and perfectly into each of the Twin Towers.
Check out the link I provided in my other comment and spend some time reading about what floors were important to demolish and why?
"The scheme would have required the complete cooperation and coordination of thousands in and outside of government."
I disagree. Twenty-five maybe, tops, including those from a partnering country with the best demolition experts in the world, and some of them only knowing bits and pieces.
This is something one cannot think through on one's own because one happens to have a degree in civil engineering. This is an extremely complex situation, and that is why THE DETAILS surrounding this event, and the DETAILS about this event and the DETAILS leading to the reasons for this event are important to read through carefully from many sources. And they are available.
Building 7 was a completely different animal structurally, but essentially steel. How come it fell when the fires inside it were not that intense?
How come the announcement that it fell was made two hours earlier than it did fall by a TV station in England, and then that announcement was corrected?
I will stop there. This is not the place to argue the complete history of 9-11.
Just read with an outside-the-box/outside-the-lines open mind.
/cm
"If a grieving father of a family wiped out in the latest atrocity in Afghanistan attempted to settle the score by driving an explosive-laden van into the Empire State Building, would you also dismiss this as US government conspiracy theory?"
Only if there was evidence (memos) that was revealed through congressional investigation and questioning under oath of administration officials (Condoleezza Rice) which demonstrated that the government had been forewarned (July and August 2001) that attacks with jetliners were imminent ("Osama Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside US"), and the government did nothing to prevent it (denying the request of FBI agent Coleen Rowley to detain suspected terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui) or even going so far as to consciously decide to let it happen (standing down the Air Force) in order to allow a "Pearl Harbor type catalyzing event" (neocon manifesto, Project for the New American Century) to sway public opinion in favor of two wars which could earn the industrial military complex lots and lots and lots of money ($855,574,995,589 to date) would I even suspect there might have been a conspiracy by some unknown officials (Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld and all their MIC buddies) who prior to aforementioned attack may have made some statement to the effect of 'Let the bastards take their best shot'.
Personally I don't believe in controlled demolitions, remote control, holograms, or magic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_advance-knowledge_debate
SaboCat: You beat me to the keyboard! I was just going to mention Haymarket. Thanks!
Cee Miracles: I second SeventhSon on your post. Very good!
Not the first time or the last. Police agents were exposed at the G8 in Germany in 2007, in Canada that same year, and I am sure they are at every significant protest anywhere nowadays. I hope everyone feels nice and safe! With this kind of policing, who needs terrorists?
The first century philosopher Epictetus referred to the practice of Roman soldiers in civilian dress sitting down beside a citizen and, after some friendly small talk, would begin to speak ill of Caesar.
If his new found friend so much as said 'yes, that's true' he would find himself in chains and could face anything from a fine, to confiscation of all property, to being beaten with rods.
The London police murdered an innocent passerby when the police's agents provocateur could not incite the crowds to the desired political level.
I remember Jean Charles de Menezes, the innocent Brazilian electrician, executed by British Police just for show.
I think the world has found the real terrorists, the only terrorists.
Me too.
New complaints lodged against Met police over death of Ian Tomlinson during G20 protests
______________________________________
Fresh complaints have been lodged about police involvement in the death of Ian Tomlinson during the G20 protests, including concern that a City of London police officer may have allowed a dog to bite the newspaper vendor's leg.
______________________________________
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/may/08/ian-tomlinson-g20-met-police
______________________________________
I expect that the political leaders and police authorities would squeal and sputter in high dudgeon and righteous indignation at the observation that "accidental" injury and even death of innocent bystanders is, if not explicitly authorized, at least tacitly allowed and condoned by higher-ups.
That is, while it's unlikely that Constable X would be under orders to deliberately whack Bystander Y with a baton, the police superiors leniently recognize that their lads & lasses get a bit caught up in the moment, what, and Things Happen.
Regrettable, of course, but nonetheless helpful in putting the Fear upon those inclined to come out and engage in civil disturbance, eh?
· Yr Obd't Servant
sabocat,
#1 - there's a big difference between hijacking and then successfully crashing a plane into a very tall building vs. driving a van into yet another tall building.
#2 - if you haven't already done so, go spend a bit of time immersing yourself between the covers of crossing the rubicon. there you will find six hundred pages of foot-noted and fact-checked newsworthy information, which, after digestion, will afford you the position of not having to place yourself in a position of "writing out questions" that demolish "theories" not in agreement with the government's official theory.
"Provacateurs: G20 Police 'Used Undercover Men to Incite Crowds'"
Hmmm. More "standard (covert) operating procedure" or protocol, eh?! Like the Operation Gladio, the coloured "revolutions" in the Ukraine (unless it was Uzebekistan) and other countries, where the U.S. wanted "regime changes", and maybe like the "crisis' that happened in Tibet the very same period of days Winter Soldiers was scheduled for and occurred in the USA. Infiltrators from state, operating covertly in terms of real identities, this is nothing new. It was found that it happened also at the protests against the SPP or NAU (No. American Union) summit in Montebello, Quebec (Canada) in ... 2007, I think was the year, month of August; with the Canadian or Quebec (or both) police, who sent in undercover agents dressed as protesters, but rowdy, violent ones, pretending to threaten the police, and being (fake or staged, of course) arrested and hauled away by the police. Quite a little "show" that was and it was discovered that they really were undercover police in this case.