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UK Britain's Riots: A Society In Denial Of The Burning Issues

Jan 6, 2005
3,450
3,762
Metro-Vancouver, B.C., Canada
August 9, 2011

Britain's Riots: A Society In Denial Of The Burning Issues

By Finian Cunningham

Global Research, August 9, 2011

Britain saw its third consecutive night of widespread burning of properties and looting as riot police failed to contain gangs of masked youths marauding several parts of the capital, London.

There were reports too of violence fanning out to other cities across Britain. And some commentators were even suggesting that the British Army might have to be redeployed from Northern Ireland to help restore order. Armoured police vehicles are now patrolling London streets amid calls in the media for the use of water cannons and plastic bullets.

Politicians, police chiefs and the media have reacted to the chaos by labelling it as the result of “mindless criminality” that has seemingly sprung from nowhere. ‘The Rule of the Mob’ declared the rightwing Daily Telegraph. ‘Mob Rule’ is how the more liberal Independent put it.

Home Secretary Theresa May stridently denounced “unacceptable thuggery”. London Metropolitan Police Commissioner Tim Godwin vowed that culprits would be tracked down and brought before the courts. He appealed to Londoners to identify individuals caught on CCTV and amateur video footage.

Nearly 500 arrests have been made so far and police numbers in the capital have been tripled overnight to 16,000, with officers being drawn in from other parts of the country.

Although the arson attacks on commercial and residential premises do have an element of criminal spontaneity by disparate groups of youths, it is simply delusional for Britain’s political leaders, police forces and the media to claim that it is all a matter of law and order.

The burning issues that need to be addressed to explain the outburst of arson, looting and rioting are endemic racism endured by Britain’s black community and, more generally, the deepening poverty that is increasingly racking British society.

Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron cut short his summer holiday in Italy by flying home to London to hold a special “emergency security” meeting with other Cabinet members.

Speaking outside Downing Street today and visibly vexed by the unfolding chaos, Cameron condemned “pure and simple criminality that must be defeated”. The government, he said, stands with “all law-abiding citizens”.

Opposition Labour party leader Ed Milliband and the Conservative Mayor of London Boris Johnson are also making hasty returns to the capital from abroad to deal with a crisis that seems to be spiralling out of control. The British Parliament is to be recalled from its summer recess later this week so that “all parliamentarians can stand to together” to face down the sudden disorder.

The disturbances – the worst in almost 30 years – began last Saturday in the rundown north London inner-city area of Tottenham. That followed the shooting dead two days earlier of a young black man by police officers.

Mark Duggan was fatally shot by an armed police unit as he sat in his car. Police claimed that the man was threatening to use a gun. However, family and friends of the 29-year-old victim strongly denied that he was armed or involved in any criminal activity. The death is the subject of a police inquiry, but it has emerged that only two shots were fired in the incident, both by police officers.

Sinisterly, BBC news reports on the killing have invariably showed what appeared to be a family photo of Duggan taken before his death in which he is seen holding up his hand up in mock gangster style.

Angered by what they saw as a gratuitous police shooting and lack of immediate answers from authorities, the mixed black and white community in Tottenham held a vigil for the victim on Saturday. With tensions running high in the area, the peaceful rally turned into a riot against police, and several properties, including police cars, were attacked and set alight.

Since then, similar disturbances have now spread to other parts of the capital, including Peckham, Brixton, Hackney, Lewisham and Clapham. A Sony factory was reduced to a charred shell in Enfield in north London. In the outer south London district of Croydon – several miles from Tottenham – there was a huge blaze last night after a large commercial property was torched. Even the affluent, leafy borough of Ealing in west London saw upmarket boutiques and residences attacked and destroyed by fire.

The distraught owner of the razed family business in Croydon struggled to comprehend why his 150-year-old furniture shop had been targeted. Nevertheless his few words of disbelief had a ring of truth that the politicians and media commentators seem oblivious to. “There must be something deeply wrong about the [political] system,” he said.

Police forces are seen to be struggling to contain the upsurge in street violence, with groups of youths appearing to go on the rampage at will, breaking into shop fronts and stealing goods. A real fear among the authorities is the spreading of disorder and violence to other cities, with reports emerging of similar disturbances in the centre of Birmingham in the British midlands, and further north in Nottingham, Liverpool and Manchester.

Inner-city deprived black communities in Britain complain of routine heavy-handed policing that is openly racist. Community leaders tell of aggressive stop-and-search methods by police that target black youths. The community leaders say that racist policing is as bad as it was during the 1980s when riots broke out in 1985 after a black woman, Cynthia Jarrett, died in a police raid on her home in Broadwater Farm, London.

In the latest spate of violence – on a much greater scale than in the 1980s – there is no suggestion that subsequent street disturbances to the initial Tottenham riots are racially motivated. The growing number of areas and youths involved in arson, rioting and looting do not appear to be driven merely out of solidarity for the young black victim of police violence last week, although that may be a factor for some. Many of the disturbances in London and elsewhere seem to be caused by white and black youths together and separately.

But there is one common factor in all of this that the politicians and media are studiously ignoring: the massive poverty, unemployment and social deprivation that are now the lot for so many of Britain’s communities.

Britain’s social decay has been seething over several decades, overseen by Conservative and Labour governments alike. As with other European countries and the United States, the social fabric of Britain has been torn asunder by economic policies that have deliberately widened the gap between rich and poor.

The collapse of manufacturing bases, the spawning of low-paid menial jobs, unemployment and cuts in public services and facilities have all been accompanied by systematic lowering of taxation on the rich elite. Britain’s national debt, as with that of the Europe and the US, can be attributed in large part to decades of pursuing neoliberal policies of prosperity for the rich and austerity for the poor – the burden of which is felt most keenly in inner-city neighbourhoods.

David Cameron’s Conservative-Liberal Coalition government has greatly magnified this debt burden on the poor with its swingeing austerity cuts since coming to office last year. Ironically, only days before the latest burnings and riots, British government spokesmen were congratulating themselves for “making the right decision” in driving through crippling economic austerity measures that have so far spared the United Kingdom from the overt fiscal woes seen elsewhere in Europe.

But as thousands of Britain’s youths now lash out at symbols of authority/austerity, breaking into shops to loot clothes and other consumer goods that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford, the social eruption may be just a sign of even greater woes to come for the Disunited Kingdom.

Finian Cunningham is a Global Research Correspondent based in Belfast, Ireland.

cunninghamfin@yahoo.com

source: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25946

 

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Lee

SPNer
May 17, 2005
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I'm going to have to call rubbish on this one.

Yes, yes we have problems here, unmployment is quite high although not yet as high as it wa in Thatchers 80's Britian. Racism is still an issue here, but more so with racisit populous not with the police who have certianly cleaned up their house in the lsat 20 odd years.

Nope the rioters are simply using any excuse to loot, it is the looting that is happning and the riots are a cover for this.

Criminal activity pure and simple.

In other news though Sikh shop owners banded together in Southall last night to protect their livlyhoods and no looting took place.
 

kds1980

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Apr 3, 2005
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These riots are eye opener for societies like India ,not to copy west and become over materialistic O/W there will be day when Indians will also start looting and no police or military could help them
 

findingmyway

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Aug 17, 2010
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These riots are eye opener for societies like India ,not to copy west and become over materialistic O/W there will be day when Indians will also start looting and no police or military could help them

I don't think its just materialism that has led to this. The warning signs have been there for years with the rise in antisocial behaviour among inner city youth. I think a combination of factors is at play, including but not exclusive to increase in drug and alcohol use, crumbling of family structure and loss of sense of community, several generations of unemployment (and benefit use) so many of these youth have no drive and nothing to do, lack of education, increase in laws which give these people more and more freedom and less punishment so they get away with ever worsening behaviour, lack of facilities for free time, increase in violent gang culture, higher expectations of an 'easy' life, misinformation and ignorance about other ethnic groups. A lot of these things go hand in hand. People are increasingly living for themselves with no responsibility about the society they live in. There is therefore less connection to community and less support for each other. Of course, these are very generalised statements. Life is a lot more complicated!
 

kds1980

SPNer
Apr 3, 2005
4,502
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I don't think its just materialism that has led to this. The warning signs have been there for years with the rise in antisocial behaviour among inner city youth. I think a combination of factors is at play, including but not exclusive to increase in drug and alcohol use, crumbling of family structure and loss of sense of community, several generations of unemployment (and benefit use) so many of these youth have no drive and nothing to do, lack of education, increase in laws which give these people more and more freedom and less punishment so they get away with ever worsening behaviour, lack of facilities for free time, increase in violent gang culture, higher expectations of an 'easy' life, misinformation and ignorance about other ethnic groups. A lot of these things go hand in hand. People are increasingly living for themselves with no responsibility about the society they live in. There is therefore less connection to community and less support for each other. Of course, these are very generalised statements. Life is a lot more complicated!

some of warning signs you have mentioned have already started in India.

Anyway in developed country like UK there is no justification of Riots as there is no mass starvation or anything which we can say could be the cause of the riots.This is the first time I am reading that rioters are targeting Mobile stores,sports shops and boutiques ,in most of riots it is mainly food shops that are targeted .Also I don't understand that why UK still allow immigrants if there are so many unemployed youths
 
Jan 6, 2005
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Metro-Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Cameron deploys 10,000 more police to stop London riots

By Anthony Faiola, Updated: Tuesday, August 9, 2:40 PM

LONDON — Pockets of London went into lockdown Tuesday, with shops closing, a surge of 16,000 police officers taking to the streets and helicopters buzzing overhead as a stunned Britain began running the calculus of the worst civil disturbances to rock the nation in a generation.

With London jails filled to capacity and fresh violence erupting in Manchester, Birmingham and other parts Britain, the government faced the challenge of maintaining law and order in a country where the sense of security had suddenly shattered. After a glorious spring that saw a royal wedding celebrate all things British, the riots piled on to a summer of discontent plagued by phone hacking scandals, painful austerity and stock market drops.

At the same time, the trail of destruction after three nights of mob rule in sectors of the capital and other British cities left the nation confronting an over-arching question: Why?

On a street corner in Hackney, site of some of the worst riots on Monday, Sivaharan Kanbiah, a 39-year-old Sri Lankan immigrant, stood shell-shocked outside his ransacked convenience store as some residents packed bags and fled in fear. “You work all your life, and in one night, they come and destroy it,” he said. “They did not just steal everything. They tore out the ceiling. They broke up the floor. They ripped out the shelves. I don’t understand such hate.”

He paused, turned to one side, silently gathering himself. He voice cracked as he continued, “I have a wife, two children and a mother to support. Now I have no way to do it. They took my life and I can’t replace it. We’ll be turned out on the street. I want to know why. Why?”

But there were no easy answers.

The rioting was triggered by the fatal police shooting of a black resident of North London last week. But many observers say that incident alone could not explain the multi-racial rampage of burning and looting across the sprawling capital.

Some voices immediately saw a culprit in growing inequality, poor police relations with minorities and especially the Conservative-led government’s austerity drive that was robbing disenfranchised youths of educational subsidies and youth centers as the economy teetered on the verge of recession.

In London, a handful of looters who spoke out talked of a lack of respect for the young and the poor, raging against an increasingly affluent city that had left them behind.

“This did not come from nowhere,” said Diane Abbott, an opposition Labor Party lawmaker from Hackney, where shops closed and public buildings were evacuated at mid-day . “The public sector is the biggest employer in Hackney. Now you have kids wondering if their mum will have a job. It’s not all about race. But it is about rich and poor.”

Yet the vast majority of the austerity measures – which the government would now face new challenges in seeing through -- have yet to come into effect, leading some to question whether they truly played a role. And just as many voices blamed a weak police response and a breakdown of family values years in the making for giving rise to a class of directionless youth.

Youth culture

Whatever the reason, the riots exposed a desperate youth culture buried inside society here, linked to one another as never before through BlackBerry messenger and social networking sites like Twitter.

In one BlackBerry message circulating around London on Monday, for instance, a rioter called others to arms in the famous shopping district of Oxford Circus: “Everyone run wild, all of London and others are invited! Pure terror and havoc & Free stuff. Just smash shop windows and cart out da stuff u want!”

The violence here differed markedly from the kind of recent, politically charged protests seen in, say, Greece and Spain in response to hard economic times. In Britain, the rage appeared blind, apolitical and profoundly selfish. They set alight a historic department store, and a Sony distribution center as well as tiny, family-owned groceries. They burned the bikes of poor residents, and the cars of richer ones. One gang of masked thugs burst into a fashionable Notting Hill eatery to rob diners, clashing with restaurant workers wielding rolling pins. Others rioters simply fought one another.

Closed circuit cameras captured a young man, seriously injured and semi-conscious, struggling to his feet amid the chaos in East London last night. A group of looters seemed to comfort him, before one of them casually opened the boy’s backpack and robbed him as he helplessly watched.

On Tuesday evening, a committee investigating the death of Mark Duggan, the 29-year-old shot by police last Thursday in Tottenham, released information indicating he never fired his gun. Some feared the news could incite more violence. But on Tuesday night, London itself appeared relatively calm, though police were fighting new running battles with rioters in Manchester and Birmingham.

“This is serious stuff, and it is going to impact the government — it is not good for a government to be seen not to be in control of the country,” said Tony Travers, a political analyst with the London School of Economics. “But it’s hard to see this as something that’s just developed since the current government came to power in May 2009. It’s the kind of disturbing criminality that seemed to be bubbling for years.”

Cameron’s response

Nevertheless, the riots presented a stark challenge to the Conservative-led government embarking on historic budget cuts and now facing the public’s wrath over the handling of the riots.

Prime Minister David Cameron, who had been on vacation in Italy until Monday night, cut short his trip to return to London. He called an emergency session of Parliament for Thursday and announced an almost tripling of police on the streets of London. Cameron decried the “sickening scenes” of gangs of youths looting shops, setting businesses ablaze and clashing with police in neighborhoods across London.

Effectively acknowledging that the embattled Metropolitan Police had been overwhelmed — images showed riot police standing by as youths looted and set buildings ablaze — Cameron said a force some 16,000 strong would take to the streets on Tuesday, up from 6,000 on Monday night.

But he did not appear to immediately embrace calls by some to deploy the army or water cannons to restore order. And after more than 450 arrests, authorities said prisons in London were already reaching capacity, leading the newly detained to be bussed to jails outside the capital.

His deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, was booed and catcalled during an appearance in Birmingham. Boris Johnson, London’s Conservative mayor who had cut short his own trip to Australia as the riots intensified, was booed by some in the middle-class Clapham neighborhood where 20 police officers were unable to contain 200 looters Monday night.

Though facing new questions over social exclusion, Johnson and other Conservatives dismissed the riots had been anything other than product of poor parenting, wanting morals and misdirected anger.

“We’ve got to reclaim our streets,” Johnson said, later adding, “It is time that we heard a little bit less about the sociological justifications for wanton criminality.”

Special correspondent Rebecca Omonira-Oyekanmi contributed to this report.

© The Washington Post Company

source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world...london-riots/2011/08/09/gIQAqz2B4I_print.html
 

findingmyway

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Aug 17, 2010
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Londoners strike back with 'Operation Riot Clean-up'

Brooms raised defiantly in the air, Londoners began cleaning up their city Tuesday after a third night of riots, with a Twitter and Facebook campaign rallying people to the most damaged areas. The online-driven clean-up campaign is partly a riposte to the way that social networking sites and BlackBerry messaging services have been used by rioters to organise the violence in London.

In Clapham Junction, a relatively affluent area of south London, more than 200 people gathered at a police cordon waiting to be allowed access to a street full of burned-out terraced buildings and smashed glass.

"We all live in this community and we wanted to show the world that we respect it," said James Hossack, a 38-year-old consultant, who took the day off work to help.

Cheska Moon, 37, an actor from Clapham, said a friend had told her about the Clean Up London, (@Riotcleanup) campaign on the microblogging site Twitter. The account had 70,223 followers on Twitter by mid-afternoon on Tuesday, as it instructed people to congregate to remove the glass and bricks strewn across the streets of the city.

"We really wanted to do something to help. It's just disgusting," Moon said.

Amid a party atmosphere in the area nicknamed "Nappy Valley" because of the preponderance of young middle class families, volunteers brought their own brooms and bin-bags to help with the clean-up.

Organisers handed out brand new brushes to those who had come unprepared. There were cheers as a police car drove through the cordon, even though the volunteers had to wait for more than four hours for officers to allow them through to what they had deemed a "crime scene".

When they were eventually allowed through they all raised their brooms in the air.

But the mood turned when London Mayor Boris Johnson -- criticised for being away on holiday for the first two days of the riots -- later came to Clapham Junction to thank the volunteers, saying their work represents "the spirit of London".

He was met with chants of "Where's your broom" and questions about the response of the authorities to the violence.

Debris left by looters who targeted a huge Debenhams department store was littered across the street. Rioters had also targeted a party shop, stealing masks with which to disguise themselves.

Fires broke out across the capital on Monday night as looters smashed up and set ablaze buildings, shops and cars, while violence also broke out in the cities of Birmingham, Liverpool and Bristol.

Many clean-up volunteers rejected arguments that the rioting was a sign of social ills or the harsh austerity measures introduced by Prime Minister David Cameron's coalition government to reduce Britain's record deficit.

"People are saying it's to do with the cuts -- no!" said Tom Ward-Thomas, 23, an actor who said he had come from the wealthy neighbourhood of Fulham to help out.

But Basma Hassan, a 29-year-old doctor who was also at the Clapham Junction clean-up, disagreed.

"We have to ask why this is happening," she said.
"These may not be the most politically articulate kids, and I agree they are expressing it in a mindlessly criminal way, but we need to step back and looks at why a section of society does this."

In Peckham in southeast London, about 20 members of the community arrived on the high street on Tuesday morning armed with dustpans and brushes to offer small businesses help in cleaning up their shops which had been smashed in.

"I was devastated when I saw what happened last night. I was really angry so I thought I'd channel my anger in a constructive way," said one woman in her 20s.

"We have never met each other before, we just spoke on Twitter this morning. Twitter can be used for good."

In the badly-hit east London district of Hackney, local mayor Jules Pipe told AFP their response to the "outrageous and despicable" rioting was "to restore normality as soon as possible."

"All debris in the borough was cleared by 7:30am, apart from the burnt-out cars, which should all have gone by lunchtime.

"So that's one of the key things for us, to make sure that people feel safer by cleaning things up, allowing the businesses that aren't damaged to open and continue."

The Association of British Insurers estimated the damage caused by the riots across Britain as "tens of millions of pounds".

http://news.yahoo.com/londoners-strike-back-operation-riot-clean-155127609.html
 

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Lee

SPNer
May 17, 2005
495
377
56
London, UK
I don't think its just materialism that has led to this. The warning signs have been there for years with the rise in antisocial behaviour among inner city youth. I think a combination of factors is at play, including but not exclusive to increase in drug and alcohol use, crumbling of family structure and loss of sense of community, several generations of unemployment (and benefit use) so many of these youth have no drive and nothing to do, lack of education, increase in laws which give these people more and more freedom and less punishment so they get away with ever worsening behaviour, lack of facilities for free time, increase in violent gang culture, higher expectations of an 'easy' life, misinformation and ignorance about other ethnic groups. A lot of these things go hand in hand. People are increasingly living for themselves with no responsibility about the society they live in. There is therefore less connection to community and less support for each other. Of course, these are very generalised statements. Life is a lot more complicated!

Findingmyway Ji,

Over the past few days we have found that the rioters are predominantly our youth, our teenagres and young adults.

All that you say has some truth to it, but I can't help thinking that this has beem the same since I was a child and probably before that. Youths by the nature of their age can not think as an adult does as they do not yet have an adult brain.

I do not wish to make light of any grievancess our youth have and yes of course we should as a scoiety be making the transition into adulthood easyer for them.

However the truth is they are better off now than my generation was, not a one of them goes with out a mobile phone and hence mobile comptuing of some degree or other. Their grievances are exactly the same as ours where at their age. No where for them to go, hard to find employment, etc... Yet when we rioted ad we did, we did not loot(as much). Ours was civil disobediance for the sake of a cause or causes.

This is purely criminal activity.

The real question then must be what has changed since I ws a youth, or my father for that matter? Why do our youth have no fear of or respect for any autheroty figure?

Yes there are still the same old problems there always where but it does not excuse this criminal behaviour. Of course I must stress that our youth for the most part are not rioting criminals.
 

Harry Haller

Panga Master
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Jan 31, 2011
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These riots are eye opener for societies like India ,not to copy west and become over materialistic O/W there will be day when Indians will also start looting and no police or military could help them

Lets just hope the west does not copy india, personally I prefer my looters to be hoodlums and criminals, rather than members of the ruling party, and I also prefer them to just loot, rather than murder and rape
 

kds1980

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Apr 3, 2005
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Lets just hope the west does not copy india, personally I prefer my looters to be hoodlums and criminals, rather than members of the ruling party, and I also prefer them to just loot, rather than murder and rape

Since when west consider India or China or any other country as their role model societies? It is always the west that tell the entire world how civilised they are and how backward other countries are
 

spnadmin

1947-2014 (Archived)
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Jun 17, 2004
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But as thousands of Britain’s youths now lash out at symbols of authority/austerity, breaking into shops to loot clothes and other consumer goods that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford, the social eruption may be just a sign of even greater woes to come for the Disunited Kingdom

I spent some time last evening watching all available videos and have come to one conclusion. We are witnessing children of weak character following the lead of sociopaths. There is no broad sociological explanation, burning issues, related to the press of poverty, or minorities disenfranchised by authorities, as stated early in the stream of news.

The bands of looters have spread throughout England, West Midlands badly hit. The original incident began in London. If it had been confined there, one might make a case for flagrant disregard by police of minority simmering concerns, triggered by a specific incident. But it did not. What do you see on the videos of looting in Manchester? Mostly white teenagers ...btw...some of them very nicely attired...looting only the best shops with the most stylish consumer goods. "Clothing and goods they would not otherwise be able to afford..." There is the bottom line. There are clothing and goods that I cannot afford either, or if I could my money would be spent elsewhere on things more important. One video recorded 2 young girls bragging that the police and the rich could do nothing about them, they would have their way. If we reap what we sow, then we have sown now 2 generations of young people who at every level of society have no sense that individuals cannot function outside of civil society, and civil society cannot function without a shared sense of mutual indebtedness to one another. That trumps a sense of individual entitlement. We would do well to sort out the reasons for that instead of trotting out stale philosophical arguments.

Poverty is a relative term. Poor in relation to what? Just as a side note, I live in the 11th most impoverished city in the US. Now for the third summer in a row an African American mayor in a town that is populated by an African American majority, with the support of African American voters, has declared pockets of the city, that were historically affected by "youth" unrest, under martial law. There is a strict curfew, and the state police and local police enforce it. I can assert that no one here is impressed by the more intellectual search for "root causes." Voters simply do not want what they have of civil society eroded further. So these youth have nowhere to go, but jail if they can't figure things out for themselves.
 

spnadmin

1947-2014 (Archived)
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Jun 17, 2004
14,500
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I cannot stop myself from sputtering about this. Other than hatred for the "rich," What are the "root causes" for starting horrific fires in major cities including the homes of innocent bystanders, causing 10 million dollars in damage, bringing all public transportation to a halt in Manchester, for the sake of helping oneself to clothes and small mobile devices?
 

Harry Haller

Panga Master
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Jan 31, 2011
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Spnadminji,

I actually cannot believe just how not sputtering I am about this, my own parents are unable to visit me today, due to riots very close to where they live, my brother works in london, and my stepson lives in a flat above a huge parade of shops. I have to confess to being ever so slightly worried for my wife, as she is a visiting nurse, not a hospital one, and she is working till 11pm tonight, out there,.

I am not worried though, what is going to happen is going to happen, although I may go out with my wife tonight, having said that, if there is trouble, she would probably prefer using her own methods than my tried and tested method of hugging people.

Judge Dredd was a childhood hero of mine, not the cinematic letdown, but the comics, they were extremely insightful of the future, and a lot of social problems were predicted accurately, one of these was block mania, where rival blocks fought each other, that was nothing to do with youth, poverty, politics, it was like a disease, it bypassed all rational thinking and turned normal people into animals, and it spread, like a real disease, it infected you, a bit like going to a concert and getting caught up in the spirit of the crowd, well this is pretty much the same thing, half of these people have no idea what they are doing, its pack mentality at its worst, with the desire to plunder, loot and hurt infecting people.

The cure? well kdsji, this is your time to shine, the cure is the sword, for here we really do have a situation where all other methods have failed, it is just to unsheath the sword?, no, i do not mean kill them, but a show of force is needed, and has been shown to be effective, 16000 police officers in London last night, London missed most of the troubles, the infected just need to be aware how pointless all this is in the face of massive opposition, and they will come to their senses, unfortunately for some, this momentary submission to block mania will cost some their liberty, moral? be careful what you submit to........
 

findingmyway

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Aug 17, 2010
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The courts have been in session all night to deal with those arrested. Many are from 'good' backgrounds and in good jobs but got carried away. They are being held without bail and sentenced swiftly so lets hope that acts as a deterrent to those who joined in for the ride and lose their senses. The hardcore troublemakers will be tougher to deal with. Police are urging those who know of any of the perpetrators to come forward. If you can identify any of these people please let the police know:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/metropolitanpolice/
 

kds1980

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Apr 3, 2005
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UK riot genie out of the bottle

The past few days have seen youths across the country rioting on an unprecedented scale but are these riots any different to the riots of the past?



It is a yes and no answer.

Yes, there have been riots in the UK where a demonstration for a specific cause has been hijacked by those with a political agenda but this time the majority of what we are observing in the media is the result of a protest against the death of an individual being used as an excuse to riot and loot.

But why are groups of looters, many of them children, taking to the streets in such great numbers? Could it be that British society is broken to the point of being almost beyond repair? And why is it that ordinary decent folk in local businesses are being targeted as well as large chain stores in the looting?

Let us take a look at the several reasons for the riots and this breakdown in society.

Firstly law, order and recourse to the Law.

Recourse to the law in Britain is a joke, even though there are more laws criminalising vast swathes of the British public than at any other time in history. Yet the Police are bound by EU laws and a justice system which favours the rights of the career criminal and villainises the victims of real crime.

Indeed there are arrests being made. But will the justice system back up the arrests with strict sentencing? Or will the perpetrators of these crimes simply receive a slap on the wrist, which is what they are expecting?

The Police would like nothing more than to focus on real criminals and not waste the time of those who fall foul of the law through no fault of their own.



Police moral is at an all time low because they arrest young Joe Bloggs only for him to be let off by the judges, or face sentences so lenient that the criminals laugh at the sentence then the Police in frustration overstep the mark with a few too many checks of black (and white if you have the wrong type of face) youths and before you know it there is a snowballing of resentment between the Police on the street and the youth in communities.

Then there is the question of leading by example.

Just look at the recent news on the phone hacking scandal, which painted a picture of a corrupt Metropolitan Police force and political class who are more than prepared to take a backhander and be wined and dined and get away with it than do the jobs the community want them to do.

What message does that send to the next generation? Our children are told that they can’t afford a house, won’t get a job, can’t spell and count, won’t go to higher education and will have to pay off the debt of the previous generation who are telling them how useless they are.

I think the message is simple ‘If you want to steal from us then we will steal from you and if you can get away with it then so can we‘.

The deterrents that normally keep people on the straight and narrow path to be a law abiding citizen are nowhere to be seen. But now the problems that are normally confined to sink estates have forced their way into our lives, the public perception towards how we deal with our ‘feral youth’ has changed. Now we have vigilante groups ready to act and the prospect of the children, yes children, that perpetrate these acts having baton rounds and water cannon used against them! Have we failed these children so much that this violence is our only answer?

Community leaders and members of the public living in high crime areas knew that something was brewing outside of the ordinary and have voiced it yet the politicians have chosen to ignore these messages in case they conflict with the social engineering experiments of recent political administrations.

A generation has grown up without strong family and community roots, which would have taught them responsibility for their actions. We must now face up to the reality of this very quickly if we are to have any hope for our future.

There is an absurd passing of the hot potato when it comes to who is to blame for what we have just witnessed from a small minority of our youth.

The current theories are:-

The Police are to blame.

The parents are to blame.

The politicians are to blame.

The youth themselves are to blame.

The truth of the matter is we are all to blame because we did nothing to reinstate democracy and punish the political class and financial elite who took us for a ride in the very sight of our children thus dissolving their respect for authority.

Our society then created an underclass culture within our inner cities, which most of us can thank God we did not have to grow up in. And then ignored the distressed pleas from those growing up there as they escaped into crime and drugs and we sat back and watched it become almost glamourised.

We also ignored the warning signs of the failed social engineering experiment of political correctness and allowed this country to continue down the path of greed and selfishness and stifled true debate.

We had this coming because we failed our children and in that we failed ourselves.

So can any good come out of the UK riots?

To that I will say yes.

We can look at what has happened to our culture and pinpoint exactly where and when things went wrong in the social engineering experiments and hopefully try and save this generation by rebuilding our communities and localising the businesses within those communities employing local youths.

Our young need to understand the fragility of our communities and local economies and the impact that rioting has on them.

We must remember that children are not computers, you cannot just programme them and boot them up into robotic citizens. They are and will always be individuals that need time and money spent on them. They may be other peoples’ children but they will either be tomorrow’s responsible citizens contributing to society or tomorrow’s criminals helping to destroy it. We should all do our part to ensure it is the former wherever we can.

Then we can look at real crime deterrents and bring back the British Bobby instead of the Gestapo-style storm trooper serving the will of state over community.

But the one thing we don’t want to do is give our civil liberties away as a reaction to a sick society.

Britain is broken and we broke it…….so we must fix it, all of us and not sit there waiting for someone else to do it for us, or riots and looting will become part of our everyday life.

The Police have proven to be ineffective against this type of rioting except in the form of an overwhelming reactionary presence. This does not remedy the situation in the long run, it only bottles it up for now. So next time a demonstration against the government is put together our leaders should be worried.

We have seen what a couple of angry, greedy kids can do…..so what can a well organised group of angry focused adults do?

The only way to deal with focused political rioting will be for the government to call the army in. It is at that point you will notice how far a state will go to protect itself from the will of its citizens.

Just like the recent financial crisis this sad state of affairs did not just suddenly arrive, although some of the politicians and press may try to portray it like that. It has been brewing for years. The signs were there and warnings given but, just like the credit crisis, we chose to ignore the coming problems because it was easier and more comfortable to us to do so.



http://www.economicvoice.com/uk-riot-genie-out-of-the-bottle/50022616#axzz1Uem4SoG2
 

findingmyway

Writer
SPNer
Aug 17, 2010
1,665
3,778
World citizen!
With the recent events, it is easy to become all doom and gloom and despondent. I would like to add that the hooligans are a small minority of the population here-very small. There were more people out in the morning in the cleaning campaign then there were causing trouble the night before, including youngsters. I think that tells a lot about the good people of this country who form the majority. The riots have also brought people together and anarchy will not win. There is no excuse for the events in the past few days. Thankfully today has been quiet across most of the country so there is hope ahead.
 

kds1980

SPNer
Apr 3, 2005
4,502
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Indian media want Indian cricket team to comeback as Today was the 1st day of 3rd test and India is already 2-0 down in series .India today got out cheaply and may get drubbing of lifetime.The stadium was full and english was playing very well but some media channels blamed riots for India's terrible performence even ex cricketers refuted the anchors but they were putting words in their mouth lol
 

spnadmin

1947-2014 (Archived)
SPNer
Jun 17, 2004
14,500
19,219
Some vignettes of the day.

Jon Brain
BBC News, Highbury Corner Magistrates' Court
Sat in the dock in a blue tracksuit top, the 11-year-old boy was barely big enough to see over the wooden ledge into the main body of the courtroom.

But, according to the prosecution, the child had been among the hundreds arrested in connection with the rioting in London over the past few nights.

He was the youngest to appear at Highbury on Wednesday, and admitted taking a wastepaper basket from a branch of Debenhams in Romford, which was looted by rioters.

Others brought before magistrates included a man who works in a primary school, a student and a convicted drug dealer. Nearly all will be sentenced at crown courts which have the powers to impose tougher penalties.

The 11-year-old is due at a youth court at the end of the month. Despite his tender age, he spent last night in a police cell. He's been told to observe a curfew between 18:00 and 06:00 until his fate is decided.

.......................

The prime minister has said the "fightback" is under way, after cities in England suffered a fourth night of violence and looting.

David Cameron said every action would be taken to restore order, with contingency plans for water cannon to be available at 24 hours' notice.

On Tuesday night, unrest spread to cities including Manchester, Salford, Liverpool, Nottingham and Birmingham.

Three men protecting property died when they were hit by a car in Birmingham.

Haroon Jahan, 21, Shahzad Ali, 30, and Abdul Musavir, 31, who were from the Asian Muslim community, were taken to hospital but died from their injuries.

Mr Cameron said the deaths were "truly dreadful" and offered his condolences to the men's families.


Haroon Jahan, Shahzad Ali and Abdul Musavir were protecting property, residents say
A candle-lit vigil, attended by some 200 people, took place in Birmingham for the men. The BBC's Jeremy Cooke said it was entirely peaceful.

Ladywood MP Shabana Mahmood had appealed for calm, telling a community meeting it was important people did not take matters into their own hands.

Meanwhile, rioters in Manchester and Salford have been told that they face being evicted from their council homes if they are identified on CCTV footage.

Both city councils have issued warnings that if any of their tenants or their children have been involved in violence or looting they will be "thrown out".

Greenwich Council also says it will be seeking the eviction of any council tenants if they are found to have been engaged in criminal activities.


Earlier, the prime minister said police had the legal backing to use any tactics necessary to bring the rioting across England under control, including using baton rounds.

Speaking after a meeting of the government's Cobra emergency committee, he said: "This continued violence is simply not acceptable, and it will be stopped.

"We will not put up with this in our country. We will not allow a culture of fear to exist on our streets."

But Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) president Sir Hugh Orde ruled out using water cannon or baton rounds for now, saying the tactics were not suited to the current unrest.

"Water cannon are used to deal with fixed crowds to buy distance," he said.

"The evidence... is showing very clearly these are fast-moving crowds, where water cannon would not be appropriate."

He added that baton rounds would only be deployed when his officers' lives were under serious threat.

Meanwhile, Home Secretary Theresa May told the BBC she had ordered all police forces in England and Wales to mobilise special constables, cancel leave and adopt a "tough, robust approach".

Six forces have requested assistance for Wednesday evening, according to Acpo, which is co-ordinating resources in England and Wales.

They are Avon and Somerset, Gloucestershire, Greater Manchester Police, the Metropolitan Police, Nottinghamshire, and West Midlands.

................

Analysis: Courts run all night
Earlier, Mr Cameron said: "We have seen the worst of Britain, but I also believe we have seen some of the best of Britain - the million people who have signed up on Facebook to support the police, coming together in the clean-up operations.

"There are pockets of our society that are not just broken, but are frankly sick.

"It is a complete lack of responsibility in parts of our society, people allowed to feel the world owes them something, that their rights outweigh their responsibilities and their actions do not have consequences. Well, they do have consequences."

The Met Police has made 820 arrests and charged 279 people in connection with violence in the capital.

In London, three courts will stay open all night on Wednesday to deal with some of the scores of people facing mainly disorder and burglary charges after four nights of rioting.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14474393

...............

In the West Midlands, 163 people had been arrested by Wednesday morning, and police chiefs say at the height of the disorder it was at a rate of about one person per minute.

Full story

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14474393
 

Randip Singh

Writer
Historian
SPNer
May 25, 2005
2,935
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United Kingdom
I'm going to have to call rubbish on this one.

Yes, yes we have problems here, unmployment is quite high although not yet as high as it wa in Thatchers 80's Britian. Racism is still an issue here, but more so with racisit populous not with the police who have certianly cleaned up their house in the lsat 20 odd years.

Nope the rioters are simply using any excuse to loot, it is the looting that is happning and the riots are a cover for this.

Criminal activity pure and simple.

In other news though Sikh shop owners banded together in Southall last night to protect their livlyhoods and no looting took place.

Sorry mate, when you have Grammar school girls, teachers and army recruits looting you have to ask yourself why?

Why do the worst riots always happen when the Tories are in power?

Why is VAT being increased to 20% and is effects the poorest the worst?

Why are certain youth looting?

Bankers and Looters all are eating from the same trough!!

Bankers/rioters: In the City of God, St. Augustine tells the story of a pirate captured by Alexander the Great, who asked him “how dare he molest the sea”. “How dare you molest the whole world” the pirate replied. “Because I do it with a little ship only, I am called a thief; you, doing it with a great navy, are called an emperor”.
 
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