Mark Duggan family accuse police of operating a 'shoot to kill' policy

The family of Mark Duggan, who was shot by police. From left: his girlfriend, Semone Wilson, his father Bruno, brother Shaun and mother Pam. Photograph: Martin Argles for the Guardian

Πηγή: The Guardian
By Diane Taylor

Wednesday 7 September 2011

The family of Mark Duggan, the Tottenham man whose death in a policeshooting last month sparked five days of widespread riot and disorder, believe officers were operating a "shoot to kill" policy.

Duggan's brother, Shaun Hall, 42, said ahead of Duggan's funeral on Friday: "The police were clearly operating a shoot to kill policy that day. They are supposed to disable, not kill, suspects. If they hadn't shot and killed Mark there would have been no riots."

The family, in exclusive interviews with the Guardian, said they had been told that the bullet fired at Duggan's chest after officers intercepted the taxi he was travelling in, would have killed him in seven to 12 seconds, giving him no prospect of surviving.

They are devastated by his loss and distraught at the misinformation initially put out that the incident in Ferry Lane in Tottenham, northLondon, was a "shootout".

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), which is investigating the killing on 4 August, confirmed the two shots that were fired were from a CO19 firearms officer.

The family say they have been told there was no forensic evidence of Duggan's fingerprints on the non-police issue gun recovered at the scene of the shooting, and they have many unanswered questions. The Guardian has established from sources outside the family that the gun was found inside a sock.

The family are also puzzled by reports that the taxi Duggan was travelling in when he was shot was initially moved from the crime scene and then returned.

"It's as though the police have messed with the whole case," claimed Hall. "Why did the police shoot to kill, why was the taxi moved from the crime scene, why were Mark's fingerprints not on the gun? We don't know whether or not that gun was planted."

Scotland Yard has refused to comment on any aspect of the operation to arrest Duggan, saying it is the subject of an IPCC inquiry.

The family are also distraught that they read about Duggan's death in the media before they received formal notification from the police about it.

The Met's new north area commander, Mak Chishty, went to his parents' home in Tottenham on Friday evening last week to apologise for the police's failure to inform them more promptly about Duggan's death. It was the family's first formal communication with a senior police officer.

"I rushed down to Ferry Lane after the shooting," said Duggan's girlfriend, Semone Wilson, 29, who had been with him since they were both 15.

She had heard rumours that he had been shot. "I was asked to come through the police tape and to give a description of Mark. They told me that the man who had been shot had tattoos and I was asked to describe Mark's tattoos."

However, the police did not confirm Duggan's identity to her at the scene.

A police spokesman said Met family liaison officers met two members of the family that night and that they had agreed with them that the family members should inform the parents of Duggan's death. The spokesman said Chishty had visited the family after hearing of their concerns and had "apologised for how this was managed".

The family went to a Tottenham mortuary on 6 August, in the presence of the IPCC, and confirmed the dead man was indeed Duggan.

Later that day, they organised a peaceful march to Tottenham police station from the Broadwater Farm estate, to protest about the shooting and state their belief that police had failed to provide information.

"I went into the police station with my mum and told the officers on the front desk that I had come to report a murder," said Wilson.

"They asked me whose murder I was reporting. When I told them it was Mark Duggan's murder they said to me, 'Don't worry, it's being sorted out,' and they told us to go and wait outside so that they could deal with other people who were reporting crimes."

They waited for four hours, being told repeatedly by police that someone would come out to speak to them. But no one did, so the family went home.

"Things were peaceful when we left," said Wilson. "When I saw the pictures of the rioting and looting on TV later in the evening I didn't realise at first that it followed on from our protest."

The family have distanced themselves from the violent disorder of that night – and in the following days – after the peaceful protest at the police station. They said they support the Guardian and London School of Economics study into the causes and consequences of the riots,announced on Monday.

Mark's mother, Pam, 53, said her son would have been opposed to the disorder that spread to cities across England. "Mark wouldn't have condoned it and we don't condone it," she said.

"You killed my son in cold blood," she said of the police's actions. "I just want the police to admit that they killed my son. Why didn't the police shoot him in the foot instead of in the chest? I'm on Valium because of what happened. All of this has made me feel as if I want to go and lie down with my son.

"One of my other sons was stopped in a car a few days after Mark was killed and questioned by police. He went out in a taxi at the weekend and I was terrified he was going to be shot dead too."

The family are also upset by media reports that Duggan was a gangster. They admit he was known to the police and had been on remand, but emphasise he had no criminal convictions.

"If Mark had been a gangster he would have lots of money, which he didn't have," said Mrs Duggan. "He would have been out all the time with lots of others but he wasn't. He was a loving boy with a good heart. He loved his children, he loved everybody. People from the whole community will be attending Mark's funeral and people will see who knew and loved Mark. Mark was the kind of person who would say if he saw someone fighting: 'Don't bother with that.'

"I lived on the Broadwater Farm estate for 26 years and I think that the police have got worse since the riots there in 1985. They're really picking on people. Mark had been harassed by the police for years."

Wilson said her three children with Duggan had been left devastated by the loss of their father.

"They were on holiday for a week with other family members when Mark was killed so we managed to keep the news from them for a week.

"But when I finally did break the news to them, the youngest one immediately vomited.

"The other day I was in the street with my 10-year-old son and saw a white man being stopped and searched by police.

"My son asked me, 'Are they going to shoot him now?' I just tried to change the subject because I didn't want him to start asking lots of questions about Mark's death."

Hall said the family were determined to get justice. "Justice for me is someone being punished for what they've done. The person who killed Mark needs to take the blame for it. Someone needs to be made accountable for what happened. We've heard everyone talking about gangs but the police are the biggest gang of all, an institutionalised gang.

"And like any other shooter in any other gang the person who killed Mark should be punished. Someone needs to be made accountable for this and we're not going to stop until we get justice."

The family are appealing for anyone who witnessed the shooting to contact Birnberg Peirce solicitors in confidence on 020 7911 0166.

London mayor: Most in riots had criminal records

Πηγή: AP

Sep 6, 2011

LONDON (AP) -- Three-quarters of those arrested in Britain's riots last month had criminal records, London's mayor said Tuesday, blaming the U.K.'s criminal justice system for failing to turn offenders away from crime.

"What was going to make you more likely to riot? It was previous contact with the police, and that's the problem that we need to tackle," Mayor Boris Johnson told the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee.

The four days of rioting, triggered by a fatal police shooting Aug. 4 in north London's Tottenham neighborhood, were the worst civil disturbances to hit Britain since the 1980s. Five people were killed and scores of stores were looted and buildings burned in several cities, including London and Birmingham.

The Ministry of Justice says more than 1,500 people have been arrested and have appeared in court to answer charges from the riots. Some 22 percent of them were aged 10 to 17, and 91 percent were male.

Johnson said three in four had a criminal record, but a full 83 percent of those arrested have had previous contact with police.

Johnson's comments echoed those of Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke, who said in an article in the Guardian newspaper that Britain's justice system was failing to deal with a "feral underclass, cut off from the mainstream in everything but its materialism."

"In my view, the riots can be seen in part as an outburst of outrageous behavior by the criminal classes, individuals and families familiar with the justice system, who haven't been changed by their past punishments," Clarke wrote.

Tim Godwin, the acting head of the Metropolitan police, said police initially focused on known offenders including gang members. As more suspects are arrested, he said the proportion of those with criminal records may decrease.

He added it was "absolutely essential" analyze the type of previous offenses committed by rioters.

"We have in London been seeking to speed up justice, make it more relevant, make it more relevant to communities, and that's something that we need to do," Godwin said. "The amount of people who have previous convictions does pose questions for us."

Twitter, Facebook and Blackberry to attend riot summit

More than 1,400 people have appeared in court in connection with the riots

Πηγή: BBC

25 August 2011

Home Secretary Theresa May will meet senior police officers and executives from the major social networks later to discuss this month's riots in England.

Representatives from Twitter, Facebook and Blackberry are expected to attend the meeting, which will look at how to stop people plotting violence online.

The networks were criticised during the riots after it emerged they may have been used to plan some of the disorder.

The prime minister has said police may need extra powers to curb their use.

David Cameron also said the government would look at limiting access to such services during any future disorder.

But a Home Office source said there was "no suggestion" that any of the sites would be closed down.

Networks such as Blackberry Messenger - a service which allows free-of-charge real-time messages - were said to have enabled looters to organise their movements during the riots, as well as inciting violence in some cases.

Last week, Facebook and the owner of Blackberry, Research in Motion (RIM), both said they welcomed the opportunity to discuss the matter with Mrs May. Twitter has yet to comment.'Whether and how'

Crime and Security Minister James Brokenshire and Lynne Owens, assistant commissioner of central operations at the Metropolitan Police, will also be at the meeting - as will a member of the National Security Council.

A Home Office spokeswoman said the talks would explore "whether and how we should be able to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality."

BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones said one social media executive had told him the networks were keen to co-operate but that the idea of trying to block communications was "ludicrous" and had not been thought through.

Our correspondent said it was unclear whether the hour-long meeting would produce any major new policies.

Facebook says it has already prioritised a review of content that is "egregious during sensitive times like the UK riots" with the hope of being able to take down such material more swiftly.

A number of people have appeared in court in recent weeks for organising or attempting to organise disorder on social networks.

Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan and Jordan Blackshaw were jailed for four years for incitement on Facebook

Jordan Blackshaw, 21, from Marston, Cheshire, and Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan, 22, from Warrington, Cheshire, were jailed for four years for online incitement.

Blackshaw had created a Facebook event entitled "Smash Down Northwich Town" while Sutcliffe-Keenan set up a Facebook page called "Let's Have a Riot in Latchford". Both have said they will appeal.

Meanwhile, 21-year-old David Glyn Jones, from Bangor, north Wales, was jailed for four months after telling friends "Let's start Bangor riots" in a post that appeared on Facebook for 20 minutes.

And Johnny Melfah, 16, from Droitwich, Worcestershire, became the first juvenile to have his anonymity lifted in a riot-related case for inciting thefts and criminal damage on the site. He will be sentenced next month.Plotting violence

In the aftermath of the riots, which spread across England's towns and cities two weeks ago, Mr Cameron said the government might look at disconnecting some online and telecommunications services if similar circumstances arose in the future.

"We are 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," he told MPs during an emergency session of Parliament.

Tim Godwin, the Met police's acting commissioner, also said last week that he considered requesting authority to switch off Twitter during the riots.

However, he conceded that the legality of such a move was "very questionable" and that the service was a valuable intelligence asset.

Meanwhile, Guardian analysis of more than 2.5 million riot-related tweets, sent between 6 August and 17 August, appears to show Twitter was mainly used to react to riots and looting, including organising the street clean-up.

The newspaper found the timing of the messages posted "questioned the assumption" that Twitter was used to incite the violence in advance of it breaking out in Tottenham on 6 August.

Currently, communications networks that operate in the UK can be compelled to hand over individuals' personal messages if police are able to show that they relate to criminal behaviour.

The rules gathering such queries are outlined in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA).

If We’re Turning Off Social Media, I Want News Channels Shut Down, Too

Πηγή: Wired

By Duncan Geere

August 13, 2011

Amidst widespread calls from MPs, David Cameron has pledged to investigate the possibility of turning off social networks during times of crisis, lumping Britain in with some rather unsavory company.

The U.K. has long criticized countries like China, Iran and Libya for censoring the web and clamping down on dissent, which appears incredibly hypocritical to the rest of the world if he then proceeds to do the same thing on his own turf. Opinion pieces in international newspapers have already started popping up with headlines like “what goes around, comes around.”

The Telegraph quotes one commentator in China’s official Communist Party mouthpiece — People’s Daily — going even further. The commentator says “The West have been talking about supporting internet freedom, and oppose other countries’ government to control this kind of websites, now we can say they are tasting the bitter fruit [of their complacency] and they can’t complain about it.”

Chief among the claims by those who want to see more controls on freedom of speech on the web is that social networks amplify panic, spread misinformation and cause already-stretched police communications channels to be overloaded by people worried about some rumor they’ve read online.
Why aren’t politicians demanding that news channels, with their greater reach and potential to panic the public, be turned off during exceptional circumstances, too? After all, it’s all for the safety of the public. Right?

That might be a valid complaint, and even the most synergistic of social media gurus would have to admit — between creating engaging integrated solutions, no doubt — that Twitter wasn’t exactly a paragon of truth and accuracy during the riots, but you can hardly pin the blame solely on social media when rolling news channels like BBC News 24 and Sky News are running looped footage of burning buildings, overlaid with interviews with those who’d lost property and possessions in the looting. It might have been passed through an editorial filter, but continually presenting the worst of the footage creates a very skewed representation of reality.

Hitwise reckons that 3.4 million people in the U.K. visited Twitter’s homepage on Aug. 9, the day with the most hype around the riots, compared with numbers from Sky News and BBC News 24 of 9.2 million and 13.1 million, respectively. With so much of a greater a reach, clearly the scaremongering potential of traditional media is far higher than that of social networks. We’ve seen that in the past, with innocent people targeted by vigilante mobs after theNews of the World ran a campaign to “name and shame” paedophiles.

On the flip side, social networks allow for others to debunk claims, rapidly establishing what the facts about a situation are with thousands of eyes on the ground. One cyclist in Bristol was even taking requests from Twitter to go around, fact-checking whether buildings were in fact damaged or not. It’s hard for traditional news infrastructure to cope with situations where violence is springing up in multiple locations simultaneously, but it’s trivial to set up filters for social media that cut through the rumour to deliver eyewitness accounts. Filtering out any tweet with the word “apparently” in would be a good start.

So if we’re turning off social media for “safety”, why aren’t we shutting down television networks at the same time? Why aren’t politicians demanding that news channels, with their greater reach and potential to panic the public, be turned off during exceptional circumstances, too? After all, it’s all for the safety of the public. Right?

Cheshire men jailed for four years for inciting riots

The men were jailed at Chester Crown Court

Πηγή: BBC

16 August 2011

Two men from Cheshire have been jailed for four years each for using Facebook to incite disorder during riots in England last week.

Jordan Blackshaw, 21, of Vale Road, Marston and Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan, 22, of Richmond Avenue, Warrington, were jailed at Chester Crown Court.

The Recorder of Chester, Judge Elgan Edwards praised the swift actions of Cheshire Police.

He said he hoped the sentences would act as a deterrent to others.

Both men pleaded guilty under sections 44 and 46 of the Serious Crime Act to intentionally encouraging another to assist the commission of an indictable offence.

Martin McRobb, from the Merseyside and Cheshire Crown Prosecution Service, said: "They both used Facebook to organise and orchestrate serious disorder at a time when such incidents were taking place in other parts of the country.

"Both defendants, in Northwich and Warrington respectively, sought to gain widespread support in order to replicate similar criminality.'Abused technology'

"While the judge heard the two defendants were previously of good character, they admitted committing very serious offences that carry a maximum sentence of 10 years."

Assistant Chief Constable of Cheshire Police, Phil Thompson, said: "From the offset Cheshire Constabulary adopted a robust policing approach using the information coming into the organisation to move quickly and effectively against any person whose behaviour was likely to encourage criminality.

"Officers took swift action against those people who have been using Facebook and other social media sites to incite disorder.

"The sentences passed down today recognise how technology can be abused to incite criminal activity and sends a strong message to potential troublemakers about the extent to which ordinary people value safety and order in their lives and their communities.

"Anyone who seeks to undermine that will face the full force of the law."

The moral decay of our society is as bad at the top as the bottom

Tottenham ablaze: the riots began early on Sunday (Photo: AP)

Πηγή: The Telegraph
By Peter Oborne
August 11th, 2011


David Cameron, Ed Miliband and the entire British political class came together yesterday to denounce the rioters. They were of course right to say that the actions of these looters, arsonists and muggers were abhorrent and criminal, and that the police should be given more support.

But there was also something very phony and hypocritical about all the shock and outrage expressed in parliament. MPs spoke about the week’s dreadful events as if they were nothing to do with them.

I cannot accept that this is the case. Indeed, I believe that the criminality in our streets cannot be dissociated from the moral disintegration in the highest ranks of modern British society. The last two decades have seen a terrifying decline in standards among the British governing elite. It has become acceptable for our politicians to lie and to cheat. An almost universal culture of selfishness and greed has grown up.

It is not just the feral youth of Tottenham who have forgotten they have duties as well as rights. So have the feral rich of Chelsea and Kensington. A few years ago, my wife and I went to a dinner party in a large house in west London. A security guard prowled along the street outside, and there was much talk of the “north-south divide”, which I took literally for a while until I realised that my hosts were facetiously referring to the difference between those who lived north and south of Kensington High Street.

Most of the people in this very expensive street were every bit as deracinated and cut off from the rest of Britain as the young, unemployed men and women who have caused such terrible damage over the last few days. For them, the repellent Financial Times magazine How to Spend It is a bible. I’d guess that few of them bother to pay British tax if they can avoid it, and that fewer still feel the sense of obligation to society that only a few decades ago came naturally to the wealthy and better off.

Yet we celebrate people who live empty lives like this. A few weeks ago, I noticed an item in a newspaper saying that the business tycoon Sir Richard Branson was thinking of moving his headquarters to Switzerland. This move was represented as a potential blow to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, because it meant less tax revenue.

I couldn’t help thinking that in a sane and decent world such a move would be a blow to Sir Richard, not the Chancellor. People would note that a prominent and wealthy businessman was avoiding British tax and think less of him. Instead, he has a knighthood and is widely feted. The same is true of the brilliant retailer Sir Philip Green. Sir Philip’s businesses could never survive but for Britain’s famous social and political stability, our transport system to shift his goods and our schools to educate his workers.

Yet Sir Philip, who a few years ago sent an extraordinary £1 billion dividend offshore, seems to have little intention of paying for much of this. Why does nobody get angry or hold him culpable? I know that he employs expensive tax lawyers and that everything he does is legal, but he surely faces ethical and moral questions just as much as does a young thug who breaks into one of Sir Philip’s shops and steals from it?

Our politicians – standing sanctimoniously on their hind legs in the Commons yesterday – are just as bad. They have shown themselves prepared to ignore common decency and, in some cases, to break the law. David Cameron is happy to have some of the worst offenders in his Cabinet. Take the example of Francis Maude, who is charged with tackling public sector waste – which trade unions say is a euphemism for waging war on low‑paid workers. Yet Mr Maude made tens of thousands of pounds by breaching the spirit, though not the law, surrounding MPs’ allowances.

A great deal has been made over the past few days of the greed of the rioters for consumer goods, not least by Rotherham MP Denis MacShane who accurately remarked, “What the looters wanted was for a few minutes to enter the world of Sloane Street consumption.” This from a man who notoriously claimed £5,900 for eight laptops. Of course, as an MP he obtained these laptops legally through his expenses.

Yesterday, the veteran Labour MP Gerald Kaufman asked the Prime Minister to consider how these rioters can be “reclaimed” by society. Yes, this is indeed the same Gerald Kaufman who submitted a claim for three months’ expenses totalling £14,301.60, which included £8,865 for a Bang & Olufsen television.

Or take the Salford MP Hazel Blears, who has been loudly calling for draconian action against the looters. I find it very hard to make any kind of ethical distinction between Blears’s expense cheating and tax avoidance, and the straight robbery carried out by the looters.

The Prime Minister showed no sign that he understood that something stank about yesterday’s Commons debate. He spoke of morality, but only as something which applies to the very poor: “We will restore a stronger sense of morality and responsibility – in every town, in every street and in every estate.” He appeared not to grasp that this should apply to the rich and powerful as well.

The tragic truth is that Mr Cameron is himself guilty of failing this test. It is scarcely six weeks since he jauntily turned up at the News International summer party, even though the media group was at the time subject to not one but two police investigations. Even more notoriously, he awarded a senior Downing Street job to the former News of the World editor Andy Coulson, even though he knew at the time that Coulson had resigned after criminal acts were committed under his editorship. The Prime Minister excused his wretched judgment by proclaiming that “everybody deserves a second chance”. It was very telling yesterday that he did not talk of second chances as he pledged exemplary punishment for the rioters and looters.

These double standards from Downing Street are symptomatic of widespread double standards at the very top of our society. It should be stressed that most people (including, I know, Telegraph readers) continue to believe in honesty, decency, hard work, and putting back into society at least as much as they take out.

But there are those who do not. Certainly, the so-called feral youth seem oblivious to decency and morality. But so are the venal rich and powerful – too many of our bankers, footballers, wealthy businessmen and politicians.

Of course, most of them are smart and wealthy enough to make sure that they obey the law. That cannot be said of the sad young men and women, without hope or aspiration, who have caused such mayhem and chaos over the past few days. But the rioters have this defence: they are just following the example set by senior and respected figures in society. Let’s bear in mind that many of the youths in our inner cities have never been trained in decent values. All they have ever known is barbarism. Our politicians and bankers, in sharp contrast, tend to have been to good schools and universities and to have been given every opportunity in life.

Something has gone horribly wrong in Britain. If we are ever to confront the problems which have been exposed in the past week, it is essential to bear in mind that they do not only exist in inner-city housing estates.

The culture of greed and impunity we are witnessing on our TV screens stretches right up into corporate boardrooms and the Cabinet. It embraces the police and large parts of our media. It is not just its damaged youth, but Britain itself that needs a moral reformation.

'Iran will do everything to stop UK'

Chairwoman of the Human Rights Committee of the Iran's Majlis (parliament) Zohreh Elahian

Πηγή: PressTV
Sat Aug 13, 2011 6:28PM GMT

A senior Iranian lawmaker says the Islamic Republic will spare no effort to stop the UK government's crackdown on British protesters.

“Iran will use all of its potentials to stop the repression of the disadvantaged in the UK and [to secure] the release of political prisoners,” Fars News Agency quoted Chairwoman of the Human Rights Committee of the Iran's Majlis (parliament) Zohreh Elahian, as saying on Saturday.

She said the UK must make the necessary preparations for Majlis human rights observers to visit the country.

Elahian also said some of the parliamentarians are to join a protest rally, which is to be held by Iranian university students in front of the British embassy in Tehran on Sunday.

Unrest has rocked Britain in a scale unprecedented in 30 years following the recent killing of a black man, Mark Duggan, by the police. The security forces gunned down the 26-year-old in the London suburb of Tottenham.

The protests have spread to major cities like Birmingham, Liverpool, and Bristol. Several people have also been killed during the government-ordered crackdown on protests.

Meanwhile, Iranian lawmakers are set to lodge complaints with the British embassy in Tehran against the British government's violations of human rights.

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has strongly condemned the violent attacks, saying, “The true opposition in Britain is the people that are pushed to the ground and beaten on London streets and slain and yet no one hears their voice."

4 Real reasons for London’s riots

Πηγή: The Coming Depression
August 9th, 2011 at 11:07 am


“This is not a surprise at all because social breakdown is a slow process. Some years ago We came to the sad conclusion that the UK was spiraling downwards in front of many peoples eyes – and despite effort on many peoples parts to make it a better place. For decades UK political “leaders” have been asleep at the wheel.

From the spawn of Thatcher’s “there is no such thing as society”, through Blair’s “I only care about my image on the international stage”, to Brown’s “give out lots of money, but expect no social responsibility, from people who might vote for me”. We think the problems are deep and pretty much ubiquitous.

Indeed, the societal breakdown of Europe is going to plan as evidenced by the UK’s secret policy to employ mass immigration to destroy national identity. As the Daily Mail shows, “Labour threw open the doors to mass migration in a deliberate policy to change the social make-up of the UK, secret papers suggest. A draft report from the Cabinet Office shows that ministers wanted to ‘maximise the contribution’ of migrants to their ‘social objectives’. The number of foreigners allowed in the UK increased by as much as 50 per cent in the wake of the report, written in 2000.”

Despite attempts to paint this as some sort of ethnically-neutral event, ethnicity was a big factor here. The supposed trigger was the shooting of a gun-toting Yardie, who brandished his weapon at police. Even in Toronto’s recent parade melee, with a similar chain of events (Gangster of Colour shot dead by police, for refusing to drop his weapon), the streets didn’t go ablaze. There are many reasons for this, but the big one is that the ‘community’ from which the dead thug hailed was a VERY SMALL minority of the local population. Contrast this to the Villanueva riots, or even the Quarter Million Tamil March. Along with everything else, Britain has to take a hard look at how decades of mass immigration–which dramatically increased during the New Labour era–and multiculturalism created ethnic enclaves of people who avenge the deaths of their criminal heroes.


Humiliation: A young man is forced to strip to his underpants in the street, having apparently already handed his t-shirt and trainers to a black looter. There were unconfirmed reports last night of victims being made to strip in Deptford, south London, and in Birmingham.

And it’s not just third world immigration that’s the problem, but the EU’s no-border policies that are exacerbating ethnic and economic tensions, by removing Britain’s control over its population. A nation-state can’t function without control over who settles within its boundaries. Britain is experiencing this, with EU immigration (Eastern Europeans, etc.), which is overwhelming local housing and social services. A similar problem exists in U.S. border states, which have defacto open borders with Mexico: laws like SB 1070 (requiring state and local police to enforce Federal immigration law) arising out frustration with both ‘sanctuary cities’ and a Federal Government which simply refuses to enforce border or immigration controls. And, in Britain, it was the Right’s heroine, Maggie Thatcher, who started dismantling border controls, by getting rid of exit visas.

The last rounds of riots in London over the past year were the last gasp of the middle class kids there: post secondary education fees tripled in one fell swoop.

For those kids with even LESS options in life? A sense of even less to lose.

This isn’t apologetics. The conditions of poverty and consumer culture gone mad (the hottest items to loot are new tracksuits and the latest sneakers no doubt) bring out the horde of kids who advertising most aggressively targets, drunk on instant gratification and all the hatred and frustration they discovered when the paradise of false dreams was denied them.

All the destruction and looting is deplorable. Something has goaded them into it however. The long history of crime, mob culture and “us and them” in London carries on, yet another chapter cited by Dickens when he wrote “the best of times, the worst of times.” That place thrives and kills itself on contradictions. The default state of an uneasy peace will return to the streets, with less amplified tantrums of their cult of youth, wanting it all but having it constantly denied. Most of them *will* grow up. Others will turn to a quieter desperation of self-destructivity.

This is not only Britain’s problem but our problem everywhere across our world, in the West, the East and the Centre where hordes of young people without education, unread, unlearned, ignorant but not stupid, loutish, lazy without prospects or futures, understanding, compassion, empathy, jobs and especially without hope of ever legitimately getting the ‘stuff’ they crave, cars, televisions, clothes, shoes, bling and baubles. You know, the things pushed at them relentlessly every few minutes while they’re watching their parents television sets in their parents houses in the bedrooms they’ve inhabited since childhood, the very ‘stuff’ that our economic system depends on to grow and fatten the wallets of investors and traders, speculators, bank presidents, corporate CEOs and all the other non-producers who also live pointless all-consuming lives but with ‘stuff’ they own and think they have worked for and therefore deserve, all this is the reason that the many without ‘stuff’ want ‘stuff’ and will burn, smash, pillage and take what they want at will, while the authorities agonize and in puzzlement continue to ask, Why?

The moral-economy riot is a well established phenomenon. This type of riot occurred routinely in 18th century England due to food shortages. During the Cholera epidemic, communities rioted in Britain because the poor felt exploited. We are probably seeing the effects of perceived socially deterministic conditions on strong community identities reinforced by their shared economic status. The police cannot stem the belief systems that people create to cope with perceived exploitation. Today we have food being priced out of reach to the general populations of even places like US where food stamp use has been increasing dramatically in recent years due to inflation caused by the devaluation of fiat currency.

So, in bad times, it is really convenient to think that affluent people can just give up on the poor. They can cut off a part of society and assume compliance. But this behavior also permits the crowds to create their own perceptions of legitimacy. Of course, sometimes the crowds actually win.

Riots on the way for North America, Canada, USA

There is a growing proportion of under 30 self employed individuals in North America. Canada’s new jobs in May (22,000) were in the retail sector and almost all of the rest were in self employment. For the regular to high paying jobs, Canadians are being forced to compete with educated and skilled immigrants, many of whom are among the most educated in their home countries which have many times more people than Canada.

Higher self employment figures means less job security making it harder for young adults to settle down and have a family.

Once the US cuts kick in, in a few years, this will happen in the USA.
Fake conservative economists say foodstamps have to be cancelled, as the US can’t afford to feed its children. As the billionaires can’t afford 1% more in tax. When those cuts hit the US underclass, its going to be a disaster far worse than this. Indeed, food stamps are being cut left and right in the US as we speak.

The real criminals are the politicians who fight deficits on the backs of the poor and middle class and all the greedy voters who support them. Trimming deficits requires careful and efficient budgeting AND increasing progressive tax rates in order to fund critical public assets (education, libraries, parks, etc.) and social and health services. Wealth is very, very disproportionately concentrated in a small percentage of the population and they just idly play with it. Time to redistribute assets more equitably. Sounds like revolution is in the air.

British Leader Seeks Public Housing Evictions for Rioters and Their Families

In Birmingham, England, on Friday, a screen put up by the police showed images of people suspected of crimes during rioting in the city this week.

Πηγή: New York Times
By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: August 12, 2011

LONDON — As Britain begins to weigh the costs of the rioting of recent days and ponder measures to prevent a recurrence, the government of Prime Minister David Cameron put forward on Friday a new way of punishing the looters and vandals who rampaged through many of the country’s cities and towns: kick them and their families out of their government-subsidized homes.

If carried out on the scale Mr. Cameron and his ministers have proposed, the measure would probably be the most punitive of the sanctions that they have said would be considered in response to the worst civil disorder in a generation. More than 10 million Britons, about one in six, live in public housing.

Mr. Cameron took to the television studios on Friday, the third consecutive day of calm after the days of chaos that began last weekend, to broaden the “fightback” he has declared against the rioters, and against those who have argued that the blame should rest less with the rioters than with the abject social conditions in the neighborhoods from which many of them came.

He has described the rioting as “criminality, pure and simple,” with no excuse in social deprivation, and laid out a controversial plan to make much broader use of existing powers to expel not only the rioters but also their families from the free or rent-subsidized accommodations that provide millions with cradle-to-grave homes.

“For too long we’ve taken too soft an attitude towards people that loot and pillage their own community,” Mr. Cameron told a BBC interviewer. “If you do that, you should lose your right to the sort of housing that you’ve had at subsidized rates.” He added that evictions “might help break up some of the criminal networks on some housing estates if some of these people are thrown out of their houses.”

Asked whether that would render them homeless, he replied, “They should have thought of that before they started burgling.”

The communities minister, Eric Pickles, a right-wing Conservative, was blunter still in another BBC appearance. Saying it was not time to “pussyfoot around” with the lawbreakers, he said he would begin a three-month consultation on ways to deal with what he called “riot tourism,” focusing on scrapping a rule that allows for the eviction from subsidized housing of people who commit crimes in their own neighborhoods in favor of a broader measure that would allow for similar punishment wherever the offenses were committed.

Asked how those so penalized would live, Mr. Pickles responded, “They could get a job.”

The proposals would reinforce other hard-line measures the prime minister has outlined. Sensing widespread public support for a harsh crackdown on the rioters and an expansion of police powers, Mr. Cameron has backed the “speedy justice” that has hastened hundreds of suspects through round-the-clock courts, some of them drawing stiff prison sentences for even minor cases of looting.

On Thursday, he told Parliament he was ready to order the army to take over guarding public buildings and other installations to free the police for antiriot deployments, and said the government would consider steps for the temporary shutdown of social networking services like BlackBerry Messenger that rioters used to mobilize on disparate urban areas, outpacing the ability of the police to respond.

Critics of the hard-line approach, including prominent figures in the opposition Labour Party, and perhaps more important, among the Liberal Democrats who are the Conservatives’ partners in the coalition government, have said that much of what the prime minister and his associates are proposing is impractical, given the Conservatives’ lack of a parliamentary majority and what they see as a British affinity for moderation.

“Removing people for unacceptable behavior from social housing does not solve the problem,” Kevin Barron, a Labour legislator, said, since it would require local authorities to find alternative housing for evicted families.

But several Conservative-led local councils, in London, Nottingham and Salford, an outlying district of Manchester, have already said that they would start eviction proceedings against tenants convicted of rioting. And one, in Wandsworth, said it had started the process of evicting a woman whose teenage son was convicted in the rioting. A petition on a government Web site for a proposal to authorize public housing evictions drew more than 100,000 signatures within 48 hours. That number guaranteed that Parliament would have to debate the proposal.

The government has said it will maintain emergency policing levels in London through the weekend, and beyond if necessary. Some 16,000 police officers have been deployed in the capital, including reinforcements from police forces across the country. Similar precautions remained in place in cities like Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool that were hit by marauding groups, about half of them teenagers, who looted, destroyed and set fire to thousands of homes, businesses and other properties.

There have been other signs that the country has moved beyond the shock of the upheaval to a new phase of reflection — and for some, recrimination — on the causes, the days it took to get the turmoil under control, and ways to guard against a recurrence.

One element was the cross-fire that broke out between the Cameron government and two of the country’s top police officers. On Friday, they fell out noisily over who should take credit for sending thousands of police reinforcements into the riot areas of London and restoring order, and who should take the blame for the days of largely passive policing until then, which allowed the rioting to mushroom from a local disturbance in north London to a crisis across a wide area of England. Many of the riots’ victims have complained about police officers in riot gear standing back, taking no action, while mobs pillaged their neighborhoods.

Mr. Cameron told Parliament on Thursday that police tactics had been inadequate when the rioting started in the north London area of Tottenham last Saturday. “There were simply far too few police deployed on to our streets, and the tactics they were using weren’t working,” he said.

Tim Godwin, the acting commissioner of Scotland Yard, struck back on Friday, saying, “I think after any event like this, people will always make comments who weren’t there.” He appeared to be referring to the fact that Mr. Cameron, Home Secretary Theresa May andBoris Johnson, the mayor of London, were all on overseas vacations when the riots broke out. Days later, they canceled their holidays and returned home.

Ms. May, the minister in charge of policing, claimed responsibility for ordering the police to flood the streets with officers. Mr. Godwin said deployments were the sole responsibility of the police, not the government.