Oh I get the Rhianna thing now.

For a while there I thought it might actually be true so I decided to ignore it but better late then never here's an update on my domestic violence.

First up there was another Croydon murder. In this incident a Ghanaian man nicknamed King was stabbed to death at a bus-stop in front of his three year old daughter. To make matters worse he was on his way to the local Mayday hospital to visit his wife who had, that afternoon, given birth to his son. The guys name, the name of the hospital and the location of the incident may have lead people to read far too much into the incident. There is no need, the hospital closest to the scene is indeed called Mayday Hospital and is known locally by the rather optimistic nickname MayDie hospital. Violent crime and murder are not unusual events in Croydon, there have been two shootings since this murder, and the town is often used as a location for a TV show called The Bill which is the UK's answer to The Wire. All this means I don't think there was any more or less government conspiracy in this murder then there is in all the other murders.

The second incident is a clear of example of state sponsored violence though and concerns the open publishing news service Indymedia. Back in December 2008 the sentences were handed down in the trial of 7 activists involved in the Stop Huntingdon [life sciences] Animal Cruelty (SHAC) campaign. Whatever you may feel about Animal Rights activists the SHAC campaign was so successful the UK government was forced to pass a whole raft of new laws to make their activities illegal and set up a whole new police force, The National Extremism Tactical Coordination Unit (NETCU), to prosecute the campaign. It was under these new offences that the activists were convicted with Judge Butterfield handing down sentences totally 50 years. The severity of the sentences were no doubt influenced by a previous Animal Rights case where activists desecrated the grave of a relative of the owner of a farm which bred guinea pigs to be used as well guinea pigs in animal testing even though there is no suggestion that the 7 convicted had anything whatsoever to do with that offence. In furore that followed the sentencing of the SHAC 7 a "person unknown" published the name and address of the sentencing judge on the Indymedia site. As this violates Indymedia's own publishing rules the comments were removed as soon as a moderator became aware of them twenty minutes later. The moderators prompt action to protect Judge Butterfield's privacy did not stop NETCU from raiding the offices of the company that houses Indymedia's servers and seizing equipment on the pretext of finding out who made the offending post.

The police's decision to carry out this raid is quite peculiar because Indymedia do not log the IP's of people who post on the site, the equipment seized was a hard drive mirror which wouldn't have IP addresses on it anyway and NETCU already have a legally admissible wiretap on Indymedia website which allows them to log user's IP's before they even get access to the Indymedia server. After the police had time to establish for themselves that the seized equipment would offer them no clue as tot he identity of this mysterious poster they decided they were going to return this property to it's lawful owner. Instead they decided to take another legally odd decision of arresting an employee of the company that hosts Indymedia's servers under the 2007 Serious Crime Act. His home was raided, his personal property seized and her was held for 8 hours before being released without charge.

Now if I was a judge and the police who had carried out these raids were Animal Rights activists appearing before I would have no choice other then to describe their actions as "An attempt to interfere with the contractual relationship between lawful companies" - an offence under the Terrorism Act which carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. The offence is further aggravated because my sources tell me that Judge Butterfield's personal details were posted from a computer belonging to Kent Police.

The third example of violence in this very long and tedious post also involves grave desecration and concerns one of Croydon's most famous residents, Derek Bentley. Bentley was one of the last men to be executed for murder in the UK. His case was made famous when he was played by Christopher Eccelston in a film called Let Him Have It which tells Bentley's very sad story. With a mental age of 11 Derek Bentley was coerced into robbing a Streatham factory by his friend Christopher Craig. During the course of this robbery they were interrupted by a policeman who Craig shot and killed. As Craig was only 16 when he fired the fatal shots it was impossible for him to be executed for the crime so the British State decided it was going to take it's revenge by hanging Bentley claiming that he ordered the shooting by uttering the ambiguous phrase; "Let him have it Chris."After a long battle by the Bentley family Derek was finally pardoned for a murder he did not commit and his body was laid to rest in the consecrated ground of Croydon Cemetery under a headstone bearing the inscription; Derek Bentley 1933-1953. Murdered by the British State.

Two weeks ago somebody entered Croydon's cemetery, dug up the gravestone and delivered it to a local police station. The police returned the gravestone and decided there was no need to investigate any further. This is a shame because it quite clear whoever committed this offense was able to gain easy entry to the council run cemetery, was able to dig up a headstone unhindered and knew that I studied the Bentley case extensively for my GCSE's. They probably also knew that one of my great aunts is buried in the plot next to Bentleys. This grave was also desecrated during the offence.

Sorry I didn't bother post about any of this earlier but once you've lived with this level of violence for 20 odd years you learn that it's all Britain has too offer and stop being shocked by it.