How not to protest:London

[Jonathan]

The clean up is a laudable effort, good show. Hope they stay safe.

---

http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news...nd-london-riot

The article in the link makes a compelling argument that at least some of the people participating in the chaos aren't simply in it for new shoes.

There's sure to be a mix of people simply taking advantage of a bad situation, people who are pushing a political agenda, and others just getting caught up in the general catharsis of breaking shit. Individual motivations are going to vary.

I don't know if I'd call it a class conflict - while that may be a factor, these people seem to be tearing apart their own neighborhoods. Hardly an example of class consciousness and solidarity.

[Deadmanwalking_05]

check it out..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4o5mz...&feature=feedu

[Renatus]

Well it appears to be getting more violent, as the first deaths have popped up.

[Black Spiral Dancer]

The first death was a guy being shot after an arguement with another group.

As for the clean-up effort, it's called the "old Dunkirk Spirit".

[CptSternn]

@Jack

It has everything to do with poverty. Severe cuts, college fees, etc. are now being enacted and are hitting the most vulnerable in society, at the same time banks are continuing to get huge payouts. There are no jobs, there is no college now, and there is basically, to quote Johnny Rotten, NO FUTURE for a large chunk of the population. Just because you can spend £100 on a new phone does not mean you are rich. You don't have to be missing meals, living under a bridge to be considered living in poverty.

@Saya

It is not a revolution per-se. It is merely a reflection of the attitude of the underclass. People do not riot when they are happy. People for many reasons now are not happy. The current feelings of anger and what not stem from continued bad policies enacted by the government. From two wars they do not want to be in (three now if you include Libya), to the hardsh measures being put in place and the government getting rid of free college for everyone - the people are getting screwed and they know it.

What we are seeing now is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. A majority of the cuts put in place have yet t even take effect. The long term effect of getting rid of free college will not hit home for a decade or so at least, once multiple graduating classes are filled with kids who won't be able to go to college and are forced out into an already filled workforce with no hope of getting a job and no money to immigrate.

Add that to even more harsh austerity measures the government has planned and you are looking at riots that will dwarf what we just witnessed. It will happen. What will be interesting is seeing how the UK government handle it - considering they are slated to cut the size of the police force by like 30% over the next few years.

[CptSternn]

These riots reflect a society run on greed and looting

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...-greed-looting

David Cameron has to maintain that the unrest has no cause except criminality – or he and his friends might be held responsible

It is essential for those in power in Britain that the riots now sweeping the country can have no cause beyond feral wickedness. This is nothing but "criminality, pure and simple", David Cameron declared after cutting short his holiday in Tuscany. The London mayor and fellow former Bullingdon Club member Boris Johnson, heckled by hostile Londoners in Clapham Junction, warned that rioters must stop hearing "economic and sociological justifications" (though who was offering them he never explained) for what they were doing.

When his predecessor Ken Livingstone linked the riots to the impact of public spending cuts, it was almost as if he'd torched a building himself. The Daily Mail thundered that blaming cuts was "immoral and cynical", echoed by a string of armchair riot control enthusiasts. There was nothing to explain, they've insisted, and the only response should be plastic bullets, water cannon and troops on the streets.

We'll hear a lot more of that when parliament meets – and it's not hard to see why. If these riots have no social or political causes, then clearly no one in authority can be held responsible. What's more, with many people terrified by the mayhem and angry at the failure of the police to halt its spread, it offers the government a chance to get back on the front foot and regain its seriously damaged credibility as a force for social order.

But it's also a nonsensical position. If this week's eruption is an expression of pure criminality and has nothing to do with police harassment or youth unemployment or rampant inequality or deepening economic crisis, why is it happening now and not a decade ago? The criminal classes, as the Victorians branded those at the margins of society, are always with us, after all. And if it has no connection with Britain's savage social divide and ghettoes of deprivation, why did it kick off in Haringey and not Henley?

To accuse those who make those obvious links of being apologists or "making excuses" for attacks on firefighters or robbing small shopkeepers is equally fatuous. To refuse to recognise the causes of the unrest is to make it more likely to recur – and ministers themselves certainly won't be making that mistake behind closed doors if they care about their own political futures.

It was the same when riots erupted in London and Liverpool 30 years ago, also triggered by confrontation between the police and black community, when another Conservative government was driving through cuts during a recession. The people of Brixton and Toxteth were denounced as criminals and thugs, but within weeks Michael Heseltine was writing a private memo to the cabinet, beginning with "it took a riot", and setting out the urgent necessity to take action over urban deprivation.

This time, the multi-ethnic unrest has spread far further and faster. It's been less politicised and there's been far more looting, to the point where in many areas grabbing "free stuff" has been the main action. But there's no mystery as to where the upheaval came from. It was triggered by the police killing a young black man in a country where black people are 26 times more likely to be stopped and searched by police than their white counterparts. The riot that exploded in Tottenham in response at the weekend took place in an area with the highest unemployment in London, whose youth clubs have been closed to meet a 75% cut in its youth services budget.

It then erupted across what is now by some measures the most unequal city in the developed world, where the wealth of the richest 10% has risen to 273 times that of the poorest, drawing in young people who have had their educational maintenance allowance axed just as official youth unemployment has reached a record high and university places are being cut back under the weight of a tripling of tuition fees.

Now the unrest has gone nationwide. But it's not as if rioting was unexpected when the government embarked on its reckless programme to shrink the state. Last autumn the Police Superintendents' Association warned of the dangers of slashing police numbers at a time when they were likely to be needed to deal with "social tensions" or "widespread disorder". Less than a fortnight ago, Tottenham youths told the Guardian they expected a riot.

Politicians and media talking heads counter that none of that has anything to do with sociopathic teenagers smashing shop windows to walk off with plasma TVs and trainers. But where exactly did the rioters get the idea that there is no higher value than acquiring individual wealth, or that branded goods are the route to identity and self-respect?

While bankers have publicly looted the country's wealth and got away with it, it's not hard to see why those who are locked out of the gravy train might think they were entitled to help themselves to a mobile phone. Some of the rioters make the connection explicitly. "The politicians say that we loot and rob, they are the original gangsters," one told a reporter. Another explained to the BBC: "We're showing the rich people we can do what we want."

Most have no stake in a society which has shut them out or an economic model which has now run into the sand. It's already become clear that divided Britain is in no state to absorb the austerity now being administered because three decades of neoliberal capitalism have already shattered so many social bonds of work and community.

What we're now seeing across the cities of England is the reflection of a society run on greed – and a poisonous failure of politics and social solidarity. There is now a danger that rioting might feed into ethnic conflict. Meanwhile, the latest phase of the economic crisis lurching back and forth between the United States and Europe risks tipping austerity Britain into slump or prolonged stagnation. We're starting to see the devastating costs of refusing to change course.

[CptSternn]

This article is right on the money...

The Science of the London Riots

http://www.livescience.com/15505-sci...don-riots.html

low economic rank — being poorer than others in the same geographic region — rather than actual poverty, which is defined as not being able to afford things you need, elicits misery.

[All Shall Be Judged]

I've heard a lot of "What's wrong with young people" shit talked lately, in the wake of the riots. This article attempts to answer the question, and raises some compelling points about the current position of under-30s in the UK, I think:

http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/71...l#.TkU2oN9ORC8

[Still Jack]

Originally Posted by CptSternn

@Jack

It has everything to do with poverty. Severe cuts, college fees, etc. are now being enacted and are hitting the most vulnerable in society, at the same time banks are continuing to get huge payouts. There are no jobs, there is no college now, and there is basically, to quote Johnny Rotten, NO FUTURE for a large chunk of the population. Just because you can spend £100 on a new phone does not mean you are rich. You don't have to be missing meals, living under a bridge to be considered living in poverty.

And the best way to make a statement is to shit all over your own community and burn it to the ground? I would have understood it if they had burned down Knightsbridge or Notting Hill . But no, they set fire to the place they live in. I don't know, but to me that just sounds like the most retarded fucking thing to do. Yes, uni fees and expenses cuts might be hitting the most vulnerable in society, but when there were protests held about the exact same matters, you can't exactly say that the same crowd were out with banners protesting and shit, can you?

[Grausamkeit]

Jack has a good point. Personally, if I was pissed off and of a mind to riot, I'd want to let the people in the government and the fancy neighborhoods know that I was pissed. Vandalizing your own neighborhood is stupid if you're mad at the government. You're just hurting your own community. That's not a revolution.

[AshleyO]

Originally Posted by Deadmanwalking_05

"But you don't have to protect yourselves from tribes of Native Americans on the war path or wild animals,there is no need for the population as a whole to own firearms"

Everytime I see the reports on the London riots I can't help but think of the blissninny's that couldn't see this happening.

*Does Tim the enchanter impression* "I warned you...but no you wouldn't listen...."it's only a wee bunny" HA!"

Wow, you almost made a point accidentally. Not gonna make this about guns, but in context of the riots, you actually give the citizens guns, then basically, you've got full blown civil war.

Interestingly enough, the rioters don't have immediate access to guns. This may be a good thing.

If rioting on this kind of level happened in all of the US major cities, you'd pretty much have civil war. Rioting like this in the USA? Yeah, you'd have to prepare for a violent revolution in one way or another.

But in regards to what you think, guns wouldn't solve this problem, it would just make the riots more deadly. Rioters are already trying to stab and bludgeon cops to death. If they had guns...

[AshleyO]

By the way... I do want to point this out.

A lot of you guys are talking about small business owners getting attacked and it's horrible and is just evidence for opportunism.

Yes and no. What are these people stealing? If you steal a Sony PS3 from Smallbuisniess London or EB Games, exactly what have you really done? You're attacking Sony.

The small business owner is just a casualty because they've started a small business that does business with the businesses that people are trying to hurt.

Stealing Xboxes and selling them on the street? Really? That's selfish when what the poor is rioting over is... poverty? And that they're selling luxury items to those that will buy them so that that poor person can have a nest egg once the rioting comes down?

I'm just going to say that it's too soon to dismiss a generation of people on blatant anarchistic thuggery.

Honestly, I'm not a damned bit surprised if someone hijacked a truck full of luxury items and started hocking them on the streets in an effort to have money once the carnage dies down.

If anything, it'd be an indication that the mass of rioters are aware that the rioting will eventually end and everything will more or less go back to the way it was. Because SOME poor people actually believe that once this shit storm is over, it's going to be England again... business as usual.

[JCC]

The salient point here is that people are saying this is not a revolution because it attacked small businesses. You're right, it's not a revolution. It's a riot. Riots don't make sense, they are spontaneous acts.

[Deadmanwalking_05]

Originally Posted by JCC

The salient point here is that people are saying this is not a revolution because it attacked small businesses. You're right, it's not a revolution. It's a riot. Riots don't make sense, they are spontaneous acts.

Riots are also Anarchy in the flesh (in this case masses of flesh...all greedily trying to get meaningless trinkets....kind of like christmas shopping in the U.S.)

[Grausamkeit]

Depends on which definition of 'anarchy' you're going by. Due to the lack of participation on the moderator's part on these boards, we have a peaceful anarchy here where the members make and enforce a certain code of conduct. There is really no authority constantly looming over us policing our every move. Attention is only drawn if we do a certain few things.

[Deadmanwalking_05]

I think number 3 applies to the situation that happened in London...

http://www.answers.com/topic/anarchy

[Alan]

Yeah, and that's what JCC always advocated so you can act like smug shit saying he 'wanted so badly". The third definition in Answers.com

[Black Spiral Dancer]

People say that these riots were not a Race issue. They were. They were a race to see who could get the best stuff. (that was a joke, by the way)

Now that the riots are over, those that have been caught should be paying the price for their looting, be that making them clean up the areas they vandalised or being named and shamed publicly. There has beentalk of evicting people that were in council homes and convicted, or stopping their benefits. This will just make them even more detached. Penalise them, yes. Reduce their benefits so they know they are being punished. Take their children into care, so any "child benefits" they receive will go to the child's welfare, rather than go to the riotting parent's drink or cigarette habits.

For too long, a lot of these people have lived off the welfare state, expecting to be given cash for doing nothing but sitting on their arses and producing unwanted children. (I do know that some of the rioters were from well off backgrounds, but most of them weren't)
Maybe if benefits were seen as more of a privilege and not an automatic entitlement, people may think twice about this sort of thing.

[Alan]

Wow, you're quite an idiot. These riots were a direct consequence of the increasing costs of living and decreased social welfare, and your solution is to REDUCE these social benefits?
Are you related to Bachmann?

[MissCheyenne]

While I agree that those found guilty of participating in the riots and looting should be punished for their actions, I can't see how cutting benefits or removing them from council owned housing is going to achieve anything. All that's going to do is create more desperate people in even worse situations which will make them participate in desperate actions. If you take away the only means that some people have of living, they will turn to whatever method allows them to get by. It's not as simple as removing their benefits and telling them to get jobs.

[Deadmanwalking_05]

Originally Posted by Alan

Yeah, and that's what JCC always advocated so you can act like smug shit saying he 'wanted so badly". The third definition in Answers.com

It still applies.

It is a definition of anarchy correct?

And what you as well as the rest of the world saw is how the mainstream population reacts during a chaotic situation.

[Alan]

No, it doesn't apply if you're going to act like smug shit and claim that "this is what you (JCC) wanted all along"
Because it's not.
By your logic, Republicans should back the IRA. Hey, they call their ideas republicanism! Doesn't matter what their ideas really are, all we should care about is the word, right?

[Deadmanwalking_05]

Originally Posted by Alan

No, it doesn't apply if you're going to act like smug shit and claim that "this is what you (JCC) wanted all along"
Because it's not.
By your logic, Republicans should back the IRA. Hey, they call their ideas republicanism! Doesn't matter what their ideas really are, all we should care about is the word, right?

It's the actions not the word.

I figured you would know that.

[Grausamkeit]

Originally Posted by Deadmanwalking_05

It's the actions not the word.

I figured you would know that.

The point is that you're taking the wrong definition and applying it saying that it was what people wanted. Every definition does not apply just because it is *A* definition of the word.

ETA~ Cutting benefits for people isn't goingto do any good. That's like chopping your toe off so you can't stub it again. That's what they'd be doing to these people.

[Deadmanwalking_05]

Originally Posted by Grausamkeit

The point is that you're taking the wrong definition and applying it saying that it was what people wanted. Every definition does not apply just because it is *A* definition of the word.

ETA~ Cutting benefits for people isn't goingto do any good. That's like chopping your toe off so you can't stub it again. That's what they'd be doing to these people.

Understood,I was only using that to have a bit of fun (the war was still going on)

That's why I said the 3rd definiton was what best fitted the actions in London.

That's also why I went on to state in another thread that the anarchists aren't the problem.

Agent provactures though are a different thing all together,those are usually funded by the state to keep movements from gathering steam and bringing about positive changes.