MB Civic

this is from Laurie Penny on her Penny Red blog ..

I’m huddled in the front room with some shell-shocked friends, watching my city burn .. Politicians and police officers who only hours ago were making stony-faced statements about criminality are now simply begging the young people of Britain’s inner cities to go home. Britain is a tinderbox, and on Friday, somebody lit a match. How the hell did this happen? .. Violence is rarely mindless. The politics of a burning building, a smashed-in shop or a young man shot by police may be obscured even to those who lit the rags or fired the gun, but the politics are there .. Riots are about power, and they are about catharsis .. People riot because it makes them feel powerful, even if only for a night .. People to whom respect has never been shown riot because they feel they have little reason to show respect themselves, and it spreads like fire on a warm summer night .. I’m stuck in the house, now, with rioting going on just down the road .. Journalists are being mugged and beaten in the streets, and the riot cops are in retreat where they have appeared at all. Police stations are being set alight all over the country. This morning, as the smoke begins to clear, those of us who can sleep will wake up to a country in chaos

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