Crime/Law Enforcement
Riots in Britain - Could it Happen Here?
Aug 10, 2011 12:14
Britain is in deep trouble, with riots in numerous major cities and the police helpless to put a stop to it. Ugly as the details of the riots and the reprehensibility of the rioters' behavior might be, the causes are not difficult to ascertain: a large, growing, and increasingly oppressed underclass from which all hope has been extinguished.
When enough people have nothing whatever to lose by barbaric behavior and the prospect of temporary gain, we should expect barbaric behavior.
Is this complicated?
Here's what British blogger Peggy Red writes (via alternet.org):
It's not a coincidence that the vast shift in wealth and income from the lower and middle classes to the wealthy in the United States, beginning with Reagan, was accompanied by the militarization of the police, the dismantling of the Bill of Rights (justified by the war on drugs and then the war on terror), the gutting of the social safety net, the destruction of our unionized industrial base by a deliberate policy of overvaluing the dollar on the international exchanges, and the relentless underfunding of public education from infancy through graduate school. This was all intentional. Margaret Thatcher’s neo-conservative austerity (for the middle and lower classes) happened more quickly, hence more obviously.
The insane but absolute logic of movement conservatism, given its reptilian premises, virtually mandates a political and economic downward spiral for everyone but a tiny and fabulously wealthy minority, along with their political enablers, apologists and enforcers.
And it is difficult, if not impossible, to see how this can be averted. The momentum is powerful and the will to fight back is weak to nonexistent. The middle class of this nation is voting itself into extinction.
More insight:
Nina Power: As London Explodes in Riots, There Is a Context That Can't Be Ignored: Brutal Cuts and Enforced Austerity Measures
William Bowles: Riots in Britain: Back to the Future
Ilona Catherine Burton: Manchester Riots
Michael McCarthy: No shame, no limits: Has the behaviour of the mob destroyed the idea of British civility for ever?
Update 8/11/2011:
Michelle Chen: Police and Thieves: Making Sense of the English Riots (via alternet.org)
Emily Manuel: Why Riot and Not Revolt in London?
When enough people have nothing whatever to lose by barbaric behavior and the prospect of temporary gain, we should expect barbaric behavior.
Is this complicated?
Here's what British blogger Peggy Red writes (via alternet.org):
Panic on the streets of LondonNo one expected this. The so-called leaders who have taken three solid days to return from their foreign holidays to a country in flames did not anticipate this. The people running Britain had absolutely no clue how desperate things had become. They thought that after thirty years of soaring inequality, in the middle of a recession, they could take away the last little things that gave people hope, the benefits, the jobs, the possibility of higher education, the support structures, and nothing would happen. They were wrong. And now my city is burning, and it will continue to burn until we stop the blanket condemnations and blind conjecture and try to understand just what has brought viral civil unrest to Britain. Let me give you a hint: it ain’t Twitter.
It's not a coincidence that the vast shift in wealth and income from the lower and middle classes to the wealthy in the United States, beginning with Reagan, was accompanied by the militarization of the police, the dismantling of the Bill of Rights (justified by the war on drugs and then the war on terror), the gutting of the social safety net, the destruction of our unionized industrial base by a deliberate policy of overvaluing the dollar on the international exchanges, and the relentless underfunding of public education from infancy through graduate school. This was all intentional. Margaret Thatcher’s neo-conservative austerity (for the middle and lower classes) happened more quickly, hence more obviously.
The insane but absolute logic of movement conservatism, given its reptilian premises, virtually mandates a political and economic downward spiral for everyone but a tiny and fabulously wealthy minority, along with their political enablers, apologists and enforcers.
And it is difficult, if not impossible, to see how this can be averted. The momentum is powerful and the will to fight back is weak to nonexistent. The middle class of this nation is voting itself into extinction.
More insight:
Nina Power: As London Explodes in Riots, There Is a Context That Can't Be Ignored: Brutal Cuts and Enforced Austerity Measures
William Bowles: Riots in Britain: Back to the Future
Ilona Catherine Burton: Manchester Riots
Michael McCarthy: No shame, no limits: Has the behaviour of the mob destroyed the idea of British civility for ever?
Update 8/11/2011:
Michelle Chen: Police and Thieves: Making Sense of the English Riots (via alternet.org)
Emily Manuel: Why Riot and Not Revolt in London?
Riots are what happens when people—almost always young men—stop believing in their communities, in their country, in their rights as a citizen. Riots are what happens when whole groups are treated as potential or actual criminals by the police. Riots happen when anger, resentment, testosterone and yes, consumerist desire are greater than civic pride or fear of the police, when the facade of power finally cracks and people realise they outnumber the forces of order. And mostly particularly, riots are what happens when people despair, when there appears to be few options in the present and none in the future, and no way to fix the situation.
Comments
Manning Exposes Torture but Those who Ordered the Torture Go Free
Dec 24, 2010 14:34
Bradley Manning, the soldier accused of leaking thousands of classified messages to Wikileaks, has been held in solitary confinement under conditions that approach, if not satisfy, the definition of torture. Read a description of his conditions on Alternet and ponder what kind of a chief executive would condone what amounts to torture, especially after having been elected by the people as a decent, ethical alternative to the moral dwarfs that ran the White House for the previous eight years. It recalls the treatment of Captain Alfred Dreyfus after having been convicted of treason in 1894 on fabricated evidence by a kangaroo military court.
Manning may have indeed leaked the classified information to Wikileaks, but under the U. S. Constitution and the Uniform Code of Military Justice, his confinement, particularly when he has not been convicted and sentenced, is illegal if it amounts to torture.
Manning may have indeed leaked the classified information to Wikileaks, but under the U. S. Constitution and the Uniform Code of Military Justice, his confinement, particularly when he has not been convicted and sentenced, is illegal if it amounts to torture.
Wrongly Convicted in Texas—and Everywhere Else
Jan 18, 2007 06:59
According the today's New York Times, the 12th person has been recently exonerated by DNA evidence in Dallas County, Texas.
I wonder how many innocent persons were convicted and put to death in Texas with George W. Bush's approval and occasional mockery?
Considering the number of death sentences that have been overturned nationwide by DNA testing--even when the defendant actually confessed to the crime--I wonder how many innocent persons have been wrongly convicted for lesser crimes but whose conviction was reviewed with far less scrutiny than death-sentence cases? When I practiced criminal law, especially post-conviction litigation, I was astounded by convictions that seemed to rest on very flimsy evidence but which the appellate courts affirmed with no qualms. I estimate that at least 20% of the convicts I came in contact with were completely innocent. Many were convicted because their lawyers failed to perform even the most cursory investigation and allowed the prosecution to roll over their client with no resistance. False and tainted eyewitness identification accounted for many wrong convictions.
Besides invoking hyper-technicalities to avoid actually considering the issue of ineffective assistance of counsel, courts have defined ineffective assistance in such a way as to make it almost impossible for defendants to actually prove ineffective assistance, even when their counsel did practically nothing to defend them.
The explanation is not difficult. Having been whipped into a fearful frenzy over crime, mainly by political writers and commentators and by reactionary politicians, we as a society decided about twenty years ago to "get tough" on crime, by requiring extraordinarily harsh sentences and by removing more and more "liberal" constitutional protections for the accused. Consequently and predictably, more and more innocent persons have been convicted and sent to jail.
For those of us who believe that the whole idea of America is founded upon civil liberties and freedoms, it appears that we have collectively decided to trade some freedom for security, and we all know what Benjamin Franklin said about a people that trades freedom for security. It is a lesson that tragically has to be relearned over and over by human societies. We become afraid for our individual skins and ignore the dangers that threaten to engulf us all.
New York Times: A 12th Dallas Convict Is Exonerated by DNA
I wonder how many innocent persons were convicted and put to death in Texas with George W. Bush's approval and occasional mockery?
Considering the number of death sentences that have been overturned nationwide by DNA testing--even when the defendant actually confessed to the crime--I wonder how many innocent persons have been wrongly convicted for lesser crimes but whose conviction was reviewed with far less scrutiny than death-sentence cases? When I practiced criminal law, especially post-conviction litigation, I was astounded by convictions that seemed to rest on very flimsy evidence but which the appellate courts affirmed with no qualms. I estimate that at least 20% of the convicts I came in contact with were completely innocent. Many were convicted because their lawyers failed to perform even the most cursory investigation and allowed the prosecution to roll over their client with no resistance. False and tainted eyewitness identification accounted for many wrong convictions.
Besides invoking hyper-technicalities to avoid actually considering the issue of ineffective assistance of counsel, courts have defined ineffective assistance in such a way as to make it almost impossible for defendants to actually prove ineffective assistance, even when their counsel did practically nothing to defend them.
The explanation is not difficult. Having been whipped into a fearful frenzy over crime, mainly by political writers and commentators and by reactionary politicians, we as a society decided about twenty years ago to "get tough" on crime, by requiring extraordinarily harsh sentences and by removing more and more "liberal" constitutional protections for the accused. Consequently and predictably, more and more innocent persons have been convicted and sent to jail.
For those of us who believe that the whole idea of America is founded upon civil liberties and freedoms, it appears that we have collectively decided to trade some freedom for security, and we all know what Benjamin Franklin said about a people that trades freedom for security. It is a lesson that tragically has to be relearned over and over by human societies. We become afraid for our individual skins and ignore the dangers that threaten to engulf us all.
New York Times: A 12th Dallas Convict Is Exonerated by DNA