Europe

Concern that social networks to be targeted as BlackBerry helps British police identify rioters.

RWB is worried about cooperation between Research in Motion (RIM), the Canadian manufacturer of the popular BlackBerry smartphone, and the British authorities in the wake of this week’s rioting in London and other cities in which,

To speak of nonviolence obliges us to review what we understand by violence. The great backing received by the 15-M movement in Spain is due, apart from their demands, to the fact that their actions and protests are peaceful and non-violent. Nevertheless, we still don’t know very well what nonviolence as a methodology of social struggle is.

Bryan Farrell, a New York based writer and contributor to wagingnonviolence.org gives his view on the English riots and what MLK might make of it all, “It is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society.”

Berlin on Saturday marked the 50th anniversary of the day the Berlin Wall started to go up with a memorial service and a minute of silence in memory of those who died trying to flee to the West.

The area where the first spark of rioting started, following the fatal shooting by police of a local resident, today saw a large and peaceful demonstration calling for an end to the violence on all sides but also for changes in the recent austerity measures that most of those marching see as the root cause of the recent disturbances.

London and other UK cities are descending into an uneasy, massive police deployment induced calm. The post-mortem has began, even if the beast is not quiet dead yet. Everybody has an opinion as to who’s to blame. Nobody is asking the kids (“thugs”? or “victims of social exclusion”?), now going through the courts, some as young as 10.

Imagine a big swimming pool, as big as the Mediterranean sea—2,5 million km2. Imagine 150-200 million people sitting on its edges (resident costal population); other 300 millions coming from abroad every year (tourists), and 2.000 big ships and oil tankers crossing its waters at any given minute –let alone industries and oil refineries.

Britain is reeling after several nights of rioting in major cities across the country–the worst civil unrest in a least a generation. What began at the end of last week as a series of protests against police brutality and racism has escalated into a major crisis of the entire social and political order, with police apparently losing control in parts of major cities.

Credit Rating Agencies are at it again. If the hole in the real economy, the one in which real people live, created by the virtual economy, where the speculators live, aka “rescuing the Banks during the subprime crisis”, were not big enough, Standard and Poor, has “downgraded” the US Credit Rating sending the world economy into a deeper hole. So who are they?

Death of a Tottenham resident in North London by Police shooting sparks three nights of rioting, looting, firebombing and attacks on Police by members of minority communities and youth gangs. Recent cuts to services in areas already deprived and marginalised seem to have created a toxic atmosphere that only needed a trigger, and sure enough, it happened.