A hostile environment

One of the most frustrating things about the Mark Kennedy case has been the stultifying failure of its media coverage to point out the obvious. That Met officers are being paid to spy on people exercising their democratic right to protest (however shaky that right has looked since November) is bad enough, but the fact that environmentalists are now considered so iniquitous they merit over a million pounds' worth of subterfuge is both disappointing and inconsistent. The government has ignored enough experts to know environmentalists are not reacting disproportionately. Are they starting to believe their own spin - that Copenhagen wasn't a failure? That we have time to fanny about with bills and revisions just to please the CEOs?

Terence Blacker, writing in The Independent on the the 17th of January, got it half right when he suggested that the Met had 'put excitement and self-interest before any genuine interest in law and order.

But not a moment later the piece takes a rather more sinister direction.

It is not difficult to see why this operation would appeal to a man like Kennedy [...] access to eco-babes willing to do their bit for the cause.

Is this man actually suggesting that Mark Kennedy's lovers somehow deserved what they got because, as activists, they had forfeited all fidelity and respect? Or is he suggesting that women only get into activism for the sex?

Blacker continues to dig without grounds:

Several of Kennedy's lovers are said to be 'deeply upset' to discover they had slept with a policeman. Another claims she feels violated. There is serious talk of a civil action against the police. It is absurd – men never lie more than when they are trying to get women into bed – but no sillier than the rest of the case.

To reiterate: men have no respect for women, but that's fine; women don't deserve their respect anyway; environmentalism is a fetish party, not a belief; now let's all skip down to the stock exchange and get a couple of prostitutes for after.

On a more surprising note, the Green Party commits a few fallacies of its own. Jenny Jones writes on the Green Party website that the worst part of all this is that

targeting peaceful protesters means less cash to pay for anti-terrorism, where murder and maiming is the aim, not blockading a power station or sitting in trees.

I'm downright surprised at the Greens buying into the rhetoric of the War on Terror, especially given how significantly the fight against such invisible enemies detracts from the real enemy - the environmental policy that the Green Party is supposed to be addressing, not marginalising. Perhaps the party has to be seen to toe the Parliamentary line these days - but this kind of lip service only serves to dilute something that needs all the support it can get.