London Riots 2011, split from The World News Options

[Gerard]

see: London Riot Map

and: photos

and: before and after photos (mouse over photo)






'Iran ready to send HR examiners to UK'

Tue Aug 9, 2011

A senior Iranian lawmaker says Iran's Majlis (parliament) is ready to send a group of human rights rapporteurs to the UK to investigate human rights violations in the country.


Deputy head of Iran's Majlis (parliament) National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Hossein Ebrahimi made the comment in an interview with Fars news agency on Tuesday.

He referred to the large arrests of British protesters angry over the killing of a black man by the police and said, Iran's Majlis urges the British government and the UK embassy in Tehran to facilitate the visit without making false excuses.

Ebrahimi said that the group of rapporteurs intend to interview political detainees and to give a report to international bodies on the treatment received by the protesters.

The unrest in the UK erupted on Saturday when a few hundred people gathered outside a police station in Tottenham to protest against the fatal shooting of Mark Duggan on Thursday.

The protesters also set a bus and buildings on fire on High Road and broke many shop windows.

Turmoil is now threatening to sweep across all of Britain as the mayhem and looting has also spread to the central city of Birmingham, the western city of Bristol, the northwestern city of Liverpool, and south London neighborhood of Brixton.

Police said they have arrested more than 200 people since the unrest began.

Iran's Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast also called on the British police to exercise restraint against protesters.

Mehmanparast asked the British government to start dialogue with the protesters and to listen to their demands in order to calm the situation down.

He also asked independent human rights organizations to investigate the killing in order to protect the civil rights and civil liberties.

[Homer]

View at Youtube

[Gerard]

View at Youtube

Do you imply, Homer, by placing this YouTube fragment that the UK riots are an uprising against the establisment comparable to Tahrir Square?
To me there seems a lot of thieving going on...

[darwin]

Great video! It has changed my perception of what is going on there and I am now on the side of the rebellion. I had no idea the British establishment was that bad. This woman reminds me of the communist slime we suffer under here in America.

[darwin]

It is really upsetting to see in this video British politeness twisted into a weapon used to shut people down and to lie and do wrong. It is really tragic to see this in the country that is the birth place of reasonableness and decency and that pretty much gave us everything good we have.

[Brainiac]

There is no uprising. What we have are a bunch of skivers and scrotes thinking they can do whatever they like, and an ineffective government obviously resenting their holidays cut short that are too sleepy and groggy to do anything. Gerard is correct. What started as an ostensibly serious concern/protest about the fatal police shooting of Mark Duggan has just turned into a vicious free-for-all with every little estate scumbag jumping on the bandwagon, boasting about their booty and completely absolving themselves of any social responsibility, even among their own:

View at Youtube

[darwin]

Oh god this is going to be a lot of fun. I am going to go swim in cold water right now and wear myself out and acclimate for my Boston winter swimming but I will be back later. I need to actually educate myself about the situation and figure out how the rebels in the street are right and how the British establishment and government are actually communists and traitors to our English heritage. Any ideas anyone?

[Homer]

Do you imply, Homer, by placing this YouTube fragment that the UK riots are an uprising against the establisment comparable to Tahrir Square?
To me there seems a lot of thieving going on...

I don't imply anything as I have no idea of the situation, other than what is on the news. I must say, the incredible number of looters and makers of mayhem does seem to indicate that there is more to this than simply Ipods and designer tracksuits. Whatever the cause or the reason, the UK is in deep shit. The rebels of today have a very different attitude to the rebels of yesteryear. If they were targeting politicians would you think that this was a true sociological rebellion? It looks like a class war from this side of the pond. Powerless people fight with bricks and stones. What choice do they have?

[Homer]

From what I am reading the blacks and Bangladeshi kids are being stopped and searched by the police by the hundreds of thousands while the whites are largely left alone. I surmise that much of the anger being vented in the riots is due to the drug war - a racially selective drug war. I know that in the USA drugs are used by whites and blacks in roughly the same proportions but the number of blacks in prison or on parole far outnumbers the whites. Such discriminatory policing policies will result in collective resentment and violence, as we are now seeing on the streets of England.

http://www.lifeline.org.uk/feature.php?idnum=62

"Drug-related searches and offences in the UK are now at a level never seen before. First, drug-related stops and searches by the police in England & Wales climbed to a record level of 405,000 in 2006/07, up from just 32,500 in 1986 (Table 1, Chart 1). This constitutes a twelve-fold increase in 20 years, and amounts to over 1,100 drug-related stops and searches per day. It should be noted that this figure is based on searches of people’s clothes, bags and vehicles in public places only, and generally excludes other types of searches and settings 2. If relevant figures for the rest of the UK are added, we now have an annual national toll of around half a million drug-related stops and searches. Indeed, in the 3-year period from 2004/05 to 2006/07, there were over one million stops and searches for drugs (1,021,300) in England & Wales."

Professor Nutt gave the government the scientific evidence regarding drugs and the government ignores this at the peril of society.

View at Youtube

Featuring Interviews with:
Professor David Nutt (Head of the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs)

[darwin]

Brainiac can you please split this stuff off into its own topic? And do you live near what is going on? Do you get to see it first hand? I was really upset at all the destruction, especially that corner building being burned down. Didn't the British Empire control India with one British civil servant for every 10,000 Indians? And it all ended reasonably peacefully as far as Indians versus British. I think the European countries could learn from the way American society deals with immigrants. As far as I can tell the situation in Europe is what we would have here in America if the Leftists had more power. The Left would bring in immigrants and pay them welfare but the Left in power would also create a racist socialist economy of the middle class in place of the capitalist economy of free markets and this would exclude the immigrants from getting real jobs and creating wealth. Maybe that is what is happening in Britain?

[darwin]

God save the Queen.

View at Youtube

[darwin]

View at Youtube

[Brainiac]

Brainiac can you please split this stuff off into its own topic? And do you live near what is going on? Do you get to see it first hand? I was really upset at all the destruction, especially that corner building being burned down.

It has been quite a shock for the British public, especially since the riots started 'copycatting' all over the country for no real reason. I live in a pretty decent neighbourhood so nothing much happened around my area. However, there was a break-in at a local mobile phone shop (Phones4U), the door was boarded up and the windows were smashed. A big store boarded up its windows as a precautionary measure, and there were frequent police patrols along the high street. The local residents were in disbelief as mine is a rather sleepy town and away from a lot of action.

The real threat was when I went to work, as I use public transport to and fro (easier than car) so there was always the threat of being attacked or whatever, although thankfully I don't work in the affected areas in London but near them. And of course, many shops and banks shut up earlier than normal. Thankfully it appears to have mostly blown over now, but typically these riots happened in areas where there are large concentrations of ethnic minorities and downwardly-mobile citizens, which is why there has been a lot of anger against them as they are viewed as scrounging wasters and layabouts who have nothing to do except riot only to ease their 'boredom'. And anger against the government too for being so ineffective. The deaths have been saddening to hear about; one Muslim man was attending to an injured person while his son was run over by a car right behind him. There have been some 'heartwarming' tales too: Enfield residents (a town quite near mine) are said to have engaged in community spirit by cleaning up the vandalism as well as forming some sort of vigilante groups to prevent more destruction, which has received mixed responses. Sikhs have banded together and are said to have protected local Mosques as well as their own Gurdwaras. The Turkish community community rose up and chased away the yobs rather than tolerate their vandalism.

Didn't the British Empire control India with one British civil servant for every 10,000 Indians? And it all ended reasonably peacefully as far as Indians versus British. I think the European countries could learn from the way American society deals with immigrants. As far as I can tell the situation in Europe is what we would have here in America if the Leftists had more power. The Left would bring in immigrants and pay them welfare but the Left in power would also create a racist socialist economy of the middle class in place of the capitalist economy of free markets and this would exclude the immigrants from getting real jobs and creating wealth. Maybe that is what is happening in Britain?

To be honest, this isn't really an immigration issue although I'm sure some of those tensions were ignited. What happened is that the police shot a guy called Mark Duggan (black guy) in the heavily ethnic area of Tottenham and there was a protest about it, asking for answers about the shooting which I think received unsatisfactory answers. That was when the riots started and it looked like it was going to be a British version of the LA riots of the 90s. So there was an initial air of injustice and racist treatment around, as blacks have long silently fumed about being stopped and searched by police for drugs and other unlawful items. There were reports that Duggan had shot at the police first before receiving an armed response, but during the riots an investigation found that there was no evidence that Duggan shot first. So that complicated things even more. And when it spun off into copycat riots elsewhere, it became clear that as time wore on it became less about solidarity for Duggan and more about unemployed and criminal youths taking advantage of the atmosphere and reaching out to grab whatever they could.

It looks that msot of it has blown over now, but there will still be serious questions asked of the Government and there is widespread anger about the damage caused, people are saying they will demand that the funds for any cleanup do not come from their taxes. A large petition submitted to the Governmnt calls for convicted riots to be stripped of their state benefits, and good thing too.

As an aside, I used to study at the Tottenham and Enfield campuses of my university. I really hated having to visit them and am glad these riots didn't happen then. It would have been sheer hell.

[zanardi]

It looks like a class war from this side of the pond.

Said Homer. I think: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Pe1de7sFnc

Class war it is, just the modern kind.

[Homer]

It looks like a class war from this side of the pond.

Said Homer. I think: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Pe1de7sFnc

Class war it is, just the modern kind.

There is something very comforting in knowing that Uriah Heep is continuing to chug away doing road tours and studio recordings. They remind me of a very different time and of my long dead brother-in-law who was a rebel if ever there was one.

It looks as though England is making good use of their millions of CCTV cameras to identify and arrest the looters. This is comforting and disturbing at the same time. I'll have to reread 1984. I remember that Winston Smith had to covertly travel far into the countryside to avoid Big Brother's cameras and microphones from seeing and hearing what he and his lover would get up to and say to one another.

Under the spreading chestnut tree
I sold you and you sold me...

Oily Victory Gin, anyone?

[Homer]

I'm surprised that the Bobbies didn't smash the camera. I suppose England has a little ways to go to get to the USA level of police harassment.

http://revolutionarypolitics.tv/video/view...?video_id=16026

[Brainiac]

I hate the way people have had their livelihoods destroyed, others have had their family members die in the riots, etc. but all things considered I'm sort of glad the riots turned out the way they did. I.e. that the young underclass distracted from everything with their pointless thieving, looting and lawless behaviour. Because if it had turned out the way people thought it might turn out, namely a British repeat of the LA Riots, the UK would have seen a full-scale race war on the streets.

British society is a slowly simmering pot of racial tensions in the cities that came close to boiling point. It would have been total carnage if it did, mark my words.

[darwin]

..the UK would have seen a full-scale race war on the streets.. British society is a slowly simmering pot..

America is totally immune to all that.

View at Youtube