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Britain

British PM Authorizes Water Cannon in Riots 'Fightback'

2011-08-11

[An Nahar] Prime Minister

David Cameron
... has stated that he is certainly a big Thatcher fan, but I don't know whether that makes me a Thatcherite, which means he's not. Since he is not deeply ideological he lacks core principles and is easily led. He has been described as certainly not a Pitt, Elder or Younger, but he does wear a nice suit so maybe he's Beau Brummel ...
said a "fightback" was underway Wednesday after four nights of violent riots as he authorized police to use water cannon for the first time in mainland Britannia.

With Britannia's worst riots in a generation spreading to the northwest city of Manchester and three people being killed while defending their community in Birmingham, central England, Cameron said there was a "sickness" in society.

He said London was quieter overnight after 16,000 police flooded the streets and vigilante groups protected stricken neighborhoods from gangs who have burned down and raided dozens of shops and homes.

"We needed a fightback and a fightback is underway," Cameron told a news conference outside 10 Downing Street after the second meeting of Britannia's COBRA security committee in as many days.

"We now have in place contingency plans for water cannon to be available at 24 hours' notice," Cameron said, adding that police had already been authorized to use plastic baton rounds against rioters.

Water cannon have only previously been used in the troubled British province of Northern Ireland to tackle sectarian tensions between the Protestant and Roman Catholic communities.

The violence has raised questions about security ahead of the 2012 London Olympic Games, and it prompted the cancellation of Wednesday's friendly between England and the Netherlands at Wembley Stadium.

Cameron's tough new line comes after he flew back from holiday in Tuscany on Tuesday to take charge of the biggest challenge to the Conservative-led coalition government since it came to power in May last year.

Police have tossed in the calaboose more than 1,100 people across the country for violence, disorder and looting since the riots erupted on Saturday in the north London district of Tottenham after police rubbed out a man.

The prime minister dismissed "phony concerns about human rights
...which often intentionally defined so widely as to be meaningless...
" over the issuing by police of photos of some of the suspected rioters. He also called for all those convicted over the disorder to be tossed in the calaboose.

The government has blamed "opportunistic" criminals for the unrest, but the opposition says cuts to social services and the failure to deal with underlying social problems has contributed to the riots.

Some of Britannia's most deprived areas erupted late Tuesday, with 200 rioters pelting police with missiles in Toxteth area of the northwest city of Liverpool, which was rocked by huge riots in 1981.

Elsewhere, hooded rioters set fire to buildings in West Bromwich and Wolverhampton in central England and a cop shoppe in nearby Nottingham was Molotov cocktailed. There was also trouble in the western English town of Gloucester.

The focus of Tuesday's violence was Manchester where police were driven back by gangs of hundreds of youths who covered their faces with scarves and ski masks.

Gangs set fire to a girls' fashion store and smashed the glass entrance of the Arndale Centre, Manchester's main shopping mall, allowing hundreds of youths to run off with armfuls of clothes and shoes.

Assistant Chief Constable Garry Shewan of Greater Manchester Police, who joined the force after moving to the city in 1981, called the scenes "senseless violence and senseless criminality on a scale I have never witnessed before."

In Birmingham, Britannia's second biggest city, police said they had tossed in the calaboose a man and launched a murder inquiry after an incident in which three Asian men died when they were hit by a speeding car.

Witnesses said the men who died had just come out of a mosque and were protecting their neighborhood shops after a car was set alight nearby.

"They bit the dust for other people, doing the job of the police," Mohammed Shakiel said outside the hospital where the men were taken, prompting around 200 people to gather in support.

Despite the unrest, police and cricket officials announced that the Test match between England and India, due to take place at the nearby Edgbaston ground, would go ahead as planned on Wednesday.

The only other fatality of the riots so far was a man found with a gunshot wound to the head in a car in the south London suburb of Croydon.

Posted by:Fred

#12 the sickness he talks about is the muslims taking over the country

Posted by: chris 2011-08-11 19:29

#11 Here is a picture of English Sikhs, guarding their temple.

With a turnout like this, odds of rioters even trying it on drop to near zero. It's more likely that the police will call on them to disperse and leave their temple unguarded, because guarding it "is provocative" to the rioters.

Posted by: Anonymoose 2011-08-11 14:22

#10 You've got a major riot and arson on a huge scale and you have the get authorization from the Prime Minister of the entire country to stop it?

What the hell is wrong with y'all?? (rhetorical question) >:-(

Posted by: Barbara 2011-08-11 13:51

#9 Careful, David. You might get Achmadinejad mad at you.

Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305 2011-08-11 12:49

#8 "We now have in place contingency plans for water cannon to be available at 24 hours' notice,"

"Riot in progress. Send water cannon"
"Roger that. Will be there tomorrow after we process your requisition form WCR-23/Z-8."

Posted by: SteveS 2011-08-11 12:28

#7 Sorry, but a long time coming and will be a long time running. Same will happen here if the free cheese stops. Like Cameron, the "Food Stamp" president will do little to stop it.

Posted by: Besoeker 2011-08-11 11:07

#6 I view the situation more pragmatically: Before the american experiment, the goal of all forms of government was self-preservation. If catching criminals and executing justice was the way for governments to survive their citizens, they would do that. Governments engage in war because the winners of the war depose the leadership of the vanquished government.

The key to understanding what's happening is to see that both criminals and governments derive wealth from the same source: citizens weaker than they are. Criminals won't go after governments: too many guns. The example of Kennesaw, Georgia, shows that criminals won't burgle if the chances of being confronted by an armed citized supported by their local government are high (a situation that creates a "herd effect" that benefits liberals who mis-identify the origin of the effect). Armed citizens are a threat to criminal government as well as to criminals.

The concept of a criminal government being illegitimate and thus worthy of replacement is the core idea behind the Declaration of Independence: the Constitution is merely the *blueprint* for a government that the same people who wrote the Declaration hoped would not become criminal, and all departures from the processes and procedures outlined therein, either by utter disregard or creative "interpretation" as a "living document", are the root cause of our present troubles.

What is really holding back the american people is the simple fact that a good fraction, if not the simple majority, are Christians who take seriously the Pauline injunction to submit to human government. However, the key assumption underlying Paul's injunction was that the government's key function was to punish evil-doers, the funding of which by taxes Paul saw as a necessity. Liberal Churches and Christians see their mission as pushing Romans 12 as an absolute when Democrats are in power, while dismissing it for the sake of "higher principles" when Democrats are not in power. In doing so, they hope to stifle and suppress any motions toward reform outside of processes that they control. The dismissal of the Black Panther voter intimidation case is proof that they are not adverse to THEIR people pursuing "reform" by processes outside of the bounds of law.

What my fellow conservative Christians need to see is that Paul's injunction applies to them only when the government punishes evil-doers. When the government goes criminal, then the thrust of Paul's argument fails and the injunction evaporates.

I recommend Asa Mahan's "Oppression through Ignorance" to my fellow Christian Rantburgers as the source that started this chain of thought. However, I want to emphasize that the ideas I am advocating are strictly strategic: while helping us see the legitimacy of rebellion against, and the overthrow of, criminal government, such a realization does not help us at a tactical level in bestowing upon us a plan for actually succeeding. A victim of a bully certainly knows he is being oppressed, but that mere knowledge does not confer any extra benefits that would enable that victim to overcome the bully. The Second Amendment confers the right to bear arms, but does not bestow actual weaponry, nor the cool heads necessary to wield them wisely.

Posted by: Ptah 2011-08-11 11:02

#5 That is, they see the threat to themselves and their power by an empowered citizenry far greater than from mobs of criminals victimizing the public.

You got it. That's why local/state/national governments go after those who protect themselves or turn to vigilantism. The common crooks are not perceived as a threat to the state's power where as the act of the citizen is an alarm that signals that the very legitimacy of the state is in question. Now I do use the term 'perceived' specifically because in the end the crooks can achieve power that competes or eclipses that of the state as we witness in Mexico. The ruling caste is just too wrapped up in its own self congratulatory behavior to notice till its too late.

Posted by: Procopius2k 2011-08-11 08:48

#4 I noticed elsewhere that the government demonstrated the hallmark of ineffective and corrupt governments in other times and places, by placing the rioters and criminals above honest citizens; and only reacting, and then only against the citizenry, when they try to defend themselves.

That is, they see the threat to themselves and their power by an empowered citizenry far greater than from mobs of criminals victimizing the public. So they take immediate steps to prevent the citizenry from defending themselves.

This is the second step of the birth of a vigilante movement. The third step with be a political effort against the weak and pro-criminal government, but it is likely to fail because such a government is ironically very talented at keeping power.

Posted by: Anonymoose 2011-08-11 08:35

#3 Firing Squads of Tranquilizers might work too

Posted by: Griting Smith6978 2011-08-11 03:24

#2 water cannon and plastic bullets from the outset.

Bird shot, then buck shot. You get the pathologies that you tolerate.

Posted by: Eohippus Phater7165 2011-08-11 01:35

#1 The police treated this as a series of 'protests' for far too long. Probably advised by 'community experts' that the mobs were motivated by all the usual bullsh!t Liberal excuses for anti-social behaviour. What was/is actually localised anarchy and mass looting should have been dealt with using water cannon and plastic bullets from the outset.

Of course the media and the ovine members of the public have a lot to answer for, themselves, demanding infallibility from the police and shrieking "police brutality" every time a provocative protestor/wannabe rioter on other occasions has had a clip round the ear.

Posted by: Bulldog 2011-08-11 01:30

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