Riot in London last night

This is something I think a lot more people will be saying as austerity really bites, or at least they should.
It's easy to blame the guys at the bottom for all the problems but the problems come from the top. The people with the power have the responsibility.
 
Two young men have just been given FOUR YEARS in gaol for posting something on Facebook.

Both men pleaded guilty under sections 44 and 46 of the Serious Crime Act to intentionally encouraging another to assist the commission of an indictable offence.
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Chris Johnson, of Moss Haselhurst solicitors in Winsford, said: "It was something which was started as a joke by Jordan.

"Obviously it was rather misplaced and misguided.

"We are not aware of any one taking up the call that they made.

"Northwich, as far as we understand, has remained peaceful."
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-14557772
 
And unemployment has just gone up again.

According to the BBC, this is a "surprise"!

The level of unemployed women rose by 21,000 to 1.05 million - the highest figure since May 1988
The number of employees working part-time because they could not find a full-time job increased by 83,000 to 1.26 million - the highest figure since comparable records began in 1992
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14555264
 
FluffyMcDeath said:
It took me a while to get around to reading this - it's been sitting in an open tab on my browser for days now - but it's absolutely the best thing I've read on the riots to date.
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This part is an important one which seems to have been mostly overlooked in the media here:
In one NBC report, a young man in Tottenham was asked if rioting really achieved anything:
"Yes," said the young man. "You wouldn't be talking to me now if we didn't riot, would you?"
"Two months ago we marched to Scotland Yard, more than 2,000 of us, all blacks, and it was peaceful and calm and you know what? Not a word in the press. Last night a bit of rioting and looting and look around you."
Eavesdropping from among the onlookers, I looked around. A dozen TV crews and newspaper reporters interviewing the young men everywhere
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Metro London is well over 12 million people with protests happening all the time, it's easy to ignore 2000 people of any color. Maybe they just need more friends next time they try to protest something. So if the mainstream press ignores 2000 people that's some kind of justification for torching random buildings? Sorry, but that's garbage.
 
Glaucus said:
So if the mainstream press ignores 2000 people that's some kind of justification for torching random buildings? Sorry, but that's garbage.
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I agree but my concern is that people like the interviewee don't see it the way you or I do.
 
Glaucus said:
So if the mainstream press ignores 2000 people that's some kind of justification for torching random buildings? Sorry, but that's garbage.
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No, it's legitimate. How many times do people need to march and be ignored before they figure out that marching is useless - that any legal means of protest is useless. If someone were eating off your plate you might simply protest the first few times they did it but at some point an escalation is required. There is a bad dynamic here and there are two sides.

If you punch out the guy who is always eating your food then you are the one with the problem - but if you don't then you have a problem. If the police beat the poor then the poor are no good and deserve it, and if the poor beat the police then they are no good and deserve a beating. They are, for the most part, the underclass and they have legitimate concerns but since they have no power it's OK to ignore them - but they do have a power. It's just the not pretty.

It's the pageant of rule - there are two sides - the winners are the winners because God favours them and the losers who want to get back some of what was won from them are just going against God's will. Therefore when losers protest the fixed rules of the game they are evil but when winners beat more winnings from the losers they are righteous.

Expensive flying bomb launched form an expensive ship at a water plant - righteous. A cheap cobbled together and detonated as an occupation military vehicle passes by - terrorism.

Perhaps it is time people re-familiarized themselves with the Stanford Prison Experiment.
 
Fluffy, it almost seems as though you're arguing that two wrongs make a right.
 
FluffyMcDeath said:
No, it's legitimate.
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No it's not. Only if the violence was aimed directly at the government or banks it would be.
These rioters are just as bad as the robbing fat cats, and hard working people can pay once more. Like those kebab bar owners, they work their asses of, harder than anyone ever here on this board.
They get the full beatings of that scum and I don't blame them if they defend their stuff with bats. They put a lot of risk in their investment and you don't want to know how that feels if some no-good-for-nothing throws a molotov through your window.
Oh, btw. students are wussies, working for no money at all! Let's beat the shit out of them and rob them while you're at it.
 
Glaucus said:
Fluffy, it almost seems as though you're arguing that two wrongs make a right.
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Apparently they do. When someone steals someone else's property that is wrong. When someone has their freedom taken away that is also wrong. When one wrong is done in retribution for another wrong we call it justice. Justice, of course, is in the eye of the beholder.

My personal opinion is that responsibility rests with the those who have the most power. This is, in theory, why they are paid so much and given so much respect - because the buck stops with them; they are responsible. Unfortunately power tends to attract the kind of people who like telling other people what they should do instead of the kind of people who ask people what they need.
 
Speelgoedmannetje said:
No it's not. Only if the violence was aimed directly at the government or banks it would be.
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I do believe quite a few police stations got burned. The rest we can call collateral damage because ... shit happens in a war.
The rioters have legitimate needs but their expression was an emotional outburst born of frustration (even the stealing). When peaceful avenues are exhausted others will be explored. The violence was not a political statement per se nor an organized protest. It was the result of long standing conditions - and it can happen again if those conditions are not addressed - either real soon now or in twenty years when a new crowd of disaffecteds is old enough to riot but young enough not to remember the last one.
 
I don't see what wrong was righted by these riots. It certainly wasn't a case of the Have-Nots evening the score with the Haves as all that will result from this is like I said in a prior post/thread - it will be exploited by the powerful and the extremists (often both), especially the "tough on crime" groups but also the racists and other wackos.

But let's get back to what started this little exchange. The rioter justified the riots because the mainstream press ignored him (and in fact, what he says isn't proof that they ignored him, he just feels ignored which may not in fact be actual fact). Now as far as I can tell England is a democracy and citizens have the right to free speech. That however does not imply that you have a right to be heard. You can say whatever you want, but I can also choose to not listen, and yes, to completely ignore everything you say. Unless you think everyone has the right to be listened to, then I don't see how you can use this line of logic to justify illegal action. They rioter himself admits to protesting peacefully, implying there was no attempt to block or coerce them. As far as I'm concerned, he's got nothing to complain about, at least in regards to his protest. If no one noticed, maybe no one cares and it sucks to be him. If he then decides to go ape shit, well, then he should be dealt with accordingly.
 
FluffyMcDeath said:
It was the result of long standing conditions - and it can happen again if those conditions are not addressed - either real soon now or in twenty years when a new crowd of disaffecteds is old enough to riot but young enough not to remember the last one.
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These long standing conditions are largely caused by themselves because of their own disability to get out of the role of being alpha male/female (as showed off with gold and branded wear as loot).
If you want to see people who are really being abused by fat cats go to China, India or Indonesia. Yet no riots like in London there. And the uprisings that took place in these countries were well organised and strictly aimed at the foe, and India did it even mostly without violence. And believe me, these people have seen the worst of the worst of the west.
 
Speelgoedmannetje said:
These long standing conditions are largely caused by themselves because of their own disability to get out of the role of being alpha male/female (as showed off with gold and branded wear as loot).
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If everyone insists that the best way to understand this event is that the rioters are just bad and they should be punished (more) then you will never understand the dynamic of the system, you risk being swept away by it at a later date.

You may add straws to the camels back but when it breaks it is not the camels fault for having a beak with a carrying capacity less than the straw you piled on it.
 
Robert said:
I agree but my concern is that people like the interviewee don't see it the way you or I do.
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I agree, they certainly don't see it the way you and I see it. And yes that's a problem. Fact is, there are more effective and less violent ways to get your point across - but those may require effort and don't include free loot. They could have blockaded important bridges or subway stations and that would certainly get attention, but that requires a bit of thinking I guess. Camp out on Trafalgar or go on a hunger strike. A Buddhist monk lit HIMSELF on fire to protest against China the other day - that got my attention and respect. Sacrifice, not rioting, can be the most powerful weapon against oppression. Seeing these guys running out of stores with luxury items only makes me want to give them a good boot to the head.
 
Glaucus said:
But let's get back to what started this little exchange. The rioter justified the riots because the mainstream press ignored him (and in fact, what he says isn't proof that they ignored him, he just feels ignored which may not in fact be actual fact).
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But he is almost certainly right (he would know) that he had not been interviewed about any marches. Fundamentally he is correct. Most protests are ignored by the media, even the gargantuan anti-war protests before the Iraq war were ignored and most of the hundreds of thousands of protesters at the various G8/20 events were peaceful (middle class) protesters who got no attention whatsoever. Only a few rioters got all the attention. When it is only a few rioters the the news can point to a few trouble makers and ignore the hundreds of thousands of other people who weren't rioting. The political message is clear. Only rioters will be heard. If this message was fully applied then peaceful protests should end to be replaced by hundreds of thousands of rioters - an event which (as we see with thousands) is much harder to cover up. In that sense there is a great pragmatism behind the approach. This sort of thing can change governments (when it becomes apparent that governments have no power). In fact, plenty of CIA and other countries intelligence budgets goes into funding trouble makers for exactly this purpose. As a strategy over time it is effective. This is not what is happening in the UK but the interviewee is certainly correct in his observation.
Now as far as I can tell England is a democracy and citizens have the right to free speech.
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Only in theory. In fact it is much like the US and Canada. There are things that you may speak freely which are either irrelevant to power or agree with power. Then there are all the things you may not say.If you say the things that you may not say then you will be threatened, arrested, harrassed, ridiculed (if ignoring you doesn't work). Some positions that threaten power come pre-ridiculed or are taboo and everyone knows that they shouldn't talk about them. Whenever you come across a taboo idea you are likely in the company of something that threatens a major power in your society. Either it is a diffuse power or a concentrated power or a diffuse power co-opted by a few. We can question the existence of God these days or wonder if Mary was really a virgin but once upon a time you couldn't. We still have things that can't be talked about but they are different (dangerous) things.
That however does not imply that you have a right to be heard. You can say whatever you want, but I can also choose to not listen, and yes, to completely ignore everything you say.
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And if you did that when I told you that you were standing on my foot you would be a total prick and at some point violence would be, if not a solution the a part of getting you to listen.
Unless you think everyone has the right to be listened to, then I don't see how you can use this line of logic to justify illegal action.
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Illegal action is merely action that is against the law. It used to be illegal for women to vote and all of their protests were also illegal. The actions of Gandhi and his followers were all illegal. In China after the Opium wars it became illegal for the Chinese to block the sale of opium. The law is an ass and is written by asses.

If no one noticed, maybe no one cares and it sucks to be him. If he then decides to go ape shit, well, then he should be dealt with accordingly.
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If nobody listens then it sucks for them when he finally goes ape shit thus dealing with them accordingly. It all depends on point of view and when people refuse to look at a situation from another person's point of view it makes it difficult to see what went on. In an authoritarian society it is the rule that those at the top don't have to care about how other people feel about things because they have the power to crush whoever they want. In an egalitarian or democratic society with a flatter power structure it is important to recognize each others' concerns, seeing things through their eyes.

Were the French wrong to riot in 1789? The aristocracy had allowed a critical mass of disaffection to grow up around them. Britain is not there yet but this riot is a warning sign and it has arisen because of the incompetence and entitlement of the ruling classes just as it arose in France. How will the ruling classes respond.
 
Glaucus said:
Fluffy, it almost seems as though you're arguing that two wrongs make a right.
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There are legitimate grievances and no legitimate ways to settle them. Maybe one way is to loot Tesco.

Unemployed people are being sent to work without pay in multinational corporations, including Tesco, Asda, Primark and Hilton Hotels, by Jobcentres and companies administering the government's welfare reforms. Some are working for up to six months while receiving unemployment benefit of £67.50 a week or less.
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Typical corporate greed taking advantage of stupid government policy (or some symbiosis). Get tax payers to pay people to work for private companies for free. We had something similar here in BC and we probably still do. The government is finally ending the six month training wage because it seems to result in people only working for six months at a time and for less. Surprising that. But I had a big jobless gap back in the late 80's when I had just arrived in Vancouver and there was a program then that would get you a job for stupidly low pay half paid by the government for 6 weeks for "experience" and even then it was hard to get work and you'd end up with a bunch of placements that last 6 weeks. Looks good on a resume, that does. Stupid policy, predictable abuses and a substitute for a solution.

But as the government refuses to deal with or even recognize the fundamental causes of the current economic crisis and start applying austerity the whole thing is going to get much worse. Unemployment is rising in the UK.
 
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