[Use Of Weapons]

http://www.xkcd.net/386/

[Illuyankas]

Cool Anomander, I didn't see your post before.

This post has been edited by Illuyankas: 10 August 2011 - 12:33 PM

[Illuyankas]

King Kazma, on 10 August 2011 - 02:49 AM, said:

This was initially a long post about my feelings about stuff, but it was rather caustic so I've shortened it.

@Illy....Duggan had a handgun in his sock.....HE HAD A HANDGUN IN HIS FUCKING SOCK. I don't care if the handgun was or wasn't used or if he pulled the trigger or not. Don't carry a handgun is job fucking one. It's simple. Why do you gloss over that like it's nothing. If you aren't a thug, you don't carry an unregistered gun. If you are a thug, and you're carrying a handgun...the intent to do harm at some point is in your head...otherwise you don't need to have a gun. So don't gloss over the fact that he has that gun. He did and he shouldn't have and one day that gun would likely have killed or injured someone. And this stopped being about Duggan after Saturday...it became about something else entirely. Teens feeling effing entitled to free shit. Don't defend this shitheads right at owning a gun by acting like the fact that he didn't fire it makes it okay. As far as I am concerned guns are illegal in London...you own one...you face the ire of the police who are trying to tamp down on said weapons. If you are a cop and you walk up to a guy who you know IS stacked with a handgun...I guarantee you will look at that situation differently, that cops LIFE was on the line simply because Duggan HAD that gun...end of story.

Illy, Tiste is a fellow forumite and he works with police...his insight into the inner workings of this stuff is a heck of a lot deeper than yours, so before you go off the deep end and shout people down for their opinions...THINK about who it is you are talking to please.

Owning a gun forfeits your right to be alive. Got it. Also he's not a member of the Met, he's not a part of the force that pulled a disabled man out of his wheelchair, beat and hospitalised him because he was 'rolling at them aggressively', the force with a dozen deaths and no arrests or resignations for unlawful killings, the one that people want to have more power and less accountability. (more funding AND more accountability would be great, though, which I suspect will be the only thing in this whole post everyone will agree with)

King Kazma, on 10 August 2011 - 03:20 AM, said:

Illuyankas, on 09 August 2011 - 09:29 PM, said:

People in the shittiest parts of our society spend decades being told they are the reason we suck, demonised as 'chavs' and less than human while having all the blame for the situation they're in placed firmly on them instead of the policy makers who put them there, they have hordes of middle and upper class fucks with their 'Fuck you got mine' attitudes telling them they could get out of this shithole if they only tried harder, and have all their avenues of expressing themselves taken away and ignored, and then when they do the only thing they have left to do and lash out you want all them killed or imprisoned for life?

No, sorry you misunderstand the situation. The majority of these little shits have spent years being told that the best stuff is what they should have (music, trainers, clothes, gadgets), and if they want it then they can just take it. This is the result of a generation of kids downloading music, movies and the like free on the internet. If you want it, fucking steal it and they tuck that away in their entitlement bank and call it RIGHT. Well no it's not fucking right. People in the shittiest parts of society keep it that way...I volunteer at a place down in the sketchy part of Toronto and there are GOOD people there doing GOOD things...and trying to teach their youths that violence and crime is NOT the answer...the problem is that these kids are being told by the pop culture they consume that what they are doing is okay and that they need to get rich or die tryin'. that's a problem. But don't try to tell me that its because they CAN'T behave properly...they fucking can if they buckle down and try. This is evidenced to me by the GOOD people who work to try to make things better....they are totally poor and totally beaten down, but they still are TRYING and for a lot of kids they ARE making a difference. Lashing out is a childish schoolyard bully tactic, and even the people FROM the rough part of town agree on that. It's not EVER going to be okay to do such things, so don't try to sell that as an excuse, cause it's not.

This is like the personification of the whole bootstraps, 'Fuck you, got mine' mentality.

And again, it's not an excuse, it's a reason. I am not, have not, and will continue to not condone the mass violence and firebombing, I'm vilifying the idea that these people are subhuman scum.

[Obdigore]

Illy, I have a question - what are these people stealing? Is it food? Throwing off their rags and putting on jeans and tshirts? Maybe a coat for the winter? How is firebombing sony's warehouse going to help them throw of their chains of poverty? How is running over other hard-working Brits going to help them 'fight the man'? Is that new big screen TV really going to help them find a job and throw of their poverty shackles? Why did they need to beat the crap and then mug a 20 y/o exchange student?

Or are a large majority of these people out there with the 'I'll get mine, fuck everyone else' mentality that you seem to claim only the rich espouse?

This post has been edited by Obdigore: 10 August 2011 - 01:13 PM

[QuickTidal]

Obdigore, on 10 August 2011 - 01:12 PM, said:

Illy, I have a question - what are these people stealing? Is it food? Throwing off their rags and putting on jeans and tshirts? Maybe a coat for the winter? How is firebombing sony's warehouse going to help them throw of their chains of poverty? How is running over other hard-working Brits going to help them 'fight the man'? Is that new big screen TV really going to help them find a job and throw of their poverty shackles? Why did they need to beat the crap and then mug a 20 y/o exchange student?

Or are a large majority of these people out there with the 'I'll get mine, fuck everyone else' mentality that you seem to claim only the rich espouse?

Indeed. I'm sorry but NONE of these little shits is actually standing up for anything worthwhile to even protest about, let alone riot. They are thieves and thugs. They strip down people and steal their clothes....or like that video they pretend to help a bleeding kid up only to rip him off...

...and this entire group of thugs who you seem to claim have nothing...are ORGANIZING THEMSELVES ON BBM....that's a fucking smartphone that carries smartphone fees to use. These are NOT have-nots...they are goddamned little idiots who see a chance to cause havoc and steal shit. This isn't the French revolution where people have no food....it's a bunch of social media-raised bit torrenting kids who fucking think they can take what they like....they can't and it's time to show them that.

This moral high ground you think you are standing on is not as high as you thought Illy.

[Illuyankas]

Obdigore, on 10 August 2011 - 01:12 PM, said:

Illy, I have a question - what are these people stealing? Is it food? Throwing off their rags and putting on jeans and tshirts? Maybe a coat for the winter? How is firebombing sony's warehouse going to help them throw of their chains of poverty? How is running over other hard-working Brits going to help them 'fight the man'? Is that new big screen TV really going to help them find a job and throw of their poverty shackles? Why did they need to beat the crap and then mug a 20 y/o exchange student?

Or are a large majority of these people out there with the 'I'll get mine, fuck everyone else' mentality that you seem to claim only the rich espouse?

I found this article pretty interesting and related to your post, actually: http://www.guardian....logy-of-looting

I also really like wichdoctor's comment at the end of the page, too. Enough to quote it, in fact:

Quote

We have a large section of society mostly young with no stake in it. They are derided as 'chavs'. excluded from jobs even menial ones. Told by the wealthy they are useless yet fed on by the same wealthy (£145 a year demanded to pay rich BBC journalists). Derided by MPs as wasters while those same MPs dip their snouts in the trough and suport murder and torture overseas. Called criminals by police who sweep through areas assaulting and sometimes killing with impunity (is there ever going to be an inquest on Azzele Rodney).

To get the pittance society allows them they have to 'agree' to hunt for non existant jobs that many of them are unskilled for anyway all the while being denigrated by job centre staff and sanctioned with loss of benefits for the slightest infringement.

And this is now the second generation. Many of them will have parents who left school in the 1980s and faced identical problems that were never fully solved.

Then we get rich bastards telling us that these people rioting burning and looting is unnacceptable yet not one of them asks why it happened. They say poverty is no excuse. It may not be an excuse but taken with other things it is a damned good reason for it happening. There is no single cause in my view but when a generation of young people are squeezed onto the bottom of this pile of shit we call British society then this sort of thing was inevitable. You cannot keep telling people they are surplus to requirements and expect them to continue to support the status quo.

Poke a rotweiller with a stick long enough and it will bite you when it gets the chance.

[Obdigore]

And how, pray tell, are they going to get out of this poverty by smashing up businesses and homes and dragging more people down into the poverty with them?

[Mentalist]

having read the thread, here's what i'd like to see:
have the government pass a "riot response" law.

give the police the power to "detain" (not arrest) suspected rioters for up to a week.
have them use serous riot gear (noise machines, water guns) to subdue people. take them out of the cities, into the countryside. have them tried there.
if you're guilty--flat fine, 15k pounds. if the young rioter can't afford it--take away their blackberry, their flat screen TV, their 100 pounds trainers and whatever else they feel "entitled" to.

still can't cover it? make them work in community projects--like rebuilding what they've burned down.

on the topic of "entitlement/ vs the poor oppressed masses" that Illy and QT are arguing about:
I'm with QT on this one. I dunno, maybe the Canadian "ghetto" scene is radically different from the UK, but i've spent 8 months of my life working there, as a fundraiser. no matter how economically repressed a group is, it doesn't mean it gives them a right to be violent.
I've also gotta say, on the topic of "they can't even get a menial job"--I call bull$hit. I flat out, do. not. believe. that.

you know why?
because last year, when working as a fundraiser, on a commission-only job, it was part of my job to hire more people. I'd be interviewing people, who, according to their resumes, were out of work for over a year, and were desperate. and then, once they'd hear the word "commission", they'd tell me that this "wasn't what they were looking for".

seriously, it's one or the other. either you ARE desperate, or you're delusional thinking you are entitled to have a dream job fall into your lap. the world doesn't work like that.
As such, I feel little sympathy for these rioters. I do feel bad for whomever is hurt in this as a bystander, but I think that the government and police need to send a clear message about this.

[Illuyankas]

If you're in a commission job and you're not selling, you're haemorrhaging money on travel and food for no benefit. It's not sustainable. Hell, without money from my parents I'd have never managed to stay in my first sales job long enough to start making a profit. Commission work is not sustainable for a lot of people.

Tottenham had 54 people on the dole to every job there. Fifty four. There aren't jobs.

Here's a video on topic:

[Mentalist]

Illuyankas, on 10 August 2011 - 03:17 PM, said:

If you're in a commission job and you're not selling, you're haemorrhaging money on travel and food for no benefit. It's not sustainable. Hell, without money from my parents I'd have never managed to stay in my first sales job long enough to start making a profit. Commission work is not sustainable for a lot of people.

Tottenham had 54 people on the dole to every job there. Fifty four. There aren't jobs.

Here's a video on topic:

I agree on your first point. but, wouldn't you have to try it yo know you're not selling?
Dismissing an opportunity to work offhand in no way can be reconciled with claims of desperation in my head.
Desperation=starvation. When you're willing to work anywhere to earn any money.
Untill you reach that point, I don't see reasons to complain. people whose houses and businesses you're torching didn't have it any easier than you.
and in this, i'm referring to the rioters, not to you personally.

and, naturally, not being from the UK, this is just my opinion. I can't really say what the job situation is like there.

EDIT: watched the video. seriously, a "cry for help" that involves torching your neighbour's house/store?
if this is a "cry for help" from the impoverished masses, then why don't they go torch Westminster, or one of the richer areas?
call me cynical if you must, but I have high doubts that this type of rioting will do the cause of these rioters any good whatsoever.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 10 August 2011 - 03:35 PM

[Use Of Weapons]

54 applicants for each job means there are no jobs in Tottenham, not that there are no jobs. It may be that Tottenham is where the unemployed tend to end up -- it's far enough out of the centre (Zone 6) that life is slightly cheaper. But Tottenham is not representative of London as a whole.

[Gothos]

Sorry Illy, but if they're neck deep in shit as you're suggesting, then all they're doing now is shoveling underneath their feet and calling for more shit in the pool. Not to mention that it's obvious they lack perspective. Can't describe the bullshit of claiming destitution living in the atlantic civilization circle.

And seriously? 1 working guy in 54 doles, that to me looks more like throngs living off the system than throngs looking for work.

[QuickTidal]

UseOfWeapons, on 10 August 2011 - 03:37 PM, said:

54 applicants for each job means there are no jobs in Tottenham, not that there are no jobs. It may be that Tottenham is where the unemployed tend to end up -- it's far enough out of the centre (Zone 6) that life is slightly cheaper. But Tottenham is not representative of London as a whole.

I was also going to mention this. To add to it as well, these people in these poorer areas stagnate there. No one is willing to move to get work. I'm sorry, but if there are ACTUALLY no jobs where you live (which I'm doubting) then you go ELSEWHERE. I don't care if you're poor, you go to where the work is. It's called being driven. You fucking get out there and you FIND where there is work. If anyone tells me there is no work in all of Britain right now I will call you a flat out liar. This all stems again from that feeling of entitlement...."The jobs should come to me. There should be work in my part of town!" No...fuck you...get off your ass and travel if need be for work, that's how the rest of the law abiding society functions...so why shouldn't they.

At my last job I traveled 3 HOURS EVERY DAY and 3 EVERY NIGHT to get there. That's roughly six hours a day on transit to go 4 cities/towns over for work. I did that for 5 years solid. Even right now I travel for an hour and a half to ANd from work. And am two towns/cities away from my house. I'm sorry, but if I can do that...so can people in lesser money situations.

If you're starving and can't put food on the table you DON'T resort to violence and rioting. How does that make any sense. Those people have themselves to blame.

This post has been edited by King Kazma: 10 August 2011 - 04:26 PM

[Beezulbubba]

Quote

Denigration afflicted our vaunted ideals long ago, but such inflictions are difficult to measure, to rise up and point a finger to this place, this moment, and say: here, my friends, this was where our honour, our integrity died.

The affliction was too insipid, too much a product of our surrendering mindful regard and diligence. The meanings of words lost their precision – and no-one bothered taking to task those who cynically abused those words to serve their own ambitions, their own evasion of personal responsibility. Lies went unchallenged, lawful pursuit became a sham, vulnerable to graft, and justice itself became a commodity, mutable in imbalance. Truth was lost, a chimera reshaped to match agenda, prejudices, thus consigning the entire political process to a mummer's charade of false indignation, hypocritical posturing and a pervasive contempt for the commonry.

Once subsumed, ideals and the honour created by their avowal can never be regained, except, alas, by outright, unconstrained rejection, invariably instigated by the commonry, at the juncture of one particular moment, one single event, of such brazen injustice that revolution becomes the only reasonable response.

Consider this then a warning. Liars will lie, and continue to do so, even beyond being caught out. They will lie, and in time, such liars will convince themselves, will in all self-righteousness divest the liars of culpability. Until comes a time when one final lie is voiced, the one that can only be answered by rage, by cold murder, and on that day, blood shall rain down every wall of this vaunted, weaning society.

Impeached Guild Master's SpeechSemel Fural of the Guild of Sandal-Clasp Makers

[worry]

Riots do tend to be pretty ineloquent, inherently, even when they have legit issues at heart, and they have to fight an uphill battle already since people dismiss them out of hand, and media focus on sensationalism at the expense of everything else. And it seems fairly clear that even if there's a core of legitimacy here, that others have piled on to wreak havoc for its own sake. I don't see any reason to homogenize the rioters, or claim that youths today are worse then they've ever been, all this unnecessary (but easy) reductionism. I also don't see any reason to pretend, in order to sate one's anger or frustration, that stating simple truths as Illy has (police executing looters is going too far; there exists nuance and spectrum in the motivations of rioters) is the same as defending everybody involved, or excusing bad behavior. When you have complex problems, simple solutions are often ineffective solutions. They may (or may not) treat the symptoms and effect short term change, but they rarely if ever address the cause or maintain long term positive effects. A page or two back someone (Una?) argued that you have to put an end to the craziness before you start working on the long term stuff, and that does make sense, but you don't turn off your brain in the meantime, right?

[Sinisdar Toste]

Geekstad Nerdhammer, on 10 August 2011 - 05:10 PM, said:

Quote

Denigration afflicted our vaunted ideals long ago, but such inflictions are difficult to measure, to rise up and point a finger to this place, this moment, and say: here, my friends, this was where our honour, our integrity died.

The affliction was too insipid, too much a product of our surrendering mindful regard and diligence. The meanings of words lost their precision – and no-one bothered taking to task those who cynically abused those words to serve their own ambitions, their own evasion of personal responsibility. Lies went unchallenged, lawful pursuit became a sham, vulnerable to graft, and justice itself became a commodity, mutable in imbalance. Truth was lost, a chimera reshaped to match agenda, prejudices, thus consigning the entire political process to a mummer's charade of false indignation, hypocritical posturing and a pervasive contempt for the commonry.

Once subsumed, ideals and the honour created by their avowal can never be regained, except, alas, by outright, unconstrained rejection, invariably instigated by the commonry, at the juncture of one particular moment, one single event, of such brazen injustice that revolution becomes the only reasonable response.

Consider this then a warning. Liars will lie, and continue to do so, even beyond being caught out. They will lie, and in time, such liars will convince themselves, will in all self-righteousness divest the liars of culpability. Until comes a time when one final lie is voiced, the one that can only be answered by rage, by cold murder, and on that day, blood shall rain down every wall of this vaunted, weaning society.

Impeached Guild Master's SpeechSemel Fural of the Guild of Sandal-Clasp Makers

very topical. though in our society, as compared to lether's, the commonry (these rioters in particular) have very little to be truly upset about. the level of entitlement that you would find in only in the wealthy of lether is just rampant among the entire population these days. reminds me of that kid that lit a cop car on fire in vancouver and then baw'd when they took away his rowing scholarship (or w.e it was)

[Grief]

Keep it civil in here.

[Mentalist]

worrywort, on 10 August 2011 - 11:43 PM, said:

Riots do tend to be pretty ineloquent, inherently, even when they have legit issues at heart, and they have to fight an uphill battle already since people dismiss them out of hand, and media focus on sensationalism at the expense of everything else. And it seems fairly clear that even if there's a core of legitimacy here, that others have piled on to wreak havoc for its own sake. I don't see any reason to homogenize the rioters, or claim that youths today are worse then they've ever been, all this unnecessary (but easy) reductionism. I also don't see any reason to pretend, in order to sate one's anger or frustration, that stating simple truths as Illy has (police executing looters is going too far; there exists nuance and spectrum in the motivations of rioters) is the same as defending everybody involved, or excusing bad behavior. When you have complex problems, simple solutions are often ineffective solutions. They may (or may not) treat the symptoms and effect short term change, but they rarely if ever address the cause or maintain long term positive effects. A page or two back someone (Una?) argued that you have to put an end to the craziness before you start working on the long term stuff, and that does make sense, but you don't turn off your brain in the meantime, right?

that's all very nice.
but, honestly, do you believe anyone will shell out the money necessary to actually fix the root issue? or will it be ignored and allowed to fester?

also, just a disclaimer: i'm not trying to take away the importance of what illy's saying. but. In the end, every single person that's out there rioting has made a choice. No one's forcing them to riot. even if it is physically impossible for these people to find a job anywhere in the UK after years of endless searching, I still don't see torching a neighbourhood corner store will help alleviate the situation.
And it's even harder to take the "years of fruitless job searches" scenario seriously when you hear that the rioters all use BBM, and owning a blackberry and being connected requires money. and a constant supply of it, to pay for the data plan.

[worry]

It's not just very nice, it's very true, I believe. You're right though that being practical about problems and being practical about money/greed are often frustratingly mutually exclusive. I don't think they have to be, but I acknowledge the cynics might have a point there in terms of countering inertia. Which isn't exactly an excuse to do the wrong thing either. The riot could be a turning point for the better, or for the worse, or might not be a turning point at all. That stuff comes later, when people (on all sides) have hopefully calmed down, and they decide what to do.

As a board, we've talked about protesting before, if it's effective, all that kind of stuff, and naturally the perspectives and conclusions were quite varied. I think there's pluses and minuses. And I kind of think riots have a lot of the same pluses and minuses, at least potentially, but both are exploded in magnitude. But what gets crowded out from all the noise though is the message. So what they gain in attention, they lose in nuance and communication. And of course, they get piggybacked by other causes or people with no cause at all. The WTO protests are usually pretty great example of that phenomenon. I would suggest though that if you're hearing that the rioters "all use BBM" etc. then you might be hearing that from a baised, jaded source. Not that the phenomenon doesn't exist (it exists on the small scale here in America too recently, and has been mislabeled as "flashmobbing" by TV news anchors who apparently conflate roving teenage gangs with coordinated dancing in train stations). There's just too much simplifying, because it's easier to villainize everybody en masse if you pretend they're of a type (especially if that type already pushes your buttons). What they all do have in common is they are lashing out, which as you suggest, isn't (at least immediately) conducive to solving their grievances. I'm sure some of them would counter that their grievances would never be heard if not for this, and I can't fault that reasoning. The underclass get ignored, everywhere, all the time. And I'll repeat once again that saying that doesn't mean I don't also recognize that there are also rotten young people out to cause havoc. Not that you, Mentalist, have been deaf to that refrain, but it bears repeating for those who might still be unwilling to acknowledge the differentiation.

[QuickTidal]

worrywort, on 11 August 2011 - 01:25 AM, said:

I would suggest though that if you're hearing that the rioters "all use BBM" etc. then you might be hearing that from a baised, jaded source.

Stats from RIM on BBM for Rioters: 27,000 messages sent over the first 3 days between rioters in reference to police locations and where to target.

Not really biased. more Fact.

If you think the types of young thugs that are doing this don't ALL have smartphones, Blackberry's or not...

This post has been edited by King Kazma: 11 August 2011 - 02:10 AM