London Riots - Heartless Scum Steal From Injured Boy (Disturbing)

[Turborama]

Run time: 01:15 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Gex_ya4-Oo   Posted on YouTube: August 09, 2011 By YouTube Member: ReaderDriver Views on YouTube: 55433   Posted on DU: August 09, 2011 By DU Member: Turborama Views on DU: 5587

 

Footage has emerged of a group of youths helping an injured boy to his feet and then appearing to steal the contents of his bag during disturbances in London on Monday.

The boy, who was bleeding heavily, was left standing on the street, with an empty backpack.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14456065

(Hat tip to Poll_Blind for posting the BBC report on this http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1698155">in GD)

[slackmaster]

1. They're anything but heartless. They even helped him stand up...

...before they took his stuff.

:sarcasm:

Anyone who thinks the riots in England are political needs to watch this, and then explain its political implications.

[GillesDeleuze]

2. the economy sucks, the police are killing people

and the people are pissed off.

if thats not the definition of political, im not sure what is

[Turborama]

3. This isn't for you, it's for the person who's on ignore that you are responding to

And I'm guessing they are asking "how is this video political?", right?

Well, if I am right, as per the guidelines for this forum...

"This is a political website so we expect the videos to have some political content or relevance to current news stories."

[slackmaster]

8. Please tell the person who I have on Ignore, who apparently has me on Ignore, that I say "Hello."

:rofl:

ETA Turborama, I have no issue with you posting the video. I think it's very important that people take a critical look at the political rationalizations that are being tossed around for the opportunistic violence.

[Supply Side Jesus]

5. yes, and robbing injured kids is a natural reaction to it!!

fucking bizzaro world

[guruoo]

15. No, but rioting can be. nt

[JDPriestly]

29. You are assuming they were robbing an innocent child.

But you have no idea what happened before that fragment of a story began.

You are projecting your own expectations and thoughts on the story there.

That the older guys walked away so calmly and that the younger boy did not run for help or anything makes me conclude that I really cannot tell from that fragment of a story what happened.

Please. It's this kind of jumping to conclusions without having all the facts that set these riots off in the first place. It is irresponsible.

Gather evidence and analyze your evidence before you jump to conclusions.

You can theorize about what happened in that clip, but you can't know.

the clip is too short and appears to begin in the middle of some series of events that was longer than the video was running.

[Boudica the Lyoness]

6. The police are not killing people.

One known gangster was killed and it's still under investigation. Just because the economy 'sucks' that doesn't give anyone the right to help themselves to other peoples stuff and attack the police.

[GillesDeleuze]

17. rights are so bourgeois nt

[Historic NY]

4. They need to start caging and bring order with the army...this is not political..

its opportunistic criminals.

[guruoo]

18. What's seen in the video isn't political, for sure. nt

[dissidentboomer]

10. 1. One incident is not indicative of motives. 2. The riots are definitely "political". No one riots

when they are comfortable and happy about their prospects. No one. 3. These people are no different than you or me or the goddamn House of "Lords". Many of them might have sensibilities more humanistic than the tea party, wall street brokers, Murdoch, or the House of "Lards".

Whether the mobs issued some candy ass manifesto, or not, these riots are at least partially rooted in a terrible economy and bad economic and social policies. There is just no way around that fact.

However, please bluster on like Fox News or the Bourbons and Romanovs about the thugs that are always attracted to riots, revolutions, wars, armies, police departments, and security work for rich people.

[SteveM]

11. No, these are rioters in Punk-a-Matic Drive, stealing and assaulting. nt

[dissidentboomer]

12. Revolutions move in punk-a-matic and other drives, Steve. LOL. Mostly, though, they partly look like

London, last night. They don't look like Broadway stage plays, Steve. They are ugly and the political violence looks just like crime. Often, the hopeless and poor who take to the streets aren't even sure why they are in the streets. All they know is that it seems as though things might change and this is their chance to get food and send a message, if not take over an entire city. Most revolutionary mobs just follow the inertia of the crowd. Read about the looting and crime during the French and Russian and even American revolutions.... ugly. They were, as you say, simply in "punk-a-matic" drive. :) Well, here's to punks! :patriot:

[slackmaster]

13. Sometimes a criminal riot is just a criminal riot

[guruoo]

16. Sometimes a political riot turns into a criminal riot

[SteveM]

19. Well, I wan't there for the Russian, French and American revolutions...

And I think we are all aware of the excesses of "revolutions," but I think it is a gross mistake to characterize every riot as a precursor to revolution. In any case, they didn't seem to be attacking Parliament or Whitehall. Therefore they can expect the kind of reaction of everyday citizens when they defend themselves. As in the aftermath of the Rodney King riots: Post #42 in

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=118x446925

Keeping family, home and shop from "following inertia!"

[dissidentboomer]

26. They'll figure out where the best places to riot might be. They just need a little more knowledge

AND continued stupidity from the greedy whores who run their country.

[SteveM]

30. Best places? Where the average defenseless folks are, of course.

[JDPriestly]

31. So many of them? No. Especially not in staid old England.

If that were France, then maybe they would have that many people out on the streets.

But this is rare in the UK.

Something is wrong somewhere.

There have been quite a few of these riots in the UK in recent years.

Remember the bank riots and the burning of a bank, maybe the Bank of Scotland?

Something is wrong, and something will change in the UK.

[SteveM]

34. Let's hope things change for the better, like...

Allowing qualified citizens to possess firearms, something they cannot do now. In this manner, they can defend themselves from the gross excesses of these riots. In the long term, there are probably so authentic reasons for these riots; in the short term, people have a right to defend themselves. England's government has chosen not only to ban guns, but to dilute the very meaning of self-defense to a point where the victim must prove his/her actions are justified.

I hope that is something which will change.

[JDPriestly]

28. You saw a bit of a story, and you projected onto it your

narrative of what happened. You don't have any idea of what happened. Maybe the thing they took out of his knapsack belonged to them not to him. Maybe it was a picture or something that the child had stolen.

You are jumping to conclusions. You cannot tell from that story what it was about. Please.

[slackmaster]

36. Watch closely what the guy who removes something from the knapsack does

It looks to me like he pulls out a wallet, or something similar, that is in a plastic bag.

He discards the plastic bag (littering), then does something with the object, appears to remove something from it (cash?), and throws something away to his right (the wallet, emptied of cash? More littering.)

The boy wearing the knapsack appears to be stunned.

[JDPriestly]

39. The thing was too big to be a wallet. It looked more like a tablet

of paper. He tore off one piece of paper after the other and threw them away on the street. It did not appear to me that he kept any of the object.


I watched it a third time.
If they were just stealing, why didn't they simply take the bag when they had the chance?

You cannot tell what they were doing.

How much money is a young kid like that going to have? Hardly enough to make that effort worthwhile.

[slackmaster]

46. And now for the REST of the story - YouTube mugging victim 'recovering'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14476828

[JDPriestly]

58. Thanks. The story is now told. The short video did not

tell it.

[Turborama]

59. No, the story wasn't 100% clear. But the speculation you fabricated regardless was waaay off base.

I wouldn't bother thinking about a career as a detective, if I were you.

[Boudica the Lyoness]

7. Watch this

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14458424

According to these young thieves, the riots are about showing the rich people,(shop owners and the people who work in shops)and also the police, that they can do what they what. After all it's all about them having a bit of fun...a lark, and getting free stuff.

[Boudica the Lyoness]

9. Political my arse!

Here are the 'rich' people they are attacking, stealing from and attempting to put out of business.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14462007

Life will never be the same now these people have discovered they can help themselves to other peoples stuff if there are enough of them to do it. I predict bars on windows and doors of the business that stay in these areas.

[Turborama]

14. As per the guidelines for this forum...

"This is a political website so we expect the videos to have some political content or relevance to current news stories."

As for everything else you have been saying in relation to this, I wholeheartedly concur. See these OPs to see where I'm coming from...

London Riots: Before & After Photographs
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1699784

&

There is nothing noble or admirable about what the recreational rioters are doing in England
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1697276

[LiberalLovinLug]

20. Then your arse should run for mayor!

Of course individual criminal acts of personal attacks are not political.
But how can you deny that the over-all reason for the upheavals, which inadvertently allow pockets of criminality to run loose, are not rooted in political/social problems?

The poor are getting poorer and the rich richer. That's a fact. And the poor watch the wealthiest class rob them and get away with it. They watch the rich get tax breaks and the community center that kept their kids off the streets get shut down due to lack of funds. These kids live in homes where the parents are unemployed and angry at the government for fostering this situation and pass along this lack of respect for authority to their offspring. This kind of rioting will only increase globally. And the RW, (FoxNation forums are full of these short-sighted posters) and even some posters here on DU apparently, will only have tunnel vision for these kinds of individual acts of human cruelty, and call for even more police, more "security", more military to round up the thugs, giving the politicians an easy out instead of demanding POLITICAL changes to a corrupt, top-heavy system that fosters these kinds of sad events.

[Amonester]

21. Start a bidness in Protection services, and offer your product.

If nobody hires your professional services (or don't want to pay to protect their property), whose fault is it?

[JDPriestly]

32. I knew a couple whose lives were torn apart by the riots that

followed the Rodney King verdicts in LA in the early 1990s.

They were just ordinary people with a small business.

True, they get caught up and bear the punishment for crimes that much more powerful people commit.

But that does not change the fact that these people are moved to riot, to risk being sent to prison, for something. What is it that is making them so angry? That is what the authorities need to figure out.

When I lived in London in the early 1970s, the class structure and the racism were stifling -- just horrible. I don't suppose that Maggie Thatcher or Blair did anything to change that.

[Amonester]

22. Although disgusting, there is a sick 'lesson' for kids going to riots...

Do Not Bring Anything Valuable With ya...

(as in: if anything goes wrong, whose fault will it be? mmm?)

[Turborama]

23. We don't know if he was a participant of the riot or not

But it sure seems like he was not amongst friends and was on the outside looking in. I could be wrong but I think he was quite possibly an innocent bystander.

[Amonester]

24. I truly doubt he was a bystander.

It sure doesn't look like it, but in any case, there's another sick lesson for kids carrying valuable stuff with them: "if you find yourself in any 'unstable' situation (where 'violence can errupt at any given moment'), do not stand there just to watch: quickly find any 'stable' area you can go to...

[Turborama]

25. Did you see the pool of blood on the ground and his bloody face?

He was obviously smacked really hard in the face prior to the start of the video and he looks like he was confused and suffering from concussion.

They look like professional thieves who are using a bait and switch mugging tactic.

I hope he's OK now.

The lesson is, don't trust anyone and run as fast as you can when you have been smacked in the face.

[Amonester]

27. Since he is in the UK, a 'mouth repair' job might not cost him too much,

if any. At least, he didn't get killed...

Besides, through all his suffering pain, he doesn't look to be 'concerned' too much by the loss of his EEPC (or whatever it was)...
(something he looted himself? (as it seemed to be in a 'suspicious plastic bag'...) prior to getting smacked???)

About the 'lesson' well, it should be the real basic 'Survival 101' stuff all schools SHOULD provide (hope MANY do, otherwise...)

[Turborama]

56. He is a Malaysian student who had arrived in the UK a month ago. Was on his way to a friend's house

To break the fast during Ramadan: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4956523

[JDPriestly]

33. But, Turborama, you don't know.

In fact, you could not possibly know much of anything from that video.

The odd thing is that the older boys simply walk away. They don't seem worried about whether the police will pursue them.

And the boy, the one that everyone hear assumes was stolen from, also just walks away and doesn't appear to be all that upset.

And it looks to me like whatever it was that was taken out of the backpack was maybe a piece of paper, maybe a picture that was thrown away. It is absurd to assume that we can know from watching that video just what happened. Maybe the boy with the backpack took something from one of the older boys. Hard to say.

[Turborama]

35. I did actually clearly say I don't know and that I could be wrong.

I was giving my take on what I saw, and that's what you are doing too.

He was smacked in the face (the blood on it attests to that) by someone and he seems to be confused and concussed. Maybe you think he doesn't seem upset, I see a confused boy in shock.

If you want to play the 'no-one knows' game, you have no idea what was taken out of his backpack and trying to guess what it was is useless and pointless. What we know is that something was taken out of his bag by someone else who walked away with it.

Oh, and there have been multiple reports from 1st hand witnesses who have been saying that all the roaming gangs of rioters have been acting like they aren't afraid of the police, so it's no surprise that the men walked away not worried about getting pursued.

Anyway, I'll leave you to take away from it what you think happened and leave it at that.

[JDPriestly]

38. The only conclusion I draw from that video is that I don't know the

whole story about what happened.

It is quite puzzling if you think about it because they took something from the backpack, tore off page after page and threw the pages on the ground. But they did not take the backpack or beat the child up or take anything else he had.

Any story we build around the video is just the product of our imagination, but it looks like he had something belonging to the older boys and they did not want him to have it or, alternatively, that he had something that they thought they didn't want him to have -- and then when they got a hold of it decided it wasn't what they thought it was in the first place.

You never know. Maybe the boy had stolen something from a shop that the older boys were protecting.

On the other hand, maybe the older boys were bullies as so many DUers assumed.

We just can't tell. I watched the video twice. You just can't tell what is happening.

[FourScore]

41. Exactly. n/t

[Turborama]

43. Or he was simply mugged

Which is quite likely considering what's been going on in the streets of London over the past couple of days.

I've watched it a few times and it doesn't look like "pages and pages" being ripped out from anything. To me it looks like he was removing the packaging from something.

And he was obviously beaten before the film started.

My conclusion is that the boy is a victim of violence and he had stuff taken from him by people who were pretending to help him.

[slackmaster]

47. He was mugged.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14476828

[X_Digger]

53. Confirmed..

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14476828

[Skip Intro]

37. But, they're conscientious revolutionaries striking out at the corrupt elite....

:shrug:

[Amonester]

40. Who said they are 'conscientious revolutionaries' (?)

Who ever SAID (or wrote) that (link?) is (obviously) off their marbles...

[GillesDeleuze]

44. not everyone is a gramscian intellectual.

some people are pissed and feel the need to lash out.

[go west young man]

42. Anyone who doesn't understand that this is a mugging should

get their eyes checked. Yobs+bloody face+ hands in pack= a mugging.
If your not sure do yourself a favor. Get a ticket to Hackney and stand around
with a backpack on near a group of Yobs. When your feeling to be sure your face
and wallet are still there after the arse kicking you can then ask yourself, "was I mugged?"
Come back and post about it and let us know. We'd love to hear about it.

[GillesDeleuze]

45. yobs to refer to working class people doesn't belong @ DU

[go west young man]

49. You may want to look up what a yob is.

They are definently not "working" nor do they have "class". They are gangsters,thugs, violent criminals.


















































They are for sure not "working" nor do they have "class". They are violent thugs, gangsters, criminals.
Here let me help you out. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/YOB

[GillesDeleuze]

50. yob is a slang term for an uncouth or thuggish working-class person.

yup.

yob = working class.

nice job.

[go west young man]

51. Please post a link to the definition that includes "working class".

Being working class myself I'd love to see it. Here's some links to definitions for ya.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/yob
http://www.answers.com/topic/yob

The only part you have correct is uncouth, and thuggish. Violent you conveniently left off.

[GillesDeleuze]

52. here:

Dr. Onions of the Oxford English Dictionary seems not to have noticed the word before he published the XYZ section of the dictionary in 1921 but the later supplement notes the use of 'yob' as meaning 'boy' in the working-class youth context, from 1859.

Also, wikipedia "yob"

[go west young man]

54. Your quoting wikipedia from the old English dictionary of the 19th century.

Here's Oxford online today. http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/yob?view=uk
No mention of working class.

Wiki's etymology page does not mention working class in the origins of the word.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/yob

[go west young man]

55. This debate between you and I has devolved into semantics.

But let me add this.. if you go back to post 45 one can see that it is you who brought up working class.
I never said it or inferred it. You put the words out there and aligned them with me. It was an assumption on your part.
Yobs neither work or have class.

[slackmaster]

48. The victim is a Malaysian student. He was indeed mugged, and is now recovering.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14476828

[Turborama]

57. Anyone who doesn't understand that this is a mugging should listen to what the victim says

Here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4956523

&

Here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x608341