scarletfawth
Established
I'm worried that by analysing the cause we will (or may) end up making the case that the effect is a natural and inescapable consequence of it.
I don't like deterministic philosophy; these people have a choice and free will. Perhaps the cards are loaded against them, but so is it for many who don't act in this way.
These people made a choice that is unacceptable to society - they should be punished with little or no reference to the underlying cause.
These outbreaks of looting have nothing to do with legitimate protest or social injustice; don't confuse these thugs for the miners, or Arab spring protesters.
I don't like deterministic philosophy; these people have a choice and free will. Perhaps the cards are loaded against them, but so is it for many who don't act in this way.
These people made a choice that is unacceptable to society - they should be punished with little or no reference to the underlying cause.
These outbreaks of looting have nothing to do with legitimate protest or social injustice; don't confuse these thugs for the miners, or Arab spring protesters.
Peter_Jones
Well-known
I keep hearing (on TV/radio) words like "poverty" and "disadvantaged", when interviewing kids in £100+ trainers (sneakers) and designer gear, who are addicted to their Blackberry or iPhone smartphones.
Back to topic : Any pics yet ?
Back to topic : Any pics yet ?
N
Nikon Bob
Guest
White collar crime, corporate execs, MPs, bankers and the like fiddling with the books to their own advantage has always been treated differently to blue collar crime like looting. That might also be one small facet in the many causes of the looting now going on. If it is good enough for the big shots it is good enough for me.
Bob
Bob
Peter_Jones
Well-known
Wonder how many muggings, rapes, carjackings, and humiliating victims by making them strip, happened ?
UK media will never tell you for some reason, you have to sift through foreign media to read the truth.
UK media will never tell you for some reason, you have to sift through foreign media to read the truth.
Ranchu
Veteran
"It would be a waste of time to detail all that which is agonizing in existing social relations. They say the family is coming back, that the couple is coming back. But the family that’s coming back is not the same one that went away. Its return is nothing but a deepening of the reigning separation that it serves to mask, becoming what it is through this masquerade. Everyone can testify to the rations of sadness condensed from year to year in family gatherings, the forced smiles, the awkwardness of seeing everyone pretending in vain, the feeling that a corpse is lying there on the table, and everyone acting as though it were nothing. From flirtation to divorce, from cohabitation to stepfamilies, everyone feels the inanity of the sad family nucleus, but most seem to believe that it would be sadder still to renounce it. The family is no longer so much the suffocation of maternal control or the patriarchy of beatings as it is this infantile abandon to a fuzzy dependency, where everything is familiar, this carefree moment in the face of a world that nobody can deny is breaking down, a world where “becoming self-sufficient” is a euphemism for “having found a boss.” They want to use the “familiarity” of the biological family as an excuse to eat away at anything that burns passionately within us and, under the pretext that they raised us, make us renounce the possibility of growing up, as well as everything that is serious in childhood. It is necessary to preserve oneself from such corrosion.
The couple is like the final stage of the great social debacle. It’s the oasis in the middle of the human desert. Under the auspices of “intimacy,” we come to it looking for everything that has so obviously deserted contemporary social relations: warmth, simplicity, truth, a life without theater or spectator. But once the romantic high has passed, “intimacy” strips itself bare: it is itself a social invention, it speaks the language of glamour magazines and psychology; like everything else, it is bolstered with so many strategies to the point of nausea. There is no more truth here than elsewhere; here too lies and the laws of estrangement dominate. And when, by good fortune, one discovers this truth, it demands a sharing that belies the very form of the couple. What allows beings to love each other is also what makes them lovable, and ruins the utopia of autism-for-two.
In reality, the decomposition of all social forms is a blessing. It is for us the ideal condition for a wild, massive experimentation with new arrangements, new fidelities. The famous “parental resignation” has imposed on us a confrontation with the world that demands a precocious lucidity, and foreshadows lovely revolts to come. In the death of the couple, we see the birth of troubling forms of collective affectivity, now that sex is all used up and masculinity and femininity parade around in such moth-eaten clothes, now that three decades of non-stop pornographic innovation have exhausted all the allure of transgression and liberation. We count on making that which is unconditional in relationships the armor of a political solidarity as impenetrable to state interference as a gypsy camp. There is no reason that the interminable subsidies that numerous relatives are compelled to offload onto their proletarianized progeny can’t become a form of patronage in favor of social subversion. “Becoming autonomous,” could just as easily mean learning to fight in the street, to occupy empty houses, to cease working, to love each other madly, and to shoplift."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Coming_Insurrection
The couple is like the final stage of the great social debacle. It’s the oasis in the middle of the human desert. Under the auspices of “intimacy,” we come to it looking for everything that has so obviously deserted contemporary social relations: warmth, simplicity, truth, a life without theater or spectator. But once the romantic high has passed, “intimacy” strips itself bare: it is itself a social invention, it speaks the language of glamour magazines and psychology; like everything else, it is bolstered with so many strategies to the point of nausea. There is no more truth here than elsewhere; here too lies and the laws of estrangement dominate. And when, by good fortune, one discovers this truth, it demands a sharing that belies the very form of the couple. What allows beings to love each other is also what makes them lovable, and ruins the utopia of autism-for-two.
In reality, the decomposition of all social forms is a blessing. It is for us the ideal condition for a wild, massive experimentation with new arrangements, new fidelities. The famous “parental resignation” has imposed on us a confrontation with the world that demands a precocious lucidity, and foreshadows lovely revolts to come. In the death of the couple, we see the birth of troubling forms of collective affectivity, now that sex is all used up and masculinity and femininity parade around in such moth-eaten clothes, now that three decades of non-stop pornographic innovation have exhausted all the allure of transgression and liberation. We count on making that which is unconditional in relationships the armor of a political solidarity as impenetrable to state interference as a gypsy camp. There is no reason that the interminable subsidies that numerous relatives are compelled to offload onto their proletarianized progeny can’t become a form of patronage in favor of social subversion. “Becoming autonomous,” could just as easily mean learning to fight in the street, to occupy empty houses, to cease working, to love each other madly, and to shoplift."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Coming_Insurrection
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Michael Markey
Veteran
Hi Peter
Joel got some of the aftermath.
Shoots with two Canons ...a 5D and a 5d 2.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pixel-eight/page1/
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Ranchu
Veteran
Interesting article too.
"At a time when the gap between the rich and the poor is at an historic high, higher than it was in the nineteenth century when capitalism was at its peak, is it any surprise that unemployed young men from Tottenham, Hackney, Clapham or Peckham have learned these lessons well? In the event of the breakdown of the state, keep your eye on the main chance. Gold is at an all-time high now, it’s where all the smart investors are going. They take their money and run. There’s always a market for cool TVs, especially with the Olympics coming up – just up the road from Tottenham as it happens. If you’re not in you can’t win. So get in there and take what you can. In the end of the day it’s just business. From MacDonald’s to the ‘Payday loans’ and ‘we buy gold’ companies that advertise all over East and South London, the message is clear: ‘The only value we place on you is your ability to pay. Anyone who can’t afford to pay is a scrounger, a scum, a chavvy *******, a parasite.’
In this world the police are just another form of violence – look at what they did to the anti-cuts marchers. They are the state’s weapon of choice for disciplining disaffected youth, for criminalising dissent and for protecting profit. They’re not playing the latter role very effectively in London at present, but they’ve worked hard at the others, which are easier picking. The recent gaol sentence of 16 months for Charlie Gilmour for supposedly violent acts during the recent anti-cuts protest, the worst of which acts seem to have involved throwing a dustbin at Prince Charles’ Rolls Royce and swinging from a flagstaff, contrasts sharply with the fact that no policeman has ever been convicted for the death in custody of a black person. The shooting dead of a black man in a mini-cab in Ferry Lane, Tottenham is all of a piece with this repressive function. We now know that there is no evidence to support the police alibi that Mark Duggan fired first. Whether or not he was a gangster, as the police believed, the fact is they would never have shot a bank director. Nevertheless, the banker is the obverse of the coin that has Mark Duggan’s face on it. The closure of three-quarters of the youth centres in Tottenham by the present Tory government is directly linked to the supposed stability of the UK economy. The price of the banker’s home is paid by the young citizens of North and South London. Today, on RTE’s LIveline programme I heard a man who lived in London describe the rioters as ‘shopping with our money’. That works both ways. The banker shops with money that should have gone to the communities of Tottenham, Clapham, Hackney ..."
http://libcom.org/news/tottenham-beyond-neoliberal-riots-possibility-politics-10082011
"At a time when the gap between the rich and the poor is at an historic high, higher than it was in the nineteenth century when capitalism was at its peak, is it any surprise that unemployed young men from Tottenham, Hackney, Clapham or Peckham have learned these lessons well? In the event of the breakdown of the state, keep your eye on the main chance. Gold is at an all-time high now, it’s where all the smart investors are going. They take their money and run. There’s always a market for cool TVs, especially with the Olympics coming up – just up the road from Tottenham as it happens. If you’re not in you can’t win. So get in there and take what you can. In the end of the day it’s just business. From MacDonald’s to the ‘Payday loans’ and ‘we buy gold’ companies that advertise all over East and South London, the message is clear: ‘The only value we place on you is your ability to pay. Anyone who can’t afford to pay is a scrounger, a scum, a chavvy *******, a parasite.’
In this world the police are just another form of violence – look at what they did to the anti-cuts marchers. They are the state’s weapon of choice for disciplining disaffected youth, for criminalising dissent and for protecting profit. They’re not playing the latter role very effectively in London at present, but they’ve worked hard at the others, which are easier picking. The recent gaol sentence of 16 months for Charlie Gilmour for supposedly violent acts during the recent anti-cuts protest, the worst of which acts seem to have involved throwing a dustbin at Prince Charles’ Rolls Royce and swinging from a flagstaff, contrasts sharply with the fact that no policeman has ever been convicted for the death in custody of a black person. The shooting dead of a black man in a mini-cab in Ferry Lane, Tottenham is all of a piece with this repressive function. We now know that there is no evidence to support the police alibi that Mark Duggan fired first. Whether or not he was a gangster, as the police believed, the fact is they would never have shot a bank director. Nevertheless, the banker is the obverse of the coin that has Mark Duggan’s face on it. The closure of three-quarters of the youth centres in Tottenham by the present Tory government is directly linked to the supposed stability of the UK economy. The price of the banker’s home is paid by the young citizens of North and South London. Today, on RTE’s LIveline programme I heard a man who lived in London describe the rioters as ‘shopping with our money’. That works both ways. The banker shops with money that should have gone to the communities of Tottenham, Clapham, Hackney ..."
http://libcom.org/news/tottenham-beyond-neoliberal-riots-possibility-politics-10082011
zauhar
Veteran
I saw no mention in US press of anti-cut protesters receiving harsh punishment like this. Of course, this is the norm here; recently Tim DeChristopher was sentenced to two years for the "crime" of misrepresenting himself at an auction of public land for energy development.
Ranchu
Veteran
Yes me neither, but there has been a lot happening in the US so I may have missed it. I did hear about DeChristopher. That guy's a ****ing hero. He saved something priceless.
Roger Hicks
Veteran
There's a big difference between explaining and excusing. By your logic, stealing a loaf of bread to feed a starving child is the same as stealing money out of the till to pay for a drug habit. You don't care why they did it: it's just theft. That's implicit in "little or no reference to the underlying cause". Hang 'em all!
Criminology is a pretty dubious subject at times, but equally, it can be a cheaper and (above all) more effective tool for preventing crime than repression. I assume you would not argue with the thesis that it's better to prevent crime than to wait for it to happen and then punish it.
Cheers,
R.
Roger Hicks
Veteran
Much as I agree with the broad thrust of your argument, I am not sure that the highlighted portion is true, and even if it is true, I am not sure how much it means. Read The Classic Slum by Robert Roberts for an account of just how desperate and degrading life was in Salford in the early 20th century. Very few people live in this kind of poverty 100 years later, and certainly not whole communities. Poverty is not just about wealth differentials: at the bottom end of the scale, there's an absolute component to poverty that is just completely different now.
My father, admittedly nowadays a Telegraph reader in his 80s, made a point some 45 years ago that I have never forgotten. At the time we were watching Dixon of Dock Green, an early and somewhat saccharine cop show. He said, "Television raises expectations to unrealistic levels. Do you really believe a police constable can afford a house like that, furnished like that? I can't, and I'm sure I'm paid more than he is. [He was a lieutenant-commander in the Royal Navy at the time]. And look at the way they alway leave their beer when someone comes to get them out of the pub. Have you ever seen anyone do that? No. If you're called away for something important, you drain your drink before you leave. At least, everyone I've ever met does."
Cheers,
R.
Michael Markey
Veteran
The talk this morning has inevitably turned to the causes and there is a surprising degree of agreement.
High on the list are the pernicious liberal policies of the last few years which made it difficult for parents to discipline children without fear that the children would report them to the authorities.
The health and safety culture which failed to take account of young boys needs in particular.
The emphasis on consumer culture (yes this on a camera forum
) at the expense of what I`m going to term the spiritual.
Of course the politicians who are now so outraged at the recent turn of events are very the ones who championed many of these "policies" whilst doing their own bit of looting of the public purse at the same time.
What has surprised many is the profile of some of the offenders.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...Primary-school-worker-postman-dad-boy-11.html
High on the list are the pernicious liberal policies of the last few years which made it difficult for parents to discipline children without fear that the children would report them to the authorities.
The health and safety culture which failed to take account of young boys needs in particular.
The emphasis on consumer culture (yes this on a camera forum
) at the expense of what I`m going to term the spiritual.Of course the politicians who are now so outraged at the recent turn of events are very the ones who championed many of these "policies" whilst doing their own bit of looting of the public purse at the same time.
What has surprised many is the profile of some of the offenders.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...Primary-school-worker-postman-dad-boy-11.html
Roger Hicks
Veteran
Dear Michael,
Does that agreement extend across all the media? It's not what I'm seeing from the BBC website, or from what I've heard of the foreign press, and it doesn't sound much like either the Guardian or the Financial Times.
Cheers,
R.
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Michael Markey
Veteran
Dear Roger
I don`t suppose that either the Guardian or the BBC will concede their positions on these matters all that easily .
The unanimity that I was referring to was evident across the ethnic divide within the affected communities and between the political parties(at least for the moment)
Some on the Labour side have clearly been told to button it and not to keep insisting that its all due to the cuts.
Labour has rightly seen an elephant trap looming on that one.
The only group that remains somewhat disaffected are the police who are bridling at the suggestion that they stood back and did nothing for the first few days.
Regards
Michael
Ps Apologies that you had to read the Mail
I don`t suppose that either the Guardian or the BBC will concede their positions on these matters all that easily .
The unanimity that I was referring to was evident across the ethnic divide within the affected communities and between the political parties(at least for the moment)
Some on the Labour side have clearly been told to button it and not to keep insisting that its all due to the cuts.
Labour has rightly seen an elephant trap looming on that one.
The only group that remains somewhat disaffected are the police who are bridling at the suggestion that they stood back and did nothing for the first few days.
Regards
Michael
Ps Apologies that you had to read the Mail
lynnb
Veteran
I don't think it's safe to generalise that most of the (mainly youthful) participants in this criminal carnage are out to get even with society for wrongs, whether real or imagined. Certainly I think that's a factor with some, possibly the instigators. But this article mentions another factor: the fun factor.
Breaking all the rules and running around smashing windows, burning and looting, avoiding the police, to a teenager is like a video game become real - a massive adrenaline rush, a heady mix of freedom and power. It just takes one individual or group to lead the way, and all those kids on the street looking for more excitement than they've ever experienced in life before will take advantage of that opportunity. The opportunistic fun factor would help to explain the surprisingly wide demographic of those arrested so far.
Perhaps if the police had been more swift in firmly intervening at the first outbreaks, and been in sufficient numbers to convince onlookers that it wasn't a good idea to hang around, then this violence wouldn't have escalated so quickly or so widely. The police certainly appear to have put themselves at a tactical disadvantage by moving from a community policing to a "rapid response" model over recent decades, and by not recognising the power of social media to keep the mob better informed about the police than the police were about the mob.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/10/liverpool-riots-mob-mayhem?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT7932
Breaking all the rules and running around smashing windows, burning and looting, avoiding the police, to a teenager is like a video game become real - a massive adrenaline rush, a heady mix of freedom and power. It just takes one individual or group to lead the way, and all those kids on the street looking for more excitement than they've ever experienced in life before will take advantage of that opportunity. The opportunistic fun factor would help to explain the surprisingly wide demographic of those arrested so far.
Perhaps if the police had been more swift in firmly intervening at the first outbreaks, and been in sufficient numbers to convince onlookers that it wasn't a good idea to hang around, then this violence wouldn't have escalated so quickly or so widely. The police certainly appear to have put themselves at a tactical disadvantage by moving from a community policing to a "rapid response" model over recent decades, and by not recognising the power of social media to keep the mob better informed about the police than the police were about the mob.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/10/liverpool-riots-mob-mayhem?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT7932
sevo
Fokutorendaburando
That is far more likely due to the police primarily grabbing those that did not run away - i.e. fairly innocent spectators rather than the actual main perpetrators.
This has been a very general issue on all manifestations and riots I reported on (my PJ years were in the eighties, quite a decade of riots) - and I am convinced, no accident. In terms of riot control, one of the easiest and least dangerous ways of stopping the action is by driving away the audience (as well as harassing the press wherever possible, for the same reason). But as desirable as it might be for the police, that is generally a illegal (hereabouts even unconstitutional) thing to do in a democracy, and if they do it nonetheless, there is a tendency to exculpate their actions by charging at least some of the arrested spectators with blown up or entirely fabricated charges.
lynnb
Veteran
I take your point, Sevo - that makes sense.
dave lackey
Veteran
Regardless of why, Britain has it's hands full dealing with something that has grown out of proportion to what is the norm.
An interesting side issue:
All things have unintended consequences. Some good, some bad. I see that the British PM is considering a ban on social media.
Sounds extreme until one thinks about it. Fledgling (actually prehistoric in the overall scheme of things) high-tech communications on electronic devices that have an impact on civil disorder.
IMO, this is an issue that really needs to be considered. Not necessarily outright bans, but maybe a change that would be considered the standard in 10 years and still allow "social media" (goofy-ass term if there ever was one) but also have control of some type...I dunno. Interesting thought once you get over the shock of the extreme reaction.
An interesting side issue:
All things have unintended consequences. Some good, some bad. I see that the British PM is considering a ban on social media.
Sounds extreme until one thinks about it. Fledgling (actually prehistoric in the overall scheme of things) high-tech communications on electronic devices that have an impact on civil disorder.
IMO, this is an issue that really needs to be considered. Not necessarily outright bans, but maybe a change that would be considered the standard in 10 years and still allow "social media" (goofy-ass term if there ever was one) but also have control of some type...I dunno. Interesting thought once you get over the shock of the extreme reaction.