Police pile out of vans to lay into protesters trying to run away
Spain’s shame as it jailed politicians this week for arranging a Catalan independence referendum has been compounded by scenes of horrific police brutality against Catalan protesters in Barcelona – as video released on social media has shown:
The UK government shamed itself when a minister insisted that these events were a purely ‘internal matter’ for the Spanish government – and EU governments appear to have turned a similarly blind eye.
But the UK’s media have been no better. As with the ‘gilet jaunes’ protests in France, what little coverage there has been of events in Barcelona have described ‘clashes’ between protesters and police, as if there has been some kind of parity of behaviour, as this snapshot of Barcelona-related headlines from the BBC News website shows:
But in fact, the aggression seems to have been profoundly asymmetrical – and as the video above has shown, merely attempting to run away has been a pretext for wanton and extreme violence.
The appalling behaviour of the Spanish authorities, the response of other governments and the craven media coverage shame all those involved.
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It would appear that Spain/Barcelona still has remnants of Franco’s fascist regime.
Half the governments in the EU are tainted by fascism, which was carefully preserved after 1945 to give a backbone to anti-communist underground movements.
The Spanish state is doing what neo-liberals hired it to do: putting down popular movements to preserve the sanctity of property from those who regard human life as more important.
Spains got form on treatment of separatists,look at the way they dealt with the Basque separatists…Catalonia would be a massive economic loss for Spain and thats why they go against the will of the people.Does Britain have a slight negative in that respect?
UK police no different. Remember Ian Tomlinson who was was barged into from behind and died later that day? And the peaceful protesting female hippy that was batonned with no provocation by a police sergeant disguising his identity by not wearing his epaulettes? And look how many people die in custody and following excessively hard redtraints when not struggling.
Police are just thugs for the Establishment.
Some forget that Spain is still a relatively young democracy. Unfortunately their current government along with the draconian imprisonment of legitimately elected politicians is all too happy to lapse back into believing that the solution lies in being dictatorial and oppressing legitimate protest with state violence.
Contrast the current state of Spain’s politics and economy with their Portuguese neighbors where a Socialist government is running things.
Portugal: the reality: austerity-lite and rampant privatisation. Or you could simply say it is fulfilling its legal obligations as a member of the EU and the Eurozone.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/10/09/portugals-socialist-miracle-pull-the-other-one/
Danny 19/10/2019 at 3:15 pm
Does anyone care one way or t’other what the neo-con financed Spiked has to say about anything. If that is really the best you can come up with then it’s obvious to all that you don’t have argument.
Danny, interesting that you should come up with a right wing publication to ‘prove’ your point, try this instead:
https://www.newstatesman.com/world/2018/03/europe-s-socialist-success-story-strange-rebirth-portuguese-left
Not really surprising. Danny’s form of right-wing nationalism, disguised as ‘socialism’ has a long pedigree. It’s of the same ilk as Farage’s version.
One of the reasons I don’t regularly read main stream ‘news’. It’s no longer real news, mostly biased reporting with a heavy sympathetic leaning towards the establishment. And not forgetting the ‘opinion’ spliced in to reports which are those of the individual reporters sucking up their editor’s backside to curry favour.
Sad state of the times. Welcome to the ministry of truth.
What do those who have influence in the EU think their failure to take action against the Spanish government looks like to those with doubts about the direction the the EU has taken,particularly since Maastricht.It stinks ,just like the treatment of Greece an dthe turning a blind eye to the actions of Poland and Hungary,with the Baltic States little better.
EU uses the excuse that it doesn’t get involved in internal policies of member states, John. In other words theres no money to be made out of intervening.
The relentless capitalism written into the EU Treaties and legislation is stoking the flames of fascism in multiple Member States. Yet the Labour Party wants Britain to stay in this shitty capitalist organisation!
Danny – Where are the quotes from Spiked?
Danny, quite a broad brush. Nothing from you on the Boris W.A.? (Canada minus sort of and more than sufficient detachment from the EU from a typical Lexit point of view) Does this mean you still would prefer a no deal scenario? Nothing from you, either, on the argument that even outside the EU we will come up against competition rules when striking trade deals with other countries?
The EU has to abide by the Human rights laws,unfortunately like many others it ignores them as john Thatcher says.The abuse of human rights ,torture and the right to a fair trial are being abused in europe… Little point in looking to Britain for advice .
I think those who are criticising the EU for not getting involved in this or that should do a little research and find out exactly what the remit of the EU is before falling for the right wing tactic of blaming it (the 28 countries of which we are one) for Spain’s use of right wing tactics!
If legislation was proposed in the EU to advise against certain actions of the police, the right wingers would be the first to be up in arms against it.
JackIT its not a right or left issue and not about brexit.We are talking about the fundamental issue of Human rights as all civilized countrys are subject to unde the Hague convention.Where society uses state suppression torture and abuse of the justice system its every ones duty and morality to speak out,We are now seeing governments across the EU and Britain.I have watched even france use an unlimited use of state of emergency to suppress the public.. THE goverments need to step back from the brink and bravo to anyone who challenges the power of anti democracy.moves from the state.
WHO VOTED AGAINST LETWIN
Kevin Barron
Ronnie Campbell
Jim Fitzpatrick
Caroline Flint
Kate Hoey
John Mann.
Abstained
Sarah Champion
Rosie Cooper
Melanie Onn
Derek Twigg
There are a lot of the ‘usual suspects’ missing from this list, perhaps they’ve finally cottoned on (not before time) that in the run-up to a GE disunity doesn’t sell well on the doorstep or maybe they are just conscious of impending trigger ballots.
Thanks SteveH. List of ‘Labour MPs’ who are a sell out to the Tories and who haven’t got the guts to tell their constituents that any form of Brexit will leave the poorest even worse off. They would rather continue their well paid careerist job and damage Labour and Jeremy Corbyn than risk criticism from their electorate for being honest with them.
The other point is, however, that their supporters are largely Remainers, as the BES has shown. Trying to woo Tory supporters at their expense doesn’t seem very bright!
They might as well advocate a harsh regime for benefit claimants – the wider target group is much the same.
Of course, the other SunMail propaganda line running at the moment is that ‘people’ just want ‘to get it done’.
That’s true – but, of course, but hides the varied motivations. Few realize that any Brexit decision is only *the start* of protracted and tedious pain as a notoriously incompetent government tries to replace existing trading arrangements – none of which will be more beneficial (except to the plutocrats) than the arrangements currently existing.
In terms of the simplistic ‘getting it done’, the best solution is ‘not doing it’.
Well-heeled Hong Kong protesters turning out in the finest, fashionable protest wear, sporting Armani and Gucci face masks and begging for democracy whilst wrapped in the union flag of their 150 year oppressor and illicit drug smuggler to the mainland are FAR MORE NEWSWORTHY, what, chaps…?
And it’s only a few thousand miles further away.
Do fuck off with that bollocks most of the protesters are students and certainly the ones hurt or killed have been.
Besides rich or poor they are still fighting for there democracy against an authoritarian regime who are attempting to stretch/break the treaty that protects them.
Apologies, but I only deal in facts. These protestors are controlled , manipulated and put onto the streets by wealthy HK oligarchs with dirty hands, pining for the old days, watching their illicitly procured mega-wealth coming under threat and feeling the heat from FAR more prosperous, growing, burgeoning cities on the mainland. Some day, China will have these financial crooks expedited to the mainland, their assests sequestered, charged, tried, found guilty and banged away where they belong. In prison. Watch the protests quickly peter out to nothing when that occurs. Just keep watching the situation, bide your time and wait and see if I’m proved wrong.
Wirral In It Together at 6:06 pm
What a load of complete and utterly evidence free bollocks.
The protest to maintain their democratic freedoms will stop when the participants are too scared to carry on.
Factual.
Tame a deep breath, get your head down and get researching, rather than resorting to apparent Tourettes-induced outbursts.
Wirral In It Together at 6:54 pm
You made the bold claims about only dealing in facts before then going on to do the opposite, it is up-to you to provide evidence to support these so called facts. I suggest you either put up or shut up.
No. Calm down, stop the reactionary gainsaying, while peppering it with expletives, roll your sleeves up and do your own research. I don’t do errands for lazy people I’m unlikely to ever meet. Now desist, pipe down or push off. Thanks.
Still no evidence to support your rather wild assertions. I suppose whether you choose to provide any or not depends on two things
1 Does the evidence exist (which is doubtful given your obvious reticence to provide any)
2. How much you value you credibility.
My name appears on my blog.
And also on my Twitter feed @waxdonaldtrump
Plenty of credibility on the blog, you’ll find.
As for you Steve H, you’re cowering in the shadows, exploiting virtual anonymity to take potshots at me.
That’s the behaviour of the gutless.
Full name please.
I now demand full openness and transparency from you.
Wirral In It Together at 7:27 pm
Unfortunately you seem to be laboring under the misapprehension that being prepared to own nonsense somehow gives it credibility, it doesn’t. Without evidence this particular nonsense you are proselyting is just that, and no amount of proclaiming ownership is going to alter that one iota.
You’re anonymous and therefore gutless. It doesn’t matter how many empty words you string together or how much time you waste doing that because your contributions are ALL worthless and ALL completely invalid. Whereas I am not anonymous, my name is known, my head is above the parapet and I’m engaging with the world as a known individual who OWNS his words.
However you sir, STEVEH – whoever the hell that is – are an unknown entity, possibly a bot. And you refuse to identify yourself. Now do yourself and everybody else reading this a huge favour, take my previous advice and go away. Thank you, oh man of mystery.
I refer you to my previous comment.
https://skwawkbox.org/2019/10/19/appalling-video-as-police-beat-fleeing-barcelona-protesters-shames-governments-and-corporate-press/#comment-124566
WTF? Name please! 🤣🤣🤣
🤷♂️ You’ve had my answer.
Nope.
Who TF are you?
FFS – Grow up. It’s your integrity that’s in question, not mine.
You can either provide some evidence to support your ‘assertions’ or piss about for the next few hours impressing yourself by acting all irate. The choice is entirely yours.
Your comments are invalid… without your identity.
I’m out there, open and proud. Whereas you’re scared to emerge, hiding behind your employer’s petticoats for fear of being recognised by some arsehole who’s holding the whip hand over you. This scenario is truly pathetic, belittling and – as a whistleblower – makes my mind go back to those fucking wasters at my last place, who either ran a mile, sucked up to the bosses or tried to stop me doing what had to be done.
You’re just another one of those f*cking anonymous worms.
Am I supposed to impressed by your ‘oh so clever’ diversionary ploys?
Name please, you anonymous insect 🤣
Instead of just doing the logical thing and simply providing some evidence to vindicate yourself I see you have chosen to continue massaging your own ego. I do hope you find this solitary pursuit fulfilling.
Knowing no shame, the nameless bot switches to auto and continues to troll its worthless drivel.
Which neatly brings us back around to the original question. Where is the evidence for the worthless drivel you were spouting earlier.
Name, bot worm.
😩🥱
Spell it out.
If you can spell your name, bot.
I’m not sure those armani & gucci facemasks are legit, Paul.
‘Tis Hong Kong after all. 😋
SteveH 19/10/2019 at 7:19 pm · ·
‘Still no evidence to support your rather wild assertions.’
I’m still waiting to be provided with proof of how Nye Bevan voted in the referendum. I mean, it was you made the (unevidenced) claim that : ‘If it weren’t for remainer types, we wouldn’t have the NHS or welfare state.’
Wirral,don’t waste your time arguing with SteveH,he is an idiot.Though whether that is a professional idiot,or just a plain straight forward idiot is open to question.
SteveH lives in a western centric bubble. Anyone who reads outside that box knows that Hong Kong protests are not what they seem and its not the black and white issue presented in the west. Hong Kong is a long time British colonial ‘possession’ and as such is filled with Oligarchs, property moguls and Capitalists and a strong allegiance to western Capitalist and cultural spheres in the wealthier classes. ‘Students’ as a guide to the nature of any protests is not a reliable litmus test.
Look out people such as Carl Zha and Andre Vltchek as a starter for different perspectives.
While I sympathise with the Spanish protesters I have less knowledge of there position. However I doubt whether the UK response would be much different if Liverpool or Manchester decided to leave the UK because of the scumbag tory government.
Are these Catalan police, or a national unit?
Craig Murray’s latest post:
No Inquest for Dawn Sturgess
‘…..the chemical that killed Dawn Sturgess could not have been the same that allegedly poisoned the Skripals. Charlie Rowley is adamant that he found it in a packaged and fully sealed perfume bottle, in a charity bin. Furthermore he states that it was a charity bin he combed through regularly and it had not been there earlier, in the three months between the alleged attack on the Skripals and his taking it from the bin.’
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2019/10/no-inquest-for-dawn-sturgess/
Afterthought: It has of course been common knowledge for a long time that Charlie Rowley found the perfume bottle in a charity bin (which was emptied regularly anyway), but I hadn’t heard before the part about him combing through it regularly (and neither do I know WHEN or HOW Craig got to hear about it). But if Craig got to hear about it at some point, then it’s unlikely that the MSM wouldn’t have heard about it, and it would be more than a little interesting as such, to ascertain if the media have reported the fact. I suspect that they HAVEN’T, because not only does it contradict the official narrative, but also raises the question of WHO put it in the charity bin.
As I have said on more than a few occasions during the past fifteen months or more, I have no doubt whatsoever that the whole Skripal poisoning saga was staged, and there wasn’t any Novichok, and neither the Skripals or the police officer were poisoned, and I came to THAT conclusion for a number of reasons, not least the fact that it is inconceivable that TWO people, who had come into contact with a nerve agent several hours earlier, would just happen to become incapacitated in exactly the same moment, let alone the fact that Vladimir Putin would suddenly get it in his head to have Sergei Skripal assassinated, AND to have it done just TWO days before the celebratory events to mark 100 days to go to the start of the World Cup Football Tournament (which Russia was hosting for the first time), AND just THREE months or so before the event itself kicked off, AND for the assassination attempt to be planned and carried out in such a ludicrous and haphazard fashion.
I can only conclude that the perfume bottle/Novichok was put in the bin so as to counter the ever-growing incredulity of the official narrative in the months afterwards, which was shot full of holes, so as to shut it/them down, and if one or more people died as a consequence, well so be it, cos it must have been the Ruskies who put it in the bin, and so THEY are responsible. Well, that evil Mr Putin that is! Whoever was responsible for putting it in the charity bin – and let’s face it, there aren’t many people who have access to nerve agents! – they couldn’t have known that it would end up in the hands of someone pilfering stuff out of the bin AND, that in all likely-hood it would end up on the shelf of the charity shop AND at some point be bought by someone……. It would be interesting to ascertain how often the bin was emptied by the people working there, as it seems most unlikely to me that they would leave it for more than a few days at a time. In fact I WOULD have thought that they emptied it every day (except for Sundays, when I assume they are/were closed)!
Now THAT’s a thought, isn’t it!!
What a strange series of comments.
I’ve no inside knowledge on the HK protests and hadn’t previously read accusations of them being fomented by oligarchs instead of being grassroots – so I have no firm opinion on the protestors’ motivation.
I would however assume all sides are desperate to manipulate the narrative given what’s at stake – and experience tells me that entrenched power wins most propaganda wars.
When people write reams of abuse, accusations and demands instead of simple links when they’re asked for evidence (relatively politely for this forum I thought) by someone who links to a LOT of evidence himself – that behaviour doesn’t win arguments or friends but it definitely influences opinion.
‘by someone who links to a LOT of evidence himself ‘
That steveh you’re referring to?
If so, then posting links to op-eds and opinion poll results doesn’t constitute ‘evidence’.
And steveh has form for dismissing REAL evidence even if said evidence comes from official labour party communiques. Dismissed along with te excuse that ‘nobody goes to those obsolete sites’ or: ‘That looks like a pre-manifesto pledge and can’t be taken seriously’ or other such balderdash.
Nevertheless, that’s not to say that @Wirralinittogether doesn’t post evidence himself. He does. He has his own blog, and frequently garners supporting, quality evidence from his own endeavours, rather than from someone else’s opinion pieces or poll results.
If steve h is as good at providing evidence as you seem to think he is, then surely he can gather his own rather than making spoilt-brat like demands on other people to do his legwork for him.
“What a strange series of comments.”
Indeed.
Of course, there’s all sorts of interests leeching on the Hong Kong protests. You don’t have to do other than state the bleedin’ obvious for that to be the case. You can bet that there’s a few shady interests within the Catalan independence movement, too. That’s show biz, and to state it means little.
But you also don’t have to be particularly bright to grasp that a large number of people in Hong Kong don’t much like the capital-led dictatorship and oppression that is the current regime in China.
At the moment, living standards have risen because of the inflow of capital and the vast human resources available. As in this country, that will put a lot of people on side. But the regime is still the same sort of autarchy that engineered the Cultural Revolution. ‘Communist’ – hollow laugh.
Sorry David,but you are way off on this one.I can’t recall SteveH offering any evidence for any of his offerings here,and certainly not on this particular subject.Maria above has offered links to a couple of people writing authoritatively on the subject,and there are others.
I stand by my comments.
I’ve recently read claims that oligarchs are behind Extinction Rebellion – I can’t confirm them true or false either, but ask yourselves who has what to gain from making such claims.
Oligarchs exist in China as well as in HK and just about everywhere else – all are driven by profit and power and their interests may coincide or clash episodically but they all demand predictability and maximum capital growth from neoliberal governments in a neoliberal world.
If some support a particular protest as a means to a devious end does that condemn a whole movement and colour all its activists gullible dupes?
Of course not.
We’re socialists. We know the media is bent.
Is Wirral In It Together not as reliant on second or third hand information – Chinese Whispers – as the rest of us?
Of course he is, yet he defends his belief like a priest defending the bible – by demanding the apostate prove the impossible negative or be burned.
Not calling anyone names but that’s what cultists and bullshitters do.
Condemning another for not posting under his own or full name WIRRAL IN IT TOGETHER? Seriously? Not very brotherly, brother.
I made no value judgement regarding the quality of evidence in SteveH’s links because I’m not a zealot dismissing everything that doesn’t reinforce my obsession, unlike like some.
I pointed only to the number of links provided by SteveH because a lack was claimed.
john thatcher, there are more links here from SteveH and Allan Howard combined than the rest of us put together.
I don’t know what blog you’ve been reading.
Don’t expect any push back from EUParl… they voted to not even debate the violence against protestors. Wonder how LP MEPs voted… rhetorical question.
https://twitter.com/James7Holland/status/1186305181467717635
Vicious state violence against yellow vest protests of course is ignored by EU.
EU only favours secessionist movements when in a former socialist bloc country. Couldn’t care less about Catalans or Scots