OH SNAP. Looks like they mean business now. Somewhere the inventors of the Buzz Bomb are laughing in their graves.
I'm... confused. They weren't allowed to ask people to pull down their hoods before? What the hell? You don't actually have to criminalize "not pulling off one's face covering" to haul a guy in for extended questioning if he refuses, and charge him with a crime if there's evidence.
Without a doubt I think this shit will happen in the US in the next year. After all, our poor/disenfranchised/unlucky/angst ridden/etc are watching all these Brits get some FREE SHIT and will want theirs. Has the idea of personal responsibility been completely forgotten? Differentiating between right and wrong is apparently impossible as well.
Again, I say it all comes back to a degradation of family values. Television, the internet, and facebook are raising a lot of kids these days. And we know the kind of shit that goes viral on Youtube. Parents have to step up.
They said this about Generation X and the Baby Boomers too. Someone probably said it about the Greatest Generation and they definitely said it about the Lost Generation.
Naaa it's not the same. When you have a chaotic family life and no discipline + no emphasis on education or growth, then you have a recipe for lazy, non-introspective people who generally act like shit heads. It always goes back to the home life. I was watching BBC and the general consensus of the rioters its not the poors frustration of the rich, that was just a soundbite of one girl. The demographics of the rioters are all over the place from various economic backgrounds. It's the "If I can get away with it, I'm going to do it," mentality.
That's always been the mentality of those who vandalize and loot. And if it's not, what's the excuse for the people people who were looting and vandalizing in those riots I posted earlier in the thread, which occured in the '40s, 60's, and 90's? Edit: To clarify, I'm not saying that the cause for this mentality isn't close to or on the mark to the idea that these people have shitty home environments. What I'm disputing is that broken homes and shitty parenting is somehow a new phenomenon while the previous generations were shining examples of childrearing.
It's nothing new, but it's getting worse, and more prevalent. And "social media" also makes it easier to spread those behaviour traits, and make them something people emulate. Never mind all the bullshit posturing. What I found amazing about the Vancouver and UK riots were the number of people who had their smart phones out and were taking video to post on YouTube. People are getting hurt, or some sort of situation happens, and what's the first thing some people do? Grab their phone so they can put it up on YouTube. Or tweet something. Don't think that happened in the riots you quoted earlier.
To be fair, that's probably the most helpful thing you can do in those kinds of situations, outside of helping the injured. If no one in your immediate vicinity needs medical attention, then collecting video evidence is probably the most valuable thing you could do in that situation. What happened to the people who tried to fight the rioters in Vancouver? They knocked one or two people down, and then got the ever-loving shit kicked out of them. If I were watching this riot unfold I would be filming hours of videotapes to turn over to the police ASAP.
Except most of these people aren't doing it with good intentions, they're posting it so they can go "Oh look how cool I am!"
Spoiler How, exactly? I suppose I could send money. But it'd likely be intercepted and used to finance piracy or a theocratic regime. I could send food. It'd suffer the same fate. I could go there in person, to ensure that it gets to the starving Somali child? I'd stick out like a sore thumb, and end up as a hostage. None of these are easy, and none of these actions have the power to change the situation in Somalia. I am over $100k in debt currently, and have no significant income coming in. Despite this, through patience and repeated loanings of the funds I've had returned to me, I have loaned $1000 to various farming groups, mainly in SE Asia and Central and Coastal Africa. It is not enough to change the world, but it is enough to improve a few lives and increase how much food is available in those countries. As I do not have the tools to effect change on a larger level right now, it is all I can do. Does being indifferent to the suffering of others make you good? I'm not saying that by not helping others you become Satan, but if you are smart enough to see that there's a problem and too indifferent to try to do something to help it, it's possible you're kinda a dick. I suppose it's more a matter of being raised to believe that helping the unfortunate is good, and thinking about how lucky I am that, by some fluke, my consciousness manages to be attached to a middle-class white American male. Through no effort of my own, I have been granted access to excellent education, a family that has both cared for me and has been able to feed and clothe me through my youth, a life relatively free of violence and crime, vaccines to protect me from many diseases, and the protection of the strongest military in the world. Maybe 1% of the world population has the luck to be born somewhat like me. Whether it's good or evil, I don't like thinking someone should have to live a shitty life just because they were dealt a poor hand at birth. Ah, so genetics determines success? Who needs more children to keep their family business running profitably, a lawyer or a farmer? The poor having more children than the rich is not a modern phenomenon, it has consistently been practiced in societies that have moved past the "my wealth is measured in how many goats I have" stage. In royal families, which have historically been the richest, having a large family could prove to be a negative, as you'd have countless people vying for the throne, causing instability and upheaval. In poor peasant families, each other mouth to feed might be a drain while they're still a toddler, but soon they can feed your chickens or mind your sheep or sow your fields. Sure, your family might not have much money, but it has many workers, and if one of your children dies then at least you've got plenty others to help carry their load. As for the breeding bit: humans are bred. Idiots and angry rioters are made*. This is not a statement about the London rioters. I have seen some footage which would suggest that the initial cause was a police slaying (and poor response to it) among a historically oppressed community, and a lot of police footage of violent greedy cunts stealing things from whatever store isn't determinedly guarded, with a bit of arson thrown in for laughs. I do not have sufficient information to determine all of the root problems there. As for the video footage of the riots: It doesn't matter what their intent is, once it's examined for evidence it can be used against any rioters that can be identified. Whether good Samaritan or chavvy twit, YouTube and the courts will benefit. *You could assume that idiocy and anger are the natural state of humans, and that society and education seek to train out that idiocy and anger.
Well that's a generic, un-cited blanket statement if I ever heard one. I agree that parents deserve a huge amount of the blame, and the impression I'm getting is that most of these kids are stupid fucks destroying things and endangering lives for no reason other than they perceive it to be 'fun', but could you sound anymore crotchety? Brings back a distinct memory of when I was 10 and my grandpa 'gave me a talking to' about how 'the kids these days' are disrespectful and don't appreciate what they have because they don't have the proper 'family values'. Then later that night I heard him call Oprah a 'stupid nigger'. Oh, and during his time, lynchings actually happened and were fairly accepted. Meanwhile, today, there's a black president and gay marriage is legal. In terms of social values, if you had a choice, would you raise your kids today, or 60+ years ago? The thing I don't get, is why, for the seemingly VERY few who are rioting for socioeconomic reasons (like the two girls who are 'showing the rich we can do what we want'), they are destroying their own neighborhoods. If they want some kind of revolution against the rich, why not storm the rich parts of town instead of the rinky dink shops in the middle class-poor areas? Unless I'm that mis-informed about London geography and the pics/footage ARE the rich areas, in which case, I'd probably riot too.
Just to address the whole "why" of it all from the perspective of someone in the UK: I know a guy over there who doesn't live in London, but his town has had some rioting. I asked him his opinion, and his response was, "For the hell of it." So yes, poverty / social class might have some underlying part in making some of these people more pissed off, but as has been stated before, this is mainly a bunch of unethical pricks doing whatever they want just because they can.
Interesting to note...for me at least...after my divorce I moved to a different cluster in our school district. The demographics are substantially different from where they attended school before. Non English speaking homes...homes where education is under valued...as the administration described it to me. My boys live school and learning and reading...but they hate this school district. They say the kids have no manners, They're rude and disruptive, and that the school doesnt challenge them. Parents do need to step up. Instill value for hard work by praising hard work instead of results. Results are important but so is the work. Praise actions. Regarding the riots...these people are just assholes. I don't 100% believe in sniping them but I'm fairly on board with rubber bullets and full prosecution.
Honestly, if we just crop dusted them with an ass load of pulverized roofies, wouldn't that shit take care of itself pretty soon? Everyone would inhale it, blackout, wake up in the morning, do the "what the fuck just happened?" thing, and go back to trying to make the hangover go away and forget the damn riot. Worst case is rioters accidentally rape rioters, which is ok, because they were damn terrorists in the first place. And as long as you also air drop condoms into the crowd beforehand, what the hell could possibly go wrong?
Here's the tl:dr version of why the riots are happening: Because they can. Lazy, greedy shits are trashing stuff because it makes them feel good, and stealing stuff because they're greedy. This is not social rebellion against the wealthy upper crust. A minority will claim it is. But that's like terrorists claiming every bomb that goes off is theirs. It's convenient propaganda, and partially truthfully - but it's not the reality. When you're pissed off at your gas bill do you go and shoot your wife? It's not a reasonable response and there's attributable causal connection. If you went and shot up the gas company, that's one tiny step in the right direction. Claiming that these riots have any real and direct relation to the politics of the widening gap between rich and poor is a beat up. It's small business owners and residents that are getting victimised here - the poor stiffs who work for a living.
Nice article on the subject: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/british-rioters-the-spawn-of-a-bankrupt-ruling-elite/story-e6frg6zo-1226112640970" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/op ... 6112640970</a>
But that can't be right... it sounds way too crotchety. And yet they don't tell anyone to get off their lawn. I'm confused. Or is that the dementia kicking in. I'm just more confused now.
Historically, though, the Powers That Be don't offer meaningful concessions to placate angry masses - they start bringing in harsher penalties for disobeying laws, and encouraging people to inform on their neighbours. Which I suspect is exactly what will happen. For everyone talking about how the rioters aren't doing it intentionally as a form of class protest, you are quite right. No-one out there looting TV's is thinking 'fuck yeah, I'm striking a 55inch blow for the proletariat". However, you know who burns down their own communities? People who feel that they have absolutely nothing invested in those communities. People who look at the social institutions around them as the enemy. That's the underlying cause of these riots. These kids have no concept of ties to anything larger than themselves, so if its not hurting them when they burn down Mr and Mrs Smith's house down the road, who cares right? Or as Eminem so eloquently put it: On a related note, if you look at the origins of welfare programs, they didn't spring up because a bunch of rich people wanted to help the poor. Typically, desperate poor people started robbing the houses of the rich, and the rich thought: fuck this, how do we stop them robbing us, and keep them as a labour force? All that said: as a privileged white man, you better believe that if a bunch of poor rioters come round my neighbourhood, I'll be the first one on the phone to my local Minister demanding tanks in the streets.