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Greek police run out of tear gas...
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
..as rioting continues into the 7th day (must be 11th day now?).
Story.
FWIW I think the kid getting shot was probably a careless accident, but that was just the catalyst for what's happening now. there is a lot of resentment towards politicians for corruption and the economy, clearly the young people have had enough.
More pics...
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/12/2008_greek_riots.html
Could this ever happen in the UK?
Story.
FWIW I think the kid getting shot was probably a careless accident, but that was just the catalyst for what's happening now. there is a lot of resentment towards politicians for corruption and the economy, clearly the young people have had enough.
More pics...
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/12/2008_greek_riots.html
Could this ever happen in the UK?
0
Comments
A backlash from the youth in the UK isn't unimaginable.
There's a serious gap between generations in this country, with a lot of ill feeling towards youths. It would take something pretty dramatic to kick it off, but it's possible.
The UK's not a stranger to mob violence.
Could this ever happen in the UK?[/QUOTE]
Never say never but
you'll get political riots most people aren't interested enough to take part
you'll get non-political riots but they tend to be localised and apolitical.
Its seldom you'll get the two co-joining as they've done in Greece.
Also no British police are going to stand by and tell their men to only intervene if people are attacked and not protect property, they'd get a grip sooner.
country B: a citizen is unlawfully killed by policemen. There is public outrage, mass protests and riots. Not 48 hours later the policemen have been arrested and other heads start to roll.
Some food for thought there...
Alternatively country A has the rule of law and removes Governments through elections
Country B has attempts to remove Government through violence and to subvert the rule of law.
Depends how you look at it...
As an aside does anyone know why the peeler opened fire. I did hear there were two peelers were surrounded by a mob of thirty people attacking them with stones and petrol bombs and chanting 'we're going to burn you alive', but given they're prosecuting I assume there is more to it.
Something very disturbing there, and not exactly a vindication of the democratic, just and impartial ways of Country A. If I had to choose, I'd rather have a country where people engaged in vigorous protests against State injustice, even if sometimes violence flared, that a country where such injustices are ignored by the government and muster little more than critical headlines from the press and candle vigils from the public.
They weren't - a coroners court was told they weren't allowed to consider unlawful killing. Actually being told what verdicts are allowed is common and considering the verdicts of soldiers in iraq and Afghanistan being extremely critical of Govt its hard to say coroners are in the Govt's pocket.
really? I used to live in such a country and frankly they're not nearly as nice as you think.
everything I've seen about the riots doesn't suggest some concern for a miscarriage of justice but violent attempts to force an elected Government out of power.
perhaps if someone could give me the circumstances of the killing I may change my mind, but the only version I've seen doesn't really paint a copper randomly shooting innocents, but a couple of scared men using lethal force against a mob they feared were going to kill them
Incidents of police brutality in Athens are all too common and well documented. Indeed, the local cops are rather infamous for their heavy handness. Perhaps the mass protests were prompted by this last straw, rather than being an orchestrated attempt to bring down the government.
I don't think that was their aim at all. Do you think the Paris rioters were trying to bring down the French government as well?
Going back to the general argument of direct action, if the 1.5m+ people demonstrating peacefully against the universally derided plans to go to war on Iraq back in 2003 had 'gone French' the following week, I suspect the government would have listened a little closer, instead of acting against international law and the wishes of just about everyone in Britain.
True - but then I've seen one report of why he fired and so don't have enough information to make a decision whether he lost his temper, panicked without reason or whether he fired a warning shot or a real shot (and either may have been justified)
perhaps, but also the area where the shooting took place is also well known as an anrachist stronghold where locals who disagree are strongarmed into silence and police are routinely ambushed.
Nah that was apolitical thuggery, not all riots are the same (and in fact not all political riots are always to bring down the Government, sometimes they're just to try and push it down a path - for example I don't think many of the students who rioted in the Vietnam War were trying to bring down Wilson, they were however trying to push him into a particular policy direction on Vietnam)
possibly, possibly not - perhaps the police would have reacted with rubber bullets and the protesters would have gone home with sore ribs, or perhaps some of them would have petrolled bomb the police and the police would have been burying a twenty year old WPC (and as an aside at the time of the march opinion was pretty evenly divided). But say it had suceeded would you be so sanguine when the million supporters of Fox Hunting stormed Downing Street? And what about the mob violence against paedophiles - I seem to remember you thinking direct action was wrong then.
In a democracy there are ways and means for the people to change policy and I have no sympathy with those who use violence to subvert it, even when I may agree with their aims.
Governments should be absolutely terrified of their own citizens, not the other way round. Wouldn't that have been interesting to behold back on Friday, July 22, 2005? The marksmen who shot him in cold blood would all have been locked up, Cressida Dick would be forced to answer questions about the operation, and Ian Blair would have been suspended from duty. Instead, we get a whitewash years later. Pathetic.
Er of course. However a) Clausewitz was talking bollocks with an extremely narrow 19th century intepretation b) he was talking state to state c) in a democratic state the citizen is not at war with his Government, even if they disagree.
Are you scared of the Government? I'm not, though i may disagree with them I don't worry they're going to lock me up or make me dissapear.
But then I don't think it's a good thing for Governments to be terrified of the people either (which frankly is why places like the USSR/nazi germany shot and imprisoned their citizens).
and yes it could definatly happen in the UK, i'd like to hope that someone would realise the problem and stop it before then but tbh i think our government/polcie are just as stubborn and abusive as the greek government/police!
Someone I think of as a friend was the first one to tell me that and I'm sorry I didn't believe him at all now, because I've heard others say that a lot of them came out of a police van and I even saw a video of some talking to the police quietly, before an outbreak (holding steel pipes and everything).
It feels like something sinister is going on...
Fail.
They've used the death of this boy as an excuse, these kids who are protesting against capitalism and big spending are the ones who have benefted from it for years.