Riots in London

[gunsmith]

the news reports I read last night suggested that the dead drug dealer didn't have a gun - that it was a cop who shot at him and the other cops thought the dealer was shooting, FUBAR'ed.

I knew a lot of young brits on the dole in the 90's when I lived in Ireland, welfare is a lot different over there you can save up enough to buy a house if you work off the books ( like everyone does ) take vacations, travel to other countries ... They were very
entitled ( to say the least ) freaking spoiled rotten. Its one of the reasons I really want to close every American mil base overseas, let them pay for their own defense-by us paying for it we prop up their welfare state when we have true unfortunates dying of inanity & deprivation right here

[Iain]

gunsmith - he linked students rioting over tuition fees in London to the Arab Spring movement. Completely unrelated, but apparently Europe was on fire. Amusing that you'd cite the old warhorse Darcus Howe on anything really.

It's fun being here at the moment, the politicians are all blaming each other. There's a bit of wailing and gnashing of teeth about social conditions or the abolition of corporal punishment, depends a bit on which politicians you are blaming as to which side you pick there. Next week it will mostly have been forgotten.

The kids had no agenda, they did it because they could. Every city in every country in the world could experience that on any given day, the mob can temporarily rule. I'm very wary of people trying to draw far reaching conclusions about the state of society. This has happened before, Britain is a lot less riot-y than it used to be. It's summer, there was a minor flashpoint in Tottenham and copycats who saw others getting away with it. The police will have to figure out what to do about small, well organised groups who hit and run in future. That's probably about all that will come out of it.

Libya, the Irish and the French are all analysing it in great detail, making grand conclusions. You guys might as well join in too, hell, we do it to you and it'll probably amuse me.

gunsmith - he did have a gun. It wasn't fired, but if he so much as put a hand on it most cops would put at least two rounds in him. Truth will out there.

[cassandra and sara's daddy]

his own friends acknowledge that "he was into something"

[lee n. field]

when we have true unfortunates dying of inanity

??

[Perd Hapley]

The catalyzing event does seem to be displeasure over a shootout between the police and a black criminal father of four, though.

FTFY 

[zxcvbob]

true unfortunates dying of inanity

That's gotta be a horrible way to go.

[MicroBalrog]

Every city in every country in the world could experience that on any given day, the mob can temporarily rule.

Do you feel yourself on the verge of flipping out and looting a store, only restrained, perhaps, by your fear of the Bobby?

I certainly don't.

[Iain]

Do you feel yourself on the verge of flipping out and looting a store, only restrained, perhaps, by your fear of the Bobby?

I certainly don't.

You deny the existence of the mob? It's not made up of me, I wouldn't be there. Everywhere, there are people who would, particularly people who would take advantage of looting. There's nothing unusual about London or Manchester, nothing that couldn't happen in Jerusalem, New York or Beijing. In the latter though, they're a bit more likely to get run over by tanks.

[MicroBalrog]

I think that the threat of the mob is grossly overstated.

There's a certain amount of people who will do that, no doubt. They're in a minority anywhere, Jerusalem or London.

I think there is a need to separate two things:

1. The social reasons for this event (Thatcherite policies, Cameron's cuts, the welfare state, capitalism, etc. etc.). On these there can be differences of opinion.

2. The tools to deal with this event as it has occured. These have been worked out by civilization already. Guns, police batons, and water hoses. Use them often and in an organized and determined fashion and it will be the non-problem it really is.

[Matthew Carberry]

2. The tools to deal with this event as it has occured. These have been worked out by civilization already. Guns, police batons, and water hoses. Use them often and in an organized and determined fashion and it will be the non-problem it really is.

You left off tear gas.

In my day it wasn't a riot til the snot ran in rivers.

[gunsmith]

That's gotta be a horrible way to go.

quite an inane way to go, I meant insanity.

[gunsmith]

gunsmith - he linked students rioting over tuition fees in London to the Arab Spring movement. Completely unrelated, but apparently Europe was on fire. Amusing that you'd cite the old warhorse Darcus Howe on anything really.

No, you're wrong. the students rioting over the tuition fees much like the idiots protesting here identify with the Arab spring. If you look at any radlib protest you'll find folks spouting the usual crud about Palestine, Israel etc , I've been to plenty of protest. I was an anarchist punk rocker when I was young. As an adult I've been a counter protester & I would see all the usual suspects. The same folks that organized tuition fee protest are the very same that organize 90% of all big protest. Here they call themselves ANWSER http://www.answercoalition.org/national/index.html
but really they're most likely "workers world" & a few other of the abc radlib orgs...I put the Darcus Howe guy up there because he was saying that the uprising in the middle east is the same as the riots in London-so its not Glenn Beck saying that, Glenn Beck just shows his viewers people like Darcus Howe saying that.

[zxcvbob]

quite an inane way to go, I meant insanity.

I like "inane" better   My imagination can run with it.

[roo_ster]

You left off tear gas.

In my day it wasn't a riot til the snot ran in rivers.

I think I might cry...for joy.

[Hawkmoon]

The kids had no agenda, they did it because they could. Every city in every country in the world could experience that on any given day, the mob can temporarily rule. I'm very wary of people trying to draw far reaching conclusions about the state of society.

But it IS a commentary on the state of society -- but perhaps not on the state of politics. The same thing happened (on a smaller scale) a few days ago at the Wisconsin State Fair -- mobs of "youths" began attacking fair-goers. I can't find it now but the reports I saw at the time indicated that the attackers were blacks and that they were singling out whites to assault.

Regrettably, as if we needed proof that technology is always a two-edged weapon, we're going to be seeing a lot more of such "incidents" as the economy continues to erode and more "youths" latch onto orgainizing these events through the "social media."

[Strings]

>In my day it wasn't a riot til the snot ran in rivers.<

Wait... there were RIVERS of you?

[Jim147]

>In my day it wasn't a riot til the snot ran in rivers.<

Wait... there were RIVERS of you?

River?



jim

[Iapetus]

Considering that Caribbean and African Blacks are roughly 2% of the UK's population, but seem to be represented at about 25-50% of the photos I've been looking at, I'd say there's something to the supposition.

I suspect that as it goes on there's been more and more opportunistic rioters/looters from a wider swath of the UK's population though.

The catalyzing event does seem to be displeasure over a shootout between the police and a black criminal though.

On the other hand, most of that 2% is concentrated in London and the other big cities.  About 25-50% of the people I've seen lamenting what has happened and criticising the police for not coming down harder on the riots are also black.

And there was one white rioter interviewed briefly on the news yesterday who say "we have to riot" because "the Poles are taking all the jobs".  (When asked how looting and burning down shops would help, he just said "that's for them to solve").  Fortunately, he was stupid enough to admit to rioting on national TV without wearing any sort of mask, so with luck the police will be paying him a visit before long.


Edited to add: also, the Telegraph article is wrong on at least one point.  The police originally claimed that Mark Duggan fired on them, hitting one officer, before they returned fire.  Now they have admitted that he didn't shoot, and the hit policeman was struck by a police bullet.  The last I heard was that they found a concealed handgun (wrapped up in a sock) inside the taxi, but it had not been drawn.  Now that could be true, and maybe the police could see him trying to draw it, but given the police's record of shooting people for "being on the subway while foreign", or "being in posession of an unlicensed chair leg", and then BSing about what happened, I'd cautious about believeing even that.

[Iain]

Gunsmith - there's no link, other than that there was a social media aspect, which is what people are saying. Whatever you think of the motives of the Arab Spring movements, people have grievances and they organised in a certain way. Here, people had desires to loot, and they organised in that same way. Student tuition - again, whether you agree with their motives or not, I'm somewhat sympathetic to a generation of children who've been told that in the main their education is going to cost them 20-30x more than mine did, and a lot more than the free tuition that the members of this government, and the last one, got. Particularly when those who got free uni tuition and now charging for it include Eton educated David Cameron, privately educated Tony Blair (started under last government) and most of the cabinet went to Oxford or Cambridge with no tuition, something that will now cost £9,000p/a. Those politicians have also devalued a university education by massively expanding Higher Education to try and get up to 50% of school leavers into university, a ploy intended to reduce youth unemployment statistics.

But, I also happen to think that the country can't afford it any more, and that the concept of back pay tuition fees to people who have benefited over the last 40 years should have been explored. These kids have been told that the old argument that paying back through tuition through taxes now isn't valid for them, but it is and was for everyone born before 1979/80. There's a lot there for the youth to get annoyed about in the ways they always have done, without it being some grand Islamist/Marxist co-conspiracy.

Hawkmoon - my suspicion over people drawing conclusions on this is twofold. One - an axe to grind 'the welfare state did it', 'me first society did it' when we actually have no particular clue right now, and it seems those being arrested include people from professional jobs. Two - everyone will rush to a diagnosis, and it's forgotten about next week. Oh and thirdly, and I'm being careful how I say this, because it doesn't apply to anything said here - there is no small amount of racist commentary going on too. As Iapetus points out, relatively poor young urban blacks living in most of the areas hit constitute a fair higher percentage of the demographic than they do in the rest of the UK. I watched the video gunsmith put up of Darcus Howe, and then watched the comments streaming in underneath it. Depressing is not the word.

Iapetus - I saw that chap too - "gotta do it, there's all these Poles coming over and taking our jobs". Same as it ever was, with less monkey and Paki "jokes".

[agricola]

Edited to add: also, the Telegraph article is wrong on at least one point.  The police originally claimed that Mark Duggan fired on them, hitting one officer, before they returned fire.  Now they have admitted that he didn't shoot, and the hit policeman was struck by a police bullet.  The last I heard was that they found a concealed handgun (wrapped up in a sock) inside the taxi, but it had not been drawn.  Now that could be true, and maybe the police could see him trying to draw it, but given the police's record of shooting people for "being on the subway while foreign", or "being in posession of an unlicensed chair leg", and then BSing about what happened, I'd cautious about believeing even that.

With respect, the Police have never claimed that.  If you look at the official statements that were put out, none of them state that, it was papers sexing up the much blander statements of the IPCC and Met (admittedly possibly with the benefit of individual officers spinning them a line off the record). 

[Jocassee]

I'm very wary of people trying to draw far reaching conclusions about the state of society.

I understand what you mean completely.

[Bogie]

1) People are angry. They may not know completely why, but they are angry.
 
2) People in large numbers are stupid. Take the collective IQ, and for a small group, take 10% off of it... For a bigger group, take 25% off... Add loud noises, a bit of booze, and the opportunity of getting a free big-screen TV that you can tuck under your arm and walk home with, and you can cut 50%...
 
US cities are going to come unhinged if welfare is cut.
 

[gunsmith]

Gunsmith - there's no link, other than that there was a social media aspect, which is what people are saying. Whatever you think of the motives of the Arab Spring movements, people have grievances and they organised in a certain way. Here, people had desires to loot, and they organised in that same way. Student tuition - again, whether you agree with their motives or not, I'm somewhat sympathetic to a generation of children who've been told that in the main their education is going to cost them 20-30x more than mine did, and a lot more than the free tuition that the members of this government, and the last one, got. Particularly when those who got free uni tuition and now charging for it include Eton educated David Cameron, privately educated Tony Blair (started under last government) and most of the cabinet went to Oxford or Cambridge with no tuition, something that will now cost £9,000p/a. Those politicians have also devalued a university education by massively expanding Higher Education to try and get up to 50% of school leavers into university, a ploy intended to reduce youth unemployment statistics.

But, I also happen to think that the country can't afford it any more, and that the concept of back pay tuition fees to people who have benefited over the last 40 years should have been explored. These kids have been told that the old argument that paying back through tuition through taxes now isn't valid for them, but it is and was for everyone born before 1979/80. There's a lot there for the youth to get annoyed about in the ways they always have done, without it being some grand Islamist/Marxist co-conspiracy.

Hawkmoon - my suspicion over people drawing conclusions on this is twofold. One - an axe to grind 'the welfare state did it', 'me first society did it' when we actually have no particular clue right now, and it seems those being arrested include people from professional jobs. Two - everyone will rush to a diagnosis, and it's forgotten about next week. Oh and thirdly, and I'm being careful how I say this, because it doesn't apply to anything said here - there is no small amount of racist commentary going on too. As Iapetus points out, relatively poor young urban blacks living in most of the areas hit constitute a fair higher percentage of the demographic than they do in the rest of the UK. I watched the video gunsmith put up of Darcus Howe, and then watched the comments streaming in underneath it. Depressing is not the word.

Iapetus - I saw that chap too - "gotta do it, there's all these Poles coming over and taking our jobs". Same as it ever was, with less monkey and Paki "jokes".

So, when English Socialist claim that they are organizing in the middle east, & then they claim they are organizing protest against tuition fee's they are simply blowing smoke? Sure they use facebook/twitter but who doesn't? They seem to be a bit better at using social media then the conservatives do but that doesn't mean they are not organizing protest here & in the UK & the middle east, look at the "peace flotilla" that's a hodgepodge of the usual suspects, ANSWER,Code Pink, & all the various ABCD "revolutionary groups"

[230RN]

Bogie said,

2) People in large numbers are stupid. Take the collective IQ, and for a small group, take 10% off of it... For a bigger group, take 25% off... Add loud noises, a bit of booze, and the opportunity of getting a free big-screen TV that you can tuck under your arm and walk home with, and you can cut 50%...

You are merely "popularizing" the long-standing Terry's Law of Reciprocity of Group Intelligence, to wit:

"The reciprocal of total group intelligence is the sum of the reciprocals of each individual's intelligence."

That is,

1 / Total Intelligence  = 1 / Intelligence 1 + 1 / Intelligence 2 + 1 / Intelligence 3 + 1 / Intelligence N...

This is similar to the law of Resistors in parallel:

1 / Total Resistance  = 1 / Resistance 1 + 1 / Resistance 2 + 1 / Resistance 3 + 1 / Resistance N...

Just as Total Resistance decreases as the number of paths for the current to flow increases, Total Intelligence decreases as the number of paths for stupidity to flow increases.

And the same corollaries apply:

(1)  Total Resistance (Intelligence) cannot be greater than the smallest Resistance (Intelligence).

(2)   As any Resistance (Intelligence), regardless of value, is added, the Total Resistance (Intelligence) must decrease.

(3)  As any Resistance (Intelligence) is added, the total Power possible increases.

Et cetera... consult any electrical handbook.

Note that for only two Intelligences, the equation can be simplified to the "product over the sum" formula *, that is,

Total Resistance =  (Resistance 1 X Resistance 2) / (Resistance 1 + Resistance 2)

and similarly, for Intelligence,

Total Intelligence =  (Intelligence 1 X Intelligence 2) / (Intelligence 1 + Intelligence 2)

This rubric also explains a lot of what goes on with various internet boards.

Respectfully submitted,

Terry, 230RN

* REF:
http://www.tpub.com/content/armyordnance/Od16338/Od163380090.htm

[gunsmith]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/blog/2010/nov/10/demo-2010-student-protests-live

left wing UK newspaper says "anarchist/socialist" protesting tuition hikes, I wonder how Glenn Beck got them to say this??

And here too http://www.swp.org.uk/
Glenn Beck is forcing the socialist workers party UK to organize both protest over police racism during the riots and also in support of Egyptian/Arab spring.

Who knew how powerful Glenn Beck is, he makes the commies unite with the islamofascist - he is forcing them to work together! how evil is he?