salute tottenham
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Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Well I guess anyone with a gang-related beef is going to take an opportunity like this, when everyone's running around like headless chickens and the cops are nowhere to be seen, to settle scores - if that's what's happened here, which would hardly surprise me for Croydon.
Edit: Op Trident is investigating, quelle surprise.
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baboon2004
Darned cockwombles.
Obviously I agree with that sentiment, but where does such nihiliism come from? Seems pretty obvious - from the impression that society gives that it doesn't give a fuck about them as human beings, which is true. Political violence begets physical violence from those it is targeted against.
All of which is obv not to say that threat to life and damage to small businesses is not terrible, and the fact that the violence has been so indiscriminate is horrible. But as soon as people start othering the people who are doing this as amoral/completely non-understandable/stop granting them the right to feel pretty fucked off, you come closer to treating groups of people as sub-human, which is the problem in the first place. It's like a self-fulfilling prophecy, and then complaining when it comes true.
Edit: I'm writing a Masters dissertation about the war in the DRC right now, and it's interesting how many right-wing, rhetorical tropes to frame Africa as 'savage', replete with 'senseless violence' etc, are being virtually repeated by the media in the way it is reporting what happens here. Discourse very, VERY similar.
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Sectionfive
bandwagon house
john eden
male pale and stale
The Met don't put up all their press releases for public consumption, such is their commitment to transparency.
It is quite clear from the literature about the death of Colin Roach (in Stoke Newington Police station in 1983) and the death of Smiley Culture earlier this year that the Met have a long history of briefing the press off the record about deaths in custody.
In the case of Ian Tomlinson the media reported all sorts of lies about the officer concerned suffering under a hail of bottles. In the case of Demenzes they reported him leaping over the tube barriers.
I doubt these were official police statements, but they were part of the media management of the public's perception of the deaths. Hard to say how much the police (or individual officers) were involved with this, but you seem to be assuming that the media is entirely neutral which clearly isn't the case. As we've seen from the NOTW scandal there are some murky connections there with ex-coppers working for the press and payments being dished out left right and centre - and of course what looks like a failure to investigate phone hacking properly.
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http://kenanmalik.wordpress.com/2011/08/09/five-quick-points-about-the-riots/
I am writing a longer and more reflective piece, but in the meantime here are five quick points about the riots in London and elsewhere:
1
This is not a rerun of the inner city riots that shook Britain in the late seventies and the eighties. Those riots were a direct challenge to oppressive policing and to mass unemployment. They threatened the social fabric of Britain’s inner cities and forced the government to rethink its mechanisms of social control. Today’s riots may have made the Metropolitan police look inept, revealed politicians as out of touch and brought mayhem to some parts of London, Liverpool and Birmingham. But there is little sense that they pose a challenge to social order, in the way that the 80s riots did, or that they are in any sense ‘insurrectionary’, as Darcus Howe described those revolts. Rather today’s riots amounted to the trashing of some of the poorest areas in the city. On Friday night, when the riots began in Tottenham, there was some political content to the violence, an inchoate response to the shooting of Mark Duggan (whose death looks increasingly like a police killing rather than the outcome of an exchange of fire). By Saturday the riots had descended largely into arson and looting with little sense of political motive or cause.
2
The riots are not about race. Many on the left have seen them as a response to racist policing. Many on the right have been pouring out racist bile against ‘immigrants’. In fact race has played little role in the violence. This is not to deny that young black men continue to be the primary target of police stop and search (an issue that has been shamefully ignored in recent years). Nor is it to deny that there is a legacy of bitterness about, and resentment of, police tactics in many inner city communities. But the riots were not in any way defined by racial divisions, antagonisms or resentments.
3
The polarisation between the claim that ‘the riots are a response to unemployment and wasted lives’ and the insistence ‘the violence constitutes mere criminality’ makes little sense. There is clearly more to the riots than simple random hooliganism. But that does not mean that the riots, as many have claimed, are protests against disenfranchisement, social exclusion and wasted lives. In fact, it’s precisely because of disenfranchisement, social exclusion and wasted lives that these are not ‘protests’ in any meaningful sense, but a mixture of incoherent rage, gang thuggery and teenage mayhem. Disengaged not just from the political process (largely because politicians, especially those on the left, have disengaged from them), there is a generation (in fact more than a generation) with no focus for their anger and resentment, no sense that they can change society and no reason to feel responsible for the consequences of their actions. That is very different from suggesting that the riots were caused by, a response to, or a protest against, unemployment, austerity and the cuts.
4
We should ignore anyone who talks about what ‘the community’ wants or needs. So called ‘community leaders’ are very much part of the problem.
5
Mindless though the rioters may be, those who call for the army to be unleashed, curfews to be imposed, or ‘robust policing’ to be used, are more mindless still, and more dangerous.
I am writing a longer and more reflective piece, but in the meantime here are five quick points about the riots in London and elsewhere:
1
This is not a rerun of the inner city riots that shook Britain in the late seventies and the eighties. Those riots were a direct challenge to oppressive policing and to mass unemployment. They threatened the social fabric of Britain’s inner cities and forced the government to rethink its mechanisms of social control. Today’s riots may have made the Metropolitan police look inept, revealed politicians as out of touch and brought mayhem to some parts of London, Liverpool and Birmingham. But there is little sense that they pose a challenge to social order, in the way that the 80s riots did, or that they are in any sense ‘insurrectionary’, as Darcus Howe described those revolts. Rather today’s riots amounted to the trashing of some of the poorest areas in the city. On Friday night, when the riots began in Tottenham, there was some political content to the violence, an inchoate response to the shooting of Mark Duggan (whose death looks increasingly like a police killing rather than the outcome of an exchange of fire). By Saturday the riots had descended largely into arson and looting with little sense of political motive or cause.
2
The riots are not about race. Many on the left have seen them as a response to racist policing. Many on the right have been pouring out racist bile against ‘immigrants’. In fact race has played little role in the violence. This is not to deny that young black men continue to be the primary target of police stop and search (an issue that has been shamefully ignored in recent years). Nor is it to deny that there is a legacy of bitterness about, and resentment of, police tactics in many inner city communities. But the riots were not in any way defined by racial divisions, antagonisms or resentments.
3
The polarisation between the claim that ‘the riots are a response to unemployment and wasted lives’ and the insistence ‘the violence constitutes mere criminality’ makes little sense. There is clearly more to the riots than simple random hooliganism. But that does not mean that the riots, as many have claimed, are protests against disenfranchisement, social exclusion and wasted lives. In fact, it’s precisely because of disenfranchisement, social exclusion and wasted lives that these are not ‘protests’ in any meaningful sense, but a mixture of incoherent rage, gang thuggery and teenage mayhem. Disengaged not just from the political process (largely because politicians, especially those on the left, have disengaged from them), there is a generation (in fact more than a generation) with no focus for their anger and resentment, no sense that they can change society and no reason to feel responsible for the consequences of their actions. That is very different from suggesting that the riots were caused by, a response to, or a protest against, unemployment, austerity and the cuts.
4
We should ignore anyone who talks about what ‘the community’ wants or needs. So called ‘community leaders’ are very much part of the problem.
5
Mindless though the rioters may be, those who call for the army to be unleashed, curfews to be imposed, or ‘robust policing’ to be used, are more mindless still, and more dangerous.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
If it starts to get boring here, you could always kick things off in Sydney. I, for one, would salute you!
baboon2004
Darned cockwombles.
they have special glasses on that don't allow them to see poverty. and the relentless 'most of the youths participating are from other areas' thing is getting stupid now.
baboon2004
Darned cockwombles.
Look up the Rodney King riots, and compare. George Bush and Dan Quayle were saying exactly that afterwards.
Surely the 80s riots saw trashing of poor areas too?? And I'll bet when they were happening, lots of people were syaing the same thing too - 'no political motive', 'senseless' etc. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
well here they are doing exactly that
posing a challenge to the police
to show they dont care about them and will do as they please
in the face of the riot squads
this is a riot about the police
ppl keep forgetting
doesnt mean their actions arent that of scum however
no matter how justified the cause is
pattycakes_
Can turn naughty
realize this has been said already but it just sunk in - how the police dealt with this compared to the student riots and g20.
mistersloane
heavy heavy monster sound
Yeah I've crossed a few people off in recent days.
What babs is saying is right : "feral rats" (quote, shop owner, Liz Pilgrim, BBC website).
Feral rats. Affirmative Shopping.
baboon2004
Darned cockwombles.
I think it's quite useful, to realise where people really stand on things, as opposed to in theory. All I personally ask is for people to apply the same tools of thought/discourse to this as they would to events anywhere else in the world.
If I hear the phrase 'opportunisitc looting' one more time I think I will do some opportunistic looting. People taking their thought patterns direct from Sky news. Scary.