21st Century Wire Managing Editor Patrick Henningsen appears on The Alex Jones Show to discuss the recent unrest in London and other parts of the UK this week.
READER COMMENT: “To claim that these disaffected youths are the vanguard of some organic revolutionary movement is completely asinine. If this is a genuine backlash against the establishment, why are the mobs not congregating around Downing Street, the Houses of Parliament or Buckingham Palace, the real culprits of Britain’s economic degradation. Why instead are they busy filling trolleys full of tennis shoes, mobile phones, along with plentiful supplies of booze and cigarettes from tiny local off-licenses?”
Editor’s Note: Sadly, what we are witnessing here can be summed up as a racially motivated incident using humiliation in order to establish social dominance. In a lawless environment, any gang will use their upper hand to carry out unspeakable acts and this is one example of what we can expect, an act which can destroy decades of integration and racial progress. It could be anyone of any colour, but you cannot deny after seeing these multiple reports that there is a very real and negative, economically-fueled, and territorial-based racial tension that exists under the surface in some areas of the UK. 1000 years ago, this would have been defined as tribal strife, but today in modern Britain, the tribes are perveived through economic status, and also colour.
This picture shows the shocking depths the thugs were prepared to plumb – stealing the clothes from a man’s back.
The taller, broader man already holds a pair of white and green trainers and a white T-shirt in his hands. Now, it seems, he wants the trousers too.
The shorter man dutifully removes his jeans, leaving only his dark blue underpants and his white socks.
Humiliation: A young man is forced to strip to his underpants in the street, having apparently already handed his T-shirt and trainers to a looter. There were unconfirmed reports last night of victims being made to strip in Deptford, south London, and in Birmingham (PHOTO: Twittter)
The image appeared on Twitter as internet rumours claimed that, on top of widespread violence and looting across London, thugs were even removing clothing from their victims.
Several people on Twitter claimed there have been incidents of victims being stripped naked in Deptford, South London and Birmingham but, because of the very nature of the alleged incidents, the reports remain unsubstantiated.
In the photograph the ‘victim’ – his face pixellated – stands on the kerbside in a quiet side road and appears cowed before the other man after handing over his clothing.
The British Prime Minister has vowed that rioters will pay for what they’ve done, as he addressed Parliament in the wake of clashes that engulfed the country. What started as a peaceful protest against police shooting a man in North London quickly grew into scenes of bedlam. London-based political analyst Sukrat Chandan believes the core of the problem is the lost generation of youth.
LONDON (Dow Jones) – Blackberry’s BBM messaging network and social networking sites were Tuesday being blamed for helping rioters in London spread word about the next hot spot, but industry experts said it’s unfair to point the finger at technology.
Following three nights of rioting and looting in London, some police, politicians and media organisations singled out Blackberry’s messaging network as being a useful aid for troublemakers. It’s an “encrypted, very secure, safe, fast, cheap, free, easy way for disaffected urban youth to spread messages for the next targets”, according to Mike Butcher, editor of TechCrunch …
Editor Patrick Henningsen speaks to RT News about the London and UK riots this week. “Our leadership need to stop playing politics, Labour vs Conservative, and start paying attention to what is happening on the street.”
On Wednesday David Cameron finally admitted what many of us have known for some time: that parts of British society – what has come to be known as the ‘underclass’ – are “not just broken, they’re sick.”
Little does the Prime Minister realise that among youth the word “sick”, like the word “wicked”, now means something uber cool. So doubtless the rioters regard the epithet as a compliment.
It’s just one more example of just how appallingly out of touch the almost exclusively privately educated Tory cabinet are with great swathes of those they rule, but certainly don’t represent. They don’t even speak the same language.
THE IRON LADY: “There is no such thing as society, only individuals”.
The knee jerk reaction of a Conservative government when faced with civil strife has always been authoritarianism, their instinct being to demonise and criminalise. They are the ruling class, sustained by the bourgeoisie and the still deferential poor, and they always fight to defend their own. History has observed that save for exalting the market above all other social instruments, British conservatism isn’t really an ideology, it is a cadre of self-interest, whose overriding priority is the maintenance of its own wealth, position, privilege and power. In the current paradigm we are witnessing, it is safe to say that they are out of touch. And therein lie the seeds of the current malaise.
David Cameron is without a doubt the most intelligent and humane Conservative Prime Minister for half a century, now heading the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government, but we have some way to go before he acknowledges that the seeds of sick Britain were sewn in the 1980’s by his sometime idol, Lady Margaret Thatcher. In a remark that immediately revealed her to be Grantham’s answer to the simpleton Chauncey so brilliantly portrayed by Peter Sellers in ‘Being There’, Margaret Thatcher famously declared that there was “no such thing as society, only individuals”(sic).
Her government, and those of her proteges Messrs Major and Blair, took her at her word and between them – bit by bit, piece by piece, set about dismantling the civic, and very civil society that had evolved in Britain through the Great Reform Acts of the 19th century, Women’s Suffrage, Two World Wars and the founding of the modern Welfare State. Where once we all had a stake, now some are excluded. Until privatisation, each and every hoody and every single mum owned a tiny part of the enterprises that brought water to our taps, gas to our cookers and power to our lights, but no more. Where once we could travel around our capital and our country at modest expense on genuinely public transport, we no longer can. Where once education was free, it no longer is. Where we had public service and a common wealth, now we have only self service and private wealth. In a society shorn of any sense of public probity, where wealth distribution is skewed more strongly in favour of the rich (and more specifically the super rich) than in Victorian times and where money, possessions and celebrity are exalted above all and any other aims in life, is it any wonder that the often parentless, badly educated ‘underclass’ want to grab whatever they can ?
The smash and grab culture so unpleasantly displayed on Britain’s streets the last few nights is the unfortunate but inevitable result of a society that divides people sharply into ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ and where even many of the ‘winners’ have recently been unmasked as criminals of a very unpleasant kind. Of the few looters to be interviewed in the media, the overriding impression they give is that since no one cares about them, why should they care about anyone else ? While not overtly politically motivated, there is a more than dim awareness among most that while some banks are deemed too big fail, their government has no such qualms about watching them disappear down the plughole of society.
The millions that will never be an X-factor winner or play for Manchester United had been happy to spend most of the time hypnotised by the circus, but when that spell is broken, as it now is, the social cohesion based on shared values and principles that once held us together is missing.
By Patrick Henningsen 21st Century Wire In London
August 9, 2011 – 3:00PM BST (GMT)
After three days of continuous rioting, looting and violence in pockets of the UK that has already claimed millions in property damage, public service costs and some lives, criminals are now issuing street leaflets discouraging culprits and witnesses from coming forward regarding crimes undertaken by youths.
This is one of a number of disturbing new trends that has reared its ugly head since Saturday night’s initial unrest began in Tottenham North London, which soon turned into “Retail Rioting”, as youths between the ages of 12 and 20 years old took to the streets in search of take-away retail prizes. The result was mass violence, theft and arson not seen before on this scale.
It seems that lawlessness knows no bounds.
DON’T TALK: Criminal issued leaflets on the streets of London are telling culprits to keep a low profile to avoid detection by authorities.
Police are currently combing through thousands of CCTV still images and video footage in an effort to ‘name and shame’ youths embedded in their urdan communities, and hoping to track down vandals who participated in the mass social unrest which has plagued urban areas in London and other areas of the UK this week.
In response to this, shadowy criminal advocates have printed flyers in an attempt to reassure thousands of culprits not to come forward to police even if their digital portraits are show in the media.
On one level, criminals have exposed to oxymoron of the CCTV camera, in that police do not have the manpower or stable of analysts needed to go through and follow-up on so many CCTV leads.
In a bid to out smart the authorities, the flyer is telling looters to “lay low”, “delete dodgy texts”, “change your haircut” and “be careful who you speak to about what happened”.
501 RIOT: A Hackney youth inspects his big prize after a gang raid on clothing store (Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)
This level of organisation, normally reserved for political activists and ideological anarchist activities, is a new trend whereby criminals and looters are employing dissemination of advocacy information for the purpose of protecting participants in one of the worst criminal mass demonstrations in modern UK history.
Similar disturbing revelations will no doubt come to light as this story unfolds in the coming days and weeks.
Already authorities are keen to sequester Twitter account details and Blackberry network server logs for BBM texts, in an attempt to catch those involved in propagating and organising retails raids and arson.
What is almost certain is that the actions of these thousands of youths over the last few days will be used to justify further encroachments on every citizen’s rights and privacy in the name of preventing crime. In addition to this, recent events will also push up the price of goods and services, as businesses will not be allowed to operate licensed premises without addition security features and additional insurance.
And as if the timing could not have been worse, amid austerity measures and state budget cuts, public services are, and will be, overstretched in cost, logistical capacity and manpower in order to deal with social unrest on this scale.
All these negative results of public unrest are of course, a massive “own-goal” on the part of teenaged criminals and unemployed rioters, who are themselves cash-strapped and unemployed, and naturally they will each be dependent on the state for benefits and social security. Indeed, many of those participating in the riots will be queueing up at the DSS Job Centre tomorrow morning in hopes of collecting their free fortnightly government allowance.
Sadly, few of the disaffected youth are likely to be interested in their “society” anymore, much less their futures.
Watch Russia Today News tonight at 6pm BST (GMT) as Patrick Henningsen, Editor of 21st Century Wire, discusses live on air the recent riots and violence in London and throughout the UK over the past 72 hrs.
By Patrick Henningsen 21st Century Wire
In London
August 9, 2011 – 2:00 AM GMT
A third night of social unrest has plagued London and the UK this past Monday evening, hitting Clapham in South London, one of the city’s major transport, rail and commercial hubs.
Groups of youths spent the evening breaking into dozens of businesses, looting, ransacking and setting fire to many of them.
Similar riots and youth vandalism has also been reported in the London boroughs of Enfield, Peckham, Lewisham, Hackney, Ealing, Notting Hill, East Ham, Woolwich, Camden and Croydon. New outbreaks and incidents are being reported by the hour.
DOZENS OF INCIDENTS: Violence sprung up all over London last night stretching police and fire services.
Trouble was not confined to the capital, as the Midlands major cities Birmingham and Manchester, Bristol in the Southwest, as well as Liverpool in Merseyside were hit with a significant volume of violent incidents, looting and arson.
The first major riots took place on Saturday night in Tottenham North London, where local crowd reacted in response a police shooting incident. Sunday night saw copycat mass disorder, violence and looting in Brixton, South London.
The Brixton riots were not political like the Tottenham riots, rather, these were organised via gangs of youths using SMS text messages, and BBM Blackberry Messaging, in order to pick and hit their retail targets.
LAWLESSNESS HITS LONDON: Youths use rubbish bins and furniture to block vehicle access on streets (PHOTO: Dan Istitene/Getty Images)
According to numerous eyewitness reports, the majority of the rioters were youths of mixed males and females between the ages of 12 and 18 years of age, and mostly of Afro-Caribbean decent, with older youths in cars directing activities.
Groups of youths as large as 200 strong were reported in some areas.
In all cases, youths were determined to get their hands on easy to carry away retail goods, mainly electronics, mobile phones, cloths and trainers (sneakers).
This same profile was also seen vividly in Clapham this past evening. As the situation spreads into new areas in the city and the UK, the profile of looters continues to expand to encompass nearly every ethnic demographic, but confined to working class.
In most cases, police have been slow to react to vandals, and upon arrival often being forced to stand back waiting, watching rioting youths run wild, and wait for reinforcements and fire services to arrive. By this time, the situations have spiraled out of control.
Shocking video footage of looting and violence in Clapham South London.
RT video footage of disturbances in London last night.
In Enfield, North London, a major Sony Electronics distribution centre was sacked and then set on fire by a gang, with fire services still trying to control the blaze this morning.
Police report that approximately 250 arrests have been made so far in London.
In numerous instances tonight, mobs have turned on press and local residents who were seen to be filming with cameras and mobile phones.
Clapham resident James Downey described the scene at Clapham Junction, “This is total lawlessness, mostly we saw young teenagers who were out for a jolly, doing what they want, grabbing what they want in stores.” Downey added, “This kids obviously have no future, how could they trash their own communities if they thought they had a future. This is really sad.”
Another South London resident who is unnamed stated, “These groups of youths with their hoods and bricks are acting as if no one can stop them, they seem intent on putting fear into this community. I’ve lived here for 20 years and I’ve never seen anything like it.”
The last three days’ events will undoubtedly have a catastrophic effect on London’s economy, hitting both large and small businesses and lopping additional security costs and insurance premiums on businesses across the capital and the country.
Clapham was the first high profile, middle and upper class area to get hit by this week’s social unrest in the UK.
In addition to commercial businesses, already cash-strapped public services are currently being stretched by events this week. According to Scotland Yard, over 1,700 additional police are currently being deployed the in London to deal with the violence.
Met Police Commissioner Tim Goodwin has already made a public appeal to residents to “help clear the streets”.
Voters and politicians will no doubt be clambering for more police powers and harsher court sentences for anti-social behaviour in an attempt to quell future incidents.
Pressure will also be mounting on city officials and police to exhibit a “show of force” in the run-up to the London 2012 Olympics next summer.
Officials expect more copycat incidents to continue this week.
21st Century Wire
21st Century Wire 