Posts by George Darroch
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Saturday linky love: Feist has a new song "How come you never go there?" It starts off sweet, with her delightful vocals, but gets sadder every time I hear it.
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there aren’t many Aboriginal equivs of Taika Waititi, Tipene O’Regan or Paul Reeves.
There are a few. Off the top of my head, Warwick Thornton (Cannes Camera d'Or), Noel Pearson (national stage political figure), Gurrumul Yunupingu (voice of honey). Granted, the situation with Aboriginal political representation is dire, especially in 2011, but Aboriginal Australians are making their own way, despite the repression and obstacles the rest of Australia has put in their way. It's hardly good, but it isn't all bad.
But then things are bad enough that the Redfern and Palm Island riots were both extremely explosive. In both cases, the police killed Aborigines, and people finally pushed back.
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Pretty depressed by it all, really. PIAS, London's largest distributor of independent records, has been burned to the ground, including all their stock.
The looting I can understand - opportunistic selfishness, for those who don't give a fuck. It's the destruction, the random arson that upsets me most.
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The small organized group could just as easily be bank robbers who figure that if you collect a bunch of police in one place fighting looters, making a getaway on the other side of town is going to be all the easier.
Seeing evidence that ATMs are being targeted.
Watching @PaulLewis tweetstream has been intense.
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I suspect that whatever degree of coordination is present has something to do with the anarchist groups, who have always been fairly organised.
I reckon that's entirely post-facto. Militant anarchists might feel good about this, but there's little to suggest that there's been anything that follows their methods. No black-bloc style work, very little anti-capitalist intent actually on the streets.
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Birmingham, Liverpool now.
West Midlands Police have confirmed that a police station in Holyhead Road in Handsworth, is on fire. #birminghamriots
Damn.
ETA, Leeds.
ETA2: Manchester. -
By throwing up in their own throat in an unmonitored cell and suffocating on it.
Or overdose (alcohol poisoning or otherwise).
The deaths in custody thing reminds me of Australia, where hundreds of Aborigine men have died and not a single conviction has been found. What's the situation like in NZ? I feel like I should know that...
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Other incredible tweeting from @paullewis.
Turkish man: "We're protecting our homes. This is war." #hackney
It's all very intense. I wonder how far this will go, how long it will continue for.
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Also, I'm more than a little upset that this is taking the spotlight off Syria. Hama is under siege, with no food, no water, and no electricity. People are being shot on the streets. I said a couple of days ago that if this was happening in Britain or France, nobody would be talking of anything else.
Obviously, when other things are happening, we can be excused for looking elsewhere.
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I should be working, so I'll only throw down some links and quick comments.
Firstly, if people were burning Porirua and looting the shops, I'd be equally quick to condemn. These are disgusting acts, by people with no consideration for others. But it is worth asking how such people might come about.
Radical disengagement (rioting, looting, destruction) must be considered politically. "it is [a society] which I am happy to burn”. Of course the riots are political. If "there is no such thing as society", destructive and violent acts operate in a different social environment. Which is not an endorsement, of course. A couple of Guardian columns provide some context: 'Rioting fuelled by social exclusion and 'There is a context'
It is also worth noting Britain has the worst social indicators for children among developed nations. These kids and teens in the early 2000s, when the data was collected, are teens and young adults now. When you ain't got nothing (and some of them clearly feel that way) you ain't got nothing to lose.
On Twitter;
@londonriot
@ravisomaiya (NYT London correspondent)And finally, a very young Vincent Cassel, in la Haine.
"Mais l’important c’est pas la chute, c’est l’atterrissage." The important part is not the fall, but the landing.