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Danger, Gordon Brown! Danger!

By Mike Flugennock on Monday February 23, 2009 06:54 PM

Perhaps the Brits could send a bit of this rage across to us, as they gave us the gift of the Beatles and Stones... although a comparison to The Who or Slade might be more appropriate.

Oh, yeah, c'mon feel tha noize, 'cause mama, weer all crazee now:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/feb/23/police-civil-unrest-recession

Police are preparing for a "summer of rage" as victims of the economic downturn take to the streets to demonstrate against financial institutions, the Guardian has learned.

Britain's most senior police officer with responsibility for public order raised the spectre of a return of the riots of the 1980s, with people who have lost their jobs, homes or savings becoming "footsoldiers" in a wave of potentially violent mass protests.

Superintendent David Hartshorn, who heads the Metropolitan police's public order branch, told the Guardian that middle-class individuals who would never have considered joining demonstrations may now seek to vent their anger through protests this year.

He said that banks, particularly those that still pay large bonuses despite receiving billions in taxpayer money, had become "viable targets". So too had the headquarters of multinational companies and other financial institutions in the City which are being blamed for the financial crisis....

Hartshorn said he also expected large-scale demonstrations this year on environmental issues, with hardcore green activists "joining forces" with middle-class campaigners over issues such as airport expansion at Heathrow and Stansted. With the prospect of angry demonstrations against the economy, that could open the door to powerful coalitions.

"All you've got to do then is link in with the environmentalists, and look at the oil companies. They're seen to be turning over billions of pounds profit in issues that are seen to be against the environment."

Comments (12)

I can already picture the Bama-babies lecturing us about working within the system.

MJS:

Also, we have to give Obie "time". In fact, he's certain to need a second term before he can do anything constructive at all.

You're reading my mind, Smiff.

You oughta check out the comment threads over at the Black Agenda Report, possibly the most bad-assed, totally-non-Kool-Aid-drinking black activism blog I've seen, which I read every day. There's always at least a couple of posts from knee-jerk Obamapologists whining about how we should lay off Obama and give him a chance, he's just barely taken office.

Why does that kind of crap suddenly remind me of that hit video on YouTube, of that gay emo-kid Britney Spears fan shrieking LEAVE BRITNEY ALOOOONNNNEEEE!!!

Too bad I'm too busy working on the gigs I have and trying to rustle up more gigs; otherwise I'd love to shoot a parody of that kid, surrounded by Obama schwag and howling "LEAVE OBAMA ALOOOONNNNEEEE!!!

Peter Ward:

Tangentally, I'm always stuck by police lining up against their fellow proles defending the forces of reaction. It seems the secular commandment Do not loose your job still holds most full force.

dermokrat:

If you'd like a good laugh:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/02/23-9

B'wahh ha ha ha ha haaahh.

God damn, man. Jim Friggin' Hightower. Now, that's just friggin' sad, man.

Don't you just love how all these Pwogwessives are now all doing their imitation of Claude Rains in Casablanca?

"I'm shocked -- shocked --
to find out that gambling is going on here!"

frijoles junior:

I'd never underestimate the English potential for hooliganism, but the notion that disaffected jobbers will link up with greens fells fanciful, like the US notion that the biggest domestic terrorist threat is from radical environmentalists.

Pushing the connection between environmentalism and anti-social activism seems to me to be a tactic designed to delegitimize environmentalism in general, most likely just because of it's general hostility to corporate dominance.

LA Confidential Pantload:

Well, I can certainly see disaffected mobs rioting here in the US. Of course, they'd mostly be lynching non-whites for daring to default on their subprime loans and thus maliciously causing a $60+ trillion financial meltdown, but I suppose one has to start somewhere.

seneca:

My friend Larry Bensky (long-time talk show host on Pacifica) went to Paris last year for a well-deserved vacation, walked out of his hotel the first morning there and joined an anti-war demonstration.

That's why we love Europe.

It'll never happen here. We just watch the tellie, drink beer, and go out and shoot people.

Give me fantasy or give me death!

Michael Hureaux:

Tell me about it. I spent twenty minutes listening to my union local vice president last night, who prefaced his remarks with the observation that you couldn't rely on promises from the legislature, and then proceeded to spend the rest of his speaking time telling us why we should continue to lobby the legislature. The Obamists are beyond delusional.

gluelicker:

Good ol Jim Hightower, pining for the good ol days when paternalistic businessmen made productive investments and donated to the neighborhood Little League, before morally dissolute and demonstrably unpatriotic (quite possibly because of their decadent cosmopolitanism!) financial gamers came along to wreck and loot the Good Ship Lollipop. Jesus H Christ, what sad hokum. What's even more sorry about this cardboard petty bourgeois populism is that, unlike during the late 19th Century, the audience for which it is putatively intended studiously ignores it.
Fox News and paleolibertarianism is more its speed. Instead, the Hightower dreck is lapped up by "wanna-be-down-with-the-little-people" types inhabiting the Santa Cruz-Madison-Northampton orbit, who in their parallel lives mock the "mouth-breathing, crucifix-wearing, Wal-Mart shoppers."

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