Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News
Malaysia Today - Your Source of Independent News |
- British rioters the spawn of a bankrupt ruling elite
- Militant groups fuel the fires
- Less political rebellion, more mollycoddled mob
- Tension Grows in Malaysian Religious Controversy
- A Reluctant Symbol for Electoral Reform in Malaysia
- London riots: how BlackBerry Messenger played a key role
| British rioters the spawn of a bankrupt ruling elite Posted: 10 Aug 2011 06:03 AM PDT
THE riots in London and elsewhere in Britain are a backhanded tribute to the long-term intellectual torpor, moral cowardice, incompetence and careerist opportunism of the British political and intellectual class. British youth leads the Western world in almost all aspects of social pathology, from teenage pregnancy to drug taking, from drunkenness to violent criminality. There is no form of bad behaviour that our version of the welfare state has not sought out and subsidised. Theodore Dalrymple, The Australian They have somehow managed not to notice what has long been apparent to anyone who has taken a short walk with his eyes open down any frequented British street: that a considerable proportion of the country's young population (a proportion that is declining) is ugly, aggressive, vicious, badly educated, uncouth and criminally inclined. Unfortunately, while it is totally lacking in self-respect, it is full of self-esteem: that is to say, it believes itself entitled to a high standard of living, and other things, without any effort on its own part. Consider for a moment the following: although youth unemployment in Britain is very high, that is to say about 20 per cent of those aged under 25, the country has had to import young foreign labour for a long time, even for unskilled work in the service sector. The reasons for this seeming paradox are obvious to anyone who knows young Britons as I do. No sensible employer in a service industry would choose a young Briton if he could have a young Pole; the young Pole is not only likely to have a good work ethic and refined manners, he is likely to be able to add up and -- most humiliating of all -- to speak better English than the Briton, at least if by that we mean the standard variety of the language. He may not be more fluent but his English will be more correct and his accent easier to understand. This is not an exaggeration. After compulsory education (or perhaps I should say intermittent attendance at school) up to the age of 16 costing $80,000 a head, about one-quarter of British children cannot read with facility or do simple arithmetic. It makes you proud to be a British taxpayer. I think I can say with a fair degree of certainty, from my experience as a doctor in one of the areas in which a police station has just been burned down, that half of those rioting would reply to the question, "Can you do arithmetic?" by answering, "What is arithmetic?" British youth leads the Western world in almost all aspects of social pathology, from teenage pregnancy to drug taking, from drunkenness to violent criminality. There is no form of bad behaviour that our version of the welfare state has not sought out and subsidised. British children are much likelier to have a television in their bedroom than a father living at home. One-third of them never eat a meal at a table with another member of their household -- family is not the word for the social arrangements of the people in the areas from which the rioters mainly come. They are therefore radically unsocialised and deeply egotistical, viewing relations with other human beings in the same way as Lenin: Who whom, who does what to whom. By the time they grow up, they are destined not only for unemployment but unemployability. For young women in much of Britain, dependence does not mean dependence on the government: that, for them, is independence. Dependence means any kind of reliance on the men who have impregnated them who, of course, regard their own subventions from the state as pocket money, to be supplemented by a little light trafficking. (According to his brother, Mark Duggan, the man whose death at the hands of the probably incompetent police allegedly sparked the riots, "was involved in things", which things being delicately left to the imagination of his interlocutor.) Relatively poor as the rioting sector of society is, it nevertheless possesses all the electronic equipment necessary for the prosecution of the main business of life; that is to say, entertainment by popular culture. And what a culture British popular culture is! Perhaps Amy Winehouse was its finest flower and its truest representative in her militant and ideological vulgarity, her stupid taste, her vile personal conduct and preposterous self-pity. Her sordid life was a long bath in vomitus, literal and metaphorical, for which the exercise of her very minor talent was no excuse or explanation. Yet not a peep of dissent from our intelllectual class was heard after her near canonisation after her death, that class having long had the backbone of a mollusc. Criminality is scarcely repressed any more in Britain. The last lord chief justice but two thought that burglary was a minor offence, not worthy of imprisonment, and the next chief justice agreed with him. By the age of 12, an ordinary slum-dweller has learned he has nothing to fear from the law and the only people to fear are those who are stronger or more ruthless than he. Punishments are derisory; the police are simultaneously bullying but ineffectual and incompetent, increasingly dressed in paraphernalia that makes them look more like the occupiers of Afghanistan than the force imagined by Robert Peel. The people who most fear our police are the innocent. Of course, none of this reduces the personal responsibility of the rioters. But the riots are a manifestation of a society in full decomposition, of a people with neither leaders nor followers but composed only of egotists.
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| Militant groups fuel the fires Posted: 10 Aug 2011 05:57 AM PDT
THE media coverage of the British riots and the political response reveals an inexcusable incomprehension of the internal forces that are destroying Western societies. Central to this strategy is the rapid mobilisation of agents provocateurs such as the Black Bloc cadre, with their dark clothing, hoodies, ski masks, scarfs and helmets, who appear rapidly at such incidents to initiate violence and property destruction. Merv Bendle, The Australian It would be laughable, if it weren't so serious, to hear the cliches about poverty, racism, police victimisation and budget cuts cited as the causes of this violence and criminality, as if this narrative of oppression explains or excuses the wilful self-destruction of these urban communities. The dismissal of the rioters and looters as criminals is also lazy and short-sighted. Such violence is increasingly common in Western societies as their social structure slowly disintegrates. And it particularly reflects the volatile situation that exists among the urban underclass in large cities that have suffered de-industrialisation in the past 50 years and now house various marginalised and alienated communities of unemployed people of various ethnicities, many of whom survive on welfare and come from families that have not been in the mainstream workforce for generations. This situation has occurred also because of a failure of governance in Western societies, illustrated above all by the impotence of the police and the legal system, as most of those apprehended will escape with minor if any penalties. However, these riots and their rapid escalation are not spontaneous but reflect the co-ordinated efforts of self-styled revolutionary groups determined to incite and escalate outbreaks into urban insurrections. Central to this strategy is the rapid mobilisation of agents provocateurs such as the Black Bloc cadre, with their dark clothing, hoodies, ski masks, scarfs and helmets, who appear rapidly at such incidents to initiate violence and property destruction. The police and media are only now noticing their highly co-ordinated activities in Britain, despite their high profile in demonstrations against globalisation. At this stage, these groups don't aspire to lead a revolution, but the riots serve two functions. First, they confirm their radical theoretical analysis of Western society, which makes the urban underclass central to their revolutionary strategy. Second, the riots are seen as playing a vital role in the radicalisation and empowerment of this underclass, which learns how to organise and that it has little to fear from the police or the state. Western society is doomed, rotting from within, according to such groups and the post-Marxist revolutionary theory that is pervasive on the radical Left, especially within the anarchist, anti-globalisation and radical environmental movements. According to this perspective, the squalor and alienation of the urban underclass constitutes a "pre-revolutionary condition" that can be exploited by an organised revolutionary elite to mobilise a mass uprising. A representative manifesto of this militant tendency, The Coming Insurrection, attributed mysteriously to "The Invisible Committee", was published in French in 2007 and in English in 2009. The Invisible Committee sees itself as a successor to ultra-left terrorist groups of the 1970s and 80s, including the Baader-Meinhof Gang, the Weathermen and the Red Brigades. The Coming Insurrection sees Western civilisation in apocalyptic terms. The West is "clinically dead [and] kept alive [only] by all sorts of life-support machines that spread a peculiar plague into the planet's atmosphere". Consequently, "what we're facing is not the crisis of a society but the extinction of a civilisation . . . its clinical death". What is required is "to decide for the death of civilisation, then to work out how it will happen". All that is needed is the "decision that will rid us of the corpse", and that decision is to join the coming insurrection and launch direct action against the system. The book identifies components of a rapidly emerging revolutionary situation in Western societies: the global financial crisis and high-profile crimes and scandals associated with the rich and powerful; climate change and escalating environmental destruction; the alienation of youth, the failure of the educational system and widespread unemployment; political corruption, incompetence and inertia; urban degradation, irreversible demographic changes, anti-migration sentiment and ethnic conflict; the accelerating collapse of the welfare state; and spreading social chaos in many countries. It sees these factors as components of a systemic crisis that will overwhelm liberal democracies. Central to this insurrection will be an alienated generation that "has known nothing but economic, financial, social and ecological crisis". "Everyone agrees," it begins, "it's about to explode." Suitably led, this force will exploit "the truly revolutionary potentiality of the present" to implement "a new idea of communism", conceived as "the matrix of a meticulous, audacious assault on domination", led by alienated youth, marginalised groups such as European Muslims and the radicalised underclass. In the face of this revolt, "the future has no future". The front line will be the metropolis, "one of the most vulnerable human arrangements that has ever existed" and susceptible to a "brutal shutting down of borders . . . a sudden interruption of supply lines [and] organised blockades of the axes of communication", so that "the whole facade crumbles [as it] can no longer mask the scenes of carnage haunting it from morning to night". The Coming Insurrection and others like it showcase the tradition of radical extremism shaped by prominent post-Marxist theorists such as Michel Foucault and Antonio Negri, who was imprisoned on serious terrorism charges but still was allowed to publish a series of radical diatribes against the West -- Empire (2000), Multitude (2004) and Commonwealth (2009) -- all extremely influential in radical circles and academe. According to these books, the US is at the top of a global capitalist "Empire", assisted by NATO, the G8, International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organisation and similar agents of oppression and exploitation. Beneath them is the economic oligarchy of multinational corporations and subservient nation-states such as Britain or Australia. All of these are targets of direct action, sabotage, terrorism and so on, along the lines detailed in The Coming Insurrection. The objective is to achieve "true democracy" as exemplified by the UN and international non-governmental agencies such as Greenpeace, parliamentary democracy being a sham that perpetuates capitalism. The British riots provide fertile ground for the promotion of this ideology and we are making a great mistake if we ignore the role played by these highly motivated militant groups. Merv Bendle is senior lecturer in history and communications at James Cook University.
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| Less political rebellion, more mollycoddled mob Posted: 09 Aug 2011 07:16 AM PDT
What we have on the streets of London and elsewhere are welfare-state mobs. The youth who are shattering their own communities represent a generation that has been suckled by the state more than any generation before it. Brendan O'Neill, The Australian MANY commentators are on a mission to contextualise the riots that have swept parts of urban London and other British cities. "It's very naive to look at these riots without the context," says one journalist, who says the reason the violence kicked off in the London suburb of Tottenham is because "that area is getting 75 per cent cuts [in public services]". Others have said the political context for the rioting is youth unemployment or working-class anger at Prime Minister David Cameron's cuts agenda. "There is a context to London's riots that can't be ignored," says a writer for The Guardian, and it is the "backdrop of brutal cuts and enforced austerity measures". The "mass unrest" is a protest against unhinged capitalism, apparently. These observers are right that there is a political context to the riots. While the police shooting of young black man Mark Duggan may ostensibly have been the trigger for the street violence, there is a broader context to the disturbances. But they are wrong about what the political context is. Painting these riots as some kind of action replay of historic political streetfights against capitalist bosses or racist cops might allow armchair radicals to get their intellectual rocks off, as they lift their noses from dusty tomes about the Levellers or the suffragettes and fantasise that a political upheaval of equal worth is occurring outside their windows. But such shameless projection misses what is new and deeply worrying about these riots. The political context is not the cuts or racist policing, it is the welfare state, which has nurtured a generation that has no sense of community spirit or social solidarity. What we have on the streets of London and elsewhere are welfare-state mobs. The youth who are shattering their own communities represent a generation that has been suckled by the state more than any generation before it. They live in urban territories where the sharp-elbowed intrusion of the welfare state during the past 30 years has pushed aside older ideals of self-reliance and community spirit. The march of the welfare state into every aspect of urban, less well-off people's existences, from their financial wellbeing to their child-rearing habits and even into their emotional lives, with the rise of therapeutic welfarism designed to ensure that the poor remain "mentally fit", has undermined individual resourcefulness and social bonding. The antisocial youthful rioters are the end-product of this antisocial system of state intervention. The most striking thing about the rioters is how little they care for their own communities. You don't have to be a right-winger with helmet hair and a niggling discomfort with black or chavvy yoof (I am the opposite of that) to recognise that this violence is not political, just criminal. It is entertaining to watch the political contortions of commentators who claim the riots are an uprising against the evils of capitalism, as they struggle to explain why the targets have been Foot Locker sports shops and why the only "gains" made by the rioters have been to get a new pair of trainers or an Apple laptop. In the Brixton race riots of 1981, looting and the destruction of local infrastructure were largely incidental to the broader expression of political anger, by-products of the main show, which was a clash between a community and the forces of the state. But in these riots, looting and smashing stuff up is all there is. It is childish nihilism. Many older members of the urban communities rocked by violence have been shocked by the level of self-destruction exhibited by the rioters. Some shop owners have got together to defend their property, even beating up rioters who have turned up with iron bars. In one video, a West Indian woman in her 50s braves the rubble-strewn streets to lecture the rioters: "These people worked hard to make their businesses work and then you lot wanna go and burn it up. For what?" On Twitter, the hashtag #riotcleanup is being used by community members to co-ordinate some post-riot street-cleaning, to make amends for what one elderly Tottenham resident described as "the stupid behaviour of the young". But it is more than childish destructiveness motivating the rioters. These are youngsters who are uniquely alienated from the communities in which they grew up. Nurtured in large part by the welfare state, financially, physically and educationally, socialised more by the agents of welfarism than by their own neighbours or local representatives, these youth have little moral or emotional attachment to their communities. Their rioting reveals not that Britain is in a time warp in 1981 or 1985 with politically motivated riots against the police, but that the tentacle-like spread of the welfare state into every area of people's lives has utterly zapped old social bonds, the relationship of sharing and solidarity that once existed in working-class communities. These riots suggest that the welfare state is giving rise to a generation happy to shit on its own doorstep. This is not a political rebellion; it is a mollycoddled mob, a riotous expression of carelessness for one's own community. And as a left-winger I refuse to celebrate nihilistic behaviour that has a profoundly adverse affect on working people's lives. Far from being an instance of working-class action, this welfare-state mob has more in common with what Marx described as the lumpenproletariat. Indeed, it is worth remembering Marx's colourful description in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon of how that French ruler cynically built his power base among parts of the bourgeoisie and sections of the lumpenproletariat, so that "ruined and adventurous offshoots of the bourgeoisie rubbed shoulders with vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged jailbirds, escaped galley slaves, swindlers, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, brothel-keepers, organ-grinders, ragpickers, knife-grinders, tinkers, beggars and from this kindred element Boneparte formed the core of his [constituency], where all its members felt the need to benefit themselves at the expense of the labouring nation". In very different circumstances, we have something similar today where the decadent commentariat's siding with lumpen rioters represents a weird coming together of sections of the bourgeoisie with sections of the underworked and the over-flattered, as the rest of us, "the labouring nation", look on with disdain. There is one more important part to this rioting story: the reaction of the cops. Their inability to handle the riots effectively reveals the extent to which the British police are adapted to consensual rather than conflictual policing. It also demonstrates how far they have been paralysed by the politics of victimhood, where virtually every police activity gets followed up by a complaint or a legal case. Their kid-glove approach to the rioters only fuels the riots because, as one observer put it, when the rioters "see that the police cannot control the situation, [that] leads to sort of adrenalin-fuelled euphoria". So this street violence was largely ignited by the excesses of the welfare state and intensified by the discombobulation of the police state. The riots tell a very interesting story about modern Britain.
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| Tension Grows in Malaysian Religious Controversy Posted: 08 Aug 2011 08:02 PM PDT
Religious police accuse Christians of attempting to convert Muslims The federal constitution, which ensures freedom of religion in Malaysia, also bans conversion attempts. Other state governments have enacted other statues that prohibit proselytizing by non-Muslims. Asia Sentinel Always-tense relations between Malaysia's religious communities continue to be strained again over a raid on Aug. 3 by officials of the Selangor Islamic Religious Department on a Methodist church in the Kuala Lumpur suburb of Petaling Jaya where they said Malay Muslims were being converted to Christianity.
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| A Reluctant Symbol for Electoral Reform in Malaysia Posted: 08 Aug 2011 04:51 PM PDT
Ms. Ambiga, who is ethnic Indian in a country that is mostly Malay and mostly Muslim, said that the protesters "exploded many myths" about Malaysians, such as the notion that people of different ethnic and religious backgrounds could not work together and that the middle class was "too comfortable to step up to the plate." Her photograph has been burned by ethnic Malay nationalists, there have been calls to revoke her Malaysian citizenship and she has been threatened, via text message, with death. The movement she leads, Bersih, an alliance of 62 nongovernmental organizations pressing for electoral reform, has been declared illegal, and a demonstration that brought thousands of its followers into the streets of this capital city last month ended with nearly 1,700 arrests. But having stared down these challenges, Ambiga Sreenevasan, 54, a University of Exeter-educated lawyer and former president of the Malaysian Bar Council, is now being hailed by many here as the "new symbol of civil society's dissent." "She has not been afraid to speak the truth to power," said Ibrahim Suffian, director of the Merdeka Center, an independent polling firm in Kuala Lumpur. Over peppermint tea in a busy cafe recently, Ms. Ambiga squirmed uncomfortably at the attention she had attracted. "This focus on me is actually ridiculous," said Ms. Ambiga. "It's a true citizens' movement, because the citizens have taken ownership of Bersih." The Coalition for Clean and Fair Elections, or Bersih — "clean" in Malay — got its start in November 2007. Members of the political opposition and civic groups defied restrictions on gatherings of more than five people without a permit and rallied for changes in an election system they said unfairly favored the governing coalition, which has been in power since achieved independence in 1957. The demonstrators were dispersed by tear gas, and some were arrested. They did not achieve their immediate demands, which included better access to the state-owned news media by opposition candidates and the use of indelible ink on voters' thumbs to help prevent fraud. But their action was credited with winning support for the opposition and contributing to the governing coalition's poor showing in the 2008 election, when it fell below a two-thirds majority for the first time. Ms. Ambiga did not attend that rally in 2007, but earlier in the year she had led a march of more than 2,000 lawyers calling for judicial reform. And while she runs a commercial litigation practice, she has also devoted considerable time to pro bono cases involving the rights of squatters, indigenous people and women. In 2009 she became the first Malaysian to receive a U.S. State Department "International Women of Courage" Award. Maria Chin Abdullah, executive director of Empower, a nongovernmental organization that promotes women in politics, said it was because of Ms. Ambiga's "commitment, dedication and leadership in defending human rights and democracy" that she and other N.G.O. leaders approached her to lead Bersih 2.0, the second incarnation of the electoral reform movement. Ms. Ambiga agreed, on the proviso that it be "civil society-driven," and not simply a tool of opposition parties. Again, Bersih pushed for an end to electoral fraud, media access for all parties and a minimum 21-day campaign period before any election. But Ms. Ambiga said she never expected the event to unfold the way it did. What began as a call for reform morphed into widespread anger at the government's handling of the activists. When Bersih was declared an unregistered and therefore illegal organization, barred from demonstrating in the capital, and more than 200 people were arrested in the weeks leading up to a July 9 protest, Ms. Ambiga said, the effect was to prompt even more people to join in the rally. Bersih estimated that there were 50,000 protesters; the police put the figure at 5,000 to 6,000. As the demonstrators tried to march to Stadium Merdeka, the police fired tear gas and water cannons to disperse the crowds. Among those arrested was Ms. Ambiga, who, along with the others, was released that night. "While I was sitting there the most wonderful things were happening in Kuala Lumpur, which I could only read about that night," she said. "It brought tears to my eyes. I just didn't for a minute expect Malaysians to rise to the occasion in the way they did that day." Even though the rally was blocked, she said, Bersih has heightened public awareness of the need for free and fair elections. "A number of people have told me that they may not have voted before, but they'll definitely vote next time," she said. Even now, though, she does not call herself an activist. "I think I'm an advocate for a cause," she said. "In a sense it was a learning experience for me, pulling myself out of the comfort of the Bar Council and all its support that it had, including finances, coming into this organization that didn't have a single cent." Ms. Ambiga, who is ethnic Indian in a country that is mostly Malay and mostly Muslim, said that the protesters "exploded many myths" about Malaysians, such as the notion that people of different ethnic and religious backgrounds could not work together and that the middle class was "too comfortable to step up to the plate." She attributes her willingness to get involved in public causes to her upbringing. She cites as an inspiration her late father, a doctor who helped establish the National Kidney Foundation. "I suppose I've been brought up to always try and do the right thing no matter what the odds," said Ms. Ambiga. Haji Sulaiman Abdullah, also a former president of the Bar Council, said he was not surprised by "the breadth and depth of leadership she has brought to the Bersih movement." "Even the ordinary man in the street has come to appreciate what Ambiga stands for," he said. The events of recent weeks offer plentiful fodder for a compelling election campaign narrative, but Ms. Ambiga shoots down any possibility that a political career could be in the offing. "I don't have the stomach for it," she said. In fact, it has been Ms. Ambiga's ability to define the Bersih movement as a cause apart from partisan politics that has enabled her to unite Malaysians, said Mr. Suffian, of the Merdeka Center. Bersih has pledged that its campaign would continue and has called for people to wear yellow on Saturdays, but no more protests are planned for now. "People keep saying, 'What next?,' but, quite frankly, I think the citizens have taken it upon themselves to organize things around the country using the yellow theme, the theme of democracy. What I think Bersih has achieved is the awakening," Ms. Ambiga said. She said there have been positive responses from the Election Commission, for example, making it possible for Malaysians living overseas to vote. Its announcement that it would introduce a biometric fingerprinting system, she said, was an admission that there had been a problem of election fraud. When pressed on how Bersih would respond if the government did not meet other demands, such as equal media access, before the next election, which must be held by mid-2013, Ms. Ambiga's tendency to deflect the focus from herself resurfaced. "It's not me making the decision," she said. "It will be the rakyat" — Malay for "people" — "making the decision."
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| London riots: how BlackBerry Messenger played a key role Posted: 08 Aug 2011 03:34 PM PDT
Police looking on Facebook and Twitter for signs of unrest spreading will have missed out – they should have watched BBM (The Guardian) - In October 1985, on the Broadwater Farm estate in Tottenham where the death of Cynthia Jarrett sparked riots that culminated in the brutal murder of PC Keith Blakelock, a community leader stood on his chair at a packed open-air meeting. The man bellowed into a megaphone to the 150 residents in front of him: "You tell them that it's a life for a life from now on. This is war." Over whoops and cheers from the residents, he turned to a huddle of police officers standing 50 yards away and warned: "I hope you're listening. There is no way I am going to condemn the actions of the youth on Sunday night." Twenty six years later, police officers are still listening – but the megaphones and open-air meetings have been largely replaced. This weekend's north London riots, the Daily Mail announced on Monday, were "fuelled by social media". But is this necessarily the case? Certainly, the first online gathering of people mourning – and soon vowing to avenge – the death of Tottenham resident Mark Duggan took place on Facebook. Some of those behind the page, which now boasts more than 7,500 fans, launched into action shortly before 10.30pm on Saturday evening – more than five hours after the first public show of protest, outside the police station on Tottenham High Road. At 10.45pm, when rioters set a double decker bus alight, the page posted: "Please upload any pictures or video's you may have from tonight in Tottenham. Share it with people to send the message out as to why this has blown into a riot." However, otherwise, if there was any sign that a peaceful protest would escalate, it wasn't to be found on Facebook. Twitter was slightly more indicative: tweets about an attempt to target Sunday's Hackney Carnival were spotted by police and the event was abruptly cancelled. Scotland Yard warned on Monday afternoon that those "inciting violence" on the 140-character social network would not go unpunished. Deputy assistant commissioner Stephen Kavanagh confirmed that officers were looking at the website as part of investigations into widespread looting and rioting. However, the most powerful and up-to-the-minute rallying appears to have taken place on a more covert social network: BlackBerry Messenger (BBM). Using BlackBerry handsets – the smartphone of choice for the majority (37%) of British teens, according to last week's Ofcom study – BBM allows users to send one-to-many messages to their network of contacts, who are connected by "BBM PINs". For many teens armed with a BlackBerry, BBM has replaced text messaging because it is free, instant and more part of a much larger community than regular SMS. And unlike Twitter or Facebook, many BBM messages are untraceable by the authorities (which is why, in large part, BBM is so favoured by Emirati teens to spread illicit gossip about officialdom). One BBM broadcast sent on Sunday, which has been shown to the Guardian by multiple sources, calls on "everyone from all sides of London" to vandalise shops on Oxford street. It said: "Everyone from all sides of London meet up at the heart of London (central) OXFORD CIRCUS!!, Bare SHOPS are gonna get smashed up so come get some (free stuff!!!) fuck the feds we will send them back with OUR riot! >:O Dead the ends and colour war for now so if you see a brother... SALUT! if you see a fed... SHOOT!" Another sent shortly before the outbreak of violence in Enfield on Sunday afternoon reads: "Everyone in edmonton enfield wood green everywhere in north link up at enfield town station at 4 o clock sharp!". Jenny Jones, the former deputy mayor of London, blamed an under-resourced force for missing the tweets and the status updates. "It's quite possible if they had more resources they could have picked up on this," she said. But maybe they were looking in the wrong place. Just as Tottenham residents in 1985 lambasted the media for scaremongering about protesters – the Daily Express suggested some had been trained in Russia – today's rioters might be surprised to read about "Twitter-organised chaos".
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