When you say you don't pay attention to politics you're making a political decision. Sitting around and doing nothing is a political act in stating that you choose not to care. Nothing you do is ever apolitical. The word idiot comes from Ancient Greek and was used to deride people who cared only about their own lives and didn't get involved in the running of the polis. It's time to start caring.
I live in Bristol and study politics. Most of the stuff here is usually political, a little bit of stuff from my friends. Marxist. Views, opinions, regurgitations. It all tumbles forth.
(Source: forthefloods)
Take a lesson from London.
When the state takes a life from you, take everything from the state.>Implying that the London Riots were a crusade against the state due to a man being killed.
I have some major Anarchist leanings but even i know…
Dude, the London riots were multi-cultural. Everyone from every walk of life, low to high class, black and white, were involved.That’s why it shocked a lot of people sometime after that it emerged that, no, contrary to popular opinion, it wasn’t just dole-earners who were participating, there were successful people with high paid jobs looting and smashing shit.
The original riots were the backlash, then the subsequent days were opportunistic. There obviously was an undercurrent of frustration running through the whole thing - millions of people do not just get up and go fucking mental for no reason. If it was, we’d do this type of thing every day.
I agree with the person who stated that, if America does riot, they NEED to hit the right targets. That’s what we failed to do. We proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that if there is co-ordination, then you can run rings around the state. What we didn’t do was make a significant impact. It freaked people out a little, but we did trash our own communities and thus failed to give the riots any significant meaning, and there’s no fucking point in that. You just take money out of your own pocket.
Had we hit government run newspapers, had we hit the Tory HQ again, had we hit out at anything that represented, or better yet, actively participated in the ruining of the country, then it’d been worth a damn, and it would have made an impct and made a difference. As it is, it didn’t.
On the off chance that America gets off it’s collective couch and starts thinking for itself again, then they need to be co-ordinated and they need to have targets. Otherwise they don’t effect anything.
Well next time the nation rises up in unbridled, undirected anger I’ll be sure to put your name forward for the guy who tells everyone which targets are suitable and which targets aren’t. Then we can see how that goes, yeah?
In other words, you’re a moron if you think spontaneous riots can be controlled and directed. You’re an elitist if you think that the only authentic or otherwise acceptable display of rage at the capitalist system is one which is directed through normative political expression. You’re lying to yourself if you think that a few days of rioting, regardless of where it’s directed, is going to bring down “the system” when it’s little other than a symbolic act. You’re verging on Maoist if you don’t argue the necessity of building the workers movement and instead argue for a form of revolutionary vanguardism that prioritises the acts of a select few participating in guerilla actions. You’re classist if you distinguish between a “good” riot and a “bad” riot.
Basically, pull your head out the sand.
Take a lesson from London.
When the state takes a life from you, take everything from the state.>Implying that the London Riots were a crusade against the state due to a man being killed.
I have some major Anarchist leanings but even i know that’s total BS. Many small independant business men and women were raped of thier livelyhoods by opportunists who just wanted a “laugh” and free shit. They had no intention of smashing the state. I even tried talking to a few about how they should do it and who to attack but they admitted it was basically for greed.
Take a lesson from London, don’t follow what happened. Do it fucking right and attack the right people for the right reasons.
Way to oversimplify capitalist culture. How about deconstructing consumerism and poverty to figure out why that is, it should only take a few seconds.
As if the onus for fixing things falls on the people who are oppressed by the broken system?
If riots do happen, the real lesson to take from the London Riots is that they need to share the multi-racial expression of anger against the racist system. White people need to understand why it’s happening and get really fucking angry too, instead of sitting in their living rooms and complaining about “black people destroying their own communities”. Fuck that noise.
I’m posting this following la-vie-est-politiques’, “Worrying trend in unaccountable unchecked police”, of which I recommend reading - at least if you live in the UK…
A TV reporter asked a Londoner, “Is rioting the correct way to express your discontent?”.
“Yes,” said the young man. “You wouldn’t be talking to me now if we didn’t riot, would you? … Two months ago we marched to Scotland Yard, more than 2,000 of us, all blacks, and it was peaceful and calm and you know what? Not a word in the press. Last night a bit of rioting and looting and look around you.”
The truth is that discontent has been simmering among Britain’s urban poor for years, and few have paid attention. Social activists say one out of two children in Tottenham live in poverty. It’s one of the poorest areas of Britain. Britain’s worst riots in decades took place here in 1985. A policeman was hacked to death. After these riots, the same young man pointed out, “They built us a swimming pool.”[Source].
It was on local news and publicised, although not in the mainstream media perhaps.
He is referring to the march regarding the death of Smiley Culture (David Emmanuel), a reggae artist who died under suspicious circumstances.
Emmanuel died from a stab wound to the heart that police say was self-inflicted, while they were searching his house, an hour and a half after officers arrived with a search warrant. His family and friends were concerned that it sounded too strange to be true, as he seemingly wasn’t supervised when entering the kitchen and so forth. The Independent Police Complaints Commission is carrying out the inquiry though. [Source].
There are loads of cases that involve such matters, and - as I’ve mentioned before - little seems to ever become of them. Not to say nothing becomes of many, but…
The biggest prior to Mark Duggan’s case (which people initially started protesting for regarding the recent UK riots) that I recall to cause public outrage was the case of Ian Tomlinson. He died of a heart attack, which some suspected was caused by how the police treated him during protests, of which he was not apart of, he was just a passer-by.
A police officer pushed him to the ground, you see. Then the entire thing was worsened because then people started to distrust the inquiry itself for a number of reasons and so forth. You can read about it here. Anyways, this year (nearly two years later), the police officer in question was charged with manslaughter. I don’t know that many people know that though.
By the by, regarding the case of Duggan…
“There is no evidence Mark Duggan opened fire at police before being shot dead by a firearms officer, the Independent Police Complaints Commission has said”. [Source].
More in the same vein as my previous post.
Just inside three weeks ago, we saw some of the most volatile and wide spread civil unrest that Britain has ever seen. Even the riots of the 80s, under Thatchers’ conservative government, while effecting many cities and boroughs, took place over a spread out period of time.
Undoubtedly, while not the underlying cause, a significant trigger was the death of Mark Duggan when he was shot by the police in Tottenham [link] (Aug 4th). Original justifications for the action revolved around the claim that Duggan had shot at the police, though this was later proven to be false [link].
In the last eight days, there have been a further three deaths at the hands of the police.
Dale Burns in Cumbria [link] (Aug 17th) was arrested in which the police deployed a taser gun. He was being arrested on suspicion of criminal damage and subsequently, whilst in custody, became ill and was taken to hospital.
Jacob Michael in Cheshire [link] (Aug 24th) was reportedly pepper sprayed and then beaten by officers after he had been handcuffed.
Philip Hulmes in Bolton [link] (Aug 24th) had barricaded him inside his home and it’s reported he’d stabbed himself in the abdomen. Police called to the scene used a taser gun in restraining him.
IPCC has opened investigations into all three and postmortem are yet to show the exact causes of death. The first two seem fairly clearcut, though ambiguity in the case of Philip Hulmes is present concerning whether or not the self inflicted wounds are likely to have caused the death, or if it was the deployment of the taser that exacerbated the situation. It does, however, appear to indicate towards a concerning trend in the use of excessive force by varied police forces.
A little closer to home (geographically speaking, for me) is the police raid on the home of the editor of a local radical paper, The Autonomist [link] with a warrant that tries to make connections between the individual and the recent rioting that has taken place, referring to it as domestic extremism. Anybody remember the fuss floating around a week or two ago regarding the requests police had been making of businesses to report any knowledge of anarchists?
At the same time, a number of arrests are being made as “pre-emptive strikes” to prevent “criminality” during Notting Hill Carnival [link], with thirty-five arrested in this pre-crime initiative. This approach ties in closely with the heavy oppression that surrounded the royal wedding, with people dressed as zombies being detained to prevent peaceful anti-establishment events from taking place.
After the London riots there have been calls to bolster police powers. As I have said already and will say again, this is a dangerous notion. Any further police powers will simply make it easier for the police to abuse them, and with the perennially useless IPCC there will continue to be any substantial repercussions or accountability for the officers involved. This growing trend and perhaps perceived acceptability in arrests made for pre-crimes is also of great concern. These are all trends that lead towards a greater repression of political activity that does not fall within the establishment’s perceptions of acceptability.
Just a little sequence of events that I thought served well being brought to your attention.
Aamer’s hilarious take on the London Riots @ Political Animal, Edinburgh Festival 2011.
Seriously, this is worth the watch. Brings up some serious points and leaves you in stitches.
So proud of the boys, performing at the world’s largest arts festival!!
FREE THE CHILDREN
A 17 years old has been sentence for posting the above comment on facebook.
Similar flaunt comments are made in the UK press everyday, but the goverment and the courts are using young people to try and put an end to legitimate dissent.
Prisoner suport group here:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/143369622416604/
Please, reblog and spread.
Facebook witch-hunt for London rioters (by RussiaToday)
‘British courts are coming down hard on the rioters who spread mayhem last week - but human rights groups are accusing judges of over-reacting by dishing out severe penalties to score popularity points. Two men were jailed for four years each for trying to incite street violence through Facebook. But Prime Minister David Cameron defended it, saying it sends a ‘tough message’. RT’s Ivor Bennett reports from London.’
Flash mobs that lead to violence and property destruction are a legitimate concern for governments. But is arresting someone for planning water pistol fight going to far?
Police in Colchester, Essex, England, have arrested a man and charged him with under Britain’s Serious Crime Act of 2007 after he allegedly used social media networks to plan a water gun fight.
In a post on the Essex police website titled “Police reassure residents they are working to keep county safe,” Essex law enforcement reported that the unnamed 20-year-old allegedly used his BlackBerry to encourage Colchester residents to gather for a city-wide bout of water-flinging. He was released on bail and is scheduled to appear in court on September 1.
The arrest comes a week after several cities in England were rocked by widespread rioting, looting, and arson, much of which appears to have been organized via instant messaging and other social media platforms. Unlike other counties, Essex has not seen any large-scale unrest.
The man’s arrest has prompted outrage on Twitter, with many asking if the report was a joke. Essex police responded via Twitter that “there may be more involved” in the case, but did not elaborate.
In the wake of the riots, British Prime Minister David Cameron has called for a clampdown on social media. Speaking to the House of Commons last week Cameron said that his government is “working with the Police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality.”
Cameron’s statement stands in contrast to those he made in January, during the uprising in Egypt that ultimately ousted President Hosni Mubarak. Back then Cameron, in a joint statement with his counterparts in Germany and France, warned the Egyptian government that “[t]here must be full respect for human rights and democratic freedoms, including freedom of expression and communication, including use of telephones and the internet, and the right of peaceful assembly.”
Britain is not the first country to crack down on a splash mobbery. Last month, Iranian morality police arrested 17 youths participating in a Facebook-organized mixed-gender water pistol shootout in a park in central Tehran.
There are reports that Iranian youths are organizing another Super Soaker event.
While we get caught up in fussing as to how we’ll defend society against the pervasive rioting that has now died down, lets not forget that the backdrop to this was:
- Institutionally racist policing tactics whereby black communities were harassed by stop and searches on a daily basis, culminating in the execution of Mark Duggan.
- The “Hackgate” scandal implicating an intrusive and unaccountable media, a corrupt police force (they lost their commissioner and it’s increasingly apparent that police were taking bribes for information) and a corrupt political class.
- Government cuts attacking the working classes ability to exist, housing and benefits for the poor and the disabled, attacking healthcare, attacking education.
- Heavy-handed policing attacking and criminalising peaceful protestors. Manipulating and abusing the powers they hold to delegitimise the cause of protest movements.
- Undercover cops and agent provocateurs infiltrating protest movements with unaccountable and questionable actions once embedded.
Lets not forget that the response to the riots has to be viewed in light of what will fix problems versus what will only serve to deepen the antagonisms and conflict within society. What’s more is to remember that police no longer being bound by time and place for the implementation of section 60s, a normalisation and considered legitimacy of using rubber bullets, tear gas and water cannons on mainland soil (atrocious and illegitimate as I consider their use in Northern Ireland) is setting up the norm for any future protest action, not just the sort of riots we saw the previous weekend. Forfeiting liberty for security will only lose you both.
NYC protest hits mass arrests in London
During a torrential downpour, some 20 people gathered outside the British Consulate-General in Manhattan August 15 to protest Prime Minister David Cameron’s mass arrests of youths. The multinational, multi-generational protesters, including students from England and France, chanted: “From London to New York, youth need jobs, not jails!”
More than 2,000 people – half below age 16 – have been arrested since the four-night rebellion that shook London and other British cities. The youth uprising followed the killing of a young Black father of three, Mark Duggan, by police in the Tottenham area of London on August 4. Daily police raids are continuing against suspected “rioters.”
“We know who the real criminals are,” said Larry Holmes of the Bail Out the People Movement, which called the protest. “Cameron’s government, the banks and corporations in London and Wall Street who profit from cutbacks, racism and war – they should be on trial, not the young people who already face a grim future of unemployment. What happened in London could happen here next.”
Photos by Anne Pruden and redguard
