In which there are news and views, and now I need booze
1. The USians are developing a weapon that would enable them to bomb anywhere on Earth in under one hour: the media are spinning the story away from that angle though, obv. Remember: the politicians and their paymasters don't want you to look behind the curtain. They want us to tell ourselves that our societies/children are most threatened by a few powerless looters or whatevz the distraction of the moment is....
2. On my society. I would hope everybody reading this already knows the following facts, cos post-riots they're even making it into parts of the mainstream media, but it can't hurt to repeat them:
a. Mark Duggan was shot dead by a policeman. A police radio, attached to a policeman, was also shot by a policeman. There was an illegal handgun found at the scene. Eight days on and there is no forensic evidence yet to connect this weapon with any of the people, i.e. policemen, taxi driver, or shooting victim, at the place where police shot Mark Duggan dead.
b. David Cameron's "new moral army" is led by at least one openly racist individual. Don't bother claiming that Cameron's uber-savvy media minders can't click when the truth is that they can but at best don't care and more likely agree with the racist.
c. I have little to no sympathy for capitalist looters, especially professional criminals (such as the politicians who loot taxes and avoid prosecution for their crimes, non-lol, or the bankers who looted our entire economy) and greedy members of the middle classes, HOWEVER if people who are already members of the underclasses, who are excluded from mainstream society and have no reason to participate in a supposed "social contract" which is almost entirely one-sided and designed to keep them down, have their only non-criminal means of even basic survival taken away from them (by the indirect removal of social support or the direct removal of benefits) then they will have even less "choice" about whether to support themselves through crime. Don't trouble yourselves to threaten them with prison when prison is NOT a worse option than their daily lives. And don't bother asking me to condemn people, especially children, who are already condemned to WORSE CONDITIONS THAN OUR SOCIETY USES FOR PUNISHING VIOLENT* CRIMINALS.
* "violent" here means "violent against human beings" not "vandalisers of property" cos, unlike the mainstream media, I can distinguish between those (even when they overlap, e.g. when someone deliberately sets a fire in a residential building).
P.S. Warning: don't blame society's problems on particular communities in my space without bringing solid evidence. I'm already bored with the racism and classism of many of the "get the rioters" contingent.
3. International commentary on English rioting: as far as I can tell this perceptive post on the London riots is an Egyptian perspective.
4. I was stuck in an "inner city" until 9pm last night cos I missed my bus and there wasn't another for a loooooong time. I saw one police van and less than a couple of dozen police (although it was hard to count cos they were circulating rapidly, except for one policeman hiding behind a parked up 4x4 while smoking a crafty fag). The loudest noise coming from any city-centre venue was the party at the Lakeland plastics shop (moderately expensive kitchenware) which included lots of giggling/shrieking middle-class white women and a male singer doing a passable Robbie Williams impersonation. It did kick off, as I was passing, when one of the more inebriated ladies knocked over a display, *CRASH*, and temporarily unplugged the singer but the police standing outside didn't react to this DRUNKEN VIOLENCE!!1!!
5. Me! Me! Me! I do actually have more than enough links for a fun round-up, and a couple more book reviews but I'm just not in the mood at the moment. I'm exhausted from 6 weeks of non-stop debilitating illness+ and then there's the politics. So. I am naarting though (not every day but >11 for August so far).
This entry was originally posted at http://spiralsheep.dreamwidth.org/371335.html and has
comments Please comment there using OpenID.
2. On my society. I would hope everybody reading this already knows the following facts, cos post-riots they're even making it into parts of the mainstream media, but it can't hurt to repeat them:
a. Mark Duggan was shot dead by a policeman. A police radio, attached to a policeman, was also shot by a policeman. There was an illegal handgun found at the scene. Eight days on and there is no forensic evidence yet to connect this weapon with any of the people, i.e. policemen, taxi driver, or shooting victim, at the place where police shot Mark Duggan dead.
b. David Cameron's "new moral army" is led by at least one openly racist individual. Don't bother claiming that Cameron's uber-savvy media minders can't click when the truth is that they can but at best don't care and more likely agree with the racist.
c. I have little to no sympathy for capitalist looters, especially professional criminals (such as the politicians who loot taxes and avoid prosecution for their crimes, non-lol, or the bankers who looted our entire economy) and greedy members of the middle classes, HOWEVER if people who are already members of the underclasses, who are excluded from mainstream society and have no reason to participate in a supposed "social contract" which is almost entirely one-sided and designed to keep them down, have their only non-criminal means of even basic survival taken away from them (by the indirect removal of social support or the direct removal of benefits) then they will have even less "choice" about whether to support themselves through crime. Don't trouble yourselves to threaten them with prison when prison is NOT a worse option than their daily lives. And don't bother asking me to condemn people, especially children, who are already condemned to WORSE CONDITIONS THAN OUR SOCIETY USES FOR PUNISHING VIOLENT* CRIMINALS.
* "violent" here means "violent against human beings" not "vandalisers of property" cos, unlike the mainstream media, I can distinguish between those (even when they overlap, e.g. when someone deliberately sets a fire in a residential building).
P.S. Warning: don't blame society's problems on particular communities in my space without bringing solid evidence. I'm already bored with the racism and classism of many of the "get the rioters" contingent.
3. International commentary on English rioting: as far as I can tell this perceptive post on the London riots is an Egyptian perspective.
4. I was stuck in an "inner city" until 9pm last night cos I missed my bus and there wasn't another for a loooooong time. I saw one police van and less than a couple of dozen police (although it was hard to count cos they were circulating rapidly, except for one policeman hiding behind a parked up 4x4 while smoking a crafty fag). The loudest noise coming from any city-centre venue was the party at the Lakeland plastics shop (moderately expensive kitchenware) which included lots of giggling/shrieking middle-class white women and a male singer doing a passable Robbie Williams impersonation. It did kick off, as I was passing, when one of the more inebriated ladies knocked over a display, *CRASH*, and temporarily unplugged the singer but the police standing outside didn't react to this DRUNKEN VIOLENCE!!1!!
5. Me! Me! Me! I do actually have more than enough links for a fun round-up, and a couple more book reviews but I'm just not in the mood at the moment. I'm exhausted from 6 weeks of non-stop debilitating illness+ and then there's the politics. So. I am naarting though (not every day but >11 for August so far).
This entry was originally posted at http://spiralsheep.dreamwidth.org/371335.html and has
comments Please comment there using OpenID.