Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: London's Burning, in reply to Rich Lock,
Well, neither did I. But I bet you weren’t exactly 100% cool, calm collected and dispassionate either. :)
Certainly not. But I did feel like an up-close observer rather than a participant.
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Hard News: London's Burning, in reply to Rich Lock,
The atmosphere is 100% contagious, too – there’s no such thing as a bystander unless you’ve been trained to it or experienced it before and can deal with it.
Sorta. As I said in the original post, I've felt that very powerful excitement standing amid rioting. I didn't leave the scene. But I didn't throw anything, break a window or loot either. So I was a bystander.
Mentally, especially at Aotea Square, I did justify it by regarding myself as a journalistic observer.
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Hard News: London's Burning, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Found the Centre for Economic Policy Research's Austerity and Anarchy: Budget Cuts and Social Unrest in Europe, 1919-2009 via the LRB blogs.
It's a sodding journal article, so I can't get the full paper, but the abstract is extremely interesting:
Does fiscal consolidation lead to social unrest? From the end of the Weimar Republic in Germany in the 1930s to anti-government demonstrations in Greece in 2010-11, austerity has tended to go hand in hand with politically motivated violence and social instability. In this paper, we assemble cross-country evidence for the period 1919 to the present, and examine the extent to which societies become unstable after budget cuts. The results show a clear positive correlation between fiscal retrenchment and instability. We test if the relationship simply reflects economic downturns, and conclude that this is not the key factor. We also analyse interactions with various economic and political variables. While autocracies and democracies show a broadly similar responses to budget cuts, countries with more constraints on the executive are less likely to see unrest as a result of austerity measures. Growing media penetration does not lead to a stronger effect of cut-backs on the level of unrest.
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Hard News: London's Burning, in reply to Sacha,
You don’t reckon that’s deliberate?
I think Ben's (video) game theory has been on the mark -- it's partly directed, partly chaotic, highly mobile.
This is one of the BBM broadcast messages Paul Lewis got:
Everyone in edmonton enfield woodgreen everywhere in north link up at enfield town station 4 o clock sharp!!!! Start leaving ur yards n linking up with you niggas. Guck da feds, bring your ballys and your bags trollys, cars vans, hammers the lot!! Keep sending this around to bare man, make sure no snitch boys get dis!!! What ever ends your from put your ballys on link up and cause havic, just rob everything. Police can't stop it. Dead the fires though!! Rebroadcast!!!!!"
And another:
Everyone from all sides of London meet up at the heart of London (central) OXFORD CIRCUS!!, Bare SHOPS are gonna get smashed up so come get some (free stuff!!!) fuck the feds we will send them back with OUR riot! >:O
Dead the ends and colour war for now so
if you see a brother... SALUT!
if you see a fed... SHOOT!
We need more MAN then feds so Everyone run wild, all of london and others are invited! Pure terror and havoc & Free stuff....just smash shop windows and cart out da stuff u want! Oxford Circus!!!!! 9pm, we don't need pussyhole feds to run the streets and put our brothers in jail so tool up,
its a free world so have fun running wild shopping;)
Oxford Circus 9pm if u see a fed stopping a brother JUMP IN!!! EVERYONE JUMP IN niggers will be lurking about, all blacked out we strike at 9:15pm-9:30pm, make sure ur there see you there. REMEMBA DA LOCATION!!! OXFORD CIRCUS!!!
MUST REBROADCAST TO ALL CONTACTS!!!"The confidence in numbers here is basically the same thing we discussed in the context of the Arab Spring actions.
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Hard News: London's Burning, in reply to Sacha,
They seem to have adapted well to the cops’ kettling tendencies.
Well, yeah. Kettling only works in areas that have already been secured, or can easily be secured. It relies on everyone being in the same place. That's just not what's happening there.
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Hard News: London's Burning, in reply to BenWilson,
Will humans have the sense to realize that we have the power to make heaven on earth, by incremental changes to our economic management? That war is a disease that needs to be eradicated, by tinkering with the capitalism that feeds it, until it isn’t capitalism any more?
I scared myself yesterday by looking at some Tea Party tweets about the UK riots. They're seeing a showdown too, but their ideas about responding to it are paranoid and violent.
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Hard News: London's Burning, in reply to Tom Semmens,
The right wing establishment in Britain clearly now feels it has carte blanche to unleash a rampage of vengeance.
But only because – as polls are demonstrating – the majority of the population wants order restored and isn’t fussy any more about how it’s done. Nine out of 10 people say they want water cannon deployed, a third want to see live ammunition used.
This blogged account by a young black man of the barely-reported looting in Walworth Road is fascinating. It also contains this:
I presume that it is up to the government as to whether police can use rubber bullets, water cannons or even bring in the army. Therefore its disgraceful that the most senior politicians were not here. I obviously don’t know all the pros and cons, but I am massively in favour of water cannons.
Trouble is, water cannon make almost no sense. They’re good for dispersing crowds. But these are crowds that disperse rapidly on their own. That’s how they’re working.
This column has a bunch more reasons that they're an absurd idea.
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Hard News: London's Burning, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Here’s a thought: Just because you can do something, it doesn’t immediately follow that you can.
Which, of course, applies to the looters themselves.
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Hard News: London's Burning, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
But I’ve long since hit the point where its not only Daily Mail columnists who should take a long pull on a double tall shutthefuckupachino.
Uncalled for, methinks. DeepRed explicitly didn't condone their actions, -- who would? -- but it's not hard to make the case that at least some of those young people have a right to feel angry.
For a start, it's school holidays and the political class closed down the only places they had to go that didn't cost money, then fucked off to Tuscany.
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Hard News: London's Burning, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Interesting article on hoodies, as in the garment.
I don’t think they’ve ever had this rep in NZ. Teachers and coders wear them to work, and so on.
Au contraire. You have clearly forgotten the idiotic "controversy" over Hoodie day ...
The highlight of this year's Youth Week is Hoodie Day on Friday but NZ First MP Ron Mark says it is sending the wrong message.
It was intended to reverse negative attitudes and smooth the animosity over hooded tops.
But Hoodie Day ended in a spat of its own when National Party MPs boycotted it, claiming it had been hijacked by Labour.
And most bizarrely, here:
A resident on the Kapiti Coast is defending his decision to turn up to a local council meeting dressed in a Ku Klux Klan outfit.
Local community board member Dale Evans says he wore the costume to yesterday's meeting to protest against National Hoodie Day today ... Mr Evans says hoodies are not an appropriate article of clothing to celebrate.
He believes that young people wear them for the wrong reasons and problems arise when police are unable to identify who is beneath the hood on security tapes.
I was surprised at the time how many apparently rational people seemed to think certain items of clothing were evil.