Everybody knows except the BBC posted by Richard Seymour

Watch this clip:



You can't watch that and not think that this policeman slapped an innocent woman roughly, then swiped her about the legs with his baton. He did so without provocation. The BBC says:

"The footage shows the woman swearing at a police officer who then appears to hit her in the face on 1 April.

"The officer also apparently strikes the woman on the leg with his baton."

Got that? The only thing the BBC could ascertain about that footage was that the woman swore at the officer concerned (ooh, the fiend, the horrible fiend). Everything else - which you and I can plainly see taking place, including the police provocations leading up to the assault - is in doubt. This is presumably the same sort of ontological doubt that is routinely cast on possibilities that are inconvenient to power, wherein a matter of fact is not merely disputed by someone but actually dubious in principle. If this is the official Beeb standard of evidence, no wonder they couldn't determine that there was a humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Labels: bbc, metropolitian police, police brutality, protest, repression