I predict a riot!!!

[Totally_Baffled]

OK - looks like this thread has covered the reasons. What should be done in the short and long term to try and address this issue?

Time seems to be short with PO related economic calamity getting ever closer?

Or is just too late, and society will just turn to more draconian/harsh rules laws and punishments to'manage' persistent riots?

Seems to me that putting kids off gun/gang culture, taking education seriously and getting rid of the culture of materialism and consumerism is going to be very difficult, particularly in the short term.

[Little John]

OK - looks like this thread has covered the reasons. What should be done in the short and long term to try and address this issue?

Time seems to be short with PO related economic calamity getting ever closer?

Or is just too late, and society will just turn to more draconian/harsh rules laws and punishments to'manage' persistent riots?

Seems to me that putting kids off gun/gang culture, taking education seriously and getting rid of the culture of materialism and consumerism is going to be very difficult, particularly in the short term.

The future will be some form of socialism or a return to overt serfdom. I can't see a middle way, given the extremity of what is coming down the pipe. Or, rather, the "middle way" is what we have more or less had for the last century or so due to an excess of resources.

We are slaves, no more than our ancesters or, indeed, people alive today in less fortunate parts of the world. The only difference is that we have been given pretty ornaments to place in front of the bars of our cages in order that we might forget that they surround us. However, as times get tougher, these ornaments are beginning to be taken away and we're getting to see the bars again At which point, we will be reminded of who and what we really are.

[UndercoverElephant]

OK - looks like this thread has covered the reasons. What should be done in the short and long term to try and address this issue?

Time seems to be short with PO related economic calamity getting ever closer?

Or is just too late, and society will just turn to more draconian/harsh rules laws and punishments to'manage' persistent riots?

Seems to me that putting kids off gun/gang culture, taking education seriously and getting rid of the culture of materialism and consumerism is going to be very difficult, particularly in the short term.

It's too late. These kids are just a product of a society which is itself rotten to the core, and devoid of any real ethical standards. There's absolutely nothing strategic to be done about any of it. We can't fix the system, but this doesn't matter because it is going to disintegrate anyway.

I think we have to go through a period of anarchy/chaos, during which most people's ideas about society, politics and the future will have to be radically re-assessed. There will have to be a lot of public debate about what is to be done, and the outcome of that process is anybody's guess.

Ultimately, there has to a re-writing of the social contract between government and the people. These kids have been disenfranchised - they have no future, and therefore there is no reason for them to play by the rules society lays down. The only way to get them back on board - to re-unify society - is to re-arrange things so they do believe that they have a future. This will necessarily involve a transfer of wealth away from the people who have benefited from the old system - i.e. the banks/bankers, the giant corporations, the people who ended up owning 20 properties by MEWing existing properties for the deposit on the next one, etc....

Ludwig seems to think that once civilisation as we know it starts to break down that we will be on a one-way journey back to the Stone Age. I remain hopeful that after an initial period of shock and confusion as people's illusions about what is going on in the world are totally shattered, there may be an opportunity to implement reforms that are unimaginable right now because most people don't understand why they are necessary.

IMO.

[jonny2mad]

When all the analysis has come and gone, this is what we are left with.

THE RIOTERS PRAYER

Our father, who art in prison,
My mum knows not his name,
Thy Riots come, read it in the Sun,
In Birmingham, as it is in London,
Give us this day our Welfare bread & forgive us our looting, as we're happy to loot those who defend stuff against us,
Lead us not into employment but deliver us free housing,
For thine is the teles, the Burberry & the Barcardi, forever and ever...
Innit !!!!

More middle class right wing bollox.

So far we've seen a student, soldier, care worker and classroom assistant amongst the rioters but no doubt its easier to blame the poor/Jews/blacks/Poles/young.....anyone who isn't us.

if you have 20,000 black people rioting and they start the riot, and its started because they are annoyed that a black guy got shot , and 100 white people join in I'd still call that a black riot .
if your a newspaper your going to run a story on the millionaires daughter or the organic chef because they buck the trend. Thousands of story's about specific black rioters a) isn't that news worthy b) doesn't support the main social meme that multiculturalism is great c) even if its true will get you called a racist

[eatyourveg]

When all the analysis has come and gone, this is what we are left with.

THE RIOTERS PRAYER

Our father, who art in prison,
My mum knows not his name,
Thy Riots come, read it in the Sun,
In Birmingham, as it is in London,
Give us this day our Welfare bread & forgive us our looting, as we're happy to loot those who defend stuff against us,
Lead us not into employment but deliver us free housing,
For thine is the teles, the Burberry & the Barcardi, forever and ever...
Innit !!!!

More middle class right wing bollox.

So far we've seen a student, soldier, care worker and classroom assistant amongst the rioters but no doubt its easier to blame the poor/Jews/blacks/Poles/young.....anyone who isn't us.

if you have 20,000 black people rioting and they start the riot, and its started because they are annoyed that a black guy got shot , and 100 white people join in I'd still call that a black riot .
if your a newspaper your going to run a story on the millionaires daughter or the organic chef because they buck the trend. Thousands of story's about specific black rioters a) isn't that news worthy b) doesn't support the main social meme that multiculturalism is great c) even if its true will get you called a racist

I do believe you are correct there J2M, I was just going to say that JSD seems to have a bad case of PCness.

[biffvernon]

He'll be doing a David Starkey next and saying that white has become black.

[jonny2mad]

Looking at the pictures Ive seen of the rioters quite a few of the whites look like wiggers, I don't think they all do and a lot of the street styles are pretty general so its hard to tell, But starkey is right lots of dodgy white people have black ghetto gang-bangers as their role models .

He seems to equate black culture with violent criminal culture that isn't entirely fair because you have different strands in a culture and not all black people are criminals, like not all Sicilians are in the mafia, but the mafia is quite a big aspect of Sicily and is part of Sicilian culture

[biffvernon]

not all black people are criminals

Well I'm very glad to hear it.

[biffvernon]

Meanwhile, in San Francisco, mobile phones were shut down last night to hinder attempts or organise a demo about the killing of a man by the police.

The operators of the Bay Area Rapid Transit subway system temporarily shut down cell service last night in four downtown San Francisco stations to interfere with a protest over a shooting by a BART police officer, a spokesman for the system said today.

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20091 ... z1UtWIaCV7

This affair seems to be gaining traction, with confusion about who actually pulled the plug and a lot of folk cross about it.

See for example this from the Electronic Frontier Foundation: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/08/b ... -francisco

And it has led to threats of hacking the BART system:

BART's move to prevent a disruptive protest Thursday by temporarily interrupting wireless cell phone service in BART stations has provoked further protests and a threat by hackers to take down the BART website today.

The hacker protest group "Anonymous" announced a series of actions shortly after reports surfaced that BART temporarily suspended cell phone service in several downtown San Francisco stations Thursday to make protest organizing more difficult.

In a posting on its website, Anonymous claims that they are already engaged in a phone, email and fax campaign to disrupt BART's operations, that there will be a live protest in the Civic Center BART station Monday at 5 p.m., and that they will remove BART's website for six hours beginning at noon today.

http://sfappeal.com/news/2011/08/barts- ... hreats.php

[biffvernon]

Anonymous, the online hacktivist group, has released thousands of names, email addresses, home addresses and phone numbers believed to be from myBart.org, an independent site that uses BART’s (San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit) open data services.

The hacking is part of a carefully planned effort by Anonymous to bring BART to its knees in retaliation for its shutdown of cell phone service Thursday night at some of its stations to disrupt planned demonstrations over a police shooting.
Anonymous has posted a list of all the names and addresses on a miscellaneous website (we won’t currently be linking to) and also included the following message

Anonymous issued a press release on Saturday claiming it would:

Begin a “Black Fax and E-Mail Bomb action”, where it would fill every inbox and fax machine at BART with thousands of copies of its message claiming the outage was unacceptable. A list of those email addresses just been posted to Pastebin, a site commonly used by hackers to share text anonymously.
It would remove BART’s website for exactly six hours. Intended to be twice as long as BART shut off cell phones for. This has yet to materialize.
A “physical protest” will take place at the Civic Center Bart Station at 5PM Pacific Time. BART has issued a statement warning users of possible disruption to its train services on the day.

http://thenextweb.com/insider/2011/08/1 ... -released/


It strikes me that this is a smarter way to protest about a police shooting than some methods we know of.

[JavaScriptDonkey]

if you have 20,000 black people rioting and they start the riot, and its started because they are annoyed that a black guy got shot , and 100 white people join in I'd still call that a black riot .
if your a newspaper your going to run a story on the millionaires daughter or the organic chef because they buck the trend. Thousands of story's about specific black rioters a) isn't that news worthy b) doesn't support the main social meme that multiculturalism is great c) even if its true will get you called a racist

Who mentioned colour? I'm pretty sure 3/4 of the cases I mentioned were black anyway. Hardly surprising for London.

I was pointing out that the modern social pariah is 'benefit people'. I wonder which group will get the blame next decade?

[Ludwig]

The future will be some form of socialism or a return to overt serfdom. I can't see a middle way, given the extremity of what is coming down the pipe. Or, rather, the "middle way" is what we have more or less had for the last century or so due to an excess of resources.

You're assuming that there must emerge some kind of new system. If such a system emerges, I think it will only be after a long period of chaos on a scale most people today can't, or daren't, imagine.

What will immediately succeed the current system will not be a new system, it will be anarchy. After a while, it will settle into a very slightly more stable, but still highly unstable, situation of local "governments" led by warlords.

Read "Collapse" by Jared Diamond. This is what ALWAYS happens when societies collapse.

We are slaves, no more than our ancesters or, indeed, people alive today in less fortunate parts of the world. The only difference is that we have been given pretty ornaments to place in front of the bars of our cages in order that we might forget that they surround us.

Sorry Steve but I regard that view as self-indulgent. We are not slaves. We are not perfectly free, but who ever was?

Our generations have suffered far less than most in the past and to call ourselves "slaves" is to dishonor the memory of all the people who have suffered from real political oppression.

I'm afraid I think your views lack historical perspective. It's academic to argue about whether we live in "cages". If we like the cages we're in, what the hell is there to complain about?

To argue that total freedom is the one absolute good is abstract nonsense, and is simply a manifestation of the need of liberal atheists to believe in some kind of absolute good in the absence of religious values.

There is no absolute good. At least not that corresponds to a particular, exclusive ideal. The ultimate good is the insight and self-sacrifice that come from understanding of suffering, and the compassion that is consequent on this. Whether even that "good" can save humankind I doubt, but it redeems the individual.

[Ludwig]

This will necessarily involve a transfer of wealth away from the people who have benefited from the old system - i.e. the banks/bankers, the giant corporations, the people who ended up owning 20 properties by MEWing existing properties for the deposit on the next one, etc....

Most of us on this forum are old enough to have benefited from the old system. You'd really have to wear a hair shirt to refuse at least some of the things that have made life for most people in the West, for the past 50 years, really very agreeable.

Electricity, hot water, indoor toilets, travelling outside one's own area more than a couple of times a year... These things all take a toll on the environment, and a saint would forego them all.

As for the bankers... As Douglas Adams put it:

"Many men, of course, became extremely rich, but this was perfectly natural, and nothing to be ashamed of, because no one was really poor -- at least no one worth speaking of."

Basically we have let the really greedy get as rich as they liked because the rest of us were happy with being, in historical terms, merely moderately rich.

Ludwig seems to think that once civilisation as we know it starts to break down that we will be on a one-way journey back to the Stone Age. I remain hopeful that after an initial period of shock and confusion as people's illusions about what is going on in the world are totally shattered, there may be an opportunity to implement reforms that are unimaginable right now because most people don't understand why they are necessary.

IMO.

Yes, I don't share your optimism UE.

Our problem isn't fundamentally "the system", our problem is that there are currently several times more people alive than can be supported in a world of rapidly declining oil supplies.

It's tempting to look at the oil production graph and assume that the down slope will be a mirror of the up slope, with people gradually becoming less wealthy. This is not what will happen. If you factor in the increasing population, and the proportion of that population already dependent on oil, and from that create a graph of oil available per person, you will get something that looks less like a bell curve and more like the profile of a sperm whale, facing right.

[biffvernon]

Magistrates are being advised by the courts service to disregard normal sentencing guidelines when dealing with those convicted of offences committed in the context of last week's riots.

The advice, given in open court by justices' clerks, will result in cases that would usually be disposed of in magistrates courts being referred to the crown court for more severe punishment.

It may explain why some of those convicted have received punitive sentences for offences that might normally attract a far shorter term.

In Manchester a mother of two, Ursula Nevin, was jailed for five months for receiving a pair of shorts given to her after they had been looted from a city centre store. In Brixton, south London, a 23-year-old student was jailed for six months for stealing £3.50 worth of water bottles from a supermarket.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/1 ... sentencing

[UndercoverElephant]

In Manchester a mother of two, Ursula Nevin, was jailed for five months for receiving a pair of shorts given to her after they had been looted from a city centre store.

Good. Did you see her mutant of a husband complaining in disbelief about the sentence? Next time somebody offers this scum some looted goods, perhaps they'll say no.

No sympathy from me.