this phrase "riot in London," I expected it would be followed by yet another description of a ritualized protest, with some marchers "kettled" and some anarchists fighting police. This is not simply a criticism: I was not not excited, but I was certainly not excited either.
Instead, the details began to emerge: the immediate spark was the police murder of a Black man, Mark Duggan, who was shot to death by police, and the beating of a 16-year old woman demanding answers from police about Duggan's death. The fuel for the fire had been long accumulating, however: institutionalized racism in the form of poverty, police stop-and-search methods, and more recent Conservative Party cutbacks in the name of "austerity," this year's chosen catchword if "revolution" doesn't eclipse it entirely.
http://counterpunch.org/maher08122011.html
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Pretty good essay. In the old day, riot and looting was pretty selective around here. Favorite places were left alone. The banks got hit so often they bricked up their fronts and installed small plastic windows high up from the angry mobs. These particular banks had turned me down for NDEA loans and were generally assholes.
CG