Harmonia :: Live 1974
2 hours ago
Friday, 12 August 2011
Some thoughts on Melanie Phillips
The problem is, I know her. I met her in a feminist squat in 1975 near Regents Park. I didn't like her, even though I liked and supported feminists at the time and made tea for them when they visited, Melanie Phillips was a vicious, critical, inhumane Stalinist feminist, a sexist bully, a ranter and a right old pain in the arse even then. I know many women who knew her then and didn't like her very much either, and this was at a time when criticising a 'sister' to a man was almost criminal.
But today, fool that I am I had to do it. Sit on my chair, grip the seat and read through Melanie Philips turgid dross on the Daily Fail. I won't post a link, if you want to you can find it. She harps on and on about the 'liberal intelligentsia' being the direct cause of the recent riots. It's because of hate filled feminists like Harriet Harman who deliberately set about destroying the nuclear family etc etc. According to the repugnant harridan that scrawled this reactionary dross, kids are rioting because they don't have fathers, because the labour party forced people to be single parents, she then uses a bit of half baked Freudian analysis about male rage. Every single broken window, stolen telly and burnt out car/shop/house is directly the result of the Labour party.
This hate filled, twisted nightmare of a woman has an enormous readership and all around the suburbs of this country today people will be absorbing this distorted gobbledegook and nodding wisely. It's not us at fault they will say, it's those wretched lefty liberals and their absurd notion that the very normal, level headed society we live in is to blame.
Strangely she doesn't quote her own paper which, in March last year, ran with the story that the gap between the rich and poor in the UK is bigger now than it was during the era of slavery 200 years ago. The gap started to widen in the late 1970's, I know, I was there. This gap was levered in by, strangely, not the liberal intelligentsia, but by right wing moralists and the uber capitalist bullies who funded them discreetly, people like, um, like Melanie Philips.
The de-regulation of the banking industry under the Thatcher government resulted in the mind numbingly short sighted foolery of the last 25 years, where terms like 'fiscal growth' and 'free market economy' leached into our every day lives. Where 'the city' became the focal point of our culture, where the dullest people on earth, the least creative, most stupid and greedy morons we have ever spawned because totems of our respect. Bankers. Ghastly men who drive stupid cars and pontificate about the economy, and all they did was screw it up for the rest of us, and then we, the poor, stupid, dumb tax payers gave them a load more money.
I wonder why young people are so stupid, short sighted and greedy. Oh wait, it's the 'liberal intelligentsia' telling them to be like that.
The moral lead they've been fed for the past 30 years, as exemplified by endless streams of financial specialists, banking pundits and free marketeers is 'you can fiddle, steal and lie your way to wealth like we do.'
Well, they have, and none of us like it.
The Daily Mail also ran a story last year about the growing 'underclass' of disenfranchised kids who had sod all to look forward to, who didn't fit into the very narrow avenues of 'opportunity' that are supposed to exist, who are marginalised, harassed and pushed aside by the law breaking, non tax paying, phone hacking, spray tanned super rich.
We are all responsible for the riots, me, you, Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown and the Cameron bloke, the Labour party, the Tory party, the Lib Dems, right wing bigots and left wing whiners. We have allowed our society to be ruled by a super elite who live offshore, don't pay tax, have the power and money to lobby governments and 'adjust' legislation to suit their goals.
But two faced Phillips, an old lefty feminist blames it all on the 'liberal intelligentsia' of whom she was once a prime member. As we all know, there is no greater anti smoker than someone who is an ex-smoker. Who the hell is the 'liberal intelligentsia' anyway? Stephen Fry? Definitely not me, I'm thick.
Robert Llewellyn @'G+'
But today, fool that I am I had to do it. Sit on my chair, grip the seat and read through Melanie Philips turgid dross on the Daily Fail. I won't post a link, if you want to you can find it. She harps on and on about the 'liberal intelligentsia' being the direct cause of the recent riots. It's because of hate filled feminists like Harriet Harman who deliberately set about destroying the nuclear family etc etc. According to the repugnant harridan that scrawled this reactionary dross, kids are rioting because they don't have fathers, because the labour party forced people to be single parents, she then uses a bit of half baked Freudian analysis about male rage. Every single broken window, stolen telly and burnt out car/shop/house is directly the result of the Labour party.
This hate filled, twisted nightmare of a woman has an enormous readership and all around the suburbs of this country today people will be absorbing this distorted gobbledegook and nodding wisely. It's not us at fault they will say, it's those wretched lefty liberals and their absurd notion that the very normal, level headed society we live in is to blame.
Strangely she doesn't quote her own paper which, in March last year, ran with the story that the gap between the rich and poor in the UK is bigger now than it was during the era of slavery 200 years ago. The gap started to widen in the late 1970's, I know, I was there. This gap was levered in by, strangely, not the liberal intelligentsia, but by right wing moralists and the uber capitalist bullies who funded them discreetly, people like, um, like Melanie Philips.
The de-regulation of the banking industry under the Thatcher government resulted in the mind numbingly short sighted foolery of the last 25 years, where terms like 'fiscal growth' and 'free market economy' leached into our every day lives. Where 'the city' became the focal point of our culture, where the dullest people on earth, the least creative, most stupid and greedy morons we have ever spawned because totems of our respect. Bankers. Ghastly men who drive stupid cars and pontificate about the economy, and all they did was screw it up for the rest of us, and then we, the poor, stupid, dumb tax payers gave them a load more money.
I wonder why young people are so stupid, short sighted and greedy. Oh wait, it's the 'liberal intelligentsia' telling them to be like that.
The moral lead they've been fed for the past 30 years, as exemplified by endless streams of financial specialists, banking pundits and free marketeers is 'you can fiddle, steal and lie your way to wealth like we do.'
Well, they have, and none of us like it.
The Daily Mail also ran a story last year about the growing 'underclass' of disenfranchised kids who had sod all to look forward to, who didn't fit into the very narrow avenues of 'opportunity' that are supposed to exist, who are marginalised, harassed and pushed aside by the law breaking, non tax paying, phone hacking, spray tanned super rich.
We are all responsible for the riots, me, you, Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown and the Cameron bloke, the Labour party, the Tory party, the Lib Dems, right wing bigots and left wing whiners. We have allowed our society to be ruled by a super elite who live offshore, don't pay tax, have the power and money to lobby governments and 'adjust' legislation to suit their goals.
But two faced Phillips, an old lefty feminist blames it all on the 'liberal intelligentsia' of whom she was once a prime member. As we all know, there is no greater anti smoker than someone who is an ex-smoker. Who the hell is the 'liberal intelligentsia' anyway? Stephen Fry? Definitely not me, I'm thick.
Robert Llewellyn @'G+'
rorylawless Rory Lawless
@evgenymorozov South Sudan's main export will be domain names for European neo-nazi organisations.
Glasgow gangs chose route to peace in face of tough crackdown
The Barlanark area of Glasgow is one of a number of neighbourhoods where gang crime has dropped significantly in recent years. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
It was, said one witness, a day of great theatre but also of great underlying menace. Scores of battle-scarred gang members, bitter rivals in their home territories, were marched by police in stab-proof vests in to a courtroom in Glasgow for a unique and highly charged confrontation.Faced with the mothers of their victims and graphic medical slides of faces disfigured by blades, the gang members were given a blunt choice: end it now or face an unrelenting crackdown by Strathclyde police and the judiciary.With the courtroom packed with church ministers, youth workers, criminologists and an American basketball star whose gang-member brother suffered a violent death, the gang members – dismissed by some as feral thugs – listened. And it worked.The Community Initiative to Reduce Violence (CIRV), cited by David Cameron in the Commons on Thursday as an example to all cities, has seen a near 50% reduction in gang-related violence in the east end of Glasgow and the blighted housing schemes on the city's eastern and northern fringes, particularly in Easterhouse, Barlanark and Shettleston.
The scheme provides mentoring tailored to individual needs, with advice on finding work, how to behave at interviews and access to education and training.
Peter Donnelly, a professor who recounted that dramatic day at Glasgow sheriff court, writing in the British Medical Journal in 2008, said his detailed study of the CIRV's work had found that violent offences by gang members on the scheme had fallen by 46% in the two years since then. Other figures suggested even greater success for the worst offenders: a 73% cut for those on the most intensive programme.
Many of these young men, brought up on estates with multi-generational unemployment and raised on violent territorial wars defending just a few blocks of housing, came from "really disrupted backgrounds", Donnelly said.
What the programme did was gave those people a second chance, he said.
"This isn't a softly, softly, approach. It's very much tough love. Access to the good stuff is contingent on them signing pledges not to carry a weapon and not to be involved in violence. And if they do go back to that they get withdrawal of all these things: I think that aspect is very important."
Detective Chief Superintendent John Carnochan, head of the Scottish violence reduction unit which set up the CIRV, said the method, adapted from a proven US system tested among the gangs of Boston and Cincinnati, was actually "incredibly straightforward".
Both Carnochan and his deputy, Karyn McCluskey, are in regular contact with English colleagues, sharing experience.
Funded with £1m from the Scottish government, the programme involves close coordination by all the services: police, prosecutors, the courts, trainers, social workers, young workers and teachers. What it does not do is break up gangs. Tested in the north and east of the city, it is now being rolled out across Glasgow by Strathclyde police.
Working with members of 55 gangs, it attempts to give its members greater self esteem, and a diversion away from the often arranged street fights.
Carnochan said: "We're not trying to bust gangs up. We don't mind them being in gangs – we're all in gangs. We all gather together around a common purpose now and again, but these guys get together for a rather dangerous thing, which is recreational violence.
"We can't break the gangs up because they do get something from gangs, a sense of identity, a sense of sociability, so it's about the positive elements of that.
"They defend their areas against another area and stand in very dangerous situations alongside their friends. If you're in the British army in Helmand province these things would be valued, but it happens on housing schemes in the 21st century." And that, he said, "we bloody do" care about.
The programme has got two key ingredients: offering hope and much greater help finding work, and, most immediately, an alternative to the grim routine of an arranged knife fight every Friday night. On many Friday and Saturday nights, the gangs have been brought together to fight it out on the pitch, with a football.
"What really matters to these guys is a job," Donnelly said. "Part of the programme is about personal development but it's also about getting job training and experience; there's no doubt that's the incentive."
While clearly flattered by Cameron's applause for the project, Carnochan would not be drawn on whether it would work elsewhere in the UK. "I don't know the inner city challenges facing Birmingham, Manchester or London but I do know it has worked in Scotland … it's for others to judge what's applicable. I wouldn't want to be told from 300 miles away what to do." .
What Carnochan does believe, however, is that the current system has clearly and patently failed.
"More cops, more prisons, more sentences, will make you feel better for a couple of days – and we haven't made a blind bit of difference to equality or inequality and the gangs are still there, gangs that were there when I was a young cop 35 years ago.
"This is about a cultural change and attitudinal change, which is as much required within professional service providers, police, health and social workers, as well as a cultural change within the communities that think it's okay to do this. It's everybody's issue."
Severin Carrell @'The Guardian'
Jihadists flood Web with anti-British messages
Jihadists have flooded internet with anti-British messages inciting rioters to take further action, US-based terrorist tracking group SITE Intelligence has said.
Postings on jihadist websites have urged Muslim militants to incite the rioters via social media that could possibly lead to Arab-style protests in Britain, SITE said.
In a message on the Shumukh Al-Islam website, an extremist said the riots could be "useful" for the jihadist cause. He suggested Britain could withdraw troops from Afghanistan and send them to London to quell the violence.
Another post on the website advised jihadists to "infiltrate the British Facebook and Twitter" pages with catchy slogans such as "We are all Mark Duggan".
On another website, Ansar Al-Mujahedeen, users provided links to the Facebook pages of top British football clubs such as Manchester United and Arsenal, urging militants to post key slogans there, SITE said.
The SITE group constantly monitors internet and traditional media for material and propaganda released by jihadist groups and their supporters.
The death of Mark Duggan, taxi-driver and alleged drug supplier ina police shootout, sparked the violence in the country. Police have held over 1,100 people over the looting and unrest, which analysts say were largely organised by young people using the Blackberry smartphone's messaging service, micro-blogging website Twitter and other social networking websites.
@'The Times of India'
Postings on jihadist websites have urged Muslim militants to incite the rioters via social media that could possibly lead to Arab-style protests in Britain, SITE said.
In a message on the Shumukh Al-Islam website, an extremist said the riots could be "useful" for the jihadist cause. He suggested Britain could withdraw troops from Afghanistan and send them to London to quell the violence.
Another post on the website advised jihadists to "infiltrate the British Facebook and Twitter" pages with catchy slogans such as "We are all Mark Duggan".
On another website, Ansar Al-Mujahedeen, users provided links to the Facebook pages of top British football clubs such as Manchester United and Arsenal, urging militants to post key slogans there, SITE said.
The SITE group constantly monitors internet and traditional media for material and propaganda released by jihadist groups and their supporters.
The death of Mark Duggan, taxi-driver and alleged drug supplier ina police shootout, sparked the violence in the country. Police have held over 1,100 people over the looting and unrest, which analysts say were largely organised by young people using the Blackberry smartphone's messaging service, micro-blogging website Twitter and other social networking websites.
@'The Times of India'
A social media crackdown is the wrong response to riots
The government is contemplating tactics against the UK riots that set dangerous precedents.
In parliament today, prime minister David Cameron said authorities and the industry were looking at "whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality". Well, at least he did post it as a question of right and wrong.
It would be wrong, sir. Who is to say what communication and content should be banned from whom on what platform? On my BlackBerry? My computer? My telephone? My street corner?
Cameron also said, according to a Guardian tweet, that he would look at asking online services to take down offending photos. Again, who decides that content is offending? If you give authority to government and telco and social companies to censor that, what else can and will they censor?
Beware, sir. If you take these steps, what separates you from the Saudi government demanding the ability to listen to and restrict its BBM networks? What separates you from Arab tyrannies cutting off social communication via Twitter or from China banning it?
This regulatory reflex further exposes the danger of British government thinking it can and should regulate media. Beware, my friends. When anyone's speech is not free, no one's speech is free. I refer the honourable gentleman to this . Censorship is not the path to civility. Only speech is.
There is also debate about tactics to restrict anonymity in public. Cameron wants police to have the authority "in certain circumstances" to require face masks to be removed: instead of a burqa ban, a hoodie ban. One MP in the current debate also suggested rioters be sprayed with indelible ink. In addition, Cameron said that CCTV pictures – and, one assumes, pictures on social networks and the afore-derided BBM – would be used to identity and arrest rioters. I understand the motive and goal to control crime. I don't necessarily oppose the moves, for I argue in Public Parts that what one does in public is public.
But again, be aware of the precedents these actions would set. Be aware how they could be used under other circumstances. In Public Parts, I compare the use of social media to identity Egyptian secret police from ID photos taken from their liberated headquarters with the use of social media to identity protestors in Iran. A tool used for good can be used for bad.
The bottom line of these debated tactics would be this: anonymity would be banned in public; it would require that one be public in public.
Right now, online, we are having many debates about anonymity and identity .
So now we need to look at how the public street in London compares with the public street on the internet, on Facebook, Twitter, BBM, blogs and newspapers. What government does on the streets it could do on the internet, and vice versa. Each is a form of a public.
I was just writing a post defending the need for anonymity and pseudonymity online for the use of protestors and whistleblowers and the oppressed and vulnerable. I was also writing to defend social services that try to require real identity as their prerogative to set the tone of their services (rather than discussing that in the context of Facebook or Google+, look at it in the context of, say, LinkedIn, where pseudonymity would rob it of its essential utility and value). I was going to suggest that services such as Google+ find a middle ground where real identity is encouraged – even with verification of true identity as an optional service – but pseudonymity is permitted, with more power given not to the service but to the user to filter people and media and comments on that basis (allow me as a user to, for example, read the comments of people who have the courage to stand behind their words with their names). There is much nuance to be grappled with in these issues and in these new circumstances.
But now come the UK riots and the debate over what to do about them, raising these same issues in a new context – the street – with a new player: the government. The proper debate, I argue in Public Parts, should be held not in the specifics of these matters but instead as principles.
Restricting speech cannot be done except in the context of free speech.
When debating public identity, one must decide what a public is.
These are not easy issues, any of them, in any of these contexts. So I would urge my British friends to be careful about enabling their government to impose restrictions on the public.
Jeff Jarvis @'The Guardian'
In parliament today, prime minister David Cameron said authorities and the industry were looking at "whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality". Well, at least he did post it as a question of right and wrong.
It would be wrong, sir. Who is to say what communication and content should be banned from whom on what platform? On my BlackBerry? My computer? My telephone? My street corner?
Cameron also said, according to a Guardian tweet, that he would look at asking online services to take down offending photos. Again, who decides that content is offending? If you give authority to government and telco and social companies to censor that, what else can and will they censor?
Beware, sir. If you take these steps, what separates you from the Saudi government demanding the ability to listen to and restrict its BBM networks? What separates you from Arab tyrannies cutting off social communication via Twitter or from China banning it?
This regulatory reflex further exposes the danger of British government thinking it can and should regulate media. Beware, my friends. When anyone's speech is not free, no one's speech is free. I refer the honourable gentleman to this . Censorship is not the path to civility. Only speech is.
There is also debate about tactics to restrict anonymity in public. Cameron wants police to have the authority "in certain circumstances" to require face masks to be removed: instead of a burqa ban, a hoodie ban. One MP in the current debate also suggested rioters be sprayed with indelible ink. In addition, Cameron said that CCTV pictures – and, one assumes, pictures on social networks and the afore-derided BBM – would be used to identity and arrest rioters. I understand the motive and goal to control crime. I don't necessarily oppose the moves, for I argue in Public Parts that what one does in public is public.
But again, be aware of the precedents these actions would set. Be aware how they could be used under other circumstances. In Public Parts, I compare the use of social media to identity Egyptian secret police from ID photos taken from their liberated headquarters with the use of social media to identity protestors in Iran. A tool used for good can be used for bad.
The bottom line of these debated tactics would be this: anonymity would be banned in public; it would require that one be public in public.
Right now, online, we are having many debates about anonymity and identity .
So now we need to look at how the public street in London compares with the public street on the internet, on Facebook, Twitter, BBM, blogs and newspapers. What government does on the streets it could do on the internet, and vice versa. Each is a form of a public.
I was just writing a post defending the need for anonymity and pseudonymity online for the use of protestors and whistleblowers and the oppressed and vulnerable. I was also writing to defend social services that try to require real identity as their prerogative to set the tone of their services (rather than discussing that in the context of Facebook or Google+, look at it in the context of, say, LinkedIn, where pseudonymity would rob it of its essential utility and value). I was going to suggest that services such as Google+ find a middle ground where real identity is encouraged – even with verification of true identity as an optional service – but pseudonymity is permitted, with more power given not to the service but to the user to filter people and media and comments on that basis (allow me as a user to, for example, read the comments of people who have the courage to stand behind their words with their names). There is much nuance to be grappled with in these issues and in these new circumstances.
But now come the UK riots and the debate over what to do about them, raising these same issues in a new context – the street – with a new player: the government. The proper debate, I argue in Public Parts, should be held not in the specifics of these matters but instead as principles.
Restricting speech cannot be done except in the context of free speech.
When debating public identity, one must decide what a public is.
These are not easy issues, any of them, in any of these contexts. So I would urge my British friends to be careful about enabling their government to impose restrictions on the public.
Jeff Jarvis @'The Guardian'
Thursday, 11 August 2011
Ed Miliband's Statement On UK Riots
The victims are the innocent people:
Who live in many of our cities;
Who have seen their homes and businesses destroyed;
Their communities damaged;
And their confidence about their own safety undermined.
There can be no excuses, no justification.
This behaviour has disgusted us all.
It cannot be allowed to stand.
We will not allow it to stand.
I want to join the Prime Minister in mourning the loss of life we have seen, including those killed in London and Birmingham.
Our thoughts are with the family and friends of those who have died.
With Tariq Jahan whose son was murdered.
We stand with him.
He is the true face of Britain.
The Britain we are proud of.
I want to also thank our brave policemen and women throughout this country for the work they have been doing on our behalf.
And all of the emergency services.
We salute them for their courage, their dedication and their willingness to put themselves in harm’s way to keep our communities safe.
Thanks to them a degree of order has been re-established on our streets.
But from all sides of this House we know what the public want, and are entitled to.
A return to normality, as well as order.
Normality does not mean shops having to shut at 3pm because they fear looting.
Normality does not mean rushing home because you are scared to be on the streets.
Normality does not mean feeling fearful in your own home.
They want to have back the most fundamental of liberties: the ability to go about their business and lead their lives with security and without fear.
They have a right to expect it.
And we have a responsibility to make it happen.
To do this, Parliament needs to do its job.
Uniting against the violence.
And being the place where we examine and debate, frankly, all of the issues involved:
How we have got where we are;
What it says about Britain;
And what the response should be.
First, on policing.
Can the Prime Minister confirm that the additional operational costs the police are now facing will be funded from the Treasury reserve, and not place additional pressure on already stretched budgets?
Can he also confirm that the increased presence on our streets will remain in place as long as it takes, even beyond the weekend, until the police can be confident that the trouble will not recur?
The events of the last few days have been a stark reminder to us all that police on the streets make our communities safer, and make the public feel safer.
Given the absolute priority the public attach to a visible and active police presence, does the Prime Minister understand that they will not think it is right that he goes ahead with the cuts to police numbers he is planning?
Will he now think again?
Secondly, on criminal justice.
The public are clear that they want to see swift, effective and tough action to send a message about the penalties and punishment that follow from the violence we have seen.
We must see swift progress from charge to trial in these cases.
Can the Prime Minister confirm that there is the capacity within the courts and among our prosecutors to deal with cases swiftly, not just for first appearance but throughout the trial process?
It is right the Crown Prosecution Service is taking into account the aggravating circumstances within which the horrendous criminal acts we have seen in recent days took place.
Does the Prime Minister agree that magistrates and judges need to have those circumstances at the front of their mind so that those found guilty of this disgraceful behaviour receive the tough sentences they deserve and the public expect?
The Prime Minister mentioned the importance of CCTV in catching those responsible.
So will he undertake to look again at his proposals on CCTV to make sure they in no way hinder bringing criminals to justice?
Thirdly, we need all of our cities back on their feet and operating as normal.
That work began with the thousands of volunteers who reclaimed our streets and showed the true spirit of those cities and our country.
I welcome what the Prime Minister said on a range of support being provided.
Can he reassure us that the help that is provided will be genuinely needs-based without an arbitrary cap?
And can he assure us that these funds will flow straightaway so that people can get on with rebuilding their lives and communities?
Fourth, on the deeper lessons we need to learn.
The Prime Minister said in 2006 “Understanding the background, the reasons, the causes. It doesn’t mean excusing crime but it will help us to tackle it”.
To seek to explain is not to seek to excuse.
Of course these are acts of individual criminality.
But we have a duty to ask ourselves why there are people who feel they have nothing to lose, and everything to gain, from wanton vandalism and looting.
We cannot afford to let this pass, to calm the situation down, only to find ourselves in this position again in the future.
These issues cannot be laid at the door of a single cause or a single government.
The causes are complex.
Simplistic responses will not provide the answer.
We can only tackle these solutions by hearing from our communities.
What the decent people I met on the streets of London and Manchester told me, and will tell the Prime Minister, is that they want their voice to be heard.
They want us to go out and listen to them.
And before saying we know all the answers, or have simple solutions, we should all do so.
Can the Prime Minister explain how those in areas affected will have their voice heard?
Will the Prime Minister agree that there must be a full independent commission of inquiry, swiftly looking at what has happened in recent days, and what lessons we need to learn.
Not an inquiry sitting in Whitehall hearing evidence from academic experts but reaching out and listening to those affected by these terrible events.
They deserve and need to be heard.
We need to look at and act on all the issues that matter:
The responsibility we need from top to bottom in our society, including parental responsibility.
The take what you can culture, that needs to change from the benefits office to the boardroom.
A sustained effort to tackle the gangs in our cities, something we knew about before these riots.
And of course, Mr Speaker, questions of hope and aspiration.
The provision of opportunities to get on in life which don't involve illegality and wrongdoing.
When we talk about responsibility, we must not forget ours: above all, to the vast majority of law abiding young people.
They are a generation worried about their prospects and we cannot afford to fail them.
We cannot afford to have the next generation believe that they are going to do worse that the last.
They should be able to do better.
That is the promise of Britain.
Let me say in conclusion:
Successful societies are built on an ethic of hard work, compassion, solidarity, and looking after each other.
Ours must be one society.
We must all bear our share of responsibility for it.
It is right that we came back to debate these issues.
It is right that public order must be paramount.
But it is also imperative that even after order and normality are restored, we do not ignore the lessons we must learn.
We cannot afford to move on and forget.
For all the people who have been in fear this week, for those who have lost loved ones, homes, and businesses, we owe a duty to ensure no repeat of what we have seen.
This is our responsibility to the victims.
It is our responsibility to the country.
And we on this side will play our part in making it happen.
Via
peterfainton peter fainton
staggering - Cameron 'simply doesn't accept that economic poverty leads to increases in crime.'
A Must Read: Let's cut the bullshit and start some serious debate shall we?
I'm sick to death of the partisan bollocks spewing forth from the usual cabal of out-of-touch opinion creators, both left and right, regarding the causes of the riots. Actual reasoned analysis is thin on the ground, little diamonds in a sea of bile, ignorance and cliche.
This is a question of morality.
I have yet to see a philosopher interviewed on the subject.
Moral regard is determined by who and what you identify with, which is itself comprised of the culture through which one grows up. A large number of youths clearly have no moral regard for the police or for their communities. Ergo, we can deduce that a situation has developed whereby large numbers of youths are growing up devoid of the kind of influences that generate shared cultural identity. This is clearly evident; conforming cultural appearance (as suits are to businessmen), a shared dialect (much like that shared between politicians and the business world, not a coincidence and yes, the same applies regarding the moral concern...) etc; natural examples of divergent cultural evolution of separated groups (just like genetic evolution does). This has made them so alien to the rich and powerful that they have zero chance of making it, no point in aspiration and through no fault of their own. It is a mighty rare person who can buck the human instinct to conform in groups... do we then demand it of those who have the least instead of addressing the real causes? Who has created the walls? Who has caused the segregation in the first place? Why is there such a huge gulf of worlds between the haves and have-nots?
There are no jobs. That's where most of us are forced to mix, forced to expand our moral concern by taking in structure, responsibility, exposure to people you would never normally mix with. What jobs there are do not pay enough, not to deal with the sheer volume of advertising generating needs and desires through a process of saturation (and now smart) bombing. Whereas before one person could work and still happily sustain a family, now both parents (where there are two...) have to work just to survive, members of the ever growing working poor. There are no pools, there are no clubs, there is no chance of ever buying a house, ever going to university. There is nothing but corruption in their eyes, foolishly looking directly at the Sun much too often; the greed and dishonesty of the haves (politician's expenses, Ian Tomlinson, phone tapping, bailouts) acting as convincing rationales for simply doing whatever they want to do. And why shouldn't they? They have no moral concern for us. Imagine if the Right's dreams came true, and all the people on benefits suddenly worked really hard, doing everything they possibly could to get ahead. What would change? Nothing, except they'd look like chumps instead of scroungers.
Yet despite this, they still have to be seen to be responsible even if they are victims of the system (in the same way that we have to assume free will, even if science tells us it aint so). Those kids have had little choice over their lives - that responsibility falls on the parents. Unfortunately they may be just as excluded has the youth. Either way, society progresses with the aid of law and justice, and in this case restorative justice HAS to be the way to go. Until these youth are forced to face their victims, until they are forced to spend time working in the communities they trashed, how will they gain the experiences to help them break out of this limited group identity?
It isn't a choice between "It's poverty, leave them alone!" and "use live ammunition, that'll teach the bastards!". Criminality isn't some ontological entity, some insidious cloud that infects people... it has a cause like everything else in existence. Neither is it a question of a bad soul which can be redeemed if broken first. It is a reaction; a reflection of parts of society that our leaders are blind to; a warning sign of severe cognitive dissonance. These youths and Politicians Inc are more alike than they realise: both are closed systems and both have moral regard for their own groups first and foremost. Society at large needs to realise this, because I fear the former will not be saved until we deal with the latter. Ben King @'Grime and Reason'
This is a question of morality.
I have yet to see a philosopher interviewed on the subject.
Moral regard is determined by who and what you identify with, which is itself comprised of the culture through which one grows up. A large number of youths clearly have no moral regard for the police or for their communities. Ergo, we can deduce that a situation has developed whereby large numbers of youths are growing up devoid of the kind of influences that generate shared cultural identity. This is clearly evident; conforming cultural appearance (as suits are to businessmen), a shared dialect (much like that shared between politicians and the business world, not a coincidence and yes, the same applies regarding the moral concern...) etc; natural examples of divergent cultural evolution of separated groups (just like genetic evolution does). This has made them so alien to the rich and powerful that they have zero chance of making it, no point in aspiration and through no fault of their own. It is a mighty rare person who can buck the human instinct to conform in groups... do we then demand it of those who have the least instead of addressing the real causes? Who has created the walls? Who has caused the segregation in the first place? Why is there such a huge gulf of worlds between the haves and have-nots?
There are no jobs. That's where most of us are forced to mix, forced to expand our moral concern by taking in structure, responsibility, exposure to people you would never normally mix with. What jobs there are do not pay enough, not to deal with the sheer volume of advertising generating needs and desires through a process of saturation (and now smart) bombing. Whereas before one person could work and still happily sustain a family, now both parents (where there are two...) have to work just to survive, members of the ever growing working poor. There are no pools, there are no clubs, there is no chance of ever buying a house, ever going to university. There is nothing but corruption in their eyes, foolishly looking directly at the Sun much too often; the greed and dishonesty of the haves (politician's expenses, Ian Tomlinson, phone tapping, bailouts) acting as convincing rationales for simply doing whatever they want to do. And why shouldn't they? They have no moral concern for us. Imagine if the Right's dreams came true, and all the people on benefits suddenly worked really hard, doing everything they possibly could to get ahead. What would change? Nothing, except they'd look like chumps instead of scroungers.
Yet despite this, they still have to be seen to be responsible even if they are victims of the system (in the same way that we have to assume free will, even if science tells us it aint so). Those kids have had little choice over their lives - that responsibility falls on the parents. Unfortunately they may be just as excluded has the youth. Either way, society progresses with the aid of law and justice, and in this case restorative justice HAS to be the way to go. Until these youth are forced to face their victims, until they are forced to spend time working in the communities they trashed, how will they gain the experiences to help them break out of this limited group identity?
It isn't a choice between "It's poverty, leave them alone!" and "use live ammunition, that'll teach the bastards!". Criminality isn't some ontological entity, some insidious cloud that infects people... it has a cause like everything else in existence. Neither is it a question of a bad soul which can be redeemed if broken first. It is a reaction; a reflection of parts of society that our leaders are blind to; a warning sign of severe cognitive dissonance. These youths and Politicians Inc are more alike than they realise: both are closed systems and both have moral regard for their own groups first and foremost. Society at large needs to realise this, because I fear the former will not be saved until we deal with the latter. Ben King @'Grime and Reason'
Cameron’s Broken Windows
Our son lives next to a Turkish mosque on Kingsland Road in Hackney, where some of London’s worst mob violence has occurred. When looters rampaged through Hackney last weekend, there were few police officers to stop them and residents had to chase them off with butcher knives, truncheons and baseball bats. Vigilante action succeeded where normal policing failed.
Kingsland Road resembles the bustling, ethnically mixed streets of Brooklyn. During the day, it is a home of sorts for unemployed young men with nothing to do; Britain’s youth unemployment rate is currently over 20 percent. During the economic boom a decade ago, though, nearly as many were out of work, and they did not all turn to crime.
To counter the risk that they might, there were storefront drop-in centers for young people in the neighborhood; these places are now shutting down, as are other community services, like health centers for the elderly and libraries. Local police forces have also been shrinking.
All are victims of what people in Britain call “the cuts” — the government’s defunding of civil-society institutions in order to balance the nation’s books. Before the riots, the government had planned to cut 16,200 police officers across the country. In London, austerity means that there will be about 19 percent less to spend next year on government programs, and the burden will fall particularly on the poor.
The rioters in London appear to be young men of varying races — despite reports of a monolithic mob of alienated “black youth.” But there is a racial dimension to this drama. The wave of riots began with protests against the police killing of a young black man, Mark Duggan. While initially peaceful, the demonstrations soon descended into violence. When the unrest spread to Manchester on Tuesday, many of the rioters there were apparently white.
An old-fashioned Marxist might imagine that the broken windows and burning houses expressed a raging political reaction to government spending cuts — but this time that explanation would be too facile.
The last time Britain saw widespread rioting, in the 1980s, street violence came after a long and failed political struggle against the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher, which suppressed trade unions and decimated social services. Today, the rioters seem motivated by a more diffuse anger, behaving like crazed shoppers on a spree; while some of the shops looted are big chains, many more are small local businesses run by people who are themselves struggling through Britain’s economic slump.
There has been a change in national temperament that has affected decent citizens as well as criminals. The country’s mood has turned sour. Indeed, the flip side of Britons’ famed politeness is the sort of hooliganism that appears at soccer matches and in town centers on weekend nights — an unfocused hostility that is usually fueled by vast quantities of alcohol. Fears of anarchic urban mobs date from Shakespeare’s time, and Prime Minister David Cameron has summoned these old fears, describing the present conflagration as “senseless.”
Mr. Cameron was good at selling people on the idea of cutting costs, but he has failed to make the case for what and how to cut: efforts to increase university fees, to overhaul the National Health Service, to reduce the military and the police, even to sell off the nation’s forests, have all backfired, with the government hedging or simply abandoning its plans.
In attempting to carry out reform, the government appears incompetent; it has lost legitimacy. This has prompted some people living on Kingsland Road to become vigilantes. “We have to do things for ourselves,” a 16-year-old in Hackney told The Guardian, convinced that the authorities did not care about, or know how to protect, communities like his.
A street of shuttered shops, locked playgrounds and closed clinics, a street patrolled by citizens armed with knives and bats, is not a place to build a life.
Americans ought to ponder this aspect of Britain’s trauma. After all, London is one of the world’s wealthiest cities, but large sections of it are impoverished. New York is not so different.
The American right today is obsessed with cutting government spending. In many ways, Mr. Cameron’s austerity program is the Tea Party’s dream come true. But Britain is now grappling with the consequences of those cuts, which have led to the neglect and exclusion of many vulnerable, disaffected young people who are acting out violently and irresponsibly — driven by rage rather than an explicit political agenda.
America is in many ways different from Britain, but the two countries today are alike in their extremes of inequality, and in the desire of many politicians to solve economic and social ills by reducing the power of the state.
Britain’s current crisis should cause us to reflect on the fact that a smaller government can actually increase communal fear and diminish our quality of life. Is that a fate America wishes upon itself?
Richard Sennett & Saskia Sassen @'NYT'
Kingsland Road resembles the bustling, ethnically mixed streets of Brooklyn. During the day, it is a home of sorts for unemployed young men with nothing to do; Britain’s youth unemployment rate is currently over 20 percent. During the economic boom a decade ago, though, nearly as many were out of work, and they did not all turn to crime.
To counter the risk that they might, there were storefront drop-in centers for young people in the neighborhood; these places are now shutting down, as are other community services, like health centers for the elderly and libraries. Local police forces have also been shrinking.
All are victims of what people in Britain call “the cuts” — the government’s defunding of civil-society institutions in order to balance the nation’s books. Before the riots, the government had planned to cut 16,200 police officers across the country. In London, austerity means that there will be about 19 percent less to spend next year on government programs, and the burden will fall particularly on the poor.
The rioters in London appear to be young men of varying races — despite reports of a monolithic mob of alienated “black youth.” But there is a racial dimension to this drama. The wave of riots began with protests against the police killing of a young black man, Mark Duggan. While initially peaceful, the demonstrations soon descended into violence. When the unrest spread to Manchester on Tuesday, many of the rioters there were apparently white.
An old-fashioned Marxist might imagine that the broken windows and burning houses expressed a raging political reaction to government spending cuts — but this time that explanation would be too facile.
The last time Britain saw widespread rioting, in the 1980s, street violence came after a long and failed political struggle against the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher, which suppressed trade unions and decimated social services. Today, the rioters seem motivated by a more diffuse anger, behaving like crazed shoppers on a spree; while some of the shops looted are big chains, many more are small local businesses run by people who are themselves struggling through Britain’s economic slump.
There has been a change in national temperament that has affected decent citizens as well as criminals. The country’s mood has turned sour. Indeed, the flip side of Britons’ famed politeness is the sort of hooliganism that appears at soccer matches and in town centers on weekend nights — an unfocused hostility that is usually fueled by vast quantities of alcohol. Fears of anarchic urban mobs date from Shakespeare’s time, and Prime Minister David Cameron has summoned these old fears, describing the present conflagration as “senseless.”
Mr. Cameron was good at selling people on the idea of cutting costs, but he has failed to make the case for what and how to cut: efforts to increase university fees, to overhaul the National Health Service, to reduce the military and the police, even to sell off the nation’s forests, have all backfired, with the government hedging or simply abandoning its plans.
In attempting to carry out reform, the government appears incompetent; it has lost legitimacy. This has prompted some people living on Kingsland Road to become vigilantes. “We have to do things for ourselves,” a 16-year-old in Hackney told The Guardian, convinced that the authorities did not care about, or know how to protect, communities like his.
A street of shuttered shops, locked playgrounds and closed clinics, a street patrolled by citizens armed with knives and bats, is not a place to build a life.
Americans ought to ponder this aspect of Britain’s trauma. After all, London is one of the world’s wealthiest cities, but large sections of it are impoverished. New York is not so different.
The American right today is obsessed with cutting government spending. In many ways, Mr. Cameron’s austerity program is the Tea Party’s dream come true. But Britain is now grappling with the consequences of those cuts, which have led to the neglect and exclusion of many vulnerable, disaffected young people who are acting out violently and irresponsibly — driven by rage rather than an explicit political agenda.
America is in many ways different from Britain, but the two countries today are alike in their extremes of inequality, and in the desire of many politicians to solve economic and social ills by reducing the power of the state.
Britain’s current crisis should cause us to reflect on the fact that a smaller government can actually increase communal fear and diminish our quality of life. Is that a fate America wishes upon itself?
Richard Sennett & Saskia Sassen @'NYT'
We are allowed to ask questions
Why are global stock markets plummeting again? Didn't the people on TV say everything was OK now? Why has the USA's credit rating been downgraded? How could they have possibly gotten into such a mess? And what about European countries? Why are they suddenly needing IMF bailouts?
What's happening to that former IMF leader who was accused of rape? Did he do it or was he set-up, and if so by whom? Why is his replacement also in trouble? What does the IMF actually do, anyway? Why is there another famine in Africa? Isn't that why we set up the World Bank?
What's happening in the Middle East? Why is Iraq still such a bloody mess, after all these years? How many people have died there? Why are the Taliban still so strong in Afghanistan? When are our soldiers coming home? What exactly are we trying to achieve over there? Why are the local warlords still allowed to profit from heroin crops? Why are we propping up president Karzai, if he doesn't even like us?
Why is Pakistani turning against the USA? Why were they hiding Osama Bin Laden? Weren't they supposed to be helping us? What's happening to their nuclear weapons? Are we going to support India instead now? What about China? Is it true they hold the global purse-strings these days? How does that work, if they are all supposed to be communists?
And what about Saudi Arabia? How can they be opposed to violence in Syria, when they invaded Bahrain to attack protesters? Why didn't the USA say more about that? Is it because Fifth Fleet is stationed in Bahrain? Why don't Western leaders speak up against Saudi mistreatment of women, and their repression of the ethnic Shiah community? Is it because the Saudis have so much money invested in Wall Street, and buy so many arms?
Why is Gaddafi still in power? And why is NATO fighting Gaddafi in Libya, but not standing up to Assad, or North Korea, or Burma? Is Mugabe still running Mozambique? Whatever happened to him? Why don't we care anymore?
Whatever happened to that UK Iraq War enquiry? If Blair lied about Iraq WMDs, why didn't he go to jail? Why do so many people believe Dr David Kelly was murdered? Who would do such a thing? Did Blair really sex up the intelligence? Is that why Cheney set up his Office Of Special Plans? Has he released the minutes of his pre-war energy taskforce meetings with oil executives...?
Continue reading
Gary Lord @'The Drum'
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