Excellent.
There’s a review of this video here.
Tag Archives: Protests & Civil Unrest
Mainstream Media Coverage of Wall Street Protests
The Riots: A Mob Made By The Welfare State?
Flash Mobs Looting in the U.S.
UK Riots: Years of liberal dogma have spawned a generation of amoral, uneducated, welfare dependent, brutalised youngsters
Another great article on this topic here: www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10970/
A few weeks after the U.S. city of Detroit was ravaged by 1967 race riots in which 43 people died, I was shown around the wrecked areas by a black reporter named Joe Strickland.
He said: ‘Don’t you believe all that stuff people here are giving media folk about how sorry they are about what happened. When they talk to each other, they say: “It was a great fire, man!” ’
I am sure that is what many of the young rioters, black and white, who have burned and looted in England through the past few shocking nights think today.
It was fun. It made life interesting. It got people to notice them. As a girl looter told a BBC reporter, it showed ‘the rich’ and the police that ‘we can do what we like’.
If you live a normal life of absolute futility, which we can assume most of this week’s rioters do, excitement of any kind is welcome. The people who wrecked swathes of property, burned vehicles and terrorised communities have no moral compass to make them susceptible to guilt or shame.
Most have no jobs to go to or exams they might pass. They know no family role models, for most live in homes in which the father is unemployed, or from which he has decamped.
They are illiterate and innumerate, beyond maybe some dexterity with computer games and BlackBerries.
They are essentially wild beasts. I use that phrase advisedly, because it seems appropriate to young people bereft of the discipline that might make them employable; of the conscience that distinguishes between right and wrong.
They respond only to instinctive animal impulses — to eat and drink, have sex, seize or destroy the accessible property of others.
Their behaviour on the streets resembled that of the polar bear which attacked a Norwegian tourist camp last week. They were doing what came naturally and, unlike the bear, no one even shot them for it.
A former London police chief spoke a few years ago about the ‘feral children’ on his patch — another way of describing the same reality.
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Every firm in the land knows that an East European — for instance — will, first, bother to turn up; second, work harder; and third, be better-educated than his or her British counterpart.Who do we blame for this state of affairs?
Ken Livingstone, contemptible as ever, declares the riots to be a result of the Government’s spending cuts. This recalls the remarks of the then leader of Lambeth Council, ‘Red Ted’ Knight, who said after the 1981 Brixton riots that the police in his borough ‘amounted to an army of occupation’.
But it will not do for a moment to claim the rioters’ behaviour reflects deprived circumstances or police persecution.
Of course it is true that few have jobs, learn anything useful at school, live in decent homes, eat meals at regular hours or feel loyalty to anything beyond their local gang.
This is not, however, because they are victims of mistreatment or neglect.
It is because it is fantastically hard to help such people, young or old, without imposing a measure of compulsion which modern society finds unacceptable. These kids are what they are because nobody makes them be anything different or better.
Rampage: We are told that youths roaming the streets are doing so because they are angry at unemployment, but a quick look at an apprenticeship website yields 2,228 vacancies in London
A key factor in delinquency is lack of effective sanctions to deter it. From an early stage, feral children discover that they can bully fellow pupils at school, shout abuse at people in the streets, urinate outside pubs, hurl litter from car windows, play car radios at deafening volumes, and, indeed, commit casual assaults with only a negligible prospect of facing rebuke, far less retribution.
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Anyone who reproaches a child, far less an adult, for discarding rubbish, making a racket, committing vandalism or driving unsociably will receive in return a torrent of obscenities, if not violence.
So who is to blame? The breakdown of families, the pernicious promotion of single motherhood as a desirable state, the decline of domestic life so that even shared meals are a rarity, have all contributed importantly to the condition of the young underclass.
The social engineering industry unites to claim that the conventional template of family life is no longer valid.
Protection: Asian shopkeepers stand outside their store in Hackney that was battered by the looters. This time, though, they’re ready to take them on
And what of the schools? I do not think they can be blamed for the creation of a grotesquely self-indulgent, non-judgmental culture.
This has ultimately been sanctioned by Parliament, which refuses to accept, for instance, that children are more likely to prosper with two parents than with one, and that the dependency culture is a tragedy for those who receive something for nothing.
The judiciary colludes with social services and infinitely ingenious lawyers to assert the primacy of the rights of the criminal and aggressor over those of law-abiding citizens, especially if a young offender is involved.
The police, in recent years, have developed a reputation for ignoring yobbery and bullying, or even for taking the yobs’ side against complainants.
‘The problem,’ said Bill Pitt, the former head of Manchester’s Nuisance Strategy Unit, ‘is that the law appears to be there to protect the rights of the perpetrator, and does not support the victim.’
Police regularly arrest householders who are deemed to have taken ‘disproportionate’ action to protect themselves and their property from burglars or intruders. The message goes out that criminals have little to fear from ‘the feds’.
Discussing the difficulties of imposing sanctions for misbehaviour or idleness at school, he described the case of a girl pupil he scolded for missing all her homework deadlines.
The youngster’s mother, a social worker, telephoned him and said: ‘Threatening to throw my daughter off the A-level course because she hasn’t done some work is tantamount to psychological abuse, and there is legislation which prevents these sorts of threats.
‘I believe you are trying to harm my child’s mental well-being, and may well take steps . . . if you are not careful.’
That story rings horribly true. It reflects a society in which teachers have been deprived of their traditional right to arbitrate pupils’ behaviour.
A message circulating about the London Riots
If you’re down for making money, we’re about to go hard in east london tonight, yes tonight!! I don’t care what ends you’re from, we’re personally inviting you to come and get it in. Police have taken the piss for too long and to be honest I don’t know why its taken so long for us make this happen. We need a minimum of 200 hungry people. We’re not broke, but who says no to free stuff. Doesn’t matter if the police arrive cos we’ll just chase dem out because as you’ve seen on the news, they are NOT ON DIS TING. Everyone meet at 7 at stratford park and let’s get rich. After stratford we hit plaistow and surrounding streets taking them all out and then finally moving on to east ham. Finders keepers and we all look after each other so if you see someone getting grab by feds then make sure we help stamp out that fuking PIG. M.O.B money over bobbies =D broadcast this to everyone you know and let’s get paid!!
Israelis Sick and Tired – but of What?
The protesters do not want peace. In fact, one of the common posters in Rothschild imitates the very font, color, and design of “Peace Now” and replaces it with “Welfare State Now.” This is what makes Israelis take to the street: the exorbitant cost of living in Israel. With average wages considerably lower than in Europe or North America, prices in Israel are often much higher.
Obviously, life in Israel is economically much better than in neighboring countries. Why do Israelis expect more? Why do they compare themselves to Europe and North America, not to Egypt or Turkey? Because that’s what the Israeli state (all Israeli governments from the mid-1980s on have had precisely the same policy) has persuaded us to do. The Israeli ruling right wing (call it Labor, Likud, or Kadima; they’re all the same) has persuaded Israel’s middle class that peace is unnecessary: we can both run the occupation and have a Western standard of living. As evidence, they point at Israel’s membership in the OECD, the exclusive club of the world’s richest economies, or at Israel’s prosperous high-tech industry.
The idea sounds perfect: the regime knows that the Israeli middle class would refuse to pay for the occupation. The regime is unwilling to give up the occupation, so it convinces the masses that the occupation has no economic price for them. We don’t need peace: we can go on like this and have a good life. (Convincing Israelis that the other side does not want peace is another component of the same ideology.)
But to keep this lie alive, they have to deliver. And the Israeli governments cannot deliver. The middle class hears the promises of the good life and reads reports on diminishing unemployment rates and strong growth, but it sees a different reality: it gets poorer all the time. I see it all around me: hard-working parents cannot raise their children — let alone buy a flat — without massive aid from their own parents. “Grandparents are not an ATM,” as some protesters write on their posters.
Aims and Distractions
The rage of the protesters is not aimed especially at the occupation. Some of the protesters are blind to the occupation’s economic significance; some of them fear a split in the protest if this becomes the focus. Indeed, the occupation is in my eyes Israel’s greatest sin, but not its only one. The protesters implicitly target the unfulfilled promises of the good life. They target regressive taxation, and they target the few Israeli tycoons who, because of the interdependence between politics and big money, have monopolized almost every branch of the small, isolated Israeli economy and turned the entire people into their captive market. (Read more from )
FRANCE: Israel extends a no fly ban to European activists. Airlines are denying boarding for European passengers. Mandatory interrogation prior embarking.
Dozens of pro-Palestinian activists have been refused permission to board a flight from Paris’ Charles De Gaulle airport bound for Israel where they were due to stage a protest.
The group were prevented from leaving for Tel Aviv following a request from authorities there.
In an unprecedented move, European airlines have been given the details of 300 blacklisted passengers who will be refused entry to Israel.
Dozens more protestors headed for the same fly-in demonstration were also prevented from leaving Brussels. (Read more from euronews.net)
Fighting Tax Collector’s seizure of property
I love these guys.
People violently arrested for dancing at Jefferson Monument
Adam Kokesh and others were staging a peaceful protest.
WTF!? Lybian Rebels form a central bank.
Here’s one for the Guinness Book of Records. The Libyan rebels in Benghazi said they have created a new national oil company to replace the corporation controlled by leader Muammar Qaddafi whose assets were frozen by the United Nations Security Council and have formed a central bank!
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This continues to look like a major oil and money play, with the true disaffected rebels being used as puppets and cover, as the oil/money transfer takes place.. (Read more from economicpolicyjournal.com)
Ron Paul: Libya and Unintended Consequences
Israeli Defense Minister: Israel may ask US for additional $20 billion in military aid in response to Arab pro-democracy upheavals
Israel will need to boost military spending and may seek an additional $20 billion in U.S. security assistance to help it manage potential threats stemming from popular upheavals in the Arab world, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Monday. (Read more from online.wsj.com)
The Specter of Municipal Default
Jimmy John Liautaud, founder of the Jimmy John’s sub chain, just applied to move his residence from Illinois to Florida — and his company’s headquarters could soon follow. “All they do is stick it to us,” he says of the state legislature’s move to jack up the personal income tax from 3 percent to 5 percent — and the corporate income tax from 7.3 percent to 9.5 percent.
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However, California’s state treasurer, Bill Lockyer, says the idea of states going bankrupt is ludicrous.
“It’s a cynical proposal, intended to incite a panic in response to a phony crisis,” Mr. Lockyer said on a conference call with journalists. “Killer bees, space aliens, and now it’s the invasion of the bankrupt states.”
I’m a little surprised Lockyer is so cocky. After all, California was forced to issue IOUs in lieu of cash to pay taxpayers, vendors, and local governments back in 2009.
Mr. Lockyer’s big plan is for his state to refrain from issuing any general-obligation bonds until the second half of the year, cutting down borrowing costs. That doesn’t sound like any great trick, except California hasn’t done that since 1988. If that doesn’t work, well, “Then, the next option, if you run out of deferrals, is to issue IOUs,” Mr. Lockyer said. “It’s a possibility. It’s not one that anyone wants to do. It’s at the bottom of the list of choices. But it is on the list.”
Nicole Gelinas of the Manhattan Institute also thinks the idea of states going bankrupt is nonsense. Because states pile up debt indirectly, issuing bonds through tens of thousands of separate legal entities. She writes that New York “state” doesn’t owe all of that $78.4 billion in debt; it owes only $3.5 billion in “general-obligation” debt, so relax.
“Who owes the rest?” she writes,
The MTA, the Dormitory Authority, the Triborough Bridge & Tunnel Authority and so on. Legally, each is not a government but a “public-benefit corporation.” Each has its own board, its own rules, and its own contractual agreements with creditors, from bondholders to unions. Each of those agreements offers creditors different protections.
So New Yorkers, in this case, are supposed to sleep better at night secure in the knowledge that dozens of government entities owe this debt instead of just one? Meanwhile any one of these public-benefit corporations could default out of the blue, because more than likely nobody will get a heads-up if the Dormitory Authority runs out of dough to pay bond holders. (Read more from mises.org)
Providence, RI Mayor Fires all public school teachers!
What kind of privileged, conservative, white, tea-pary mayor would do such a thing? His name is Angel Taveras, and he’s an alumni of Providence’s public schools.