The whole mess in England seems to be getting worse, rather than subsiding. I suppose this is yet another thing I have not been paying attention to that I should have. Apparently it started because the police shot a man?
If we rioted in the states every time the cops shot someone illegally, the whole damned country would be burnt to the ground.
homeruk
The position is fragile here. It started because a man was shot although the riots seem to be the work of a number of thugs that are more interested in looting than protesting. There was a peaceful protest about the killing but it quickly got taken over by criminal opportunists. Worryingly, it has spread to other cities in England and across many different areas of London. It is disconcerting to hear the constant sounds of sirens outside our flat.
burnspbesq
The evidence available so far is still somewhat ambiguous, but is generally consistent with a justified shooting by the police.
The first night was a protest of the shooting, that got out of hand. Since then, it’s been something very different.
sukabi
the Teabaggers & their pimps are working on driving us into the ground before the rioting starts… but point taken, law ‘enforcement’ in this country has been operating on the assumption that there isn’t any law they can’t break.
Southern Beale
My Conservative Friend is convinced this unrest in England is coming to America. Says he’s stocking up on ammo.
I think he’s kidding about the last part but not sure.
Shinobi
I also read that the police beat a girl with batons at the memorial service for the kid who got shot.
I’ve been reading a lot of good stuff about the socioeconomic situation in the area where the riots started. It seems like a lot of social programs have been cut and there hasn’t been much support. It may be true that thugs have taken over, but the thugs were able to take over because the good people are desperate.
PaulW
We do have riots here in the U.S. when a cop shoots a black guy under contentious situations. It’s just we have so many cities spread out over 50 states, whereas when it’s London rioting you’re getting a riot in one of the five major cities on the whole planet as well as THE city for the whole of Great Britain (financial center, political center, cultural center… here in the U.S. we’ve spread that out from NYC to DC to LA).
Now, as a caveat, the UK is a full year into their austerity measures passed under the Cameron/Clegg coalition, so they’ve had time to see just how painful it was to cut back on police and emergency services and a social safety net that would keep the underclass placated…
cervantes
The shooting was only the precipitant. The issue is that it’s absolutely impossible for these young people to find any kind of work at all; and the austerity program is eliminating what little there was in the way of social services and income support. The people are desperate. Why it hasn’t happened yet in the U.S. is actually the question.
Culture of Truth
Cameron, Mayor, all of Parliament, rushing back from vacation. I do forget Europe takes August off.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
When did the English police start carrying guns?
Culture of Truth
Thankfully, police have fingered the true culprits: Blackberry and Twitter.
apostropher
convinced this unrest in England is coming to America
If it does, all sides are already much, much more heavily armed than anything London can offer. The shooting that sparked the first rioting was just the catalyst; all kinds of events could potentially have set it off. The conditions have been building for years. This is a good take on the situation: http://pennyred.blogspot.com/2011/08/panic-on-streets-of-london.html
R-Jud
We generally go into downtown Birmingham on a Tuesday to visit the Bullring Market. A friend rang and said not to bother as many of the produce vendors didn’t even turn up.
BBC reporting that police are already out in central Brum, shops closing up, etc. Nick Clegg’s in town trying to do “I feel your pain” type photo ops and is getting heckled to pieces.
Pleased to see people heckling BoJo in London, too. What an ass.
ETA: Mr. Cole, the Guardian, as always, has a great liveblog about the situation.
dr. bloor
@Southern Beale:
He may be kidding about the latter but he has a very good chance of being right about the former. Our current situation will either get better or get worse, and there’s no reason to believe that it will be getting better any time soon.
Zifnab
@cervantes:
Well, we’re very spread out for one. Car culture is not conducive with large crowds of people. When people lose their jobs in the US, they just go into their suburban homes and shut the doors and disappear.
Linda Featheringill
@homeruk:
Stay safe.
A riot by definition is out of control and innocent bystanders can be injured.
Culture of Truth
The U.K. intellectual property minister, called for a suspension of BlackBerry service to prevent rioters using it to communicate. Police are also reviewing the use of Twitter.
Biff Longbotham
John, the problem comes not when the cops shoot a person. It comes when twelve cops shoot a person 57 times. That’s when the natives get restless.
Linda Featheringill
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford:
I was surprised at that, too. Do you think the riots may have been averted if the police had just arrested to guy and not shot him?
Reality Check
They started carrying guns after they abolished the death penalty for killing a cop.
FormerSwingVoter
So yeah. The protests started when the cops shot a guy to death during a regular arrest. The cops say it was totally justified, while eyewitnesses say that he was thrown to the ground and shot dead while defenseless.
During the peaceful protest, a 16-year-old girl questioned a police officer about what happened and was beaten by several cops. That was when things turned violent. Y’know, after the police made it abundantly clear that they were effectively at war with the British people.
After the first couple days of riots in which the rioters were trying to do as much damage as possible to police property, a bunch of other people decided “Hey, y’know what’s cool? Free stuff.” and started going after anything that wasn’t nailed down and already on fire.
Samara Morgan
nope. police killed a man.
just like Tahir.
ChrisNYC
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: The way I understand it most still don’t. There are “special forces” type squads that do. The group involved here was specifically policing gang activities.
cmorenc
There’s always been an undercurrent of resentment and sociopathic detachment amid working-class and poorer English society that creates volatile conditions for hooliganism to break through the thin veneer of civilization imposed from above. Keith Richards’ autobiography is a fascinating read not just from the standpoint of rock and roll history, but the amoral, predatory worldview of the people in and around the band in the times before they became successful and famous. I wouldn’t have turned my back around a single one of ’em.
JPL
@dr. bloor: As a nation it is not in our interest to get better. Only through pain and hardship will our children be left with the country they so deserve. We should all think about the children.
Occasional Reader
Beat cops are unarmed (except for a few special patrols at railway stations etc). There are special firearms units hat can be called for backup. We’ve (Americans living in London) have been back stateside and are flying back over tonight. Hoping to avoid Thunderdome conditions on the ride back from Heathrow.
JPL
It’s heartbreaking to see neighborhoods destroyed in England and I hope that our English friends stay safe.
Loneoak
I found this to be a thoughtful explanation of the riots.
Joel
John, I wouldn’t be so sure riots aren’t coming our way someday soon. With the way the economy is going…
homeruk
@Reality Check: actually very few police carry guns. And it’s got nothing to do with the death penalty which was abolished quite a long time ago.
J.W. Hamner
Wait… their emergency committee is called Cobra? What do you think they call Voltron or the Thundercats?
homeruk
@Loneoak: sorry, but that’s just utter shit. Have you seen any of the footage? these people are not protesting, they are simply stealing and causing mayhem, destroying their own communities as well as other peoples’. Mark Duggan’s family (the guy who got shot) have condemned the violence. Do they really think that the people affected by this will have any sympathy for them?
Paul in KY
@Occasional Reader: Best of luck to you.
KeithW
Our Old Etonian prime minister stayed on his holiday in Tuscany for three days while London was burned and looted by poor inner-city youth. That kinda encapsulates the issue.
Violet
It’s astonishing watching the riots from here. So far my family and friends are okay, but the fact it’s spreading to other cities is really unnerving. I hope people stay safe.
KeithW
It’s called COBRA because it stands for Cabinet Office Briefing Room A. Well, officially it does. I’m sure they all get off on saying “Have to go, I have a meeting of COBRA”
gnomedad
@Loneoak:
Excellent. Thanks for passing it along.
Jack Bauer
Nice to see Penny Red getting some attention.
And it’s is absolutely freaking unbelievable to read this, in the Torygraph.
Although the comments are pretty much what you’d expect.
Peggy
This was a typical murder by police, probably due to the cop being scared because another cop shot at him.
My reading of the Guardian says that two bullets were fired.
Both were police issue- one at the victim (in the chest) and one in the police radio. The victim knew he was being followed by the police and tweeted that fact to his fiance. Unless he was being suicidal, he would not have pulled his gun. The police have not released any evidence that he fired the gun.
Occasional Reader
@Paul in KY: Thanks Paul. Hopefully at worst it will just mean more annoying traffic than usual.
Occasional Reader
@Paul in KY: Thanks Paul. Hopefully at worst it will just mean more annoying traffic than usual.
ciaran
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford:
i thinks its only special units that are armed. detectives , anti-terrorism and so on.
Reality Check
@homeruk:
That story I’ve seen posted around the internet sounds like an urban legend. It fits too neatly into the narrative certain people have about this riot.
Violet
Next year at this time, the Olympics will be going on in London.
Loneoak
@homeruk:
Explanations aren’t justifications; learn the difference. Like the author said, riots are always political even if the people participating don’t understand the politics. If austerity on top of years of economic and social hopelessness creates explosive conditions, then why and how people riot is just a matter of chance. No riot in history has been a carefully planned, rationalized event. Yet would you say no riot is explicable or they are all cause-less and apolitical?
Jack Bauer
@homeruk: Much of it is wanton criminality, but where did all of these wanton criminals come from? How many do you think have jobs?
Riots follow Tory policies as day follows night.
There really are thing to be considered other than “OMG hoodies rampaging!”
Jeremy Holland
Seems to be London’s version of the 1992 LA riots.
Martin
Yeah, that’s not how it works.
You take a subgroup of the population – minorities are almost always the right choice here – ignore them, ignore their social conditions, overlook policies that are either directly or indirectly discriminatory or neglectful of that population – and do that for some number of years, and ignore when the community comes out to city council meetings and so on to point out the problems. Basically, pretend they don’t exist because you don’t want them to exist. Then, you shoot one under questionable circumstances. Or you beat one nearly to death on video, wait 2 years for the trial to conclude, and then declare the police that did it to be not guilty.
One of the biggest violations of public trust from the corporate media is that their news is shaped for their advertisers, and their advertisers demand certain demographics be delivered. The entirety of the media in the US is therefore pre-destined to discriminate in their news delivery. You wouldn’t know that there are strong, vibrant Muslim communities popping up around the US if not for a bunch of stupid crackers bitching about it and threatening to burn it all down. You wouldn’t know anything about gun violence, or the drug war, if it didn’t occasionally reach the suburbs, at which point its the worst problem ever to strike the country, even though it’s been wiping out minority communities for ages. You wouldn’t know about inner-city living conditions and jobs until MS-13 shows up in the suburbs as well.
There’s only so much a community can tolerate in terms of being overlooked by formal society before some trigger comes along and causes them to rise up. And honestly, this is one of the more important pillars of progressivism – giving voice to those that have none, so that we don’t suffer from these kinds of social breakdowns.
Loneoak
@Jack Bauer:
I tried to read it, but my Murdoch Block extension worked as advertised!
Citizen_X
Boy, I can think of another country that that describes.
ETA: Martin says it much better.
ciaran
@Reality Check:
nawh man. these people are dickheads. fair enough they’ve terrible lives and shit prospects but its their own neigbourhoods they are destroying.
Violet
@Reality Check:
Here’s the original MSNBC report filed by Martin Fletcher. Contains the same quote.
Mnemosyne
There usually is a riot when someone gets shot by the cops, but, as other people have mentioned, our country is so spread out that people in West Virginia don’t notice riots in Oakland, CA.
If there was rioting in Manhattan or Georgetown, you bet your ass the media would notice it.
beltane
Heard an interview with two teenaged, female rioters on the BBC world service this morning. The girls kept repeating that they were doing it to show the police and “the rich people” that they could do whatever they wanted and would not be stopped. Penny Red was absolutely correct; this is about power. When a large enough mass of people is left with nothing to lose, they will gladly sacrifice their own lives just for a brief moment of revenge.
Reality Check
@Violet:
Yes and surely the media never invents shit out of whole cloth?
I think I’m going to start looking up if there was in fact any march of blacks at Scotland Yard two months ago.
Violet
@beltane:
French Revolution.
jwb
@homeruk: You wouldn’t think that openly carrying weapons at political rallies would gain sympathy, either, and it probably doesn’t. But, like these riots, it does focus attention. I certainly don’t condone the violence and agree that it will most likely prove counterproductive, but as with the Tea Party, I understand it as an extreme expression of frustration with the status quo. And you will notice that people are talking about the effects of the austerity program, even in the media, in a way they simply would not have without the riots. It’s still a losing proposition even with the talk it has leveraged in the media, I think, but it’s not as irrational as it might seem.
beltane
@Citizen_X: It’s a simple fact of life that if the PTB can ignore you, they will ignore you. If a million people show up to a peaceful candlelight vigil and no “important” people were inconvenienced, the whole vigil may never as well have happened.
Mnemosyne
@homeruk:
Welcome to Los Angeles 1992. Or any other riot, really.
There are the things that spark the riot, and then there are the things that actually happen during the riot, and the two are rarely congruent. The spark is almost always political, but the underlying anger turns it into something else almost immediately.
ChrisNYC
I don’t know UK political culture but both Cameron and Johnson are coming off so poorly to me.
All this he-man bluster about “bringing people to justice” and zero accountability. Seems like just pure blame shifting — not our fault that we couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to this until the lid absolutely blew off – blame the rioters for rioting in the first place. We’re just the mayor and the PM, after all — just regular joes.
So tired of people in high positions saying not my job. It’s an epidemic.
homeruk
@Loneoak: maybe you’re right that all riots are political; maybe. But, the truth of the matter is that in the UK – unlike in the US – everyone gets decent free education, pretty much free university, free healthcare and extremely decent welfare. A lot of these people aren’t the ‘poor’ or ‘downtrodden’. They’re just hooligans and anarchists. The ‘ordinary’ people in these communities – by the way the vast majority of the people that live in these ‘so-called’ deprived communities utterly condemn these acts of violence.
KeithW
@Loneoak:
You want to get that checked out. The Torygraph is owned by the Barclay twins.
There was a video doing the rounds last night that explains the rioting as well as anything, I think. Five or six police in riot gear, five or six youths in hoodies facing them. Lines standing firm. A youth threw something, the police moved forward a little. Then some more youths came running, and more, until there were thirty or forty of them, charging, throwing anything they could get their hands on, the police backing away from them down the road.
Those youths found safety in numbers and decided to get their own back on the police. It’s not a justification, but I bet they felt powerful for the first time in a long time.
Violet
@Reality Check:
Of course he could be making it up. Who knows. If the ITV video is available, that would answer the question.
He does say he was there:
Ash Can
@Violet: That information doesn’t fit Reality Check’s personal narrative, so it must be bogus.
Mnemosyne
@Reality Check:
There was a major one four months ago, and one before that in March, which of course means they’re TOTALLY LYING, amirite?
Reality Check
@Violet:
Yeah, video would. Or confirmation that there was a protest of blacks at Scotland Yard two months ago.
I’m just automatically suspicious of anything that fits a narrative REALLY nicely. Remember bin Laden using his wives as human shields? Kuwaiti babies in incubators? Etc.
Loneoak
@Mnemosyne:
Maybe those of us that are relatively privileged (just making a problematic assumption about you and most everyone on here) have a hard time recognizing that stealing stuff during a riot can be part and parcel of that original political spark. If your whole life is characterized by wanting but not having, and you live in a society that values you only for your consumer status, then stealing shit, even from innocent shop owners, can be a political act. If you’re a middle class bloke like me it immediately feels unjustifiable to attack property owned by people who probably have done nothing wrong to you, but the facts on the ground look different to people who feel hopeless.
Mnemosyne
@homeruk:
Didn’t you guys just have some major cuts to all of the above?
beltane
Here is the interview with the two ‘Riot Girls’: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14458424
Mnemosyne
@Reality Check:
Here’s the June protest. Less than two months ago.
Learn how to use fucking Google before you make an ass of yourself again.
Scott P.
Sometimes. Neither description seems to apply here, though.
Jack Bauer
@homeruk: Sorry, need to help you out a little:
Um, not any more.
Um, not any more.
There is often a misconception that the UK is a wonderful social nanny state. It is better to say that the UK is the closest to the US in terms of it’s economic & social arrangement’s, compared to other EU countries.
Reality Check
@Mnemosyne:
June 11th 2006 is “two months ago?”
Lol.
Martin
@homeruk:
You can’t do that kind of relativism and expect to get anywhere. Otherwise you wind up in tea party land where the founders only needed a sturdy axe to build a country, why is everyone so fucking lazy now?
Healthcare and education aren’t the sum of what a society does. What about jobs? Who are the scapegoats in that society? As corporations consume more and more of societies functions, where to they put their energy? And at whose expense?
It doesn’t matter how rich you are, if you have two kids and lavish praise one one and neglect the other, you can’t come back and say ‘I don’t know why the other one is lashing out, we’ve got a huge TV and every cable channel and an in-home chef to cook whatever he wants’. Individuals and communities have broader needs, not the least of which is the need to feel and be treated as part of the larger social fabric. That’s fundamentally what democracy is about, and truth is that we fail at that at times. And our mechanisms for how communities feel included are complex and go way beyond schools and entitlement programs.
Zifnab
@ciaran:
It was never our world. We just live in it.
jwb
@Reality Check: You mean like the Tea Party being a spontaneous, independent grass roots movement. Yeah, I’m suspicious of too-convenient narratives like that as well.
Myles
Those youths found safety in numbers and decided to get their own back on the police. It’s not a justification, but I bet they felt powerful for the first time in a long time.
It’s purely artificial. The police aren’t even armed. If they wanted to start shooting plastic bullets and water cannons, they would have been able to tell the idiots to fuck off.
I feel extremely sad and sorry for the fatality that was caused yesterday by the riots, but I think all in all it is probably for the better, had the fatality not occurred, that the government allowed the riots to play out as they did, so as to shatter the illusion, still partially residing among parts of English society, that these people are just harmless disadvantaged victims of society. Well, apparently they don’t even share the foundational precepts of civilization, so there you have it.
apostropher
67: That’s from June 2006.
Reality Check
@Jack Bauer:
I guess France must be close to the US too, which is why those massive riots in 2005 must have been figments of my imagination?
Davis X. Machina
@beltane: If it’s for a dead princess, they’d notice.
Reality Check
@apostropher:
USE GOOGLE BEFORE YOU MAKE AN ASS OF YOURSELF!
ohsuzanna
Ordinarily, I am not a big fan of The Daily Telegraph, but this opinion/commentary piece does describe the issues that are creating this problem and it’s a lot more than just one shooting.
Hope it helps:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8630533/Riots-the-underclass-lashes-out.html
jwb
@Myles: Joining the vanguard of the reactionaries, I see.
ciaran
@Zifnab:
i dont get you!
Reality Check
@jwb:
I really wish I could drop some of these people off in your nice, no doubt suburban cul-de-sac or “urban” hipster enclave and let them go wild with looting. I’m sure you’d understand them, and let them do what they want, right? Right?
homeruk
@Mnemosyne: not really to any of that stuff. Yes there have been cuts in other services though (ironically to police services…). Look, I am not saying that there is a political issue here and I deeply object to the cuts and so-called austerity measures. I can understand the anger amongst these youngsters who have nothing to do and think they have no future.
My point is that I do not necessarily think that is true. People can get to university for virtually nothing; people can get help. But more than that, if you look at the kinds of people who are committing these acts, they are taking pride in the fact that they are scaring people (and not just rich people but people who live in those communities). People, ordinary people, are being routinely intimidated by these thugs; there sure does not seem to be any political motive to this just chaos and anarchy.
the point that riots have some political cause and underlying it is socio-economic issues is not in doubt. But that interview that’s been doing the rounds is totally shit – the fact that these riots are getting attention has nothing at all to with getting attention to the problematic issues. I can tell you that 80-90% of londoners have absolutely no sympathy with the rioters at all; notwithstanding that they probably do have sympathy about the terrible shooting of Mark Duggan.
Reality Check
@jwb:
I really wish I could drop some of these people off in your nice, no doubt suburban cul-de-sac or “urban” hipster enclave and let them go wild with looting. I’m sure you’d understand them, and let them do what they want, right? Right?
Zifnab
@Myles:
Shorter Myles: Sure, it’s a tragedy, but the more important thing is that it reinforces my personal prejudices.
chopper
@Culture of Truth:
meanwhile our shit’s in full-on recession mode and congress is still on vacay. bitches.
Alex S.
@Samara Morgan:
Damnit, I hoped to be the first one to make the connection between the Arab Spring and Britain. There is an ethnic factor, and also an economic factor.
Anyway, riots like these were normal before the eighties. In France they’re still normal. The West is still ahead economically, but is going to lose its position for as long as the elite isolates itself from the population and prefers to invest in asian/african investments without paying an appropriate share of taxes. The middle and lower classes are not only losing wealth relatively, but also absolutely. Net household wealth hasn’t increased in ten years. The financial crash destroyed savings. Europe might be going back ever so slightly to the fifties.
arguingwithsignposts
Austerity:
And moar Austerity!
There seems to have been quite a bit of protesting going on in London over the last 9 months or so.
Reality Check
This is the last thing I’m going to say about the situation:
I think Americans need to shut the fuck up about this. The domestic policies of another western democracy are none of our fucking business and some of the smug condescension and preaching to the British posters here that are actually living through the riots makes me ill.
Culture of Truth
That sounds political! Bad, but political.
Joel
@ciaran: I think this is true; and that both sides of this “debate” are talking past each other. Most people who suffer from bad policies and years of neglect and misrepresentation don’t participate in riots. Hell, most don’t even demonstrate. And thugs are always with us, even in the best of times. But communities are the barrier to outright thuggishness, and when good people fall silent (they have no incentive to speak, lest they be ignored).. well, as the old saying goes.
Zifnab
@ciaran: When cops can walk into your neighborhood and beat you up or arrest you without serious cause, when you can’t find jobs, when your public infrastructure – schools, roads, hospitals – are being neglected by a bunch of Parliamentary fat cats more interested in their conservative ideology than their citizenry, when your tax dollars are gobbled up to pay for lavish royal weddings and expense accounts for corrupt pols…
Its not really your neighborhood anymore. It’s more like your prison.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
Obviously what is needed in the UK is a round of tax cuts for the
richjob creators so they can create work for the lucky duckys on welfare living in the beautiful council estates. I mean who wouldn’t want to live in a council estate? Amirite?JPL
How many families are homeless because their neighborhoods are ruined? Does anyone know and where do they go?
chopper
@KeithW:
can’t be late, last time serpentor got pissed.
The Worst Person In the World
I don’t necessarily want the whole country burned down, but a few intense riots would be a good thing right about now.
homeruk
@Jack Bauer: I really don’t want to get into an argument with you about the relative merits of the social safety net here but will just say this – there are homeless shelters that are closing down here because there’s no need for them. Yes, universities can now charge for admission but it’s a maximum of £9000 and is basically a gift unless and until you earn over a certain amount of money. And yes, I get the thing about the jobs – yes I agree that the conditions are terrible and things need to be done – I’m a lefty in this essentially left wing country – but really I don’t think that means that I can’t hold these thugs responsible for what they are doing.
homeruk
@Jack Bauer: I really don’t want to get into an argument with you about the relative merits of the social safety net here but will just say this – there are homeless shelters that are closing down here because there’s no need for them. Yes, universities can now charge for admission but it’s a maximum of £9000 and is basically a gift unless and until you earn over a certain amount of money. And yes, I get the thing about the jobs – yes I agree that the conditions are terrible and things need to be done – I’m a lefty in this essentially left wing country – but really I don’t think that means that I can’t hold these thugs responsible for what they are doing.
jwb
@Reality Check: you’d prefer to just mow them down, no questions asked, amirite?
ciaran
@Jack Bauer:
i thinks it still a relatively generous system. like the university fees are actually a progressive,capped graduate tax which i dont think is the end of the world. there has been an attack on the welfare system which wasnt that generous to the unemployed to begin with but afaik most of the cut backs havent actually happened yet. its a complicated one, these people have genuine problems but how burning down their own neighbourhoods helps is beyond me. i think its indefensible myself. if they were to burn down banks id cheer them on but i cant support people destroying homes and small business. relatives of mine live on the edge of the areas with riots. how would you feel in their position?
homeruk
From the Guardian
Jack Bauer
@Reality Check:
The riots in France had strong elements of racial discrimination and are more analogous to the London race riots of the 80’s. What has been remarkable about the London riots is that few people are blaming racism or immigration (other than the usual suspects), because so many of the rioters are white youths.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@homeruk: Droogies
befuggled
Probably this march in April.
Reality Check
@jwb:
I’m a big fan of what the Korean shopkeepers in South Central did in ’92, let’s put it that way.
ciaran
@Zifnab:
alienation dot com :)
ciaran
@Zifnab:
alienation dot com :)
Shinobi
Poor economy + Conservative social safety net +class stratification = Civil/Class War
I was just talking to a history major friend about this a few weeks ago. I am not surprised to see it happening in the UK. And you can blame the rioters all you want, but imprisoning them is not going to quell social unrest.
homeruk
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: hats off for the most dickish comment here. Yes, because I feel anger and contempt for the thugs that are ruining my city, it must mean that I am a right wing nut and want tax cuts for everyone.
Phil Perspective
@burnspbesq: And you know it was justified, how? Sounds like you know nothing about the area of the U.K. where that incident happened.
CalD
@John Cole
The was Randy King thing comes to mind, although that didn’t involve a shooting ironically. But the percentage of the UK police force that’s armed with guns is still relatively small I think. So they’re probably kind of new to this.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Phil Perspective: What does knowing about the area have to do with it. It could be justified or unjustified. How do YOU know?
jwb
@homeruk: Before writing them off as “thugs,” do try to put yourself in their shoes to understand what is motivating them. Not to condone what they are doing or agree with their strategies but to keep from falling for the rightwing bullshit that is going to come your way and attempt to appropriate and channel your anger, which I recognize as completely justified, btw.
Samara Morgan
@Alex S.: its freed market theory in action.
a correction.
JPL
@homeruk: Do you have any idea how many are left homeless because of the rioting?
Mnemosyne
@apostropher:
I have two links at #62 from 2011, but apparently now Reality Check can ignore those because I had one (1) later link wrong, so therefore it’s a LIE that there were protests against the police in 2011.
Sigh. Here’s another protest at Scotland Yard from this year, but I guess that’s just moar proof that it never happened because I had one link wrong in a different post.
Jack Bauer
Well, I’m from London (Hammersmith) and my brother is currently in Streatham. I’m pretty sure this can’t just be dismissed as criminality. There are elements of flash mob behavior among a large group of people with nothing to lose. Why do they have nothing to lose?
I know it’s all bleedin’ heart nonsense to say there are other reasons for all this, but I think there are. This shit hasn’t been addressed for over a decade, while the rich have been making out like bandits.
After all, the real looters in London all got bailed out didn’t they.
Catsy
@Zifnab:
It’s not just the geographic diffusion, it’s a combination of bread and circuses and an extremely complacent, comfortable population conditioned to submit to authority and avoid rocking the boat. Obviously that’s not true for everyone–but it’s true of enough Americans to prevent that kind of unrest from reaching and sustaining a critical mass. That’s part of what’s made the backlash in Wisconsin so extraordinary, and it says something about just how grievously Walker and his gang overreached.
Even knowing this, things would have to get pretty bad for me to hit the streets–I’m lucky enough to have a full-time job which is the sole income for my family, and we can’t afford for me to risk that.
Chronic unemployment may not have precipitated the unrest in the UK, but I doubt it would have spread or sustained itself the way it has without a critical mass of the chronic unemployed with no stake in society who see no hope or future for themselves.
Elie
@PaulW:
I note your good observation about the cuts in social spending and agree.
Of course, I won’t point out that this is what will happen here if the cuts proposed or threatenned, take place.
What times we are in…Lord give us strength for the battle ahead here.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Jack Bauer: Did you see the clip of the kid with his teeth knocked out, bleeding on the sidewalk? One dude helps him up and then this other punk-ass motherfucker robs his backpack walking away like the fuckers that bashed Reginald Denny’s head in.
Ash Can
@Mnemosyne: Google makes shit up too.
/Reality Check
Reality Check
@Mnemosyne:
A protest of women about sexual harassment from January. Yeah, that’s the same thing as “2,000 blacks two months ago” protesting racism.
Try harder.
And no, you only had one link at first. You added the later link through editing after you got egg on your face.
eemom
@Elie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrlBeEkvzHY
Loneoak
Friends have been posting this clip on FB today. Really worth watching. That BBC anchor is a total tool.
Reality Check
And remember, be sure to use google properly before you make yourself look like an ass by posting something from June 2006!
homeruk
@Jack Bauer: @jwb:
just because I call them thugs does not mean that I don’t understand (or try to understand) where they’re coming from. I am sure that there are a lot of them that think they’ve got nothing to lose, but also there are a lot of them that are just flash mob opportunists. So, not all of it can be written of as pure criminality but a lot of it can be. Also, many many criminals can point to some underlying reason for their crime – this is not to be right wing about it, but there is always some reason for a crime. doesn’t mean that it is not a crime.
I don’t know how many people are homeless because of this – I know people have lost their livelihoods as shops have been targeted. One family run shop that had been within the same family for generations has been totally wiped out. Now, they’ll just get screwed by the insurance companies.
Jack Bauer
@Raven (formerly stuckinred): I saw that, yup. Lots of scumbags out there. Worth noting, black kid helps guy, white kid robs him.
Explanations for why this is going down are not justifications for it.
Hey, the cops shot a man dead.
Villago Delenda Est
@Martin:
This, this, this.
Progressive politics are about enhancing the stability of society. About preventing the conditions that lead to what we’re seeing in London right now. Fostering social stability used to be the sort of thing that promoted business opportunity and innovation, knowing that one possible factor in failure was substantially reduced.
Police states don’t do this. Using force to keep the peace is far more precarious than encouraging people to behave peacefully because they have reason to hope for better lives. Creating a climate where people live in fear creates a feedback loop to destruction.
Catsy
@Mnemosyne: Good grief, why do you even bother engaging that piece of shit with the eponysterical name of “Reality Check”? If he’s a spoof, he’s a spectacularly poor and unfunny one, and if he’s not, he’s practically the avatar of arguing in bad faith.
NobodySpecial
@ciaran:
They burn down the shops in their neighborhood because the people who own the shops aren’t their neighbors, for the most part anymore. They’re people with a nice house in the suburb and a nice car who make snide remarks about the people they’re serving everyday when they can’t hear. And the homes get destroyed because fire doesn’t care where it goes after it gets lit.
It’s a sad, stupid affair that helps no one, and the only reason it happens is because there’s no safety valve left in a community. When everything around you is either a condition of your confinement or a weapon to be used against you, you want to get rid of all of it after a while.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@homeruk:
I’m #1! I’m #1!
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Jack Bauer: The looked like he might have been Indian or Pakistani but I couldn’t really tell.
jl
@89 Reality Check
Fine, then leave this thread and don’t come back.
I went through the middle of 1992 Rodney King Riots in LA, when I didn’t leave a meeting at University of Spoiled Children soon enough. So I been through a fricken riot, seen one up real close, so is it permissible for me to say something?
The failed austerity program in the UK is probably a good predictor of what the US will go through over the next year or so, or longer if policies do not change. Brad DeLong has calculated that relative to the size of the economy, the fiscal contraction in the US will be greater than in the UK. At least the UK government was honest enough to honestly announce what it was doing and why.
And what is happening in the UK will surely be used here in the US by various factions to try and influence policy and elections.
So, a person would have to be a fool to stick their heads in the sand and just ignore the riots in the UK.
My sympathies to the commenters from the UK who are going through this and in danger. Hope you folks get through it OK.
Mnemosyne
@Reality Check:
No, I always had two links at #62. The only “editing” was posting a different link at #67, and that was the one incorrect link.
If I edit, I always mark it. Stop lying to try and make yourself look like less of an ass for not bothering to follow the first two links I provided to you.
lonesomerobot
Meanwhile, the UK Home Secretary is being called out for saying this last September:
“The British public don’t simply resort to violent unrest in the face of challenging economic circumstances.”
This was said in the context of justifying cuts to police budgets. Because these riots aren’t capable of happening. So therefore, the cuts were made (yay austerity!) and police had to cut staff. Now the police are undermanned to deal with the riots, that could never happen anyway, according to Home Secretary Theresa May.
Jack Bauer
@homeruk: FWIW I don’t mind them being called thugs and I don’t find these riots to be even broadly justifiable tbh.
I’m just interested in why they are happening, and I think there are important answers to that question.
Elie
@eemom:
Thank you — totally right on… had forgotten this song but it fits. I’m sad though. Real sad these days.
jwb
@homeruk: It’s a difficult line to walk, to be sure, and I feel for you. I have also found your little reports on the situation quite informative. Please keep them coming.
homeruk
@Loneoak: Marcus Dowe is a god
Jewish Steel
I despair that we will never see a liberal president in our lifetimes.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Jack Bauer: Then “Hey, the cops shot a man dead”, really didn’t mean much now did it?
Mnemosyne
@homeruk:
Again, welcome to a riot. If things go on more than a day or two, it’s not just neighborhood people anymore. Here in LA, there was footage of people from every race and social class rioting — heck, at one point I saw some yeshiva boys running down the street with looted goods.
The problem you’re having now is not thugs who live in that neighborhood — it’s thugs (and, often, otherwise ordinary people) who see things are out of control and are coming in from outside to take advantage. And yet the people in the neighborhood will get 100 percent of the blame while the outsiders enjoy all of their new stuff in the comfort of their homes.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jack Bauer:
It’s interesting that in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, many Americans were outraged that some of us tried to understand why this happened. Rev. Wright’s vilification was because he, too, tried to explain what would motivate those 19 Muslims to do what they did. The 9/11 hijackers targeted symbols of American economic and political power for a reason. They didn’t fly a plane into the Statue of Liberty, they didn’t try to fly into the Hollywood sign, they didn’t target churches (although one could well argue that they targeted symbols of America’s true religons, money and militarism).
Unfortunately there are a lot of people, and we’re seeing some of them post here, who confuse explanation with justification. It’s nothing of the sort. Understanding your adversary is a key to overcoming your adversary. Yet so many simply refuse to do such a thing for fear of being labeled a “fifth columnist”.
Jack Bauer
@Raven (formerly stuckinred): I can tell, it’s a white guy.
PeakVT
@homeruk: People can get to university for virtually nothing; people can get help. But more than that, if you look at the kinds of people who are committing these acts, they are taking pride in the fact that they are scaring people.
Not everyone can succeed in a university environment. In the US we’ve basically defined anyone who doesn’t get into a university as a loser. My impression is that in the UK the attitude is similar. Oddly enough, people don’t like being branded as losers, or subsisting on handouts, especially young men.
The Spy Who Loved Me
The rioters are young. They are uneducated (by choice), unemployed (because they are uneducated and/or trained for a trade), bored (because they have nothing to do), and feel entitled to the belongings of others (just because). I hope they are all arrested and thrown in jail. Assholes, each and every one.
Suffern ACE
@lonesomerobot: I have to laugh at that. What exactly was going on 30 years ago that required all those riot police barricades?
burnspbesq
@Peggy:
Your bias is showing. You’ve rushed to judgment based on (at best) wild inferences from ambiguous evidence. More likely you’re just making shit up to fit your pre-conceived notions.
For the record, it doesn’t matter even a tiny bit whether the victim fired. The police are not required to wait for him to fire. The police are authorized to use deadly force as soon as there is a credible threat of the use of deadly force against them. If he takes out a gun, other than under circumstances where he is clearly attempting to surrender, it’s on.
Mnemosyne
@jl:
I was actually attending USC at the time, though I was able to get to my brother’s in Culver City fairly soon after everything started. Some poor bastard waiting at a bus stop near my dorm got shot in the leg.
The campus itself was barely touched, BTW — the school had made enough inroads in the surrounding neighborhood that it was the stores on the periphery that got hit and very little of the campus itself.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Jack Bauer: Funny, there is at least one comment there that says he’s Asian.
jl
@PeakVT:
“Oddly enough, people don’t like being branded as losers, or subsisting on handouts, especially young men.”
Taking account of human nature is difficult. But you have to do it.
Many, maybe most, of the rioters are acting as criminals and thugs.
But why would so many in so many places, at about the same time, decide to act that way? That is the question.
And yes, seeking for an explanation is not the same as justification. When something like this happens, you need to look for explanations beyond ‘a lot bad apples turned out to trash the place’.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@burnspbesq:
“you’re just making shit up to fit your pre-conceived notions.”
Did you REALLY say that? Maybe Peggy saw what she saw ya think?
Suffern ACE
@Mnemosyne: Yep. When I read about police pulling over cars stolen and laden with goods, I figured it’s not people just living there rioting. Why steal a car and drive around town when you could carry the stuff home?
Nemesis
Power to the people. Revolution is messy.
trollhattan
Is there any similarity to the French “suburban” riots of a few summers ago? (Similarity in either the cause or the actions themselves?) I didn’t understand those, either.
Elie
@NobodySpecial:
ciaran;
My sympathies to you and the other British citizens, but the comment that Nobodyspecial highlighted is exactly what used to be said here about blacks who rioted at various points here in the US. “Why do they burn down their own homes?” Nobody answered that correctly in my opinion..
I am so sad for all of us. The sociology of this and what is happening in this country and across the world highlights the need for better distribution of the worlds wealth and benefits.
What a time we are in! Remember, not just the “Arab Spring” highlighting huge change, but the terrorist attack in Norway. The world economy and ours are but signals of the foundational changes that ocurred back in 2008 when the markets collapsed but then were superficially rescued. Not only is who has the money going to be challenged, but the whole structure of the distribution that the right wing are trying to set in place both here and in Europe.
Obama could have no more held off what is coming than Jesus. Lincoln couldn’t stop what came either. You can’t modify certain events when the timing of events press too hard.
Lets figure out how to stand together again… I don’t know how, but its critical to survive this. Our country is suspicious of its citizens and armed to the teeth. Its beyond scary…
Jack Bauer
@Raven (formerly stuckinred):
Yes, well, racists gotta keep selling their shit huh? Looks like you’re buying.
To me, who’s seen hundreds of guys just like the one in the video, he’s a white guys. Even moves and acts like one. Just another hooligan.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Jack Bauer: I’m not buying anything, I simply couldn’t tell. I don’t read any deep meaning into it one way or the other. Sit down and take a deep breath.
burnspbesq
@Phil Perspective:
Can you fucking read? Saying “the evidence is consistent with a justified shooting” IS NOT the same as saying “the shooting was justified.”
I wasn’t there. Neither were you. All either of us can do is draw inferences that we consider reasonable from the available evidence, which I SAID was incomplete and ambiguous.
Fuck off.
lonesomerobot
looks like a riot is about to break out right here
Brachiator
And your point is?
@Villago Delenda Est:
I take your point, but I am not sure that it is best to view the people rioting in the streets mainly as “adversaries to be overcome.”
Jack Bauer
@Raven (formerly stuckinred):
/yawn
Joel
@NobodySpecial: Actually, I reckon those shopkeepers are their neighbors. In fact, being neighbors is the point (insofar as thugs operate). They’re trying to exercise power over the people in their world, and I think it’s the same mentality that drives the open carry laws here in the United States. Again, it’s the proximity that makes these shops targeted.
chosenatrandom
@JPL:
The local council will take responsibility for rehousing I think, at least for people living in council housing (which will be a lot of them). One council this morning was saying they had already rehoused them – I think it might have been Lambeth; it’s hard to keep track.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Jack Bauer: Let me put it another way, go fuck yourself.
jl
@Mnemosyne:
@Mnemosyne:
I spent three days in a graduate school office on USC. Glad I knew some people pretty well there so it wasn’t totally weird and scary.
By the time the riots got to USC, there wasn’t much racial violence, at lest that I saw or heard about.
On second day, people said you could get to operating bus line, and I decided to walk, and nearly crapped my pants when I ran into a big crowd of Hispanics and African Americans marching up the street. They were protesting, they were interesting in talking about grievances and stuff.
There were just as many, of all races and ethnicities, just having a time stealing stuff and burning down businesses. A surreal moment was when some African American dudes started yelling to the mostly white co ed group of USC students watching from the edge of the campus that they were going to torch the west side of Vermont, and anyone who wanted free stuff better come and get it now. I couldn’t believe how many nice well behaved USC students took them up on the offer.
PeakVT
@jl: But why would so many in so many places, at about the same time, decide to act that way? That is the question.
Yes, that is exactly the question.
ETA: The other Cole comments.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Raven (formerly stuckinred): Sometimes bluntly concise is what it takes.
burnspbesq
@Raven (formerly stuckinred):
Yes I did. Did I miss the part where Peggy said she was an eyewitness to the shooting? As far as I know, there isn’t any video.
More to the point, anyone who wasn’t there and says they know what happened is making shit up. My initial comment was carefully phrased to (I thought) make it clear that I wasn’t drawing a firm conclusion, because there isn’t enough evidence yet to support ANY conclusion. Reading comprehension apparently ain’t what it used to be.
Villago Delenda Est
@Brachiator:
If they’re coming at you carrying a board with a nail in it, they’ve become an adversary.
Figuring out how that happened is important in dealing with your situation.
lonesomerobot
@Brachiator: Lawless and sociopathic individuals exist in almost every society. I take these riots to be the actions of the lawless and sociopathic as a result of the government creating an environment that cultivated their tendencies, while also removing the incentives (and disincentives, see my police cuts comment upthread) that would otherwise convince these people to not go ahead and freak the hell out.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@burnspbesq You have a short memory.
Sly
@Brachiator:
“Let’s burn the whole world to the ground” is a sentiment generally antithetical to creating a more livable world.
Take the Draft Riots in NYC during the Civil War. Impoverished immigrant population constantly kicked in the teeth by the city’s elite. Then down comes a law calling for a military draft lottery (ten days after Gettysburg, when serving in the army looked more and more like a death sentence) with an exemption for anyone who pays the government $300. Today, that would be around $5,250.
It is quite understandable that the massive numbers of impoverished in the city would be downright upset by this. They don’t have the money to pay, and they don’t want to die in Dixie. The only people who will get out of it will be the same people who treat them like shit on a daily basis.
So what do they do? Riot. Again, somewhat understandable. But blind, burning rage soon takes over, and those poor immigrants start grabbing any black person they find and butchering them in the street. “They started this! It’s their fault! I’m not dying for them!” They go so far as to burn down an all-black orphanage.
People who do that kind of thing are, by any rational standard, our enemies. They don’t care about making the world better, for themselves or others. They just want to destroy, because that is all they feel they’ve been reduced to.
The Raven
That was only the trigger; it was the culmination of a long pattern of police abuses. Also, of course, the UK’s austerity policies have been making everyone except for the very rich miserable, so people are on edge. I like “Lenin’s” essay on the subject, here.
…I wonder how we will behave in the USA when our time comes?
burnspbesq
@Raven (formerly stuckinred):
Having a short memory and refusing to draw spurious connections between events that are unconnected are not the same thing.
Brachiator
@The Spy Who Loved Me:
One might equally say that the Members of Parliament involved in the expenses scandal, and the financial whizzes who got fantabulous bonuses, felt entitled to the belongings of others, in this case the citizens they supposedly serve.
Oddly enough, only a very few of them went to jail. Some even still insist on their entitlements.
Jack Bauer
@Raven (formerly stuckinred):
/yawn
I think it’s important to recognize you were wrong to suggest the person in the video was “Indian or Pakistani”, because they’re obviously not. Then choosing to point out “Funny, there is at least one comment there that says he’s Asian”, kinda makes you look purposeful.
What’s your beef with what I’ve posted anyway? Too understanding on my part? Not quick enough to write it off as a race riot?
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@burnspbesq: Except that you made an incredibly stupid statement by ” making shit up to fit your pre-conceived notions” and then said you saw what you saw. I think it is very connected.
Bill Murray
@Reality Check: well it wasn’t 2 months ago, so of course you won’t accept this because everybody’s memory timeline is perfect, but there was the Smiley Culture demonstration in which 2500 people marched on New Scotland Yard in April. Smiley Culture was a reggae singer who died by stabbing while being arrested. The demonstration appears to have been covered by blogs at the big papers, but not much was in the papers themselves.
http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2011/04/18/reflections-from-the-march-on-new-scotland-yard/
http://londonist.com/2011/04/rip-smiley-culture-march-demands-justice-for-dj.php
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Jack Bauer: No, not at all. It doesn’t look that obvious to me but, as I tried to say, I didn’t read any great significance into it either way. I never thought it was a race riot, never.
I withdraw my unseemly comment.
Jack Bauer
@Brachiator:
This. That the same folks are calling for austerity doesn’t help.
Cacti
Has Dan Quayle blamed Murphy Brown for this one too?
Phil Perspective
@burnspbesq: No, you go fuck yourself, you turd!! I love how you don’t know shit but will say the cops are always justified in shooting someone. Go back to listening to Mother’s Little Helper!
Brachiator
@Villago Delenda Est:
But everyone here is not coming at people with a weapon. This sounds much like Dubya’s either “with us or agin’ us” oversimplifications.
@lonesomerobot:
People love to throw around the charges of “lawless” and “sociopathic,” the way that a rich athlete throws around dollar bills at a strip club.
Maybe it’s more to it than this, as there is in Syria, Greece and elsewhere where there is unrest.
@Sly:
Sadly, people don’t always see a hope for a more livable world.
beltane
@Brachiator: One of the rioters interviewed by the BBC specifically mentioned the expenses scandal as justification for looting. It’s not as though those at the pinnacle of society are setting a wonderful example for those at the bottom.
daveNYC
Guardian liveblog says that the round found in the police radio is jacketed, which means it could have been fired from one of the police H&K MP5’s. At which point I ask, WTF, SMGs?
jl
@174 Sly
So, the US should have killed all the Irish in NYC, or what? Or labeled them as bad apples and make sure not one of them ever gets no social goodies again until every bad rioting Irishman is punished?
I’m half Irish, so I understand from direct observation that they are bad apples, who will riot, and maybe even use violence to get their way, from time to time. But if we had done that, I might not be here right now. Or a lowly member of an outlaw caste.
So, I am a wee torn about your conclusion.
Kyle
@Reality Check:
You mean, like “They started carrying guns after they abolished the death penalty for killing a cop”?
You’re a factory of right-wing simpleton bullshit.
R-Jud
“BREAKING: The Independent Police Complaints Commission has just announced that there is no evidence that Mark Duggan opened fire at police officers before he was shot dead, according to ballistic test results, reports the Press Association.”
Sky News is reporting about 150-200 rioters in central Birmingham. Also cars being torched in Wolverhampton and West Bromwich, which are cities north of Birmingham. A smallish group of rioters also reported in the Salford district of Manchester.
Jack Bauer
Some words from the streets of Totthenam.
Jack Bauer
You knew from the start, it was always going to be this… Won’t help things tonight.
beltane
Rioting has now spread to Salford near Manchester.
Ruckus
Riots take on a life of their own. No matter the flashpoint, they are never a liner event. People feel empowered and do things they would not normally do. Or they are more brazen and do things right out in the open that they would hide without the riot. Stealing and burning up things. And they do these things where they are. Their neighborhoods. They don’t jump in their cars/on the train and drive 10-20 miles to someone else’s neighborhood. These can be orchestrated events but mostly they are events of opportunity. They are mostly people with little or nothing to lose, real or perceived. They start small but they grow fast and out of control. That’s what makes them riots instead of protests. And they become riots because for whatever reason or event the people at the flashpoint decide that the step too far is the right one. From there the riots have a life of their own. Even if they had a rational reason at the start that is seldom the reason they build.
HyperIon
@Reality Check wrote:
Good luck with that if it wasn’t covered by the media.
Just because it wasn’t covered doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
Jinxtigr
@Loneoak: I like the glittering and swinging of her diamond earring. If I was writing a scene of a wealthy media flack trying to spin an interview with an insurrectionist, I would not dare to put in such a detail, because it would be too pointed, but there reality goes, being more disgusting than fiction :)
Morbo
The troll, feed it do not.
jl
People might recall there was widespread rioting in France a few years ago.
That was different, it was some kind of Muslim Menace or something. Or no good thugs.
As I recall, it turned out that the French approach to integration of immigrants into French society was not working the way it was planned. It was more than the remote happenstance that that every bad apple in France decided to go on a rampage at the same time, in cities all around the country.
I hope these riots end with as little further injury death and destruction as possible. But there is always more to these kinds of spontaneous mass actions than a lot of thugs happening to go out and riot all at once.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jack Bauer:
Sacrifice for thee, but certainly NOT for me!
This creates the sort of situation where the oppressed feel that the need to share the pain they’ve been forced to endure becomes the most important agenda item they have.
@Brachiator:
Given that I deliberatly chose “adversary” and not “enemy”, I think you’re reading a bit too much into that. Keep in mind that Dubya had absolutely no inclination, at all, to understanding his opponents, as he had no inclination, at all, in reaching a mutually acceptable resolution of the conflict. It was his way or the highway. Which creates the situation we’ve had to deal with in Iraq, which is that “dead enders” go all Wolverines on our occupying force. Of course, this isn’t a problem with the neocons who were safely within their well guarded think tanks in DC, not dealing with the shit in Fallujah.
Martin
We need these for the tea party:
beltane
@Martin: Wouldn’t work. Teabaggers are convinced personal hygiene is a soshulist plot.
The Raven
soyaki
Meh. Are they dragging people out of cars and beating them into comas? Really, wake me up when this guy gets involved.
El Cid
We’re all forgetting the bright side. Think of all the theses and PhD’s which may now be embarked upon!
Loneoak
@The Raven:
Thanks for the Lenin’s Tomb link. I especially liked this part:
drunken hausfrau
Hello, living in London here… the original “guy who got shot by the police” got shot while being arrested — he was armed, he was a gang leader, and reported (by people in his own community) to be a drug dealer and thug. The shooting is being investigated — the cops say he shot first, a witness on the street claims he was shot while lying on the street == shot in the head, execution style. This is false — the inquest happened today — he was shot in the chest (like the police said), probably while still in the vehicle, resisting arrest. Also, the ballistic tests are not back yet, but a cop was shot in the chest, saved because the bullet lodged in his radio. I know everyone likes to pile on and blame cops for going over the top… but what if, in this case, they actually did their job right and the perp really was the bad guy? What if?
Also, the looting and arson and rioting has NOTHING to do with that original shooting. It is being coordinated on Twitter and Facebook and is basically a bunch of young punks saying, “hey, come on over to the mobile phone store or the electronics store or the footlocker, and come steal a bunch of stuff!” Or “hey, come on into Croydon and let’s set things on fire! Woohoo!”
Kids as young as 10 have been involved… it’s not that these kids don’t have jobs or that the government has made cuts in programming or that college fees are going up — that is nonsense. Most of these rioters are NOT going to college, many are too young to be working, etc. It is summer. There are a lot of youths with nothing better to do than get involved in some really cool rioting with their friends! It’s a rush. The fact that they are destroying their own communities doesn’t even occur to them.
Meanwhile, ordinary people were out today, cleaning up the mess. Also organized on Twitter and Facebook.
Joel
@The Raven: Disagreed on that quote. Many rioters that declare their intentions may have political motives, but most are just filling the air with pretty words and turns of phrase. Post-hoc self-justification, in other words. Moreover, many rioters do not declare their intentions, because their intentions are to brutalize other people. For them, police brutality and repression is only the problem insofar as they’re not the ones carrying out the dirty deeds.
chopper
@Reality Check:
keep fucking that chicken.
someguy
@Jack Bauer:
Amazing. Less than a year of Tory government has created a violent UK underclass. Amazing too how it links back to Tea Party extremism in this country creating a global market collapse.
spudvol
Is it just me or does Steve Benen post more often than the 9 Balloon Juicers combined?
John X.
I love how this situation really shows that the Republican hasn’t really washed off most of the die-hard “Democrats” here.
R-Jud
@spudvol: I imagine he gets paid to do so.
chopper
@drunken hausfrau:
you must have missed the link that states that the ballistic report shows the dude never fired at the cops. so he was shot, at most, for resisting. not good.
PeakVT
@spudvol: Benen is an android, so he can do things that mere human bloggers can’t.
A Mom Anon
@Villago Delenda Est: When people have things to fight FOR rather than against you end up with pretty much everyone invested in your larger national as well as the local community. You also might just end up with less crime and violence.
Villago Delenda Est
@someguy:
Well, given that the previous Labor regime was Tory Lite, tastes great, but less filling, why are you so surprised? I mean, in Britain, you’ve got this David Brooks approved gang of technocrats who all went to the same schools running things in approved technocratic fashion and then this shit happens.
GregB
So I take it this isn’t being called the British Spring?
Jack Bauer
@someguy:
Yes, cuts in youth services and policing have nothing to do with this.
The underclass has been around for years, ever since neo-liberal policies were mainstreamed in the 80’s. We’ve been comfortable with a corrosive level of unemployment for too long.
The 2008 market collapse signified the start of all this.
And as for the Tea Party – I find when they watch these riots abroad, they consider it justification for their hard line policies.
Villago Delenda Est
@A Mom Anon:
Yeah, but then the undeserving poor will not be in misery, and we can’t have THAT!
jl
@208 someguy
Just amazing where evidence, history and logic will take you, aint it?
A Mom Anon
@Villago Delenda Est: Yeah,I know.I really wish there was some sort of empathy spray I could carry around(make it smell like cookies,lol)and use when I hear some of the sociopathic bullshit I’ve heard the last few years.
The Populist
@Martin:
A fucking men.
The problem here is that while hooligans and criminals are part of any riot, Homeruk refuses to entertain the idea that politics and a feeling of hoplessness is driving this senseless rioting.
I was in the middle of the L.A. riots. I was downtown the night they moved from Compton and South Central to downtown. I was there for business and saw the carnage, the fires. I almost didn’t get out as the police locked down the freeways.
The spark in that one was a visual of a man being beaten, senselessly, by not one or two but MANY police officers. Rodney King shouldn’t have resisted arrest, but the police shouldn’t have done that. When the crime was documented it backed up everything the black community has said the police DO to them.
Then the courts sided with the cops over the victim and BOOM, anarchy started. Then the opportunists came out like it was one big block party for free stuff.
So we can agree that opportunists and criminals are running rampant in London, but many more are people who are angry and feel ignored and unwanted.
The Populist
@Jack Bauer: When you take what little the poor have in terms of help away, you open the door to increased crimes and unabashed anger towards “the man” (not the white man but TPTB).
Peggy
burnspbesq 150: Maybe I have rushed to judgement- “murder by police”, but mostly I was trying to give a synopsis of facts as reported by the police and a police commission to the Guardian. If you are willing to read through a week of Guardian reporting, you will find all the facts are accurate.
lonesomerobot
@Brachiator: I tend to throw around the terms “lawless” and “sociopathic” when I see legitimate examples of lawlessness and sociopathic behavior. There are probably others caught up in a mob mentality, or those that have reached the breaking point and have joined out of frustration with society, but my opinion, not based on any research or science, is that riots are probably usually started by individuals who are already predisposed to the notion of rioting. Namely, the lawless and sociopathic.
The mob mentality sets in when others, who may feel angry or frustrated as well, get the idea that most of the people around them have decided to go ahead and freak the hell out.
TenguPhule
I think its time to Officially Christen RC’s BJ nickname as “Arguing in Bad Faith”.
That or Chicken Fucker.
Tony J
drunken hausfrau @ 205 has it more or less right.
What we’ve seen spreading across the country for the last few days has nothing to do with any kind of protest or spontaneous riot. It’s just organised looting. Gangs of masked shitheads going out to cause chaos so they can steal things, because they’ve realised that if there’s enough of them, and they move quickly enough, they can get away with it.
The Police can’t handle it because it’s not confined to any one area, and it’s not aimed at any specific target. One they’ve smashed things up and set fire to the premises it’s off down the road to do it all over again while the Police and Fire Services are stuck dealing with the aftermath.
Very, very bad things are going to come of this. Cameron has his campaign issue for the next election, and in the meantime the laws applying to any kind of mass protest are going to be made even more draconian. They’re not going to let an opportunity like this go by without sucking all the juicy Police-State marrow they possibly can out of it first.
What? You think the Government trying to justify ‘austerity’ and ‘taking the State out of social services’ is going to push for a program of massive investment and job-creation in Britain’s inner-cities when they can demagogue ‘Hoodie Terror’ into a vote-getting issue? Pull the other one.
FormerSwingVoter
Iran urges restraint from UK in dealing with riots:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/2011/08/iran_chides_uk_over_riots.php
That made me chuckle. But then, seeing the response from some of the Tories to the riots, maybe they’re not that different from Qaddafi after all:
http://leninology.blogspot.com/2011/08/shoot-on-sight.html
Brachiator
@Villago Delenda Est: RE: This sounds much like Dubya’s either “with us or agin’ us” oversimplifications.
“Adversary” and “enemy” may be closer than you think (“Satan” means “adversary” in Hebrew). But again, I take your point. And other posters clearly were falling into separating the rioters into the lawless, the sociopathic, the Other. They are fellow citizens of the British. Sometimes those who seek to understand their motives still seek to totally demolish them.
But I do note the distinctions and points that you are making here.
Peggy
@burnspbesq:
This is a duplicate because I just found the reply button.
Maybe I have rushed to judgement in #38- “murder by police”, but mostly I was trying to give a synopsis of facts as reported by the police and a police commission to the Guardian. If you are willing to read through a week of Guardian reporting, you will find all the facts are accurate.
daveNYC
Except she missed the bit where the round in the radio looks like it came from a police weapon.
Villago Delenda Est
@Brachiator:
And I see your point. I think of “adversary” as a bit less harsh than “enemy”, but again, your point is well taken.
Sun Tzu’s advice is still good I think that you’ve got an edge if you understand the other guy…and yourself…going into a conflict.
Tony J
@daveNYC:
Hence, “more or less right”, and why my post was about what happened – after – the first riot sparked by the Police response to a protest about the shooting.
FWIW, I’m from Liverpool. When the Police shoot someone and immediately have a story to explain where all the bullets went, I know they’re lying.
scav
I’m personally getting another subtle clue about this event is taking place in a society that is in general economic distress and political unease, however much they wish to ignore it, in that once the riots were proved to be more than a one-off in one of “those” boroughs, the sheer number of communities that instantly are closing up shop in anticipation tonight. It’s like this semi-conscious acknowledgment that the local tinder isn’t exactly soggy. Mobs are complex things and I wouldn’t personally care to assign a single universally motivating factor to any such conflagration/congregation of people. But nahstey nahstey thuggish sociopaths that want free handsets and idle idiot teens are always with us, so I think those explanations are a wee bit unconvincing as to why everything seems to be kicking off now (instead of always).
Sly
@jl:
Forgive me, but that’s a somewhat strained conclusion to draw, and I’m certainly not going to respond by suggesting that you think Irish immigrants trying to burn black orphans to death is a perfectly reasonable response to being relegated to a permanent, disposable underclass.
The proper response is that the NYC elite shouldn’t have been fucking those immigrants where they breathe on a daily basis in the first place, and the only real way to accomplish that is to allow for the peaceable redress of grievances through democratic institutions.
One of the fundamental points of liberalism, the point of expanding participation in government and to help people defend themselves against those who are willing to fuck them where they breathe on a daily basis, is to prevent the oppressed from rising up and killing everyone around them by denying them the feeling that such actions are necessities. Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable, and all that.
The Raven
@drunken hausfrau:
The Independent Police Complaints Commission found that Duggan did not fire on the police; the bullet found in the police radio was a metal-jacketed police-issue bullet. There is speculation about a ricochet. Article.
It seems, really, unlikely that Duggan would have started a firefight, regardless of how bad a criminal he was–almost no-one picks a fight with the cops, if they can avoid it. Police always believe they have a reason for shooting and local authorities usually back them up. Doesn’t mean they’re right about it.
“Also, the looting and arson and rioting has NOTHING to do with that original shooting. It is being coordinated on Twitter and Facebook and is basically a bunch of young punks saying, “hey, come on over to the mobile phone store or the electronics store or the footlocker, and come steal a bunch of stuff!” Or “hey, come on into Croydon and let’s set things on fire! Woohoo!”
How do you know their motivations and methods of organization? Do you know any of them personally? Have you interviewed them? Do you know their families? Those are serious questions. If you “read it somewhere,” you have to look very carefully at at that somewhere.
Here’s another tile for the mosaic, video. “I asked him, ‘How many times have the police searched you?’ He said: ‘Papa, I can’t count, there’s so many times.'”
It never seems to occur to people that there is violence in depriving someone of a living, just as much as in smashing a shop window.
Joel
@Brachiator: I haven’t been following too closely, but from what I’ve heard (including clips of rioters justifying their actions to the BBC and others), these riots are closer to Vancouver than they are to Syria, Egypt, or Tunisia.
jl
@234 Sly
You are right. I was hot under the collar when I read your comment and strained a little. Thanks for your amplification.
Brachiator
@Villago Delenda Est:
I totally agree with you here, although I am a bit more partial to Miyamoto Musashi (The Book Of Five Rings) myself.
This may also be going along the lines you note, but I think that some conflicts can be avoided altogether when people understand themselves and others. Didn’t Sun Tzu have something to say about the best battle being the one that is avoided?
@Joel:
Really? Part of the background to this was a peaceful protest over the death of a person. Nothing like that in Vancouver. And there have been some heated demonstrations in the UK earlier over government policies. Again, nothing like Vancouver.
But then again, you note that you have not been following closely and are going by what you’ve heard.
Joel
@Brachiator: Were those protests met with armed resistance? Are the rioters seeking to achieve political ends? How closely have *you* been following this issue, anyways? I’m assuming about as much as I have.
someguy
I think you’re being unfair. A lot of it is organized arson, with no looting involved whatsoever. You should be ashamed of yourself to impugn the rioters this way.
FWIW, I have a substantial chunk of family who are British underclass members – lifelong dole takers. The closest family in that situation are two cousins. They get free housing, free food, free education (if they wanted it), free healthcare, and free job training. Two of the five children rebelled against living on a shitty council estate, went to university, got the hell out and made nice little middle class lives for themselves. They are pretty disgusted with their parents & siblings. The other three kids are on the dole with the parents, and working on their careers as petty criminals. They are all raving bitterly about the cuts, the primary effect is that the cousin & cousin in-law (the parents) are required within a year or so to get a part time job, so they are both working on getting classified as disabled so that they can continue to get full benefits without having to work. Otherwise their benefits have not changed significantly, or if they have it hasn’t been anything they’ve missed. I’m not very understanding of them because they’re a bunch of assholes who haven’t taken advantage of opportunities to climb up but have taken advantage of every giveaway they could get. The social security safety net is a great thing, except for how total assholes like my family can exploit it. Visiting them is always fun; with a little luck it entails a Friday night out at the pub fights. This doesn’t excuse the egregiousness of the Tory government, but I’m familiar with British underclass yobs, and there’s no excuse for them either.
Calouste
@Jack Bauer:
The underclass is a permanent fixture of British society. Dickens wrote documentaries, not novels.
Villago Delenda Est
@Brachiator:
Yes, which is how you can tell our Galtian overlords don’t follow Sun Tzu’s advice.
Tony J
@someguy:
Your snark-fu is impressive and worthy of respect. I – almost – went off on one at that.
And your extended family sounds a bit like mine. Aren’t we all just snowflakes, differing in our fleeting existance only through the arangement of our aspects? 8-)
jl
By the time the 92 Rodney King riots spread up to Hollywood, most of the trouble was middle class white youths smashing shop stores and taking cool stuff that they wanted, but did not feel like paying for.
But it would be a mistake to think of the riot as just a problem of spoiled white kids.
D-Chance.
It has nothing to do with the police. England established austerity measures. Take a poor working class on the brink, mix in your typical Limey futbol hooligans and underclass, and you have riots.
NBD. Let them have their burnt-out shell of a country. They deserve what they seemingly desire. It may have started with outrage; now, it’s “let’s have fun and burn this bitch down!”
Draylon Hogg
Police spokesmen have been on the news here this evening saying that these riots are “the worst in living memory”. Which is funny, because I’m old enough to remember Broadwater Farm in 1985; where rioters murdered PC Keith Blakelock and tried to decapitate him.
R-Jud
@Draylon Hogg: That’s kind of my husband’s attitude. “Are they hacking up people with machetes yet? Call me when they do.”
Draylon Hogg
@245
What the fuck are you talking about?
It started because of the police. They shot Duggan last Thursday and the treatment of his family incensed the local community and provoked the initial violence. Now every gang member in London has twigged to the fact that widespread disorder represents a good opportunity to loot Footlocker and Carphone Warehouse.
They found a reactivated handgun at the scene where Duggan died. Unlike your shining example of freedom, where almost anyone can acquire a real handgun; in Britain it’s nigh on impossible. If you have underworld contacts you can rent a gun, use it then return it to the pool where it will be passed on to someone else. There is a criminal industry devoted to reactivating firearms by machining new firing pins and re-rifling barrels or converting blank firing replicas so they are capable of firing live ammunition.
Brachiator
@someguy:
I understand exactly what you are saying, but the funny thing about the UK is that everything that you say here about the British underclass could also be said about elements of the overclass, including the Royal family, who receive payments from the Civil List. This kind of thing feeds seething resentment and complicates ideas about entitlements, especially in a country that long defined a gentleman as someone who did not dirty his hands with work.
Also, in the UK, there is an underclass to the underclass, e.g. the Travellers.
Draylon Hogg
@249
That is a racist comment. Travellers are an ethnic minority with a distinct culture. And most of them have a wad in their pocket big enough to choke a donkey.
snarkypsice
@drunken hausfrau:
You forgot to mention that the cop who was shot turns out to have been shot by another cop.
Probably just an oversight ;-)
drunken hausfrau
Umm, The Raven? How do I know what is being said on Twitter and Facebook here in London about the riots? I LIVE HERE. I didn’t just “read it somewhere” — it is all over the fucking news here!! They are organizing the riots on Twitter and Facebook and specifically targeting areas and stores to loot. Read pretty much anything — start with the Guardian, but also the Evening Standard, The Times, etc. Get a broad look at the news — check out the Daily Mail, too! READ what actual people in London are saying about these attacks! Consensus: it’s criminal behavior. Not fighting for a cause, just stealing, smashing, and causing mayhem. Read about the people left homeless, the people (small business owners, mostly) whose businesses are ruined.
Also, sorry — I had not seen the IPCC’s report about the bullet in the radio — it’s been a pretty busy newsday or two here, what with about 20 different areas of London being ON FIRE! And now Birmingham and Manchester, too.
The cops may have botched the arrest of Duggan, and shot him unnecessarily — and for that, there will be consequences. But it doesn’t justify the rioting and destruction that London has experienced since Saturday. Nothing does. And it hurts these already troubled communities worst of all.
KeithW
@drunken hausfrau:
There’s pretty much no evidence it’s being organised on Twitter, despite what lazy journalists say. There is, however, plenty of evidence of organisation on BlackBerry Network.
scav
Drunken Hausfrau. Just a few comments, cause I watched the beeb for a good solid while last night. Yup, lots of everyone on the news calling them hooligans, but I also watched a few (e.g. a solid two I can remember all the details of and possibly more) interviews get shut down right quickly if they suggested anything otherwise. I was struck because I’d kind of expected more integrity out of the BBC: more foolish me — it was manically hilarious watching them shut down interviews that didn’t quite go the way they expected. One interviewer even looked crestfallen when a young guy that had organized a clean-up (I think in Birmingham) expressly said he didn’t care who had made the mess rather than chime along with the leading question along the lines of condemning the youths that had done such a thing (make that 3 definite instances). The am beeb talking head was practically having a live orgasm over the thought they might bring out the water cannon: he asked nearly every person interviewed if they supported its use, no matter if it flowed from the rest of the interview or not. Things are shit and I’m not saying anything whatsoever about root causes or justifiable anythings. But there is nonetheless a media narrative being constructed and it is a pruned and simplified version of events.
chopper
@drunken hausfrau:
nice. yeah, they shot him. and killed him. that’s kind of an important detail also.
Brachiator
@Draylon Hogg:
Did you mean @249 or @251?
If you meant me, my comment about the Travellers is in no way racist. Here I was specifically referring to “underclass” with respect to how Travellers are perceived within the British class system. From the other comments I have made here, it should be clear that I don’t write about class as believing that any class is superior or inferior to any other.
It’s also clear that in the UK especially, money alone does not determine social class.
wobbly
Actually, “we” Rochesterians did riot in 1964!
Well, it was mostly “they” Rochesterians (African-Americans) who rioted, NOT over a police shooting, but over a cop siccing his German Shepherd on an unruly African- American girl. Apparently a common practice at the time,unbeknownst to me,(not African-American).
It was four days of hell and madness, BUT all of a sudden,
after the smoke cleared and the bodies were buried, Kodak started hiring African-Americans. Housing projects were built, African-American children had parents with decent jobs and decent places to live and and were able to get educated and go for their share of the political system in this city.
We have members of the school board and the city council who, as very young men, threw rocks and bottles at the cops and MAKE NO APOLOGY for that fact.
They changed my city and my life for the better, however short-lived their triumph was.
While I disapprove of riots, I cannot deny deny that they are an excellent way of gaining the attention of the elites.
With any luck, they’ll throw you a few bones.
Which we sorely need and more’s the pity.
(I am writing from Rochester, New York, not from all the other ones.)
No one of Importance
@KeithW:
To be fair, it’s not like Cameron would make the situation any better by coming back. He’s an inneffectual Tory toff like the rest of his team. What the fuck can he do about civil unrest except make it worse?
No one of Importance
@Peggy:
Only problem with that theory is that the bullets were fired from the *same* gun. So, not so much with scared cat coppers.
No one of Importance
@Jack Bauer:
“Worth noting, black kid helps guy, white kid robs him.”
Watch it again. The Black guy helping the kid is also robbing him and stops the kid from fighting the white guy back. The black man and the white man are friends and co-conspirators.
That’s why I’m dubious about this being a race-based protest. Half the looters are white as I am. This is largely about people taking the opportunity while the police are over stretched to get something for nothing. Social injustice isn’t playing a big role in most of this, however much it played a part in the original Tottenham protest about Duggan’s death.
No one of Importance
Worth reading:
Why London exploded last night
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/united-kingdom/110809/london-riots-police-david-cameron