A reminder of earlier dramas in London and surrounding parts this year:
A court on Wednesday sentenced a rioter who was caught on video pulling a man off his scooter during the summer riots to almost six years in jail.
The footage of Ryan Kitchenside, 18, chasing his victim before yanking him to the ground during the August riots in Croydon, appeared on video-sharing website Youtube, leading to his eventual identification.
Equally depressing is how other rioters joined in to help, as in to help Ryan Kitchenside.
It won’t end up as six years, but it will still be something. I recall reading elsewhere, somewhere, that the regular criminals are beating up rioters in prisons, because regular prisoners don’t like their own neighbourhoods being trashed either, and because regular prisoners are having to be moved around to accommodate the new arrivals.
Read the story and view the video here.
Here is the same video at YouTube, with added sound. That video looks like it was done by a human, rather than any CCTV machine. I am not YouTube savvy enough to find out who held the camera and what the story was there. Anyone?
I think the user’s name implies support for the Occupy Wall Street crowd.
Some Londoners I happened to talk to this last September seemed to hold to the received wisdom that numerous rioters were caught and brought to justice thanks to CCTV – I too would like to know if this notion has any basis in reality.
Doubtless the Guardian will be running an anguished editorial bemoaning the harsh treatment meted out to this heroic stormtrooper of the revolution following his fearless guerilla action. Maybe they could petition the Home Office for political prisoner status for guys like him and the ‘anarchists’ who riot in demand of an expanded state (loot a dictionary and look the word up you fucking muppets).
Have you seen this?
http://rwdb.blogspot.com/2011/12/videotaping-this-crime-spree-is-best.html
Dom
Have you seen this?
http://rwdb.blogspot.com/2011/12/videotaping-this-crime-spree-is-best.html
Dom
Not as vicious as “Occupy Oakland” , but a lot more openly violent than “Occupy Wall Street”.
That some people who call themselves “libertarians” support the London riots and the “Occupy” movement in general, is terrible.
We must be on our guard against what happened to American liberalism.
As late at the 1890s such liberal magazines as “The Nation” were pro private property and anti collectivism – they denounced people like Richard Ely (the mentor of both T. Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson).
However, in the 1920s (and with astonishing speed) someone being “liberal” started to mean BEING collectivist (not opposing collectivism).
Even down to “liberals” (incuding the Nation magazine) supporting (in many – although not all, cases) the Soviet Union – a regime that had already confiscated most large scale property, and murdered millions of human beings.
Of course “liberal”never meant exactly “libertarian”. Indeed my 1911 Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines “liberal”, in part – in the context of defining American Republcians, as supporting a “liberal” (as in broad) interpretation of the United States Constitution – i.e. broad powers for the Federal government. That is the problem with the English word “liberal” it can mean “broad” or “generious” as well as “pro liberty” – liberal as in “liberality” as well as liberal as in “liberty”.
But it would have been unthinkable (even in 1911) for “liberalism” to basically mean “socialism” (collectivism, communalism, mutualism, what you will) in an American context. Although the “New Liberalism” (semi socialist – but not as bad as what was to happen in America) was already getting a grip in Britain.
The word changed its meaning – with frightening speed.
And “libertarian” and “libertarianism” could go the same way.
If we let it happen.