What is the world seeing when looking at the UK riots?
England riots: The global reaction
By Olivia Lang
Source - BBC News
The riots in British cities have unsurprisingly dominated headlines in domestic papers. But there has also been extensive coverage overseas. So what does the rest of the world make of the unrest?
"Everyone is just very shocked," said Ravi Somaiya, a reporter with the New York Times.
Mr Somaiya told the BBC's Today programme that the riots had been a big story for the US, dominating the front pages of his paper for several days.
"I mean a couple of months ago Britain was Harry Potter and the Royal Wedding. Now it is phone-hacking and riots in the street.
"It's quite a turnaround," he said.
US papers have differed on their interpretations of the riots, but Mr Somaiya says many attribute it to social inequality.
"I think the word 'underclass' comes up quite a lot because it has a lot of resonance obviously with an American audience where there is similar income inequality," he said.
Too soft or too tough?
Elsewhere in the US, the LA Times describes how "community leaders, sociologists, police and lawmakers were left groping for a meaning for the worst social unrest to hit London in a generation."
The paper said the riots exposed a phenomenon it called "yobbery, the anti-social behavior of a generation believed to be so alienated from the norms of civilised society that pockets of some cities live in fear".
Some commentators, such as the New York Times' Robert Mackay, were baffled by the restraint shown by British police. "American readers might be surprised to learn that most members of the force charged with ending the rioting remain unarmed," he writes.
Others, such as the highly censored Iranian media, have drawn the opposite conclusion.
Iranian press say the UK has been too tough on the rioters, who it portrays as citizens protesting against poor living conditions and police mistreatment.
The Iranian government, usually at the receiving end of criticism for its treatment of demonstrators, was quick to condemn what it said was police brutality against innocent individuals.
Press TV cites Mohammad Karim Abedi, the vice-chairman of the parliamentary committee, as urging London "to order the police to stop treating protesters violently".
Other countries too have been showing what appears to be a touch of schadenfreude.
Libya has used the events as an excuse to call the British government illegitimate and demand it go - an echo of comments made by the UK about Col Muammar Gaddafi's regime.
"[David] Cameron and his government must leave after the popular uprising against them and the violent repression of peaceful demonstrations by police," Libya's Jana news agency quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaaim as saying.
'Deeper roots'
Beijing's Global Times, meanwhile, says the riots and US debt crisis show that western democracies are "at their wits' end".
An editorial in the English edition of the Global Times says that while the Chinese system has its own problems, the British riots show it is easy to underestimate the complexities of a western-style democratic system.
Germany's Die Welt says other European countries will have to confront such problems "China is one of many countries long targeted by Western criticism. It is reproached by the West for its every frustration, making many Chinese people believe domestic problems are China's systematic fault while admiring Western powers.
"However, the troubles in the US and Britain, the Norway mass killing and the protests in Israel against high living costs show that the Chinese actually do not have enough understanding of the ups and downs of an industrialised society."
Closer to home, European media has been watching more anxiously, trying to establish whether the British riots were a product of the economic malaise affecting the continent - or a uniquely British phenomenon.
"The economic crisis could have been a factor in the riots but that is far from clear," writes Walter Oppenheimer in El Pais.
"Unlike what has been happening in recent months in Greece or in Spain, where the middle classes are the ones who have taken to the streets, here it has been the young people from poor neighbourhoods. Their problems don't stem from four years of crisis.
"Their malcontent has much deeper roots."
An editorial in Spain's La Vanguardia lists the reasons behind the violence as "poverty, marginalisation, racial conflict and a shroud of hopelessness" caused by the economic crisis and the government's cuts.
France's Liberation newspaper, meanwhile, ascribes the unrest to social divisions in a "Disunited Kingdom".
Ulf Poschardt of Germany's Die Welt blames dependence on the welfare state, saying other countries that have "lived beyond their means" will be forced to endure similar turmoil.
Mr Poschardt blasts looters as those who "have got used to getting money from the state and complaining when that is cut back".
"The riots in London are hooliganism by losers, who live in a society that has little sympathy for losers. Among the arsonists are people who no longer have any values."
"These kind of problems are going to be faced in the foreseeable future by many more Europeans. As all states have to some extent lived far beyond their means, they all, without exception, will have to cut back on their spending."
Cricket jitters
In Pakistan's Dawn newspaper, Caroline Jaine, a British writer, describes how she is "staggered" by Britain's reaction, arguing that it is hypocritical in light of Britain's condemnation of the crackdowns in the Arab world.
Indian media wondered whether the cricket would be cancelled "The same people that shake their sorry heads when street protests across the Middle East are crushed by dictatorial regimes are calling for an army presence on the streets of Britain, and I have heard plenty say the rioters and looters should be shot.
"Even highly trained conflict transformation professionals who have cut their teeth on Afghanistan and Iraq are simply sighing - claiming that 'these people' are just bad-guys," she adds.
But Egyptian netizens were quick to draw a comparison between their protest movement, which toppled President Hosni Mubarak in February, and the recent scenes in Britain.
Mosa'ab Elshamy, an activist, writes on Twitter: "Egyptians and Tunisians took revenge for Khaled Said and [Mohammed] Bouazizi by peacefully toppling their murdering regimes, not stealing DVD players."
The Indian press has been largely dominated by the possible implications on the cricket match between India and England this week.
The Indian Express reported that the squad would continue its tour in Britain despite the unrest.
The Times of India, meanwhile, had another concern.
"Top Bollywood actors safe in London," the newspaper announced. "Some of our top Bollywood actors, including Shah Rukh Khan, Priyanka Chopra, Ranbir Kapoor, Shahid Kapur and Anushka Sharma, are safe in London," the paper assures fans.
Priyanka Chopra has even been happily shopping in Harrods, the newspaper cites a tweet as stating.
Behind England's riots, a violent and entitled generation of British young people
By Anthony Daniels
Wednesday, August 10th 2011, 4:00 AM
Source - NY Daily News
The riots in London and elsewhere in England have confirmed what I long knew and have long preached to my disbelieving but totally unobservant countrymen: that young British people are among the most unpleasant and potentially violent young people in the world. It took determination on the part of my countrymen not to notice it.
Needless to say, any generalization on such a scale needs to be tempered by qualification. Of course it is true that not all young Britons are unattractive in appearance and conduct, only a far higher proportion of them than of the young of any other nation. It requires but an overnight stay on a Friday or Saturday in any British city to prove it. Even Russians are appalled by what they witness.
The rioting is only the extreme end of the spectrum of bad behavior by British youth and young adults. The characteristics that are common to all classes are arrogance, a sense of entitlement and an unwillingness to moderate their behavior for the convenience of others. The main difference between the classes is that the rich can pay for what they feel entitled to, while the poor have to wheedle, cajole, swindle and steal it. But the inflamed sense of entitlement is the same.
These riots certainly did not emerge from a cultural vacuum. Many visitors to Britain, including Americans, are surprised and disturbed by how quickly many people in Britain appear to get murderously angry over trifles and direct real and frightening hatred at a person who has offended them in some very slight way. Tempers flare over nothing.
In England it is difficult now, quite literally, to distinguish the sound of people enjoying themselves from that of someone being murdered. Recently in Manchester (where there has also been rioting), I woke at 1 on a Wednesday morning in my hotel to hear drunken screaming and shouting down below on one of the city's main streets, the sound of which continued until 4:30. Lo and behold, when I left the hotel at 8 in the morning, I discovered that a man had been savagely beaten nearly to death at about 2 a.m. and was still in a coma - but the drunken reveling had continued nonetheless, uninterrupted by the police.
So the sheer viciousness and destructiveness of the riots certainly do not surprise me. No one who has seen an English football crowd, and the brutal faces it contains, could be under any illusion as to its potential for violence. At the last match I attended, the police kept the supporters of the two teams apart by almost military maneuvers, and after the match thousands of them frogmarched one set of supporters into their awaiting buses. If they had not done so there is no doubt that widespread fighting, looting and destruction would have occurred. And football tickets are now so expensive that it is no longer the game of the poor. Thus poverty does not explain the quick resort to violence, or the obvious taste for vandalism, of the modern British.
This is now the British way of life. We are afraid of our own children; many carry knives. The number of knifing injuries in London rose from 941 in the three months between November 2010 and January 2011 to 1,070 in the three months between February and April 2011; that is to say, by nearly 14%. And knifings with victims ages 13 to 24 rose 30% over this equivalent period between 2008-09 and 2010-11.
Most of the fatalities were among people of African and West Indian origin; Negus McClean, age 15, was chased on a bicycle by seven youths before being stabbed to death by them. Apparently, he was defending his brother from a gang. Oddly enough, the outrage of the local community was contained after this event and no riots ensued. Apparently, not all violent deaths are of equal concern to the inhabitants of our slums.
Long training and experience have taught young denizens of our poorer areas that they have nothing to fear from the law. Not only do the police solve a mere 5% of crimes or thereabouts, but nothing much happens to those who are convicted. A former lord chief justice of England, Lord Baron Woolf, thought that house burglary was so trivial a crime that those who committed it should not be imprisoned. Shoplifting has been virtually decriminalized. The slum dwellers of London are not well-educated - they reject the very concept of education - but are perfectly capable of drawing their conclusions. The only thing that will stop the rioters is boredom or exhaustion.
Daniels, who often writes under the pseudonym Theodore Dalrymple, is a retired British prison doctor and psychiatrist. He is a contributing editor to City Journal.
By Olivia Lang
Source - BBC News
The riots in British cities have unsurprisingly dominated headlines in domestic papers. But there has also been extensive coverage overseas. So what does the rest of the world make of the unrest?
"Everyone is just very shocked," said Ravi Somaiya, a reporter with the New York Times.
Mr Somaiya told the BBC's Today programme that the riots had been a big story for the US, dominating the front pages of his paper for several days.
"I mean a couple of months ago Britain was Harry Potter and the Royal Wedding. Now it is phone-hacking and riots in the street.
"It's quite a turnaround," he said.
US papers have differed on their interpretations of the riots, but Mr Somaiya says many attribute it to social inequality.
"I think the word 'underclass' comes up quite a lot because it has a lot of resonance obviously with an American audience where there is similar income inequality," he said.
Too soft or too tough?
Elsewhere in the US, the LA Times describes how "community leaders, sociologists, police and lawmakers were left groping for a meaning for the worst social unrest to hit London in a generation."
The paper said the riots exposed a phenomenon it called "yobbery, the anti-social behavior of a generation believed to be so alienated from the norms of civilised society that pockets of some cities live in fear".
Some commentators, such as the New York Times' Robert Mackay, were baffled by the restraint shown by British police. "American readers might be surprised to learn that most members of the force charged with ending the rioting remain unarmed," he writes.
Others, such as the highly censored Iranian media, have drawn the opposite conclusion.
Iranian press say the UK has been too tough on the rioters, who it portrays as citizens protesting against poor living conditions and police mistreatment.
The Iranian government, usually at the receiving end of criticism for its treatment of demonstrators, was quick to condemn what it said was police brutality against innocent individuals.
Press TV cites Mohammad Karim Abedi, the vice-chairman of the parliamentary committee, as urging London "to order the police to stop treating protesters violently".
Other countries too have been showing what appears to be a touch of schadenfreude.
Libya has used the events as an excuse to call the British government illegitimate and demand it go - an echo of comments made by the UK about Col Muammar Gaddafi's regime.
"[David] Cameron and his government must leave after the popular uprising against them and the violent repression of peaceful demonstrations by police," Libya's Jana news agency quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaaim as saying.
'Deeper roots'
Beijing's Global Times, meanwhile, says the riots and US debt crisis show that western democracies are "at their wits' end".
An editorial in the English edition of the Global Times says that while the Chinese system has its own problems, the British riots show it is easy to underestimate the complexities of a western-style democratic system.
Germany's Die Welt says other European countries will have to confront such problems "China is one of many countries long targeted by Western criticism. It is reproached by the West for its every frustration, making many Chinese people believe domestic problems are China's systematic fault while admiring Western powers.
"However, the troubles in the US and Britain, the Norway mass killing and the protests in Israel against high living costs show that the Chinese actually do not have enough understanding of the ups and downs of an industrialised society."
Closer to home, European media has been watching more anxiously, trying to establish whether the British riots were a product of the economic malaise affecting the continent - or a uniquely British phenomenon.
"The economic crisis could have been a factor in the riots but that is far from clear," writes Walter Oppenheimer in El Pais.
"Unlike what has been happening in recent months in Greece or in Spain, where the middle classes are the ones who have taken to the streets, here it has been the young people from poor neighbourhoods. Their problems don't stem from four years of crisis.
"Their malcontent has much deeper roots."
An editorial in Spain's La Vanguardia lists the reasons behind the violence as "poverty, marginalisation, racial conflict and a shroud of hopelessness" caused by the economic crisis and the government's cuts.
France's Liberation newspaper, meanwhile, ascribes the unrest to social divisions in a "Disunited Kingdom".
Ulf Poschardt of Germany's Die Welt blames dependence on the welfare state, saying other countries that have "lived beyond their means" will be forced to endure similar turmoil.
Mr Poschardt blasts looters as those who "have got used to getting money from the state and complaining when that is cut back".
"The riots in London are hooliganism by losers, who live in a society that has little sympathy for losers. Among the arsonists are people who no longer have any values."
"These kind of problems are going to be faced in the foreseeable future by many more Europeans. As all states have to some extent lived far beyond their means, they all, without exception, will have to cut back on their spending."
Cricket jitters
In Pakistan's Dawn newspaper, Caroline Jaine, a British writer, describes how she is "staggered" by Britain's reaction, arguing that it is hypocritical in light of Britain's condemnation of the crackdowns in the Arab world.
Indian media wondered whether the cricket would be cancelled "The same people that shake their sorry heads when street protests across the Middle East are crushed by dictatorial regimes are calling for an army presence on the streets of Britain, and I have heard plenty say the rioters and looters should be shot.
"Even highly trained conflict transformation professionals who have cut their teeth on Afghanistan and Iraq are simply sighing - claiming that 'these people' are just bad-guys," she adds.
But Egyptian netizens were quick to draw a comparison between their protest movement, which toppled President Hosni Mubarak in February, and the recent scenes in Britain.
Mosa'ab Elshamy, an activist, writes on Twitter: "Egyptians and Tunisians took revenge for Khaled Said and [Mohammed] Bouazizi by peacefully toppling their murdering regimes, not stealing DVD players."
The Indian press has been largely dominated by the possible implications on the cricket match between India and England this week.
The Indian Express reported that the squad would continue its tour in Britain despite the unrest.
The Times of India, meanwhile, had another concern.
"Top Bollywood actors safe in London," the newspaper announced. "Some of our top Bollywood actors, including Shah Rukh Khan, Priyanka Chopra, Ranbir Kapoor, Shahid Kapur and Anushka Sharma, are safe in London," the paper assures fans.
Priyanka Chopra has even been happily shopping in Harrods, the newspaper cites a tweet as stating.
Behind England's riots, a violent and entitled generation of British young people
By Anthony Daniels
Wednesday, August 10th 2011, 4:00 AM
Source - NY Daily News
The riots in London and elsewhere in England have confirmed what I long knew and have long preached to my disbelieving but totally unobservant countrymen: that young British people are among the most unpleasant and potentially violent young people in the world. It took determination on the part of my countrymen not to notice it.
Needless to say, any generalization on such a scale needs to be tempered by qualification. Of course it is true that not all young Britons are unattractive in appearance and conduct, only a far higher proportion of them than of the young of any other nation. It requires but an overnight stay on a Friday or Saturday in any British city to prove it. Even Russians are appalled by what they witness.
The rioting is only the extreme end of the spectrum of bad behavior by British youth and young adults. The characteristics that are common to all classes are arrogance, a sense of entitlement and an unwillingness to moderate their behavior for the convenience of others. The main difference between the classes is that the rich can pay for what they feel entitled to, while the poor have to wheedle, cajole, swindle and steal it. But the inflamed sense of entitlement is the same.
These riots certainly did not emerge from a cultural vacuum. Many visitors to Britain, including Americans, are surprised and disturbed by how quickly many people in Britain appear to get murderously angry over trifles and direct real and frightening hatred at a person who has offended them in some very slight way. Tempers flare over nothing.
In England it is difficult now, quite literally, to distinguish the sound of people enjoying themselves from that of someone being murdered. Recently in Manchester (where there has also been rioting), I woke at 1 on a Wednesday morning in my hotel to hear drunken screaming and shouting down below on one of the city's main streets, the sound of which continued until 4:30. Lo and behold, when I left the hotel at 8 in the morning, I discovered that a man had been savagely beaten nearly to death at about 2 a.m. and was still in a coma - but the drunken reveling had continued nonetheless, uninterrupted by the police.
So the sheer viciousness and destructiveness of the riots certainly do not surprise me. No one who has seen an English football crowd, and the brutal faces it contains, could be under any illusion as to its potential for violence. At the last match I attended, the police kept the supporters of the two teams apart by almost military maneuvers, and after the match thousands of them frogmarched one set of supporters into their awaiting buses. If they had not done so there is no doubt that widespread fighting, looting and destruction would have occurred. And football tickets are now so expensive that it is no longer the game of the poor. Thus poverty does not explain the quick resort to violence, or the obvious taste for vandalism, of the modern British.
This is now the British way of life. We are afraid of our own children; many carry knives. The number of knifing injuries in London rose from 941 in the three months between November 2010 and January 2011 to 1,070 in the three months between February and April 2011; that is to say, by nearly 14%. And knifings with victims ages 13 to 24 rose 30% over this equivalent period between 2008-09 and 2010-11.
Most of the fatalities were among people of African and West Indian origin; Negus McClean, age 15, was chased on a bicycle by seven youths before being stabbed to death by them. Apparently, he was defending his brother from a gang. Oddly enough, the outrage of the local community was contained after this event and no riots ensued. Apparently, not all violent deaths are of equal concern to the inhabitants of our slums.
Long training and experience have taught young denizens of our poorer areas that they have nothing to fear from the law. Not only do the police solve a mere 5% of crimes or thereabouts, but nothing much happens to those who are convicted. A former lord chief justice of England, Lord Baron Woolf, thought that house burglary was so trivial a crime that those who committed it should not be imprisoned. Shoplifting has been virtually decriminalized. The slum dwellers of London are not well-educated - they reject the very concept of education - but are perfectly capable of drawing their conclusions. The only thing that will stop the rioters is boredom or exhaustion.
Daniels, who often writes under the pseudonym Theodore Dalrymple, is a retired British prison doctor and psychiatrist. He is a contributing editor to City Journal.