London calling

[Prince Glittersnatch III]

This is worrying

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/blog/2011/aug/09/london-riots-day-four-live-blog?CMP=twt_gu

It was only a minor skirmish, but a potentially bad sign for community relations. Police, who have flooded the streets, were quickly on the scene when about 70 men started chasing local youths.

I wouldn't mention their ethnicity, but it seemed to be relevant. The men were white - in their 30s and 40s - and shouting that they wanted to get the "blacks" and "pakis". Lots of them seemed drunk. One man being held back by police shouted: "They're rats, they mugged my Auntie the other night."

Jay Bradley, 30, a witness, told me: "What happened here? What I just saw - everyone from this area aren't gonna have any looting.
What I saw was a couple of ethnic lads, if you can call them that, black lads, and they chased them away.  A lot of it is alcohol - I don't think the kids were doing anything. They were just on bikes and in masks. But no-one around here is going to stand for any looting. What are we supposed to do. The Co-op is closed and we're running out of food."

Not least because, as Richard Seymour points out:

I don't believe that this is just a spontaneous response to looters. When the BNP membership list was leaked, it emerged that there were a number of members scattered around the lower middle class areas, and I wouldn't be surprised if they, along with local EDL supporters, were among those out tonight. The emergence of racist vigilantism is not unique to Enfield. It's also emerged that racist Millwall fans are supposedly 'protecting' Eltham tonight. Apparently, the EDL have been marching through the area. [Update: local residents and Millwall fans both assure me that this is untrue, and that it's just locals protecting themselves. Which, if true, is a relief - but one is still uneasy about vigilantes in football gear posing as defenders of the community.]

[...]

Update: Given that there are lots of unsupported rumours flying about, I think it's important to add a couple of important qualifications to this post. A lot of the rumours going about are originating from the far right themselves - part of their propaganda about being men of action, etc. And some of them could result in people getting hurt. Naturally, I have no wish to contribute to either, so I'm just being cautious. First of all, I have heard conflicting things about the far right being involved in Enfield, but as yet no proof of this has emerged. It may well be just local racists. Guardian journalist Paul Lewis is being careful to say he only witnessed a brief skirmish (though, from the footage I've seen, it was a really nasty, scary event). Second, loads of people have been tweeting me to say it's not the EDL in Eltham. (There is some footage of what appear to be EDL being kettled there, but not the 400-strong mob that the casuals were bragging about). I'm still not okay with vigilantism, but there are degrees of danger. I'm not arguing for complacency. There are some real fascist efforts at stirring. Most of it has been kettled by the cops so far, however. So, I would bear these points in mind when you're scanning social media for updates.

http://www.bnp.org.uk/news/national/self-defence-no-offence-%E2%80%93-we-will-protect-our-communities
http://www.bnp.org.uk/news/regional/printing-new-party-recruitment-leaflet-underway-burnley



BNP is milking this for all its worth.

[Hoser McRhizzy]

Stopping in to link to a bit of analysis I'm really impressed with.  Inadequate sum-up: If you've been raised to be a consumer and not a citizen, exactly how are you supposed to dissent?  Shopocalypse Now: British riots and consumerism

Given the opportunity to take to the streets, they come out in force as consumers, not citizens. They protest against their lack of spending power, their lack of high definition TV, the meddlesome need of government to extract taxation from them for services from which (if they reach their dotage) they'll never benefit. They're the purest incarnation of our free market—consumer ideology. They're competing against the law for the best results a consumer can ever hope for—something for nothing.

And they're winning.

While pundits are onscreen in the coming weeks with the mandatory hand-wringing, and while Parliament debates the inevitable emergency police powers which will bring water cannons and maybe even rubber bullets onto the streets of London, these consumers will be at home watching it all on their new televisions, comfortably toasty in their new tracksuits. They'll re-absorb the narrative of their activity through the mediated world we created for them, a world which still contains no genuine sense of community, of productive work, of social justice, fairness or equality. But it is reality TV.

It has been said that violence is the sign language of the inarticulate. If that is true, as I believe it to be, then how much more pronounced are the violent linguistics of the forcibly muted? This violence turned inward towards the ranks from which it swelled is akin to the self-hatred of the alcoholic, beating himself up about being a drunk instead of laying off the sauce.

By what metric can we judge the behavior of these people once the nature of our society is taken into account? What transgression can we hang on them which does not originate with our own behavior, denial or neglect? Having no sense of community? Having no moral compass? Wanting what they haven't earned? Taking what does not belong to them? Exploiting the weakness of others through violence? Opportunism? Gluttony? Ignorance? Hypocrisy? Madness? Where can we draw a line that distinguishes their actions here from our collective behavior as a society both here and in countless, far-flung places?

Worth reading.  Apologies if it's already been linked elsewhere.

... they're probably searching for the evil mastermind who orchestrated the whole thing from his Blackberry.

WHY WON'T THEY LEAVE BLACKBERRY ALOOOOONE!!!?

BNP is milking this for all its worth.

The action that is needed... is more drunken naked racist white people?  :splodey:

[Cain]

Fortunately, the BNP are in something of an electoral black hole at the moment, ranting about how the hole wasn't born in the UK and so isn't British - but they totally don't hate it because it is black, oh no.

Ahem.

They lost most of their money in the 2008 financial crisis, and typically do poor when a Conservative government is in power.  They got beaten by the Greens in the last elections (who have 1 MP) and are being ideologically outflanked by UKIP, who are cornering the bitter, disappointed Tory "libertarian" and the "former neofascist now masquerading as an anti-Islam freedom fighter" crowds at the same time.

[Pope Pixie Pickle]

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peteroborne/100100708/the-moral-decay-of-our-society-is-as-bad-at-the-top-as-the-bottom/

heheh, the Telegraph agrees with me and my mummy.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Ask not what your country can do for you, ask instead whether there's any fucking point to it at all.

[Pope Pixie Pickle]

quite true p3nt

[Cramulus]

Shopocalypse Now: British riots and consumerism

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peteroborne/100100708/the-moral-decay-of-our-society-is-as-bad-at-the-top-as-the-bottom/

these were both great reads

they articulate things I've been having trouble expressing

[BabylonHoruv]

Pixie has been putting up some really good links.  Thank you.

[Prince Glittersnatch III]

Couple of government departments in the USA, Australia and Japan, more than a few UK universities and a Sky Wireless Internet IP which is quite unlike any other I have seen (and I use Sky for my own wireless internet, so I know their usual band of numbers).

What kind of departments?

[Disco Pickle]

In true internet fashion, this video has already gone viral.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkyTdhTr7PA

aaaand someone went and hilariously "translated" it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMU4XbxoXZc&feature=related

[Prince Glittersnatch III]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUxG6cHPfko&feature=related

Its also been remixed.

[Cain]

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peteroborne/100100708/the-moral-decay-of-our-society-is-as-bad-at-the-top-as-the-bottom/

heheh, the Telegraph agrees with me and my mummy.

Peter Oborne is one of my favourite journalists, and has been since his days at the Daily Mail.  He was the one willing to call the Labour government and the media "Islamaphobic" when it was fashionable to pretend 20,000 screeds a day on the subhuman untermenschen was a perfectly normal response to having to see someone in a burqa.

[BabylonHoruv]

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011/08/12/britain_sees_boston_as_antiviolence_model/

Seems the British Government are looking to Boston as a model.  I know Blight is Bostonian, does the model there look like something that could actually help keep this sort of thing from happening again?

[Cain]

The British public are still clamouring for benefits to be taken away.

Irony calling: benefits are both cheaper than putting them in prison, and spending hundreds of police hours hunting petty muggers and robbers - because, lets face it, if benefits are cut and there are no jobs, it's either stealing or starving.

In fact, if you believe that "winning" involves getting people employed, increasing revenue and decreasing resentment as well as getting people invested in their local communities, the best thing you could do is offer condition aid to businesses affected by the riots, so long as they employ more people (insurance will cover the damage anyway)...and then declare a general amnesty for every rioter who finds stable employment that allows them to stop claiming benefits (except in cases of serious violent crime). 

But you know, that's just silly, because it doesn't allow for moral outrage and hair-shirt freakery.

[Pope Pixie Pickle]

for such an irritating twat, Russel Brand hits the nail on the head with this one.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/11/london-riots-davidcameron?CMP=NECNETTXT766

and a young man in Tottenham who predicted the riot speaks in this video-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/video/2011/aug/12/i-predict-a-riot-video?CMP=twt_fd