England er stadig et kæmpestort tema i pressen, ligesom amerikanske flash mobs er. Mange pundits her – vælg noget ud:
The English tradition of gratuitous violence
Christopher Hitchens – Aug 19, 2011
I realized that the collapse of British society into a Hobbesian nightmare of mutual predation and despair was still some distance off when I caught two little straws in the wind. The first was a well-framed photograph of a badly scorched bit of London, taken on the morning after a night of riots and vandalism. Apart from heavily accoutered cops, the only human figures on the scene consisted of a forest of sleeveless forearms, all brandishing the long handles of mops and heavy-duty scrubbing brushes. The ordinary working day had scarcely begun, but the process of digging out and cleaning up, inaugurated by the volunteer locals, was already under way. Of course, I thought to myself. Inflict a physical disaster on any British city, but especially on London, and the inhabitants seem to know, without any previous training for the role, that they have been cast in a remake of Britain Beats the Blitz.
Mere HER i National Post. Slate her.
These rioters are Tony Blair’s children
Harriet Sergeant – 13th August 2011
Nihilism and disorder have been fostered by the state
On the third day of the London riots I received a telephone call from Mash, a member of a Brixton gang who I befriended three years ago. He was standing outside an electronics shop in Clapham, watching the looting. I could hear shouts, glass breaking but never a police siren. I urged him to go home. ‘Harri man,’ he remonstrated, his voice hoarse with emotion, “You don’t get to do this every day. You do your thing, and you don’t get arrested. It’s wild and exciting. These few days, it’s our time.”
The riots engulfing areas of London and other cities this week are not about poverty or race. They are about young men like Mash who are barely literate, unemployed, with no future and nothing to lose. For them it is suddenly a dream come true. Their favourite video games have become a reality. They have got what they never had before – power, a sense of achievement and lots of goodies. Most of us want the same thing. The difference is we can get them without setting London ablaze.
Mere HER i The Spectator.
Mob Mayhem
Tom McLaughlin – August 19, 2011
“If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs …”
So begins Rudyard Kipling’s century-old poem “If,” which comprised the text of a card I got graduating eighth grade and has stuck with me ever since. In the ensuing forty-six years I saw how rare it was for someone to actually do it – to stay centered within oneself in the midst of hysteria. To achieve that is to live beyond the influence of the mob.
Mobs are big news with riots in England and flash mobs assaulting people and property in the United States. The first night of London riots was said to be in response to police shooting a young black man, variously described as a “father or four” and “tied to London gangs.” That night’s rioting may have started spontaneously, but it continued and spread to other UK cities with electronic social network coordination, and that is a common thread in both the UK and in the United States. Another common thread is race, though the mainstream media in both countries try to ignore it.
Mere HER hos Family Security Matters eller her hos Tom McLaughlin.
Thomas Sowell har skrevet en hel serie, der fokuserer på USA, men som også kommer ind på engelske forhold:
Social Degeneration
Thomas Sowell – August 16, 2011
Someone at long last has had the courage to tell the plain, honest truth about race.
After mobs of young blacks rampaged through Philadelphia committing violence — as similar mobs have rampaged through Chicago, Denver, Milwaukee and other places — Philadelphia’s black mayor, Michael A. Nutter, ordered a police crackdown and lashed out at the whole lifestyle of those who did such things.
Mere HER i Town Hall. WorldNetDaily her.
Social Degeneration Part 2
August 17, 2011 | Thomas Sowell
Although much of the media have their antennae out to pick up anything that might be construed as racism against blacks, they resolutely ignore even the most blatant racism by blacks against others.
That includes a pattern of violent attacks on whites in public places in Chicago, Denver, New York, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Kansas City, as well as blacks in schools beating up Asian classmates — for years — in New York and Philadelphia.
Mere HER i Town Hall. The Washington Examiner her. Og part 3:
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Thomas Sowell – August 18, 2011
Elites have tried to solve our social degeneration with politically correct bunkum.
The orgies of violent attacks on strangers in the streets — in both England and the United States — are not necessarily just passing episodes. They should be wake-up calls, warning of the continuing degeneration of Western society.
As British doctor and author Theodore Dalrymple said, long before these riots broke out, “The good are afraid of the bad, and the bad are afraid of nothing.”
Mer HER i National Review Online. RealClearPolitics her.
Hard Work and the Real Meaning of Wealth
By Victor Davis Hanson – August 18, 2011
A once civil and orderly England was torn apart by rioting and looting last week — at first by mostly minority youths, but eventually by young Brits in general. This summer, a number of American cities have witnessed so-called “flash mobs” — mostly African-American youths who swarm at prearranged times to loot stores or randomly attack those of other races and classes. The mayhem has reignited an old debate in the West: Are such criminally minded young Americans and Britons turning to violence in protest over inequality, poverty, and bleak opportunities?
Mere HER i RealClearPolitics. Orange County Register her. Philly.com her.
Lock People Up? Not in Britain!
U.K. officials remain unwilling to learn the lessons of New York’s crime turnaround.
Steven Malanga – 18 August 2011
Over the course of the last decade, I’ve periodically met with official visitors from the United Kingdom who have come to New York City to learn about its revival—specifically, about the city’s successful war against crime, which I’ve watched closely for the past 20 years. Most of these visitors had already heard quite a bit about the NYPD’s campaign against crime. As complaints of public disorder rose in the U.K., the press there featured more stories about what had happened in New York, where crime is now down an astounding 80 percent since the early 1990s. In a 2008 article in the BBC News’s Magazine titled “Where Is It Safe To Walk The Streets?,” the British home secretary, Jacqui Smith, admitted that she felt unsafe on London’s streets late at night, while her Conservative counterpart, David Davis, called it “shameful” that one could safely walk at night in New York but not in London.
Mere HER i City Journal.
Government-Sponsored Looting
Rioters and bankers do have something in common, but not what pundits think.
Nicole Gelinas – 18 August 2011
That so many commentators have compared British looters to bankers appalls many people who believe in the rule of law and in free markets. It was a given that Britain’s left wing would make that analogy. But the right-wing Daily Mail similarly editorialized that “the bankers’ refusal to rein in their greed is fueling the politics of envy in Britain,” and Peter Oborne, a columnist at the conservative Daily Telegraph, wrote that “New Labor promoted a divisive and unequal society” via its support for finance. These conservatives, however, are almost on to something. It’s not that looters and bankers are alike in being greedy and lacking empathy. Nor is it that looters are jealous of rich bankers’ wealth. It’s that for two decades, the British government has taken the same approach to its financial industry and to its underclass—treating them as protected groups and shielding them from the forces of discipline—and that both the bankers and the looters responded predictably to that coddling.
Mere HER i City Journal.
What Do Rioters Really Want?
Joan Lachkar, PhD, Nancy Kobrin, PhD – August 18, 2011
According to many recent reports including one from The Christian Science Monitor, Countering riots and looting in Britain by Heidi J. Snow, posted August 11, mob violence is not always sparked by economic concerns, poverty, financial deprivation, but by the desire for excitement.
The British were shocked by interviews from looters claiming that they just enjoyed being able to “get away with something.”– firebombing, looting. In psychological terms this is known as the mob or group mentality whereby the horde defies all superego mechanisms of morality and together in symbiosis (which is a fused state lacking individuality) can act or enact their most vicious aggression against humanity.
Mere HER i Family Security Matters.
Britain’s Riots: Entitlement Culture from Top to Bottom
by A. Millar – August 18, 2011
Anarchists smashing up the Ritz; “Student” mobs attacking the Conservative Party headquarters; Anti-globalist,” anti-capitalist, and pro-Hamas demonstrations in London: Britain’s recent history is stuffed full of violence masquerading as serious politics. Although the BBC and respectable, high-profile individuals on the Left were convinced that the recent rioting and widespread violence against police and passersby, muggings and looting were a message about “social justice” and Government cuts, as more and more graphic details filled the news, and with this position more and more indefensible, the “protesters” were recast by the tax-payer funded BBC as the “poor,” merely seeking a crust of bread and a hand up.
Next, as viewers began calling in to point out that these “poor” people were communicating via their Blackberries, and looting designer stores, the narrative shifted to worrying about “football fans” who had come out to defend their neighborhoods against mob violence arson attacks.
Mere HER hos Hudson New York.
Are the Black Flash Mob Attacks on Whites Obama’s Fault?
By Lloyd Marcus - August 18, 2011
Mary Kay Ash, founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics, said, “The speed of the leader is the speed of the gang.” In other words, leadership flows from the top down.
Folks, I believe human beings are responsible for their behavior. However, as America’s first black president, fair or unfair, Obama’s presidency comes with enormous responsibility in terms of its influence on black youths. This is why it is so unfortunate that American black youths’ ultimate role model is a characterless, race-baiting political hack.
Mere HER i The American Thinker. Family Security Matters her.
Media Conceal True Nature of “Flash Mob” Racial Violence
John T. Bennett – August 19, 2011
Relying on documents made available exclusively through a Freedom of Information Act request, we can add another face to the growing picture of racial “flash mob” violence in America. It is a face that the media have concealed from public view.
This writer was forced to use the local Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to ascertain the facts about the racial identity of one of the victims of these attacks. The media concealed the identity of the white victim apparently because of misguided racial sensitivity.
Mere HER hos Accuracy in Media. Family Security Matters her.
UK riots: It’s not about criminality and cuts, it’s about culture… and this is only the beginning
Condemned as a racist for his comments on ‘Newsnight’ following the riots, the historian David Starkey speaks out against those who tried to silence him for confronting the gangster culture that has ruptured our society.
By David Starkey – 19 Aug 2011
What a week! It’s not every day that you’re the subject of direct personal attack from the Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition. On Tuesday, after he had spoken at his old school, Haverstock Comprehensive, about the riots, Ed Miliband was invited by a member of the audience to “stamp out” the now-infamous opinions I had expressed on the same subject on last Friday’s Newsnight.
Mr Miliband might have replied that he disagreed with what I said, but in a liberal democracy defended my right to say it since it broke no laws. Not a bit of it, I fear. Instead, Miliband – the son of a refugee who fled from Nazi Europe to preserve his life and freedom of thought – agreed enthusiastically with the questioner. Mine were “racist comments”, he said, “[and] there should be condemnation from every politician, from every political party of those sorts of comments.”
Mere HER i The Telegraph. Desuden dette link til Christian Concern:
Andre kilder: KentOnline,
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