salute tottenham

[baboon2004]

Should've qualified that statement, true. I meant that you don't see middle class people looting JD Sports, stealing in such an immediate way, because their theft is more subtle, but equally theft. So, yep, what you say is true

This conjecture strikes me as completely unfounded. As Mr.Tea's little anecdote suggests even, or especially, those who are well-off and materially secure nevertheless steal out of sheer greed or criminal energy. Our current economic system, which really amounts to an institutionalised system of large-scale theft, encourages such ruthless and anti-social behaviour. I don't see any difference between a MIT-educated Goldman & Sachs banker enriching himself at the expense of others and any one of the London looters indiscriminately stealing from the big chain stores and small private businesses. If anything the latter causes lesser damage but I don't have sympathy for either. I'm also not interested in uncovering the alleged underlying socioeconomic causes for these riots. Rather, from a kind of Shakespearean view, I grasp these events as merely one of many manifestations of the general disorder and corruption of our times.

 

[Ulala]

I was reading this http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/images/0747552509/ref=dp_image_0?ie=UTF8&n=266239&s=books last week (recommended, btw) and being a book about hip hop and LA, the LA riots are discussed. I was particularly drawn to this passage:

"In fact, though Rodney King's name was the rallying cry that inspired the hurling of the first bricks and stones, the riot had been waiting to happen for some time. Like the Watts uprising 27 years before, it was just waiting for the spark.

For some, it was just a sense of release. Kokane told me how much fun it was to be there, tearing up the place. 'Oh shoot,' he laughed, like it was the funniest time of his life. 'I was doing a gang of looting. All of it got lost, but I got a gang of shit.'

'I loved everything that was going on,' Ice Cube said. 'It was bad that some people got hurt, but it was definitely a statement, and it seems like the only thing America hears is violence and destruction. If black folks would have just marched, that would have just been on the news for 30 seconds.'

'It wasn't just the black people that was looting. There was more Mexicans than black people,' says Kokane, the happy rioter. His impression is right: 51 per cent of those arrested for rioting over those six days classified themselves as Hispanic. The Watts riot had been contained in a relatively small area; this time the sense of rage was far more widespread, both geographically and ethnically."

Lots of interesting and apposite points therein, not least that Kokane, who was a rapper of reasonable note - certainly not in need of material goods - states that he enjoyed looting. I don't think that the goods obtained by the looting is really the goal of the act - it's the smashing, the insurrection, the sheer visceral thrill of the wrong and the accompanying 'fuck you'.

 

[owengriffiths]

Coming from this side of the water its interesting to see all the looting, thats almost unheard of when it comes to riots over here. Was there much looting that happened in Paris a few years ago?

 

[Mr. Tea]

Should've qualified that statement, true. I meant that you don't see middle class people looting JD Sports, stealing in such an immediate way, because their theft is more subtle, but equally theft. So, yep, what you say is true

Hang on a sec - could you just recap what middle-class people you're talking about here, and what it is exactly "they're" (we're) stealing? Is every single middle-class person who's had a university education in that position precisely because someone else is unemployed or in jail or whatever? I don't think society is quite such a zero-sum game as you suggest.

Edit: I'm not talking about bankers and stockbrokers here - let's say teachers, lecturers, (NHS) doctors, whatever.

 

[zhao]

Come on, who "needs" a brand new pair of Nikes, or an iPhone, or a massive flatscreen TV? Let's not pretend we're talking about the starving masses ransacking bakeries.

sorry if this has already been posted, as i have not finished reading the entire thread, but this from a friend of mine:

Adam Smith answered that argument back in the 18th Century, when he identifed the phenomenon of "relative poverty"...

"By necessaries I understand not only the commodities which are indispensably necessary for the support of life, ...but whatever the custom of the country renders it indecent for creditable people, even of the lowest order, to be without... Custom... has rendered leather shoes a necessary of life in England. The poorest creditable person of either sex would be ashamed to appear in public without them." (- The Wealth of Nations)

Consumer culture has basically expanded the idea of relative poverty to include brand name shoes and plasma TVs.

and from another:

ask any of them why they rushed JD sports and they will tell "man's don't get gal in busted trainers". in others words if you aint got the latest 200 pounds foot wear on it's like your barely a human being.

 

[Sectionfive]

Coming from this side of the water its interesting to see all the looting, thats almost unheard of when it comes to riots over here. Was there much looting that happened in Paris a few years ago?

I think there was looting when the pension age protests turned nasty last year.

 

[muser]

I really dont understand the obsession with calling all of this "criminality" of course its fucking criminality people are burning down houses and robbing shops.

All the EMA\cuts stuff is politcised bullshit aswell, it also is effectively avoiding any discussion on what really creates/has created this mindset.

 

[muser]

I reckon this is all directly related to napster

 

[FairiesWearBoots]

sorry if this has already been posted, as i have not finished reading the entire thread, but this from a friend of mine:



and from another:

exactly - they just want new creps, innit

(I can understand the desire for new sneakers)

 

[IdleRich]

IPPC says Duggan did not fire.

Mark Duggan did not fire a shot at police officers before they killed him, the IPCC said on Tuesday.

Releasing the initial findings of ballistics tests, the police watchdog said a CO19 firearms officer fired two bullets and a bullet which was lodged in a police radio is "consistent with being fired from a police gun".

One theory, not confirmed by the IPCC, is that the bullet became lodged in the radio from a ricochet or after passing through Duggan.

Duggan, 29, was killed by armed officers last Thursday in Ferry Lane, Tottenham, north London, after they stopped the minicab he was travelling in.

The IPCC said Duggan was carrying a loaded gun, but it had no evidence the weapon had been fired and tests were continuing.

The officer who fired the fatal shots has been removed from firearms duties, which is standard procedure, pending the IPCC investigation.

Officers from the Met's Operation Trident and SCD 11 accompanied by officers from the Met's Specialist Firearms Command (CO19), stopped a silver Toyota Estima people carrier minicab in Ferry Lane, close to Tottenham Hale tube station to carry out the arrest. Duggan, a passenger in the mini-cab, was killed by a single gun shot wound to the chest. He also received a second gunshot wound to his right bicep.
He was pronounced dead at the scene at 6.41pm.

The IPCC's statement said that the bullet lodged in the MPS radio is a "jacketed round". This is a police issue bullet and is "consistent with having been fired from a [police] Heckler and Koch MP5".

The non-police firearm found at the scene was a converted BBM Bruni self loading pistol. The handgun was found to have a "bulleted cartridge" in the magazine, which is being subject to further forensic tests.

 

[FairiesWearBoots]

I'm not surprised - but it doesnt mean he didnt draw for his gun though?

surely armed police should have shoulder cams/helmet cams to show transparency in this sort of volatile situation?

 

[Mr. Tea]

 

[vimothy]

Kicking off here tonight...

 

[grizzleb]

This is the result of social problems that have been building up in this country for a couple of generations.

The so called underclass have effectively formed a scapegoat that is entirely acceptable for the political classes to deploy as it doesn't form around racial lines, and exploits some of the worst tropes about 'deserving' and 'undeserving' poor that should have been left to rot, where they belong, in the days of the poor law.

Yes, this is 'criminal' activity, and it's often justified (or not rather) by participants in crude terms of boredom, lack of money, bare anger, etc.

To take this at face value is to ignore that social/political factor do have influence people's lives. These people often can't put words to this, or really even have any critical framework to view their situation. Yes it's shitty behaviour, but it's just the eruption of violence from an area of society that has been cast as not worthy of dealing with for the last 30 years.

Fair enough, be angry at what's gone on, but I doubt most people on here have grown up in a fucking waste shithole where every second person is on smack and everyone at school is always brawling; everyone's parents are alkies or junkies. These impoverished places really are fucking shitholes...

Who bothers to take seriously what these people say? They are inarticulate and don't vote so they just get ignored. But it doesn't take a genius to see their conditions are shit. And if you call people scum for 20 years, it's no surprise that they live up to that expectation. Just chuck them onto the streets I suppose, that should do the trick.

 

[Mr. Tea]

surely armed police should have shoulder cams/helmet cams to show transparency in this sort of volatile situation?

And because it would make an excellent late-night Channel 5 show.

 

[IdleRich]

"I'm not surprised - but it doesnt mean he didnt draw for his gun though?"

Well they don't specifically say that he didn't but there is nothing whatsoever in that statement to suggest that he did so it seems a bit strange to take that line. Especially since there was a bullet which almost hit the police and which appears to have been fired by... the police.

 

[zhao]

exactly - they just want new creps, innit

(I can understand the desire for new sneakers)

but the point is that while not life or death, the desire for new sneaks is not nearly as frivolous as it seems in the context.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Especially since there was a bullet which almost hit the police and which appears to have been fired by... the police.

Yeah, I wanna know how this happened. Putting aside the more important matter of what happened to Duggan, there's some almost comically gross incompetence going on there, surely?

 

[vimothy]

Well they don't specifically say that he didn't but there is nothing whatsoever in that statement to suggest that he did so it seems a bit strange to take that line.

But how could the IPCC possibly infer that from the ballistic tests that they have just reported on? The statement it doesnt mean he didnt draw for his gun though? is completely consistent with the IPCC thing you quoted upthread. That Duggan didn't fire at the police does not mean that he didn't draw his gun. Logically, that's entirely correct.

In fact, no one even knows if the police ever claimed that he did. The articles that are the source of this rumour do not attribute it to the police (and one Sky journalist whose twitter feed I've been following was saying days ago that the police never claimed that Duggan fired on them).

 

[vimothy]

Market Street, Manchester, right now: