Vandana Shiva on the G20

Dr Vandana Shiva on the G20. Have been a fan for many years.

Tomlinson's coroner - how did he get it so wrong?

The news that Ian Tomlinson died of an abdominal haemorrhage and that a police office attacked him a few minutes before has been making the blogosphere rattle for the last 24 hours. The incident that led to Mr Tomlinson's death is shocking and horrific but probably expected given the tactics and attitude of the police, but what is not being explored is how the first coroner could have got it so wrong.

I'm not a coroner and have never seen an autopsy, but as someone with a clinical qualification (I'm a registered nurse) I have to ask how he could find a substantial amount of blood in the abdominal cavity and then conclude that the death was due to coronary artery disease, i.e. a heart attack.

I suspect that we will never know whether there was any pressure put on him by the police but there can only be three possibilities for him to come to that conclusion:

1. It is a perfectly reasonable conclusion to come to
2. He was pressured by the police or some other person or organisation
   
3. He is incompetant

Had the video footage of him being attacked not been made public a second post-mortem would have not been ordered and Tomlinson's death would have remained due to a heart attack. If this post-mortem had been a cover up then it may have been sucessful without the video evidence.

G20 protest lies

The police violence and intimidation seems to be becoming the norm at peaceful protests. It continues to shock me that policing is increasingly political and designed to restrict freedom of speech.

The lies that are being told are thoroughly depressing with the police claiming that there was violence in the G20 climate camp (clearly during the Buddhist meditation) and that bottles were hurled at the police trying to help the man who died (despite independent witness statements to the contrary).

I couldn't attend the protests, but many of my friends were there and I thank you all for sticking up for the truth.