English riots update

This video from London, England is called SHOCKING Footage: BBC Presenter Attacks Black Veteran Over London Riots – Aug 09 2011.

Before we have an update about the riots in England today, from last year, from the Conservative Daily Mail, from a high level policeman:

Public sector cutbacks could lead to riots, says police chief

From British daily The Morning Star:

Bullets won’t solve anything
Tuesday 09 August 2011

For all the sense that David Cameron spoke following the Cobra emergency committee meeting, he might as well have stayed in his luxury Tuscan villa.

Cameron tried hard to appear big and butch, warning people what his even harder mates in the police would do to them.

He accepted no responsibility for the conditions that gave rise to the riot epidemic and showed no understanding of why some people do it.

It is difficult to imagine a more wooden and meaningless formulation than his punchline, “This is criminality pure and simple and it has to be confronted and defeated.”

So the logical response must be to swamp problem areas with police, arrest more people, bang them up, throw away the key and, hey presto, job done.

The Prime Minister had plenty of advice from the usual law-and-order lobby for whom a major problem is misplaced concern for people’s human rights.

Put the army on the streets, wheel out the water cannon and plastic bullets and let the police get stuck into rioters without fear of consequences, they chorus.

It’s so simple and, of course, it worked so well in Northern Ireland, didn’t it?

Police in Britain could have had water cannon and plastic bullets at their disposal during past disturbances, but their overwhelming judgement was that they would cause more problems than they solve.

If the government really is considering deployment of plastic rounds in response to the current situation, this would be a retrograde step.

Those authorised to use them are given strict firing instructions, but things don’t always go to plan in the heat of the moment.

How long after their introduction will it be before a youngster dies as a result of a plastic bullet direct strike on the head?

Cameron warned young people involved in these riots that they would “feel the full force of the law,” hinting at custodial punishments.

The PM must know that the prison population is at an all-time high, placing additional pressure on overstretched prison officers who face privatisation of their service and attacks on their pay and conditions.

Similar problems confront those at the sharp end of the riots – police officers and firefighters, who are targeted by the government’s cuts agenda.

Cameron completed his speech without mentioning these false economies or the plethora of cuts imposed on young people, from funding for youth clubs, sports facilities, educational maintenance allowance, housing benefit and much else besides.

Add to that the fact that half of black youth aged 16-24 is unemployed and the wonder is not that riots have broken out but that they didn’t occur earlier.

It is meaningless complaining that many teenagers show no respect without appreciating the reality that they too are often treated without respect.

People with a job, a home and a future don’t riot.

Government should be investing in such an outcome rather than in overseas wars, nuclear weapons and tax breaks for big business and the rich.

If people feel excluded from society, there is no value in criticising them for anti-social attitudes.

Homes and businesses must be protected, which means that police have to have resources to contain violent outbreaks.

However, there must also be government investment for jobs, services and benefits to deliver a society at peace with itself rather than sharply divided into haves and have-nots.

It was true in the ’80s and it’s true now that aggressive and racist policing leads to civil unrest, argues Ann Czernik.

Top police officer warns against use of plastic bullets on rioters: here.

The inquest into the fatal shooting by police of Tottenham man Mark Duggan heard today that he was killed by a single shot to the chest: here.

Probe shows “no evidence” the man who was fatally shot in UK in incident that sparked riots had opened fire at officers: here.

White racist violence in London: here.

Violence ‘has exposed Britain’s broken society’: here.

A Hackney woman watched online by almost a million nationwide after she was videoed denouncing the riots spoke exclusively to the Morning Star on Monday following her speech: here.

With media sources blaming “anarchy” for the unfolding violence in London and across England, the North London Solidarity Federation has released the following statement as a response from an anarchist organisation active in the capital: here.

Creepy: The Far-Right [EDL] Group That Inspired the Oslo Bomber Says It Will Stop London Riots: here.

Parrot criminals stopped in Uganda

This video says about itself:

Alex, the talking research African Grey parrot passes away

CNN’s Jim Clancy speaks with Dr. Irene Pepperberg, whose research parrot, Alex, was discovered dead last week. Alex was 31 and appeared to have died of natural causes, said Dr. Irene Pepperberg, the scientist who trained and studied him for three decades. RIP Alex.

From the Monitor in Uganda:

Uganda: Flying Away to Freedom

Edgar R. Batte

7 August 2011

The African grey parrot is a beautiful, intelligent and unique creation. But for these attributes and more, this parrot is one of the most sought-after for its social nature and high intelligence.

Last week, 204 formerly confiscated African grey parrots flew into the wild from domestication by Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA). These popular beauties had been impounded from poachers at the Mpondwe customs border post in Kasese and at a private farm at Kawuku along the Kampala-Entebbe highway. The poachers were preparing to sell them across the borders.

A new study adds support to two earlier reports that songbirds and parrots are each other’s closest relatives (Psittacopasserae), indicating that vocal learning abilities appeared in this group of birds 30 million years earlier than originally assumed: here.

Related articles

• Help us eradicate abuse, cruelty and trafficking of exotic birds (goodfoxbirdiehaven.wordpress.com)
• animal languages 4 (non-historical ‘fringe’ linguistics 28) (skepticalhumanities.com)
• Parrot Lessons (ruthelsesser.wordpress.com)
• Reasoning by Inference: Further Studies on Exclusion in Grey Parrots (Psittacus erithacus) (scicombinator.com)
• “African Grey Mafia” Threatens Persistence of Grey Parrots in the Wild (newswatch.nationalgeographic.com)
• Ashlie’s #CBR5 Review #4: Alex and Me by Alex Pepperberg (cannonballread5.wordpress.com)
• Here we go again: Uganda tabloid lists alleged gays (purplegloves.wordpress.com)

British police, cutbacks, provoke riots

By Julie Hyland in England:

Major police clampdown as riots spread across London and other UK cities

9 August 2011

A massive police presence has been established across parts of the capital in an attempt to crush the eruption of social anger that has affected areas of north and southeast London and is spreading to other UK cities.

Rioting in Tottenham on Saturday evening was triggered by the fatal police shooting early Thursday evening of Mark Duggan, a 29-year-old father of four, by Specialist Firearms officers.

On Sunday, disturbances broke out in Brixton, Enfield, Walthamstow, Islington and Oxford Street, central London. By Monday afternoon, riots were also under way in Hackney in east London and Lewisham and Peckham in southeast London. Disturbances also broke out in Birmingham, England’s second city.

Upwards of 220 were arrested in less than 48 hours.

The scale of the police response belies claims that they were “taken by surprise” by events. Not only were the notorious Territorial Support Group (TSG)—the capital’s specialist public order police unit—on standby as “contingency” during peaceful protests against Duggan’s killing immediately prior to Saturday’s riots. By Sunday afternoon, thousands of police reinforcements had been drafted into Tottenham and other parts of north London from Thames Valley, Kent, Surrey, Essex and the City of London.

It is reported, for example, that by 9:30 pm that day the “whole of Enfield”—just a short distance from Tottenham—had been turned into a “sterile area” by the Metropolitan Police and back-up forces from Kent.

“Hundreds of riot police arrived with vans and police dogs, charging at groups of teenagers who disappeared into side streets, smashing cars and shop windows as they ran,” the Guardian reported. Police on horseback charged any groups of youth in the area, while police helicopters were deployed overhead.

Riots in Hackney were reportedly triggered by a police stop and search of a young man sitting outside a MacDonald’s restaurant late Monday afternoon. When he protested that he had done nothing wrong and refused to be searched, a riot van drew up and police attempted to arrest him. A crowd gathered in his defence and the situation quickly escalated into running confrontations between large numbers of riot police and hundreds of young people.

The police clampdown is being put in place even as the official version of events leading up to the rioting in Tottenham is unraveling.

Police had claimed that Duggan, a passenger in a taxi cab, opened fire on officers as they attempted to stop the vehicle as part of a pre-planned arrest operation. One officer only narrowly escaped death, according to police statements, when the bullet fired by Duggan hit his radio. Other officers returned fire in self-defence and Duggan died instantly. A non-police issue firearm was said to have been recovered from the scene.

On Saturday afternoon, upwards of 200 people gathered at Tottenham police station to demand “justice for Mark Duggan.” The protesters, including Duggan’s fiancé Semone Wilson, complained that they had been given no explanation for the shooting. Police say that after several hours, what they acknowledge had been a peaceful protest suddenly turned violent when gangs of youth began attacking police cars.

But according to the Guardian, yet to be released ballistic tests show that it was a police-issued bullet that was found in the police radio. This would indicate that the police did execute Duggan, as many suspected. Eyewitnesses said they saw police shoot Duggan as he lay face down on the floor.

As for police claims about the protest, video footage has now emerged of police brutally beating a young girl, causing outrage from the crowd.

This video is called BBC News: Explosive Eye Witness Account – Tottenham Riots, UK.

The video posted on YouTube confirms eyewitness accounts that the rioting was triggered when police “set upon” the 16-year-old. One local resident, Laurence Bailey, told reporters he saw “15 riot officers pounding her with shields.”

“She went down on the floor, but once she managed to get up she was hit again before being half-dragged away by her friend,” he said.

When the incensed crowd surged forward, police cars were used to block the road. These were the cars that were attacked by youth and set on fire.

As evidence mounts of a police provocation, a concerted campaign is underway by the media and the major political parties to blame the disturbances on “copy-cat criminals” and “looters” with the aim of justifying further state repression.

A spokesman for Conservative Party Prime Minister David Cameron condemned the rioting as “utterly unacceptable,” while Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrat Party described it as “opportunist theft.”

Kit Malthouse, the Conservative Party chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority, said: “Obviously there are people in this city, sadly, who are intent on violence, who are looking for the opportunity to steal and set fire to buildings and create a sense of mayhem, whether they’re anarchists or part of organised gangs or just feral youth, frankly, who fancy a new pair of trainers.”

The Labour Party’s shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, demanded “robust leadership and action in London now to prevent this disorder and criminality” from spreading.

“We need to be assured that the police have the resources necessary to maintain public order but also to conduct targeted follow-up operations to bring criminals to justice,” she continued, adding, “We also need a clear strategy from the government and the mayor to prevent this disorder becoming a repeated problem throughout August and September.”

Cooper’s remarks are a veiled reference to the austerity measures that have been implemented by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, involving spending cuts of some £80 billion that will devastate jobs, living standards and social programs. In recent months the government has tripled the cost of university tuition and abolished the Education Maintenance Allowance, paid to some 640,000 16-18 year olds to help them continue in higher education.

Areas like Tottenham, amongst the most deprived in the country, have been particularly hard hit. Unemployment officially stands at 8.8 percent, but will be much higher amongst young people. Claims for Jobseeker’s Allowance have risen by 10 percent in the last year, while Haringey Council has cut £41 million from its budget, reducing its youth services by 75 percent.

This is the social reality that underlies the London disturbances. It is replicated in working class areas across the country. It is the reason Cooper anticipates “repeated” disorder in the coming months.

Violence spreads to Birmingham, Bristol and Liverpool: here.

The London Riots – On Consumerism coming Home to Roost; 09/08/2011 By Zygmunt Bauman: here. Also on Zygmunt Bauman: here.

From last year, from the Conservative Daily Mail, from a high level policeman:

Public sector cutbacks could lead to riots, says police chief

Related articles

• Mayor sorry for ‘best’ riot comment (belfasttelegraph.co.uk)
• Families against police killings unite for justice (morningstaronline.co.uk)
• Mark Duggan’s relatives demand justice over police killing of gangster which sparked London riots as watchdog says officers involved did not break the law (thisismoney.co.uk)

TEPCO profits prevailed over Japanese people’s health

This is a video about radioactive beef in Japan.

From the New York Times in the USA:

Japan Held Nuclear Data, Leaving Evacuees in Peril

FUKUSHIMA, Japan — The day after a giant tsunami set off the continuing disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, thousands of residents at the nearby town of Namie gathered to evacuate.

Given no guidance from Tokyo, town officials led the residents north, believing that winter winds would be blowing south and carrying away any radioactive emissions. For three nights, while hydrogen explosions at four of the reactors spewed radiation into the air, they stayed in a district called Tsushima where the children played outside and some parents used water from a mountain stream to prepare rice.

The winds, in fact, had been blowing directly toward Tsushima — and town officials would learn two months later that a government computer system designed to predict the spread of radioactive releases had been showing just that.

But the forecasts were left unpublicized by bureaucrats in Tokyo, operating in a culture that sought to avoid responsibility and, above all, criticism. Japan’s political leaders at first did not know about the system and later played down the data, apparently fearful of having to significantly enlarge the evacuation zone — and acknowledge the accident’s severity.

“From the 12th to the 15th we were in a location with one of the highest levels of radiation,” said Tamotsu Baba, the mayor of Namie, which is about five miles from the nuclear plant. He and thousands from Namie now live in temporary housing in another town, Nihonmatsu. “We are extremely worried about internal exposure to radiation.”

The withholding of information, he said, was akin to “murder.”

In interviews and public statements, some current and former government officials have admitted that Japanese authorities engaged in a pattern of withholding damaging information and denying facts of the nuclear disaster — in order, some of them said, to limit the size of costly and disruptive evacuations in land-scarce Japan and to avoid public questioning of the politically powerful nuclear industry. As the nuclear plant continues to release radiation, some of which has slipped into the nation’s food supply, public anger is growing at what many here see as an official campaign to play down the scope of the accident and the potential health risks.

What is General Electric’s level of blame for Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant accidents? Here.

Fukushima radiation alarms doctors: here.

Fukushima Nuclear Crisis Update for August 15th-18th, 2011: here.

Japanese government seeks to defuse opposition to nuclear industry: here.

Economic crisis worsens, but not for millionaires

The calamitous sell-off on world stock markets, which on Monday topped even the enormous losses of last week, puts to rest any claim that the crisis that erupted in 2008 was temporary: here.

A massive sell-off underscores the acute sensitivity of the Australian markets to shifts in the world economy: here.

Crisis countries’ debt bought by EU bank: here.

Britain: Big pensions for bosses, poverty for workers: here.

This video from the USA says about itself:

What Verizon really wants is to bust our union. They want to shred our contract and take back everything we’ve bargained over the last 60 years. That’s not going to happen, no matter what we have to do.

More than 15,000 CWA and IBEW members took to the streets outside Verizon’s NYC headquarters at 140 West St. on July 30th and there is no doubt: We are ready to mobilize, to strike, to do whatever it takes to protect our contract and our standard of living.

Every worksite, every person, every day. Mobilize!

USA: More than 45,000 workers are on strike today at Verizon Communications. Bargaining continues. Since bargaining began on June 22, Verizon has refused to move from a long list of concession demands. As the contract expired, nearly 100 concessionary company proposals remained on the table: here.

Verizon workers denounce demands for massive concessions: here.

On Turning Poverty into an American Crime. By Barbara Ehrenreich: here,

New York City workers speak out against budget cuts: here.

Margaret Jensvold, Maryland Mom Who Killed Son Ben Barnhard, Agonized Over School Costs: here.

Mexican miners march to demand resolution of three strikes: here.