Saturday, April 01, 2006

 

Bristol with Fear

A Bristol local newspaper reported:
Vandals have caused up to £100,000 of damage at Bristol's City Academy in an apparent protest against the school's plans to build sports facilities on a public open space. Intruders used bolt cutters to break into the school grounds in Russell Town Avenue, Lawrence Hill, before tearing up areas of the artificial turf on the school's all-weather pitch and spreading a solvent across the surface to ruin more areas of the playing field.

They also attacked CCTV cameras monitoring the site.

A message claiming responsibility was later posted on an internet website used by local activists, claiming it was in "revenge" for the academy's plans to build a fence around facilities it wants to build on Whitehall Playing Fields, known locally as Packer's Field.
No prizes for guessing which "activist website" they were referring to. It is then reported that:
The message was later removed from the website - but not before being shown to police.
A Google cache search using the quote the paper gives from the vandals, shows the article as originally posted on Bristol Indymedia.

Bristol IMC have posted a statement saying they pulled the article after someone informed the police and threatened BIMC:
Following the posting of the article the following threat to BIMC then appeared:

"This [the article above] is being reported to the police, and Indymedia are being reported for condoning this. I hope this time you lose your computers for good, and I'll be asking the Police to arrest you [BIMC] for abetting criminal damage."
A BIMC reader has emailed me and noted that a search for the above quoted threat doesn't reveal any hits, on the Indmedia site or within Google's cache.

He asks:
Is it possible that BIMC, wise after their last run in with the police, tipped the cops off themselves in a fit of panic, then regretted their actions after the local paper reported it, so invented a threat?

Other activist talk boards are of course blaming Zaskar of Zaskarfilms for this tip off, despite his denials.
UK Indymedia would probably have blamed the Jews!

Whether BIMC are complicit or not is of course unclear. What is highly relevant however, is the question of why criminals and vandals would rely on Indymedia as their preferred medium. With friends like these...

Comments to the BIMC post:
This article was published on 30th March in the evening post, nearly a week after the original incident. Just a little bit behind on reporting on the news in our community aren't we evening post? Are those swingeing cutbacks on frontline journalism starting to bite or something?
Oh dear, the quality will be the next to suffer...

Previous reports on BIMC and the Police here and criminal activity on BIMC plus Zaskar's railroading here.

Comments:
This does seem odd. The BIM glitterati are naive and rather unwordly at best. They exist more and more to keep a discretidted site alive at all costs, a mocked irrelevancey of a resource.

They actually really think they are at the forefront of some thing of true value. Touching.

Thier site exists to serve thier personal needs above all else, both simple validation and for personal gain.... so thats no advertising except by the mods then ?

Well, if they did indeed imform the police as it appears they indeed did apare them a kind thought. I recieved death threats (plusible ones) and was the victim of a campaign of vandalism.

Given that they learned from last time that they are culpable in the eyes of the law for the contents of thier silly site they had to remove the post and I cant blame them for being scardipants at the likely reaction from some of the no hoper yobleft round here.

I think i sound bitter. Best leave it there.

And no it wasnt me, truthfully, not that truth will play any part in this.
 
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