London Calling

I found this little tidbit of agitprop on the G20 Meltdown site, which promises a "Financial Fool's Day" tomorrow in London followed by "storming" the Bank of England at noon. Guess you can't have a decent protest without breaking some shit, spraying graffiti about corporate pigs, and hanging some effigy with a left arm longer than Wilt Chamberlain's. What's odd about these unemployed low-life protesters is, when there is too little police presence, they cause millions of dollar worth of property damage (see Seattle 1999), but when the police actually enforce the law, the cries of "police brutality" and subsequent legal action makes martyrs out of them (see Minneapolis 2008). A true Catch-22 for law enforcement, so they seem to be taking the pragmatic approach. From BBC:

But Scotland Yard is concerned the demonstrations may be "hijacked" by people intent on using violence.

Commander Simon O'Brien - who has been meeting some of the protest groups - said people had a democratic right to protest and that police would always respond to threats "proportionately".

Best of luck to them, and hopefully the Secret Service brings their A-game as well, since Obama landed there today. However, from an OPSEC perspective, it wasn't helpful that the Daily Mail published the President's itinerary and a detailed diagram of his Cadillac. D'oh!