Just in case anyone was wondering, yes, I had a terrible night. I couldn't eat anything or hold anything down and because of it, I couldn't sleep. I am feeling much better today and drinking lots of water. In other words, nothing to worry about.
I was going to try and make it to work; but, decided to just let my body rest and recover. It gave me some time to look at the continuing story in England. I have seen it before in the United States. It begins as a protest and ends up being a party. The Los Angeles riots turned into a party for many, that is how they felt it was; but, a very expensive and costly party.
The protests in the middle east are not a party, people are being executed for just protesting, not for looting, for protesting. There is a big difference between the two and the causes. In the middle east people are fed up with their repressive governments because they have no freedom and their lives mean nothing to their leaders. Certainly Khadafi made this clear when he said he would kill everyone rather than step down.
The protests in England are different. In London everything you do is monitored. In England the government is basically telling a large part of it's population that they are going to do without, same is happening in America. Our countries are telling our young people that they will have to live in lives of poverty, without job and without hope. At the same time our two countries are rewarding bad behaviour by bankers and celebrities.
I am a Christian and understand the biblical reference to people being sheep. Most people are pretty lazy and just want to go about their own business and live their lives, there is nothing wrong with that. Every now and then it is necessary to move the sheep or to shear them. As long as you don't do it too often or too severely it all works well enough.
What we are seeing by our leaders is abuse of the people. The leaders have forgotten something and rather than being shepherds have become predators. Economies have shrunk but there is no shared sacrifice if the leaders continue to be compensated as they were before. The leaders try and blame the unions or the civil servants or foreigners; but, in the end we all know that the leadership has failed. What happens when the sheep will no longer follow the shepherd, anarchy. The complete disregard for authority.
There were a couple of young girls in England who were interviewed about the riots. They said that the purpose was to prove that they didn't have to listen to the police or the wealthy. All the cameras in the world could not stop what is happening in London because they just don't care what the authorities do. If you feel like you are in prison already then a day or two out of the cell is good enough for many.
The riots will end as they must, you cannot get food or go to work if you are rioting everyday. That wont change anything, it wont solve the problems and it wont stop it from happening again.
It is interesting to watch the politicians attempt to put a spin on what is happening in England. The Home Secretary said that these riots were not because of the austerity measures, that is laughable when the youths are saying that it is. There are others discussing the use of water cannons and plastic bullets and one of the government representatives said that they would never use such things in England although they were more than happy to use them in Northern Ireland on simple protesters.
We see the privileged ignoring the laws and doing as they please. We see the wealthy and the powerful do whatever they want and even say that the rules don't apply to them. That is the message that we send to kids and they figure that the rules don't apply to them either. There is no middle ground because nobody seeks it, everyone seeks to do what is right in their eyes.
The hacker group, "Anonymous" says that they do not forgive and do not forget and many like the sound of that. Wikileaks, Anonymous and lulzsec all hack into the government and powerful and release their information. When they do the rich and powerful cry foul, yet, they track our every more. I do not condone any of this; but, this is how it is transpiring.
The politicians and leaders in England say that these are just thugs, well guys, there sure are a lot of them and they don't appear to have any respect for you. By the way, these youths are your tomorrow and you raised them to be this way. For the past 50 years western Europe has been destroying religion, destroying values and morals, obsessing on materialism and subjectivism. Western Europe told these kids that they mattered and their opinions mattered and that they should do whatever feels good and they listened and now they are doing it. The United States is not far behind, in fact 10 years should do it.
The great socialist thinkers and the great globalist thinkers are all wrong. The bible says people are sheep and need good leaders, the socialists and globalists think that the sheep should be taught that nothing matters except materialism and this is in fact what you get.
One of the reasons that the English monarchy exists is because when they were last challenged, they agreed to ensure rights to the English people, the Magna Carta. The French were less willing to compromise and when the masses finally took over, they chopped their heads off. History should be a warning to those in power today.
The difference between today and the great depression is that the people have changed, they will not be as peaceful as they were in the past. Now is the time for the leaders of the west to really change their ways and be leaders rather than takers and sell outs. Those who control our leaders through money and prestige should also be careful as they have now been identified. The lies will no longer hide what the powerful attempt to do in secret.
Those in charge look to the police and military to protect them while at the same time promising veterans less help when they return and going after the police pensions and promising that their children will live like those in third world nations.
The western governments tell their youths that they will have to work until they are in their 60s or early 70s just to pay off the debt that they did not benefit from. I would prefer to see today's youths just refuse to participate in anything rather than create violence in the streets. I would prefer to see them engage in sit downs in the streets and put commerce at a stand still until there is some modicum of fairness; but, nobody in power will listen to them. That is not quite true, they listen a lot; but, then explain why they are still going to take advantage of them.
There are three valleys, one is lush and green, one is sort of drier and less lush and the third is dry with almost no vegetation. The hired shepherd is supposed to take the sheep to the lush green valley; but, he plans on buying that land from his boss, the owner so he takes the sheep to the sort of dry and less lush valley. The sheep quickly dispose of what is usable there so the hired shepherd then takes them to the dry valley. They can only stay there so long before they wander off on their own because they know the hired hand is of no use. What will the owner do when he discovers what has occurred, the will dispose of the hired hand, recover his sheep and manage them himself. This is a biblical reference.
We are seeing the youth go feral because the leaders have nothing for them. Because they have nothing for the youth, they will not follow them and will just ignore them. In Atlanta we have witnessed around a 150 teachers getting caught teaching their students to cheat, you have to wonder where that comes from.
The European states methodically undermined the churches while teaching kids that nothing mattered including them objectively and that they were all that mattered subjectively. The west used to teach morals, now it teaches people to do a cost benefit analysis. Well, the kids have and guess what, they see no benefits coming to them and all the costs.
The wealthy and powerful think this will all blow over; but, it won't. The young people in England see how impotent the police are to stop them. Smart leaders would not deny why the kids are rioting, they would say that they need to sit down and make sure that there is a future for these kids.
The leaders do not live the lives that they promote so they have no authority. Consider Arnold Schwarzenegger, he promoted himself as a family man and was busy cheating on his wife. How could anyone take marriage advice from him now is beyond me. What the rich and powerful do in private is no longer private and they don't know what to do. Tiger Woods and the ex-head of the IMF are good examples of this.
There is an answer; but, it is unlikely to occur. The wealthy that control 90% of this world need to put moral people in the leadership roles of government. Lets face it, money and spin gets people elected. That money comes from the wealthy and the politicians that they seek out are those that will bring them more wealth. That isn't going to work anymore. If they wish to restore morality we must have decent and moral leaders, examples not talkers who lie.
The riots will stop, the kids will get older and continue to be cheated and then when they outnumber the rest they will just take over. The youths rioting today will not feel more associated with their government as they continue to be taken advantage of, they will lose any and all respect for the government.
In the United States we have ignored our constitution. Ex President Bush was quoted as saying that it was just a piece of paper. If our leadership has no respect for the constitution and will not follow it then all laws are lost, there is no law when the highest law of the land is ignored. What is the rallying cry of the secularists, "do whatever feels good" and they are. Humanists would add, "as long as you don't hurt anyone"; but, if life is meaningless then the majority won't care. The only thing the youth of the west agree upon is doing what they want and this is what you get.
Update
After writing this, I came across the following article in the Daily Beast. "Stop Politicizing the Riots". The author believes there is nothing to be learned from the riots and that it is just a bunch of young men with free time on their hands behaving badly. How insincere and stupid that? He says there is no reason this is happening and that nobody needs to listen to the youths involved. He acts as though these revolts worldwide are just kids acting up on summer break, it doesn't happen every year, what made this one special?
He completely ignores that while it may not be a political movement it is most definitely a social movement and it has a cause. He is afraid to discuss the real cause because he doesn't like the answer. The great institutions of the west created these children and they do not know how to lead them because they won't listen anymore. You cannot teach a whole generation that all morality is subjective and then try and teach them objective morality which you don't follow yourself.
The author takes the position that guarantees failure, ignore them, don't listen to them and their reasons don't matter. That didn't work too well for King Louis, it is the opposite of what will work. The people who thought they were in power are completely dumbfounded by what is occurring, things have not gone the way they expected. Basically, the author is taking the same position as Kadahfi.
Update 2
The media jumps to marginalize what is happening. As I read the news I begin to see more happy, stupid stories like this one from afp - Londoners strike back with "Operation Riot Clean-Up. This is really going to change things, not. 200 well to do Londoners took brooms and shovels to clean up their town. When the Mayor arrived, who had been gone for two days on a holiday, even the well to do began asking why he wasn't helping clean up.
While this article also tries to sell people on the idea that there is no cause behind what is happening, one person asked exactly what I have.
"But Basma Hassan, a 29-year-old doctor who was also at the Clapham Junction clean-up, disagreed.
"We have to ask why this is happening," she said.
"These may not be the most politically articulate kids, and I agree they are expressing it in a mindlessly criminal way, but we need to step back and looks at why a section of society does this."
If you read enough articles you will find young people saying it is us against the police, it is us against the rich and it is us against the system. The response by the "leadership" and the "media" is, no it isn't it is just criminality. It is only criminality if you have a nation of laws and they don't and neither does the United States anymore. How can such complete indifference and refusal to even listen to these young people make anything better? It doesn't.
The leaders in England will quell the riots; but, that is when things will get even worse because they have done nothing to improve the lives of these people. After the anarchy that we have seen it should be understood that they are quite good at communicating and organizing each other. What happens when the do it peacefully and using the technologies available, shut down these companies. What do technologically savvy young people do when they have no jobs and no hope?
Update 3
This is just too funny. I wanted to get the latest on the riots so I searched under "England" and "riots" using Yahoo and the first three pages of news responses were that they had to call off a soccer game. Honestly, three pages of headlines about how they had to call off a soccer game.
One article quoted a high ranking police official saying that he wanted to make it clear to the rioters that they had no reason for rioting. How dumb is that? The media got a couple of nights of pictures and now they are attempting to spin the story and put it to rest by talking about how there won't be a soccer game on television. It is absolute and utterly stupid denial.
The English media is about as dumb as they come. Rupert Murdoch's vast media in England has recently been shown to have hacked people's phones and payed off police officers. Neither is trusted right now. The media and powers in England are stumped and don't know what to do. Each passing day they attempt to minimize what is happening and now they are beating the drums to use more extreme methods (that is nothing but publicizing the threat and it isn't working).
Lets say that the English start using the water cannons and plastic bullets on it's own citizens, what is the consequence? You will stop the riots; but, at what a cost. They used those things in Northern Ireland and that didn't make anything end.
Now it is being reported that a group of ultraconservatives called the EDL is going to go in there and put an end to this. Well, if you don't want people to see the police as the enemy, what if you just let your semi-official gangs of thugs go in there; but, then that would show police complicity in letting the two factions get together.
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