London / Mob behaviour

[kcdusk]

Has everyone seen the riots/looting/mob behaviour thats taken place in London over the last week?

Firstly, i hope anyone over there is safe.

Secondly, all of the violent incidents were triggered when a suspected drug dealer was shot dead. Since then, it seems like every night and even most days have seen thousands of people in the streets. Looting, rioting etc. Londons police force has struggled to maintain calm. Many innocent people have been hurt and a few killed.

Rioters have stolen off each other, and there has even been cases of rioters making people take their clothes off (why, i dont know, why steal someones jeans?).

Dangerous, bizare stuff. In England. A first world country. I know unemployment is high and theres been other potential reasons given. But i think everyone will agree its been extreme behaviour.

Now, imagine if a 3rd world war, a twilight war broke out. How do you think the public would react then? And how does that compare to how you thought a first world countrys populace might have behaved before the London riots?

[RN7]

A drug dealer from an ethnic minority background with a gun was shot and killed by the police in London, and the worst elements of England's ethnic minority jumped on the racial discrimination bandwagon and used it as an excuse to go on a voilent rampage of looting and destruction. The police werent expecting it and because of years of PC interference by the British government were reluctant to confront the rioters as most of them were from minority backgrounds and the police didn't want to be accused of being racist. This prolonged the problem which soon spread to other English cities, but it seems to have been brought under control as practically every police officer in the UK has been on the streets over the past few days.

There seems to be some severe social problems in Britain which allowed this to fester and has been ignored for years. An underclass of unemployed, badly educated and welfare dependent young people who seem to feel entitled to things they have done nothing to deserve, and the emergence of city gang culture and gun and drug crime, which has been compounded by large scale immigration from third world countries which was encouraged by Tony Blaire which have put a strain on Britain's social services and the decent hard working law abiding British tax payers who have had to pay for it. On top of that the police have had their hands tied by PC nonsense and haven't been able to do their job properly.

However the backlash against the rioters has been the best part of it all, as all the decent British people from all backgrounds are disgusted with what they saw happening, and 1,500 scumbags have been arrested and charged as most were picked up on CCTV cameras which are all over British cities. The British public seems to want the police to be given back the power to do their jobs properly again and get the gangs of the streets, and politicians are remarkably quite in their opposition to this. The rioters should realy consider themselves lucky as a sizeable minority of the British population wanted the British army on the streets to shoot them, and if they were living in countries were they realy have something to fear from the police they would have been shot dead by now.

[95th Rifleman]

Every nation has a layer of scum. I remember the riots after Rodney King was beaten by LA Police. One racist act by a few police officers sparked a riot that cost 53 lives.

Like most western nations, Britain tries to walk a fine line between order and human rights. Other nations have the luxury of ignoring human rights and as a result have less problems with civil disturbance. However the British people (like most western people) are of the opinion that running tanks over students isn't quite the way forward so we try to maintain our balance.

The riots had NOTHING to do with the police shooting, scum saw an excuse, saw the police where weak and took advantage of it. Just like they did in LA back in 1992.

For years the political correctness and human rights crowd havebeen taking pliers to the teeth of the British police and we have seen the effect. The balance has gone wrong and we havea police force trapped too far to one side, we need to make our Police strong again without going too far the other side of the line, this will take time and allot of work.

The European human rights act is the maing thing that cripples our legal system.

[kcdusk]

I thought it interesting that something relatively minor set off the events in what i would have considered a well managed country (sure, it has its problems, which country doesnt, but still first world).

Imagine food sortages, threat of nuclear war, some conventional bombing, real racial tention, no travel, paranoia, conscription, disease, famine, the whole 4 horseman business of the twilight war. I think what we've seen happen in london would happen on a much larger scale in Europe and the USA during the T2K war. It wouldnt just be Russians we would be fighting, we'd also be fighting our own home grown militants.

[95th Rifleman]

Originally Posted by kcdusk

I thought it interesting that something relatively minor set off the events in what i would have considered a well managed country (sure, it has its problems, which country doesnt, but still first world).

Imagine food sortages, threat of nuclear war, some conventional bombing, real racial tention, no travel, paranoia, conscription, disease, famine, the whole 4 horseman business of the twilight war. I think what we've seen happen in london would happen on a much larger scale in Europe and the USA during the T2K war. It wouldnt just be Russians we would be fighting, we'd also be fighting our own home grown militants.

I disagree entirely.

It is BECAUSE we have no real threats that society is so fractured, we have so much freedom and no threat to it, no fear to unite our culture and society.
If you look at the UK (and Germany) during WW2 and how united these nations became under the constant bombing campaighns you'll see a model for the twilight war.

I honestly think the problems we have today stem from too much freedom and not enough social fear, it's ironic that the threat of destruction is the one thing that truly unites a country.

[Raellus]

Originally Posted by 95th Rifleman

I disagree entirely.

I honestly think the problems we have today stem from too much freedom and not enough social fear, it's ironic that the threat of destruction is the one thing that truly unites a country.

This is an interesting point and I'm still thinking about it. I'm not sure I agree that we need more fear to bind society together. Look at what societies have become when fear is created, amplified, and/or played upon, especially by natuional governments:

Nazism
McCarthyism
Cultural Revolution

I think I'd rather deal with an occasional spate of rioting than live in a repressive police state.

But I can kind of see where you are coming from- I do agree that shared adversity can bind a nation together. Look at how well the UK and the U.S. came together behind the war effort in WWII. Granted, fear is a component of that shared adversity, but I'm not sure if it is the prime motivator/causal factor.

[Tombot]

I am not so sure about the "scum"-topic...
When there are major riots, sure - there will be some people, just taking advantage of the chaos for looting.
BUT - if most people feeling like treated well, i am sure, that there would be not enough energy to spread such a mess.
I mean dead people ? Stripping somebody?

I work in a social occupation for a long time. Groups of people do behave different than individuals. But anyone who feels accepted within a society, has a certain (negative) hurdle to overcome, before taking massively destructive action.
And we are seeing continual riots here. That should mean something.

I dunno... there must be a not too small "minority" of residents which feels mistreated, otherwise i can not imagine such a force of destruction.
I dont have much knowledge about british politics, but i am sure that people generally are not THAT violent just because there is an opportunity.
There must be (maybe several mixing) reasons for that. Any english people here with more insight on that?

[Legbreaker]

I've heard it mentioned a large number of rioters have been armed with things such as blackberry's, expensive clothing and even more expensive cars. Add in that a large number of rioters arrested include such upstanding citizens as teachers aids (one example that springs to mind) and, well, I'd say it's not just a social underclass behind it all. My guess is yes the first night was a reaction to the shooting, but ever since it's mainly been an excuse by those who are just plain bored to get out there, trash the place and pick up a new plasma TV on the cheap.

In my mind there is NO excuse for the behaviour we've all seen splashed across the TV world wide. It's not like the British government are dragging people out of the beds in the middle of the night, flying them halfway around the world and torturing them before locking them away without a trial, or simply executing them... If that were happening I could understand it.

[waiting4something]

Originally Posted by 95th Rifleman

Every nation has a layer of scum. I remember the riots after Rodney King was beaten by LA Police. One racist act by a few police officers sparked a riot that cost 53 lives.

Like most western nations, Britain tries to walk a fine line between order and human rights. Other nations have the luxury of ignoring human rights and as a result have less problems with civil disturbance. However the British people (like most western people) are of the opinion that running tanks over students isn't quite the way forward so we try to maintain our balance.

The riots had NOTHING to do with the police shooting, scum saw an excuse, saw the police where weak and took advantage of it. Just like they did in LA back in 1992.

For years the political correctness and human rights crowd havebeen taking pliers to the teeth of the British police and we have seen the effect. The balance has gone wrong and we havea police force trapped too far to one side, we need to make our Police strong again without going too far the other side of the line, this will take time and allot of work.

The European human rights act is the maing thing that cripples our legal system.

Rodney King was not really a racist beating by police officers. The black groups that try to make everything a racial issue, or the bullshit media that likes to make money off exploiting shit to make a buck made it one. Old Rodney got his ass beat down because Rodney was on pcp and didn't want do what he was told by the cops. The cops tell me to do something I try to do it. They hit me or most non high people with batons we tend to comply or atleast don't try to keep getting up. The media really made poor Rodney King a poor victim when he was really a junked up idiot. If the first responding officer(a female) would have just shot his ass we would have never heard of Rodney King.