UK Newswire Archive
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Britain’s riots: A society in denial of the burning issues
09-08-2011 13:41
Britain’s social decay has been seething over several decades, overseen by Conservative and Labour governments alike. The burning issues that need to be addressed to explain the outburst of arson, looting and rioting are endemic racism endured by Britain’s black community and, more generally, the deepening poverty that is increasingly racking British society.
Police tonight will be different - be warned
09-08-2011 12:55
Just come off the phone with an activist friend whose father is a copper (not her fault). She has talked about what the tactics will be tonight.
It seems the filth have had instructions to "take the gloves off" ( I guess from Cameron now back from his tax payer funded Italian holiday and photo op) and that they will be using two new tactics to a greater degree.
Road clearing - so called 'Sentinal Surge' - this involves the use of a tight line of police vehicals side by side simply driving head on at people who fail to move. Obviously a criminal offence but hey it's the filth right so they can get away with it. People need to be very, very careful as it is easy to assume they will stop - they will not !
Snatch squads - they call this 'carp fishing' an individual is targeted for snatch, he or she is then given a good kicking in the back of a van but rather than taken to the station is released back into the street. The individual will then stagger back to his friends who the police believe are intimidated by seeing somebody so badly beaten.
All of the state media operation is hard at work bigging up the damage to 'private' property, threats to little old ladies etc etc so that the police actions will be defendable tomorrow morning after the likely high casulties and maybe even deaths among the innocent on the streets.
Be warned, stay together, stay safe.
This revolution can be won
Articles on capitalism's present crisis and the prospects for revolution
09-08-2011 12:39
As capitalism stumbles ever deeper into crisis here are articles that offer some explanations for what is going on and how capitalism might be overthrown:Shac: AstraZeneca - don't let them get away with murder... updated contact list
09-08-2011 12:29
Rioting spreads to New Basford?
09-08-2011 11:55
Local media have made much of the news that rioting which has swept London now seems to have reached Nottingham. There were a number of apparently serious disturbance in St Anns, including an attempted firebombing of the polcie station. There was also an incident in New Basford which the police are claiming is connected. While it is possible that they have access to some intelligence to support this, I am not sure it is an obvious conclusion.
Map key:
- Shipping container targeted last night
- Car park, used on a number of occasions for dumping and torching stolen cars
- Building burnt down a couple of years ago
In their official statement, Notts Police describe the incidents in St Anns in some detail, but have only one sentence about New Basford: "At a few minutes past midnight, in an incident believed to be linked to the other violence, a container of some 200 tyres were set alight in Gowthorne [sic.] Street, New Basford."
In fact they mean to refer to Gawthorne Street. The spelling mistake (obvious to anybody who bothers to consult a map) is replicated by both the Post and the BBC giving some insight into how little actual journalism is being focused on the story, despite the inevitable interest it has generated.
As a somebody who knows this area quite well I was surprised that the police seemed to be jumping to the conclusion that arson here was connected to activity on the other side of the city when there has been a long-running spate of arson incidents only metres from last night's fire.
The shipping container of tyres which was set fire (1 in the map above) is located in Northgate Place, a small industrial area which also houses local renewable energy cooperative V3 Power. Part of this is a car park (2 in the map) which while busy during the day is both largely empty and unlit at night and has on a number of occasions been used for dumping and torching stolen cars.
Meanwhile, perhaps a 100 metres away, there is a old warehouse building which was burnt down a couple of years ago (3 in the map, subsequently restored/rebuilt). There were also a number of smaller incidents (one of which briefly disrupted power to local homes) and these are only the ones I can recall. I assume the police and fire service have much better records of such incidents.
None of this precludes the possibility that some local firebug was inspired by recent events in London to go out and set another fire. But it is possible that it was simply a coincidence, part of a long-standing local problem. A possibility which Notts Police should be well aware of. Walking past today both the fire service and police scientific support were in attendance so perhaps they know something further, only time will tell.
With some commentators queuing up to advocate that the riots be dealt with by some kind of de facto martial law; putting the army on the streets (to do what? shoot people? because that did such a good job of reducing tensions in Tottenham) it is important that we make a serious effort to understand what is going on. Grand conspiracies make nice stories and compelling headlines, but the real world is often a much more complicated place.
London Riots: God Save the Queen's Ass! (by Latuff)
09-08-2011 11:55
EDL Switch To Anti-Black Racism
09-08-2011 10:55
The English Defence League have reverted to type, with torrents of sickening anti-black racism on their divisional Facebook walls, peppered with the N-word, and description of black people being "monkeys" and "apes". Since their existance, the moderators have tried to brush all of their non-Muslim racism under the carpet, pretending that the EDL have only one enemy, Muslims, but since the rioting began in London, the far right group have switched tack to virulent anti-Black racism of an extreme and disturbing nature.
This should be a wake-up call to the misguided folks who thought that the EDL tolerated non-white people who are not Muslims. Since Saturday, when the press and media started covering the riots, Facebook and political discussion forums which have been infiltrated by EDL fascists, have become peppered with words such as "n*gger", with calls on YouTube accounts operated by EDL divisional leaders for the police to specificually shoot black (not white) rioters.
One one particular Student forum, a vocal EDL supporter, has replaced his photo with the "White Pride Worldwide" badge used by the neo-Nazi website Stormfront, as more and more, the English Defence League is reverting to type. The small handful of black and mixed-race members still with the EDL ought to watch their back. Expect monkey noises (or much worse!) on the coach down the Tower Hamlets.
Everybody with a brain knows the EDL is absolutely no-different from the BNP (other than its lack of a formal structure, membership, and lack of a ballot-box presence. Former BNP member and EDL leader Stephen Yaxley Lennon was paramount in disguising the true intentions of the EDL, knowing its real nature would emerge "when the time is right".
With young black men under the spotlight, the EDL have finally come out of the closet as hardcore white supremacists. Maybe soon, the EDL will wear KKK t-shirts as well as making their now customary straight-armed Hitler salutes.
When the EDL goosestep through Tower Hamlets, they will be accompanied by the Metropolitan Police who will be defending their freedom to racially chant, racially-abuse Asian passers-by, and violently attack mosques and community centres in their path, it's not just charges of blatant hypocrisy the EDL will face, as fascists like Jeff Marsh call for live bullets to be used on black rioters.
The EDL will face united opposition from disenfranchised black and white, as well as Asian youg men and women.
NEITHER THE METROPOLITAN POLICE OR THE EDL SHALL PASS!
N.Z. Govt.Civil Suit against Acquitted Waihopai/Echelon Ploughshares Activists
09-08-2011 10:28
BACKGROUND-2008 ACTION -ANZAC PLOUGHSHARES DEFLATE AND UNMASK WAIHOPAI/ ECHELONAt 6am on the morning of the 30 April 2008 three people entered the Waihopai Spy Base and used a sickle to deflate one of the two 30 metre domes covering satellite interception dishes.
The UK Riots and Capitalism's Decay
09-08-2011 09:55
Parts of London are still burning after an enormous third night of riots, during which the flames have spread to Birmingham, Nottingham, Bristol and Liverpool. There is huge controversy over the conflagration, and the media establishment is doing its best to condemn, rather than try to understand. As a communist, this is not enough for me. These riots are the sudden bursting to the surface of social tensions that have been building up for many years - tensions that are rooted in the crisis of capitalism.
Amongst all the TV footage of buildings engulfed in flames, it's easy to forget that those flames were sparked by bullets from police guns. Last Thursday, cops shot and killed Mark Duggan on the streets of Tottenham in North London. The nation's biggest armed gang - Metropolitan Police - claimed that Duggan had been a "gangster", and it was reported that an officer had been shot during the incident. It later emerged that the bullet had embedded in the cop's radio, and it was police issue. This added credence to eyewitness statements that Duggan had been pinned down when he was killed.
On Saturday night, friends and family of Duggan gathered at Tottenham police station, demanding answers. Cops then set upon a sixteen-year-old girl with batons, for reasons which remain unclear. The stage was set for a nocturnal showdown between an angry community and the agents of the state. The violence seemed to be the living embodiment of Martin Luther King's quote that "A riot is the language of the unheard."
That was day one. On day two, the idea of rioting appears to have spread by word of mouth and - of course these days - on Twitter and Facebook. Doubtless many of those rioting had the notion that they were settling old scores with the police. Others seem to have seized on the opportunity to loot shops while the police were distracted. This pattern spread yet further on day three. There were also reports of violence against people who had nothing to do with the police.
But those paragraphs only take us so far in understanding what happened. Like any major event these days, it has to be analysed in the context of the economic crisis, which was touched off by the ultra-rich, and their losses have been steadily passed down the food chain, with the poorest suffering most. As even a Daily Telegraph article admits, this socio-economic vandalism has created the conditions in which such tumult was certain to happen sooner or later.
Two weeks ago I a visited a small exhibition at Liverpool's International Slavery Museum, commemorating the Toxteth riots of 1981. Temporal distance had added understanding to the statements which lined the walls, though they went on to complacently claim that Liverpool was a very different place now. Last night, there was rioting in Toxteth's Upper Parliament Street once more.
But in a sense the exhibition blurb was right; Liverpool of 2011 is very different to the Liverpool of 1981. Back then we'd only had six years of the neoliberal assault. Now it's thirty-six. The latest crises of capitalism have created a generation of ghetto children with even less to lose.
The problem isn't that oppressed working class people are breaking the law en masse. The problem is that - justified anger at the police notwithstanding - so much of it is ostensibly 'apolitical', and many of the victims are entirely innocent politically speaking. As yet, there has been little leadership from the working class in the workplace. This apparently directionless outburst of rage and destruction is the inevitable result.
Tonypandy Riot 1911
09-08-2011 09:29
Theresa May making a fool of herself on the BBC prompted a phone call to BBC saying 1911 Tonypandy were followed in 1912 by the Minimum Wages Act.The UK Riots and Capitalism's Decay
09-08-2011 09:17
SAT Attack 1
09-08-2011 07:55
SAT ATTACK 1
ST.ANDREWS 9/08/2011
Over the course of the last several days, the weapons research company Fluid Gravity Engineering (http://www.fluidgravity.co.uk/ ) based on market street, St Andrews, had their front door locks glued repeatedly in an act of industrial sabotage.
Police shooting of Mark Duggan in London and subsequent riots
09-08-2011 07:55
As at midnight monday/tuesday 8/9th August reports are coming in of serious rioting and widespread looting in several areas of London and in Birmingham.
Below some sources of info/ analysis
UPDATES
Another Night of Unrest in London
09-08-2011 01:55
Last night saw an incredible spread of what some call, rioting, looting, mindless thuggery, or anarchy in the uk. What is certain is no-one is quite sure what it actually is or means. Even anarchists are watching but not quite sure how to respond, but as more and more analysis begins to make its way through the non-stop twitter updates, and hysterical media wank, were now for UKPLC? and how does the violence of a disenfranchised, un-politisized youth, be made to reflect to the bourgeois middle classes that just because rioters do not have political aims does not mean the causes of the riots do not lie in politics.
links here
Inclusive Democracy as a political project for a new libertarian synthesis
09-08-2011 00:26
VIDEOLondon Riots: Only the Rioters to Blame? (by Latuff)
09-08-2011 00:11
bristol liverpool birmingham following london
09-08-2011 00:00
cars torched in toxteth liverpool, police station on fire handsworth birmingham, riot police blocking st in bristolin london more fires being reported including large one back in enfield (maybe sony distro centre) smoke visable on m25