Scotland Yard riot squad faces calls to end ‘culture of impunity’

“Scotland Yard faced calls for an “ethical audit” of all officers in its controversial riot squad tonight after figures revealed that they had received more than 5,000 complaint allegations, mostly for “oppressive behaviour”.

Details of all allegations lodged against the Metropolitan police territorial support group (TSG) over the last four years reveal that only nine – less than 0.18% – were “substantiated” after an investigation by the force’s complaints department.

The figures, released under the Freedom of Information Act, were described as evidence of a “culture of impunity” that makes it almost impossible for members of the public to lodge successful complaints against the Met’s 730 TSG officers.”

Website of the weekend. Silents Are Golden.

Mr Feastingonroadkill ploughing through the silent movie goodness. Hooray For Hollywood! (and Pinewood, and UFA, etc, etc…)

The average tumblette logs on to post.

Courtesy of Gerry Anderson, UFO.

Eddie Cochran: ‘Twenty Flight Rock’

Just like Eddie.

Eddie Cochran.

If you listen carefully, you can hear Orwell spinning in his grave.

Nina Hagen: ‘New York, New York’

The magnificent Nina Hagen

“The Naxalite movement has its origins in a land dispute near the village of Naxalbari in the northern part of West Bengal in 1967. This lasted several years and appeared to have been brought under control. But later, a number of leftist groups fired by a Maoist ideology made links with disadvantaged peoples in parts of rural eastern India; in the early 2000s, this coalesced into a renewed movement.

Much of the activity is spread across India’s so-called “red corridor”, which stretches from the Nepalese border down to the southern state of Karnataka. A current report says: “With a force of 15,000 armed cadres, they control an estimated one-fifth of India’s forests. They are also believed to have 50,000 underground activists. Around 100,000 people, including the intelligentsia, are associated with various front organisations in different parts of the country”

The import of the Naxalites and other Maoist groups in India may go far beyond the major internal-security problem they pose. From another perspective, they represent an early example of the kinds of radical response that could - if present dominant policies continue - become far more widespread in the coming decades

In the 2010-40 period, climate change will affect the tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world in ever more pervasive ways. As the continents warm up much faster than the oceans and the croplands dry out, the consequence will be a sharp decline in the land’s ecological “carrying-capacity”

This is also a world where there are enormous gaps in living-standards, life-chances and access to resources; where 10% of the world’s people have over 85% of the household wealth; and where hundreds of millions of people in the global south (and north) are marginalised and resentful. The results, if such trends are allowed to continue, will be a combination of more fragile and failing states with intense migratory pressures; in turn this will reinforces the tendency of the world’s elites to seek to “close the castle gates”

Paul Rogers: India’s 21st Century War In a nutshell, forget about Al-Qaida, the real threat to neoliberal hegemony will come from large scale uprisings amongst the dispossessed. Someone has been reading his copy of Hardt and Negri’s Multitude.

Can Mr Feastingonroadkill just say that La Contessa is a) always thought provoking, and b) probably always right.

Maximum respect - as they say in The Hood.

Sweet Soul on the ipod for the walk to work this morning - just like this

Edwin Starr: ‘Twenty Five Miles’

Get Down!