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London riots: Looting and violence continues

Journalist Paraic O'Brien told BBC Radio 5 live that he saw up to 200 youths charging at riot polic

There has been a continuing wave of “copycat criminal activity” across London in a second night of looting and disorder following riots in Tottenham.

More than 100 people have been arrested as officers were attacked, police vehicles damaged and shops looted and damaged in parts of London.

Disorder spread to Enfield, Walthamstow and Waltham Forest in north London and to Brixton in the south of the city.

Some 35 officers have been injured over the two nights of rioting.

Three officers were hurt when a vehicle hit them as they tried to make an arrest in Waltham Forest, east London.

Clashes broke out in Enfield, north London, on Sunday evening where shop windows were smashed and a police car damaged.

There have been reports of a gang of up to 200 youths looting shops and charging police in Coldharbour Lane and the High Street in Brixton, south London.

Continue reading the main story

Rebellion spreads as youths defy police

Three officers injured after being hit by a vehicle in Chingford Mount, Waltham Forest, at about 00:45 BST
More than 30 youths vandalising and looting a number of shops in Walthamstow and Waltham Forest
Vandalism carried out by about 50 youths in Oxford Circus, central London
A police vehicle being attacked in Islington, north London
A Tesco store in Ponders End being attacked and items stolen

Kit Malthouse, Deputy Mayor of London and Chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority, described the scenes of the last two nights as “disgusting and shocking” and said the police did a good job. He added: “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.”Talking about the impact on the capital’s image, one year ahead of the Olympic Games, he said: “It’s pretty rotten for London, it does not look good.

Police in riot gear were on the streets of Enfield in north London

‘Rocks and bottles’

BBC London’s Paraic O’Brien said he had witnessed widespread looting in Brixton.

He said: “They smashed a William Hill, they set bins on fire.

“And now what we’re seeing as the night progresses is that replicated, sort of flashpoints all along Brixton High Street……..

At the scene

Andy Moore BBC News

I saw the rioting in Tottenham on Saturday and I saw the rioting last night and it was certainly different in character.

What might have been started in Tottenham by youngsters aggrieved about what they saw as police persecution has become something very different in nature.

Last night there was a sense that the looting, and violence and disorder across London was being co-ordinated on social media
.Police said “copycat” violence spread to other parts of London on Sunday night and early Monday, including the main shopping district at Oxford Circus.

There were people in their cars, youngsters on bicycles, moving very rapidly, leaving a trail of destruction behind them. As soon as you moved to one location they would move on to the next one.

The police were doing their best to catch up with them. You had police vehicles going backwards and forwards, blue lights flashing, riot police coming out of their vehicles.

Ten minutes later they’d get back in again and go off to the next location – essentially trying to fight the fires, metaphorically, that were spreading all over London.

“I’m standing outside Halfords on the other side of the road and they’ve just smashed through the doors of Halfords. They’re taking bikes out the front entrance.

“I have to say, what really struck me was the small number of police officers that there actually seem to be on Brixton High Street responding to this.”

Press Association photographer Lewis Whyld saw looters battle police at a Currys store in Brixton.

He said: “A couple of hundred youths were rioting and looting. Riot police went in to get them out and there was a big fight in the street.

“Youths were throwing rocks and bottles and there was a bin on fire. They used a fire extinguisher to push the police back so they could get back into Currys and continue taking things out.”

London Fire Brigade said it had been called to a number of fires in Enfield, Brixton and Walthamstow, including a fire at a shop on Brixton Road, which is now under control.

Tube closure

The disorder follows rioting in Tottenham which broke out on Saturday night and continued into Sunday morning.

A peaceful protest over the fatal shooting by police on Thursday of 29-year-old Mark Duggan descended into violence later in the evening.

The unrest spread into nearby Wood Green and Tottenham Hale. Shops were attacked and looted, 26 police officers and three others were injured and buildings and vehicles were set alight.

police warned the public not to trust everything they saw on the Internet

Social networking websites swirled with rumors of other riots beginning or being planned in other areas of the city, but police warned the public not to trust everything they saw on the Internet - adding that officers were keeping a close eye on what was being said online as well.
The violence has cast a pall over a city preparing to host the 2012 Olympic Games.

A man is detained outside the Currys electrical store in Brixton

The Currys store was one of many in Brixton that were attacked

Parts of Tottenham are still cordoned off, as officers and forensic specialists continue to examine the riot scene.

A total of 61 arrests have been made in connection with the first night of rioting. The majority were for burglary, and other offences including violent disorder, robbery, theft and handling stolen goods.

Sixteen people have been charged for offences including burglary, violent disorder and possession of a pointed or bladed weapon following the Tottenham riots.

As well as Mr Duggan, a police officer was also shot in Thursday’s incident, which happened in what was called a “pre-planned” event, under Operation Trident, which investigates gun crime in London’s African and Caribbean communities.

Police had stopped a minicab which Mr Duggan had been travelling in.

Attack' on teenage girl blamed for start of riot
A rumoured attack on a teenage girl by police has been widely blamed for triggering Saturday night’s riot.

The 16 year-old was said by some witnesses to have thrown a stone at a line of officers during the initial protest at Tottenham police station.

She was then allegedly knocked to the ground, and as the crowds retaliated it led to two squad cars being set alight at the start of a night of violent disturbances and looting.

Image 1 of 2 Rioters face off with riot police officers on the streets in Tottenham, north London, on Sunday Aug. 7, 2011

Rioters face off with riot police officers on the streets in Tottenham, north London, on Sunday Aug. 7, 2011 Photo: AP

Bus routes 67, 123, 141, 243, 259, 279, 349, 318, 341 and W4 are on diversion

spain: anarchist workers UNITE for General Strike

Towards the General Strike

The Confederación General del Trabajo (CGT), Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), Solidaridad Obrera (SO) and Coordinadora Sindical de Clase (CSC) trade unions met in Madrid to evaluate a response to the unprecedented attack on the workers suffering as a result of cuts and the loss of political rights imposed on them by the government and the European institutions at the behest of the bosses and the markets, and against which we must respond with a coordinated campaign based on class unity and action. ……..
The situation demands that we respond proportionally with a force that is equal to that of the measures imposed on the workers. We thus believe it is essential not only to continue with the labour struggles we are carrying on at the moment, but also to move ahead, break once and for all with the model of institutionalized trade-unionism and create a precendent in which it is the class-struggle trade unions who set the pace through offensive action to achieve our goals. ……

HACIA LA HUELGA GENERAL

Las organizaciones sindicales Confederación General del Trabajo (CGT), Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), Solidaridad Obrera (SO) y Coordinadora Sindical de Clase (CSC) nos reunimos en Madrid para valorar las respuestas que, ante el ataque sin precedentes que trabajadores y trabajadoras estamos sufriendo por la política de recortes y pérdida de derechos impulsada por el gobierno y las instituciones europeas, a instancias de la patronal y los mercados, debemos oponer en un proceso de lucha coordinada desde la unidad de acción y de clase. …….
La situación nos exige una respuesta proporcionalmente igual de contundente que las medidas que estamos sufriendo los trabajadores y trabajadoras y por ello consideramos necesario no sólo continuar con las luchas sindicales que llevamos a cabo, sino dar un paso que rompa definitivamente con este modelo de sindicalismo institucionalizado y generar un precedente en el cual seamos los sindicatos de clase quienes empecemos a marcar los tiempos desde la acción ofensiva para conseguir nuestros objetivos……

Cops forced to retract call to ‘Report all Anarchists’

The Metropolitan police initiated an embarrassing climbdown after a police station in Belgravia, west London, published a leaflet asking the public and businesses to report anyone with anarchist sympathies.

The call for information on a political rather than criminal group echoed a similar appeal for information about al-Qaida activity and “could have been better worded”, Scotland Yard admitted.

City of Westminster police’s “counter-terrorist focus desk” had last week called for anti-anarchist whistleblowers, stating next to an anarchist emblem: “Anarchism is a political philosophy which considers the state undesirable, unnecessary and harmful, and instead promotes a stateless society, or anarchy. Any information relating to anarchists should be reported to your local police.”

The move angered some anarchists who insisted that being an anarchist does not imply criminal behaviour, indeed the biggest problem with the anarchist movement is the predominance of Pacifists..

Capitalists, on the other hand are unanimously criminal and should be reported immediately

The City of Westminster is not a fan of anarchists, it seems, after their counter-terrorism unit sent out a document that includes a warning about the dangers posed by anarchists. Helpfully, the document defines anarchism for us. In fact, it defines anarchism in exactly the same words (and with exactly the same punctuation) as the Wikipedia entry for anarchism. Isn’t that a coincidence? Anyway, the document urges the reader to report any instances of anarchism to the police.

we’ll need 27 planet Earths by 2050,

Protecting bits of nature here and there will not prevent humanity from losing our life support system. Even if areas dedicated to conserving plants, animals, and other species that provide Earth’s life support system increased tenfold, it would not be enough without dealing with the big issues of the 21st century: population, overconsumption and inefficient resource use.

Without dealing with those big issues, humanity will need 27 planet Earths by 2050, a new study estimates.

The world population, currently at seven billion, is well beyond Earth’s ability to sustain. By 2050, with a projected population of 10 billion people and without a change in consumption patterns, the cumulative use of natural resources will amount to the productivity of up to 27 planet Earths, the study found.

Sustaining the current seven billion people on the planet requires a major shift in resource use. At present, the average U.S. citizen’s ecological footprint is about 10 hectares, while a Haitian’s is less than one. The planet could sustain us if everyone’s footprint averaged two ha, Mora said.

Another of the authors, Peter Sale from the Canadian Institute for Water, Health and the Environment, put it like this:
"We are just taking too much - managing forests in such as way as they degrade, same with coastal waters, and we have to stop doing this as a species.
"I don't have a solution - I have struggled for some time trying to think what is the way to get people to realise how important this is - but if we don't find it soon, the future is a very grim one.
"We're talking about losing 50% of species in the next half century - that's faster than any previous mass extinction event - and anybody who thinks we can go through a mass extinction and be perfectly fine is just deluding themselves."

THE SOLUTION To Over Consumption (some notes)

Assuming that a World anti capitalist revolution is not going to happen right now… more’s the pity… It’s high time that radical environmental groups began to think REAL.

One step that could be taken is to stop using fossil fuels. A huge but not impossible task. Renewable energy is approaching the level where it’s ‘cheaper’ than using fossil fuels. A safer, CO2-free non polluting fuel for vehicles has always existed SEE HERE https://thefreeonline.wordpress.com/category/ammonia-nh3-co2-free-fuel/

But the root of the problem is the mad greed and superconsumption that is the basis of the universal capitalist system.

A common sense moral approach would be for example to sabotage a coal plant, an arms or car factory etc. This is already happening, on a very small scale. Check it out HERE, https://thefreeonline.wordpress.com/category/prison Such largely symbolic publicity actions maybe only benefits the competition and put people out of work, but if many thousands of people were to start doing it …

Blogging to the consciences of middle class youth is all fine and good, but Direct Action on a massive scale is now needed.

Another sane and moderate idea (since their actions are destroying the planet) would be to physically attack investors and directors in the worst Corporations. Let them retreat already to the luxury bunkers they are urgently preparing. However the ‘ruling class’ have all the security forces on the planet just itching to pounce on anyone who ‘gets real’ in this way, and every media outlet ready to scream ‘terrorist’ for the next 20 years. Also the question of guilt is very relative, few really understand what they are doing, and all of us know we are participating in trashing the Earth…. cont/

Climate talks ‘Dead in the Water’

“This process is dead in the water,” said Yvo de Boer, the former head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat who stepped down last year to work at KPMG, a consultancy and auditing firm.

“It’s not going anywhere,” he said during the June 6-17 talks in Bonn among negotiators trying to avert more heatwaves, floods, droughts and rising sea levels.

Disputes between rich and poor on sharing curbs in greenhouse gases mean gridlock over the Kyoto Protocol, the existing U.N. plan which obliges about 40 industrialized nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions until 2012.

Article continues: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/19/us-climate-idUSTRE75G2TC20110619

Runaway Ice Melt NOW in Arctic

‘Arctic sea ice extent declined rapidly through the first two weeks of July, at a rate averaging nearly 120,000 square kilometers (46,000 square miles) per day. Ice extent is now tracking below the year 2007, which saw the record minimum September extent.”

SEE DETAILS OF CO2-FREE fuel HERE https://thefreeonline.wordpress.com/2011/06/22/green-gas-still-ignored-in-rush-for-profits/

See all NH3 posts HEREhttps://thefreeonline.wordpress.com/category/ammonia-nh3-co2-free-fuel/

Bidder 70. Tim gets 2 Years for Climate Defense

Tim DeChristopher, 29, the courageous activist who posed as an oil industry bidder to monkeywrench an oil and gas lease sale in Utah, was sentenced this afternoon to two years in prison. “Mr. DeChristopher had many other lawful ways to express his disapproval with the oil and gas leasing process,” said U.S. District Court Judge Dee Benson at the hearing.

But of course Tim’s disapproval, and that of millions of others, has not been heard by tone deaf policymakers content to wish away the reality of our role in climate change instead of acting.

Tim faced a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, and he was also was ordered to pay a $10,000 fine. He was not given the ability to take a few days to prepare himself for prison and was taken into custody immediately.

“Civil disobedience can’t be the order of the day,” the judge said, adding that it would lead to “chaos.” Well, I predict that the judge’s prognostication will be wrong. We’ll see when the next civil disobedience over our failed energy policy happens, and that may be in August at the Tar Sands sit in Washington D.C. Over 1,400 people have registered to get arrested to show their contempt for the Keystone XL pipeline, a 1,700 mile long fuse to the world’s biggest carbon bomb–Canada’s tar sands

Following the sentencing, around 100 protestors blocked a street outside the courthouse, leading to the arrest of 26 people.

Known as ‘Bidder 70’ to his supporters, DeChristopher was compared to Gandhi and Rosa Parks by his lawyer.

Tim read a powerful statement at the sentencing hearing, which you can read here

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