Keir Starmer says facial recognition tech is the answer to far-right riots Responding to the riots across England over the past week, Prime Minister Keir Starmer says he's backing a wider rollout of facial recognition technology to track and prevent "thugs" from traveling to areas where they plan to cause unrest. Following the abhorrent stabbings of multiple children at a Taylor Swift-themed summer …
Nobody is innocent. You all have stuff to hide. Therefore, you are guilty. Hiding your voice makes you more guilty. Whispering is a true proof of sedition and makes you definitely guilty. Any form of presenting your opinion is a heinous crime of undermining authority and proves you are guilty. We need to watch you all you guilty bunch! We know you are guilty and we will be locking you up soon enough!
/sigh
BTW, I do have modern computerized hoodies on sale with unique colours and patterns. Will fool any AI and will make GI mad as hell. The latest pattern development version will delete you from any camera image automatically and blend completely with your environment. Please contact me for your seditious orders. Only untraceable payments accepted.
We know you are guilty and we will be locking you up soon enough!
Starmer just made a statement that he'll be handing out participation awards. Anyone 'taking part' in protests will be arrested, charged, held on remand, and convicted of.. something. This, of course is the same Starmer that just released a load of prisoners because the prisons were full. This is an interesting comment-
https://thecritic.co.uk/boiling-the-british-frog/
On July 11th, the new Labour government announced that 5,000 prisoners would be released early, in order to ease prison overcrowding. On July 15th, reports emerged that London’s once-great Metropolitan Police had failed to solve a single burglary, phone theft, or car theft in 166 London neighbourhoods over the past three years. On July 17th, a Jordanian refugee who attacked a female police officer in Bournemouth was spared community service on the grounds that he could not speak English — and on July 18th, two asylum seekers from Egypt who stole a watch worth £25,000 in London’s West End were spared jail.
But such is the wicked problem that Labour (or any UK government) has to try and solve. Jailing protestors probably isn't going to help, and could just make the situation worse.
Those who smashed up shops, looted, burned out libraries and citizens advice, dragged people out of their cars to beat up and tried to set fire to hotels while people were inside aren't just protestors. They are fascist scum and deserve a long time in a small room to reconsider their life choices. This includes their rabble-rousing leaders who are sat safe in their foreign houses hoping to destabilise the government.
And most of the stupid idiots posted their involvement to their social media. The police are already being flooded with names and doors are being kicked in.
Going back a little further, in 2011 unrest broke out in towns and cities across the UK, 15,000 people took to the streets. Five protestors died, hundreds of police officers were injured, 2,000 were arrested and £250 million worth of damage was done to shops and businesses in London alone. Makes the current stuff look like a few football hooligans warming up for the football season starting on August 27th.
It looks like a couple of people think it's necessary to label the possible* political leanings of those involved. Perhaps they'd like to post a comment to explain why those who are beaten up, have their shops looted or cars torched care about such details.
* Don't forget false flags.
Those who smashed up shops, looted... ...They are fascist scum and deserve a long time in a small room to reconsider their life choices.
Can you see the problem with those two statements? Especially when the 'solution' being proposed is to expand the powers of the Ministries of Love and Truth? The people who smashed up shops and looted stuff are probably just opportunists exploiting the chaos. The opportunists in government are also exploiting the chaos to sleep walk us further into a fascist, authoritarian state. Obey Citizen, Big Brother will be watching you ever more closely.
Of course there are other fascist scum also exploiting the current economic, immigration, housing, hospital crises and some simple crowd psychology. Gather enough angry people, provoke things a little, then sit back and watch the world burn. Sadly a lot of those people are in government and the media. This is an interesting take on the situation-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8LF1bxlVXM
I agree with the interviewee that we've got a bit of a slow-boiled frog kind of situation that government(s) hasn't being doing enough to resolve.
I don't know if they are even "Fascist Scum". I think there are quite a number out there who will join in for no other reason than it is an excuse to smash stuff up and be "anti establishment".
There are a core that will instigate these sorts of events and then others are carried along. Social Media then allows people to be manipulated as all sorts of disinformation is seen as mainstream by people who believe that anything the read on Twitter, FaceBook etc is valid.
"There are a core that will instigate these sorts of events"
Much like posting misinformation whilst posted in Belgium and listening to the crash of breaking glass in British Glasshouses
https://www.adambienkov.co.uk/p/smashing-greenhouses-how-boris-johnsons
The previous government was going ban face-coverings at protests...
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-protest-laws-on-face-coverings-and-pyrotechnics
icon: pyrotechnics
-- BTW, I do have modern computerized hoodies on sale with unique colours and patterns. Will fool any AI and will make GI mad as hell. The latest pattern development version will delete you from any camera image automatically and blend completely with your environment. Please contact me for your seditious orders. Only untraceable payments accepted. --
I have some invisible & intangible fivers - do you accept those?
They have a law for that too now. If a dispersal order is granted for an area it also includes not covering your face. So if you are in a dispersal order zone with your face covered, expect to get your collar felt and no doubt a copper will pull out their phone to do FR at that point.
Ireland to ban balaclavas after anti-immigration violence
"In response to wave of disturbances, wearing of masks will be made illegal when there is clear ‘intent to intimidate’"
The UK may not be far behind...
They certainly were banned, in both jurisdictions on the island of Ireland, I imagine that was removed/relaxed sometime between the Belfast Agreement and the beginning of Covid.
If rioters start wearing N95 masks or hijabs instead of balaclavas, that will be a complex legal needle to thread.
Given that most of these people appear to have a scarf over the lower part of their face and some sort of hood or hat are really cannot see how facial recognition is going to help.
It is just yet another excuse to collect data for no justifiable reason. Someone like Clearview must be have wet dreams about a Government contract for this. Now add in Palantir to handle that data and would could possibly go wrong......
What about the Far Left, is not needed for them too ?
Aren't we in the age of DEI, where everyone should be Included ?
What a complete bunch of tossers. It's got nothing to do with the right or the left, this is all about ensuring the Dystopian nightmare which they want to enforce upon all and sundry.
There was a time when the coppers knew who you were and they knew your mother, a quite word and all was hunky dory again. Now it's all about statistics, metrics and keeping the general population muzzled.
Lets not forget that in the summer of 2020 the police raised the fist and bent the knee to the BLM rioters while forcibly arresting those at the Sarah Everard vigil.
Nothing says compassionate policing like holding a women face down on the ground with your knee in her back for attending a vigil for a woman murdered by a serving police officer.
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Do you really want to go down this path?
https://metro.co.uk/2020/06/04/london-police-take-knee-black-lives-matter-protesters-12802784/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPKQr2gc3QM
https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1859411/Keir-Starmer-take-the-knee
Video of the met arresting actual peaceful protesters
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVOt9IbScqM
OK, so when the Mulsim and Bangladeshi communities rioted about a month ago in Leeds and London, even setting fire to a bus for some insane reason, plus abusing anyone white who happened to be caught in their fracas, how come no one screamed about AI facial tech then? How come the coppers ran the other way? Where were the calls for locking up "scum" back then?
I agree that a nasty right wing element are having a field day at the expense of people with a grieveance and they need to be brought to heel, but no one's perfect and if you apply Stasiesque controls on the populace then let's have it on everyone, irrespective of race, creed, colour, gender or political affiliation, not just againt whomever Mr Starmer and crew wish to villify in the name of the liberal globalist agenda.
> how come no one screamed about AI facial tech then?
Probably because it was the end of the last government and they were actively avoiding trying to do anything with any money involved at all at any point.
Now the "new" lot are in they're back to their old ideas about ID cards and tracking everyone. It's just an updated version of the ID cards of the mid 2000s but technology has made it easier as you don't have to issue a card to everyone.
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This is true, however in the case of one the intigators stay home whilst in the other they're usually at the front of the line
Inciting riots, racial/religious hatred or terrorism(*) makes one just as culpable as being there (perhaps more so), even if you're sitting beside a pool in another country
(*) Attempting to burn down a hotel full of people whilst simultaneously barricading the exits is well past the threshold for a terrorist attack
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The actual flashpoint was nothing to do with social media. That came later, ex-post.
The flashpoint was a Pakistani (hence Muslim) being sprung while sneaking up on the vigil for the slaughtered children, wearing a balaclava and wielding a large knife. (Police claimed "flick" knife -- videos show it being nearly a foot long.)
The locals exploded.
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You have a very short memory it appears
Your example comes from a fortnight before this last weekend's riot while you yourself quoted the OP's phrase "this weekend". Can you not read? Sadly a lot of other people who can't read chose to agree with you. Perhaps you were all drunk. Or blinded by a political motivation. How would you explain your blatant error?
Really? That's your excuse? You extrapolate from a simple referential word to a malign intent regarding an unrelated incident? All to cover for your desire to change the subject to "What about the Far Left?", as though some anarcho-communists have engaged in a national programme of setting light to the homes of corporatist shareholders and tearing down the walls of Anglican churches in order to have bricks to throw at cars and cops.
Perhaps I should interpret your phrase "the overall picture" to include every riotous incident since the English Civil War.
Pathetic.
It's nothing to do with the left.
Not these latest ones, but we've had almost a year of riots calling for the destruction of Israel and Holocaust 2: Electric Boogaloo, and those haven't been driven by the right, which has decided that it hates Muslims even more than it hates Jews. The left, on the other hand, still believes that Jews run the global capitalist system and aims its bile accordingly.
Downvote, because not everybody who sympathises with the Palestinians wants the destruction of Israel. Right now Israel, as a country, is behaving like a bunch of murderous bastards and the situation in the Middle East is getting messier and messier and will, ultimately, help nobody. Unfortunately those in charge of Israel seem hell bent on disproportionate retribution whatever the cost, and I fear that things will turn uglier.
As for the Holocaust, anybody that denies or belittles humanity's darkest time in recent history is a cunt. End of.
Downvote, because not everybody who sympathises with the Palestinians wants the destruction of Israel.
Of course. But those who demand clearance "from the river to the sea" most certainly do want to see an end to Israel, and there has been an awful lot of that on demonstrations.
Goebels was quoted as saying the following ( I can't confirm this in the absolute)
"There was no point in seeking to convert the intellectuals. For intellectuals would never be converted and would anyway always yield to the stronger, and this will always be "the man in the street." Arguments must therefore be crude, clear and forcible, and appeal to emotions and instincts, not the intellect. Truth was unimportant and entirely subordinate to tactics and psychology."
It reminds me how the woke movement has established it's roots, especially the last phrase..
Stalin - I think current estimates are up to 3 million direct (executions, deaths in gulags, etc) and about 6 million in the 1920s from famine
Nazi Germany - about six million in the holocaust. About 2 million of which are included in the 14 million Soviet civilian casualties of the Eastern Front.
News just in- apparently those who have pleaded guilty and gone to court are largely the local neds with a long string of previous offences. Sop they were just using the protests as an opportunity to kick off and maybe do some recreational looting. But sure, blame the "Far Right", who mostly only exist in Starmer's authoritarian brain.
> What about the Far Left, is not needed for them too ?
Well, I don't personally think it's "needed" for anyone. The current round of thuggery has been Far Right, but expect feature creep. The UK is already one of the most surveilled societies on the planet.
> There was a time when the coppers knew who you were and they knew your mother, a quite word and all was hunky dory again.
No, that was the Noddy books.
No, that was the Noddy books.
Ah, kids today just don't know what community policing used to be like. I was on good terms with mine after being caught turning golf flags into improvised rockets, sniping golf balls with an air pistol and a few other misadventures. Handled with some informal 'words of advice' and a suggestion I a) stop annoying the golfers and b) consider a career in the military.
"Good old fashioned community policing let the Krays run their empire and let Steven Lawrence's murderers go free"
You do know that the Krays only ever killed gangsters, and even at though there is only proof that they killed one and apparently the streets were calm.. There was more media hype than there were problems.
I prefer a lot of what is going on today.
Hee-hee. Sounds eerily similar to the closing lines of Joe's Garage by Frank Zappa..
Think my childhood was more Jethro Tull's Farm on the Freeway-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LySTISqaH9o
Our playground was a big chunk of heathland shared with a golf course a couple of miles away. So most weekends and holidays I was out there with mates from dawn till dusk. Our mischief was mostly harmless, and police encounters would be for things like lighting fires. Which lead to some fun moments like being caught roasting some rabbits. Then more 'words of advice' and being shown some wild plants we could cook & eat and other fieldcraft. Our local officer was an ex Para Pathfinder, and looking back, pretty sure he was trying to encourage us to enlist when we were old enough.
But that heathland has now been pretty much swallowed up by housing, so kids now have fewer opportunities to play. Some of my favourite books are Erich Fromm-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Fromm#Political_ideas_and_activities
Fromm sought to re-emphasise the ideal of freedom, missing from most Soviet Marxism and more frequently found in the writings of libertarian socialists and liberal theoreticians. Fromm's brand of socialism rejected both Western capitalism and Soviet communism, which he saw as dehumanizing, and which resulted in the virtually universal modern phenomenon of alienation.
Which he developed and discussed in "Escape from Freedom" and then "The Sane Society", with warnings about what might happen in "Anatomy of Human Destructiveness", which the TL;DR is it's much easier to destroy than create. I don't entirely agree with some of his views wrt socialism and capitalism, but do think he was right about alienation and authoritarianism. Both of which I think we're now seeing the results of. Some anti-immigration protestors view immigrants as competition, but we've got alienation in the form of job destruction and off-shoring. The UK's just fallen out of the top-10 for manufacturing, and we have a shortage of 'blue collar' jobs.. Along with things like AI threatening to reduce jobs even further.
Then anti-immigration and lack of integration leads to a sense of alienation in immigration communities, and increases tension. Then the impression of a 2-tier policing and justice system combined with increasingly authoritarian government just piles on the pressure, people start pushing back and we see the destructiveness Fromm warned about.
But such is politics.
I want to know how to turn golf flags into improvised rockets - second childhood here I come
Well.. they're tubes. Either plastic or aluminium. So packing tube with.. stuff, running a command wire and/or contact trigger so it'd ignite when a golf ball landed in the cup would sometimes turn into a misguided missile. The flag being on the top didn't exactly help with aerodynamics. As for.. stuff, well I had a sweet tooth as a child, and was always looking for ways to preserve my candy, albeit briefly. I guess I was lucky to conduct these experiments pre-Internet and discovering butyl rubber compounds, and also being pre-anti terrorism legislation, which might have resulted in more than just informal words of advice.
But I also learned when to stop, still have all my fingers and my eyebrows grew back pretty normal. Thinking I should make an 'I Survived Chemistry' t-shirt as well.
There was a time when the coppers knew who you were and they knew your mother, a quite word and all was hunky dory again. Now it's all about statistics, metrics and keeping the general population muzzled.
There was also a time when an SF author predicted this sort of stuff in a short story I read many years ago*. The premise was someone watching riots on TV and wondering why they'd been growing. That society had teleportation, so pretty much coined the term 'flash mob'. We don't have teleportation (yet) but we do have a plethora of IM apps, public and private transport, and excuses to go and break stuff. Or just steal stuff in the chaos. Plus summer + booze = trouble.
And politicians never let a 'crisis' go to waste. So there have been multiple riots in the last couple of weeks with multiple causes, so the murders in Southport, rioting in Leeds after Romani kids were taken into care, Bangladeshis in Tower Hamlets and generic anti-immigration protests vaguely connected to the above. Government is stuck between a rock & a hard case and pretty impotent when it comes to deporting illegal immigrants, especially ones that have been charged with crimes. So it wants to increase the surveillance state, and sweep problems under the carpet by increasing censorship.
Oh, and preventing 'thugs' from travelling? An old Labour idea was we'd find using public transport 'easier', if only we had an ID Card. Londoners have been pre-conditioned to this with Oyster cards, but expect renewed calls for a national ID Card** again in 3... 2... 1...
*Aha, found it-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_Crowd
** Which knowing our 'joined up government' won't be able to be used as an Oyster card..
"Telefragging" might be a problem - could get very messy
SF (and quantum physicists) have thought about this. So the idea of opening a wormhole and strolling through it. Which could be a tad messy, if someone walks into the edge of one given it has kinda zero thickness. Or just open one in the middle of someone you don't like. Or just teleport a rubber chicken into their skull. Quackbang, out. Or the joy of reference frames and inertia, so stepping through a wormhole carrying around 0,5-11km/s of inertia that have to be.. managed carefully to avoid very messy accidents. Neal Asher explored that one when he used an innocent tourist as an inertial bomb.
Equality under the law.
Walter Wolfgang was stopped and searched, not arrested, under the 2000 Act in 2005. (the 2000 Act replaced a number of earlier acts). The problem with Section 44 of the act used at the time is that "reasonable suspicion" is not required. The section was replaced with Section 47A in 2011 which requires more of the police to justify stop and search
This is reasonable enough, but the issue is that laws are often applied to people that they should not be. Witness the JSO protesters jailed for five years for merely talking about annoying people under newly minted conspiracy laws. Do we seriously believe that the fascist scum burning out shops owned by non-whites and beating up anyone who looks foreign are going to get a penalty proportionate to that? Of course not - and I would actually hope not, as while I have no sympathy for the fash I do support equality under the law and I don't want anyone receiving draconian sentences.
Facial recognition is a particularly touchy topic in this area, as there is plenty of evidence to show that the systems can't accurately identify black people. It's very easy to repurpose such laws to discriminate, and I have no reason to believe the sitting government won't do so after they've been sitting there talking about "pro-British protestors with legitimate concerns". The Labour MP for Tamworth, Sarah Edwards, tweeted just the other day supporting the people in her constituency who "want their Holiday Inn back". I very much doubt that the people of Tamworth actually do want a cheap chain hotel that they don't need to stay in themselves as they already live in Tamworth, but there are certainly a lot of asylum seekers being housed there and right now every dog in town is covering its ears and whining.
Witness the JSO protesters jailed for five years for merely talking about annoying people under newly minted conspiracy laws.
[citation needed]
The most recent JSO gaol sentences were for people who organised highly disruptive protests. Characterising that as "merely annoying people" is akin to characterising activating display firearms as "merely doing some turning and filing" or creating a cryptocurrency money laundering system as "merely typing in some code".
The most recent JSO gaol sentences were for people who organised highly disruptive protests. Characterising that as "merely annoying people" is akin to characterising activating display firearms as "merely doing some turning and filing" or creating a cryptocurrency money laundering system as "merely typing in some code".
"[Judge Shane Collery KC] accepted the defendants were not the organisers of the protest but said they were "willing volunteers".
The JSO protesters weren't hurting anyone. They weren't throwing rocks through the windows of people's houses, or at police. They weren't burning out libraries or businesses or hotels. In fact they weren't doing anything, because they were arrested at the planning stage. So don't prate to me about mischaracterisation of their actions when I say they did less than the actual fucking Nazis who were out doing all of these things, and more.
So if there is no damage and no victim then there can be no crime?
What about the JSO protesters who smash windows or spray paint everywhere?
I know this is XR but they are the same group at the end of the day:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hV6bm8YeZfQ
The JSO protesters weren't hurting anyone. They weren't throwing rocks through the windows of people's houses, or at police. They weren't burning out libraries or businesses or hotels. In fact they weren't doing anything, because they were arrested at the planning stage.
They may not have been directly hurting anyone, but they caused an awful lot of economic harm, disruption, stress, caused patients to miss hospital appointments and have long delays in their treatments etc etc. They were also terrorists because they were using direct action in an attempt to force political and social change. They're also pretty much the definition of useful idiots being lead by far-left characters like Roger Hallam who used 'climate change' to try and push through extreme socialist ideas like government being replaced by collectives and 'citizen assemblies'. He also encouraged 'arrest as a tactic' rather than the usual democratic means to achieve social or political change. He's now got his wish, and hopefully will be quietly forgotten.. Or rant about how he's now a political prisoner.
Don't get me started on Roger Hallam. His entire goal appears to be to get as many potential left wing protesters as possible onto government watch lists. I know many people who strongly suspect that he's running an op, like the plod were with CND in the 1980s. One of the few things I agree with you on is that he's an idiot.
But for all that, if you're going to make me choose between idiots making people late for hospital appointments and rioters putting people in the hospital then that's not a choice. They are not comparable.
"Not comparable" In the very short term you could be correct. However, missing hospital appointments isn't just inconvenient - two outcomes are (A) you got to the back of queue (waiting however long), there are many conditions where early diagnosis is the biggest influence on survival chances and (B) you now require urgent treatment due to the missed appointment.
(B) you now require urgent treatment due to the missed appointment.
One of the examples given in the Judge's summing up was a cancer patient who missed their appointment to start treatment, and then had to wait 6 months for the next appointment. Which was probably one of the reasons sentencing was towards the top end of the scale. From memory, others were missed flights, deliveries spoiling and some other examples of harm or loss.
Ah yes, JSO, in their matching shirt uniforms, stirring up militarily-planned trouble and forcing people to do things they don't want to because they clearly don't know what's best for themselves.
Oswald Moseley would be proud of them.
Its a suitable bogeyman. Nobody likes the "far right" (trot out grainy clips of marching Nazis etc.)
>There was a time when the coppers knew who you were and they knew your mother, a quite word and all was hunky dory again.
Such a time existed, but so did Sidney Street, the General Strike, the actions against trade unionists in the 80s. Unlike most of Europe the UK lacks a formal gendarmarie, a public order police force that wears distinctive uniforms (when they're not dressed like a Star Wars storm trooper) so its difficult to distinguish between 'friendly local bobby on bicycle' (even assuming such a thing still exists) and 'hired thug used to ensure the primacy of State power' (although its possible that the Metropolitan police perform this function since they seem to turn up everywhere).
(Incidentally, the neat thing about European gendarmaries is that they coordinate and provide mutual aid -- very handy if there's a strike and the local boys are sympathetic to the strike's aims.)
Look at how well it worked in Northern Ireland.
The problems with policing in NI in the 60s weren't specific to the force being a civilian versus military one, but that it was a civilian force which drew its members almost exclusively from one section of a very divided community. When some policing duties were delegated to the military after August 1969 there was only a brief honeymoon, before that situation became part of the problem. Today, with the PSNI being more (albeit not fully) representative of the community it serves, things are much better. I can't see a gendarmerie-style force working at all there.
Well, that didn't take long - never waste a good crisis, eh?
If the bobbies can't recognise these thugs without facial recognition (clue: check out the knuckle dragging morons, skin head and swastika tattoos optional, with the fire lighters in their back pocket) they may not be in the right job. As an aside, I wasn't aware that they used an app to obtain alleged ID without the hassle of nicking the face owner - that's creepy.
While this may be introduced as a knee jerk reaction to some relatively minor (though not for the poor buggers whose shops have been torched, of course) recreational anarchy - I discount the notion that the villains actually care about the issues they're "protesting" about, they're just in it for the agro - you can bet it won't be withdrawn once the "crisis" has abated. After all, come winter, gathering round a burning police car may be the only way for pensioners to keep warm!
Expect more of the same sort of intrusive cobblers, and lots of it - this government is clearly at least as crap as the last one, with the added disadvantages of a big majority and plenty of time before the next election to bring down the cosh with vigour.
"The[y] probably stole the idea from Antifa ..."
Who the F**K is Antifa !!!???
This made up nonsense is yet more Trumpian crap from the US of A !!!
There is *NO* Antifa, do not import this utter delusional muppetry to the UK !!!
If you believe there is you are beyond hope !!!
By the way, Trump did lose & Jan the 6th was at the very least 'Incitement of insurrection' even by US of A vague laws / constitution.
:)
Antifa has a handbook and even facebook pages and websites with instructions on how to join. It even has a wikipedia page!
A US judge has recently ruled that contrary to leftist dogma antifa has an organisational structure.
Having loads of people larping about wearing the antifa logo on their clothes and waving flags with the logo really doesn't help your cause in trying to claim 'it doesn't exist'.
And we must remember that even though they claim to be anti-fash the very origins of antifa was to install their approved type of authoritarian rule by force.
A question comes to mind *but* first a clarification on my part ... I have *no* cause, left or right wing, other than a liking for truth !!!
Did you actually check what the 'handbook' was ???
As it appears to be: [Quoting Wikipedia after I looked it up !!!]
Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook is a 2017 book written by historian Mark Bray and published by Melville House Publishing, which explores the history of anti-fascist movements since the 1920s and 1930s and their contemporary resurgence.
Not quite the equivalent of Chairman Maos 'little red book' and not quite the lefty 'handbook' as implied !!!
Antifa as a catch-all term, in a book title, *does* exists, so 1 point to you !!!
Still not quite SPECTRE or SMERSH level, to quote James Bond villians !!!
:)
If the bobbies want to recognise thugs easier... some of them should start looking in the mirror.
Some coppers are great, I knew a few and they'd go above and beyond... but there are also those that love the power they've been given and will abuse it for their own pleasure.
It's not ACAB, it's SCAB
My personal experience with police (outside of those I used to know) is that if they can avoid logging and looking into a crime they will. When I was threatened with a knife 16yrs ago... it took them 10hrs to show up and they did fuck all about it... and this was before the tories gutted the forces and increased crime everywhere.
If the bobbies can't recognise these thugs without facial recognition (clue: check out the knuckle dragging morons, skin head and swastika tattoos optional, with the fire lighters in their back pocket) they may not be in the right job.
Indeed. No facial recognition is needed. For one thing, knuckle dragging morons with skin head and swastika tattoos should be easily spotted in the police canteen. Or at the next lodge meeting. Mind how you go.
I) Doesn't address the root of the problem
ii) Won't work - from the footage I've seen, at least some of the fashos are already wearing masks and balaclavas
iii) Increase's the UK's already dsytopian surveillance society.
From the arrest statistics, and again the limited footage I've seen, the cops are failing to make arrests including for crimes committed right in front of them (violent disorder, criminal damage, etc).
There's also no preventative action - i.e. arrest organisers for conspiracy, dispersal orders, etc. Anyone in possession of a balaclava in summer is liable for going equipped.
Of course, the recent disorder suits Plod quite well as they can plead for more funding, which is then splurged on the aforementioned technology.
It's also worth looking at that the (anti) social media firms are allowing offences (incitement, etc.) to be committed on their platforms, especial X-Twitter under Musk.
the cops are failing to make arrests including for crimes committed right in front of them (violent disorder, criminal damage, etc).
That is true, it's SOP. The police's primary role is keeping the peace so factors, such as whether an action will inflame or calm the situation, whether better to arrest on the spot or later, have to be taken into account.
It's extremely hard to get it right, easy to provoke escalation.
The police's primary role is keeping the peace so factors, such as whether an action will inflame or calm the situation, whether better to arrest on the spot or later, have to be taken into account.
Accepted (leaving what the police's primary role really is to another discusion). However, when bricks are being thrown through windows and buildings set alight, I think we can safely say that the peace has already been broken, it already has escalated, and the possibility of calming the situation has long since passed. How far does it have to go before taking action? Or does it become a case of "the more violence the less we'll (re)act"?.
Given that not few of the perpetrators are masked, the "I'll do it tomorrow" chance of later arrest is pretty slim, with or without facial recognition tech.
> How far does it have to go before taking action?
It depends on each individual situation of course but the police make detailed on-the-spot risk assessments to arrest someone during a protest because they have to balance the risk of escalating the violence further (both against them and the steps they'd have to take to control the crowd), risk to officer's lives and safety, and the safety of the person they wish to arrest.
> Given that not few of the perpetrators are masked, the "I'll do it tomorrow" chance of later arrest is pretty slim
You'd be surprised. There's already a great amount of work put into identifying people by their build, clothing, tattoos, location of mobile phones (they capture the unique details of all phones present for example) in the area, social media posts of people saying they will be present or organising the events (including their profile information from social media, known associates of people or groups who aren't masked up, and use their extensive database and knowledge of local troublemakers to try and identify masked people. It often works and can be proven to an evidentiary standard that the person was present and was the person filmed doing x (throwing bricks, assaulting officers, inciting violence etc)
Preventative measures are hard when you don't know where people will pop up. Many demos were planned; only a few actually happened. And some of them that did happen weren't advertised on publicly visible social media. Police have used dispersal orders, but then they need officers to enforce them. And police have limited resources, which are easily overwhelmed, or exhausted. So, you're in charge, what do you do? Dispersals orders everywhere and the run-down army to enforce them?
----
"at least some of the fashos are already wearing masks and balaclavas"
Technical question. Do we think conventional Facial Recognition has a chance of "seeing through" a balaclava? It's got the eye separation. In the right light, it could probably get the nose and the mouth. So has it got enough facial geography to take an educated guess? (Bonus follow up. Could we train an "AI" to do it?)
And some of them that did happen weren't advertised on publicly visible social media.
Most of them were. And what happened to "Police Intelligence"? I know it sounds like an oxymoron but the NCA consumes £ millions every year. Every regional force also has resources.
I'd accept the police being caught on the hoof the first time, but not on the subsequent days.
And police have limited resources, which are easily overwhelmed, or exhausted.
Funny, there seemed to be no shortage of police when the miners were on strike, or for stopping raves in the 90s, or a hundred other cases. Perhaps austerity has even effected the police. In which case, where's the money coming from for expensive facial recognition tech?
Technical question. Do we think conventional Facial Recognition has a chance of "seeing through" a balaclava?
Given the requirements for a biometric passport photo are still quite strict, and a moving image is more difficult, I'd say no, though it's thankfully not my field of expertise. Footage where someone wears a balaclava will probably result in Constable Savage arresting some random dark-skinned person (plus la change).
Given the requirements for a biometric passport photo are still quite strict, and a moving image is more difficult, I'd say no, though it's thankfully not my field of expertise. Footage where someone wears a balaclava will probably result in Constable Savage arresting some random dark-skinned person (plus la change).
It's eminently abusable. So Point Break had bank robbers wearing ex-President masks. T-shirt printing means you could print a Keir Starmer mask. For added fun, you could use a stocking-type mask and stitch in filler to alter the face shape. And you could test your disguise by just using one of the many online image recognition services. It's the kind of stuff that is regularly demonstrated at DefCon and similar events. It could be amusing if Starmer replaced the "V for Vendetta" masks, but as Charles Stross wrote in "Rule 34"(?) if you can download it, it can and probably will be abused.
For the miners'' strikes the locations to be policed were the entrance gates to mines which in turn are only in the mining regions of GB. And the times when there could be trouble would be at shift changes when the non-striking miners were bussed through the picket line
As such the local police forces could call upon all the other constabularies in non-mining areas for loan of their riot squads and tell them exactly where to park up.
Whereas the current trouble could flare up anywhere at anytime
Funny, there seemed to be no shortage of police when the miners were on strike, or for stopping raves in the 90s, or a hundred other cases.
If you read up on the history of the miners' strikes in particular, there is strong evidence that a lot of those turning up in police uniforms with riot shields and batons may well have not been actual officers, but people who were co-opted to put down the (largely peaceful) protests. Not to mention that a picket line at a coal-pit is pretty much a static target, whereas small groups of violent thugs moving around the country attacking multiple targets, whilst indicating their intentions to attack others, as basic misdirection, are much harder to pin down effectively.
These days, neighbouring forces quite often lend each other their riot officers when trouble is afoot, and they still struggle to quell larger disorders. What happens when there are multiple "flashpoints" at the same time in neighbouring towns and cities?
> Funny, there seemed to be no shortage of police when the miners were on strike, or for stopping raves in the 90s, or a hundred other cases. Perhaps austerity has even effected the police. In which case, where's the money coming from for expensive facial recognition tech?
You can always create a "surge" of officers for one-off events or things a few times a week (legally the police can in extremis order officers on duty, cancel rest days, make them work longer hours etc with no real say for the officers themselves) however if you keep doing this for days or weeks at a time you end up with exhausted officers who aren't thinking right and are making poor judgements and bad decisions due to fatigue.
Plus when the riot trained officers (not all of them are trained to the right standard to police in riot gear for example) are dealing with a riot you're shorting the police in other areas where the riot isn't happening, which means everyone else gets a much worse policing service, which you again don't want to sustain for days or weeks because it means important things aren't happening, like following up on burglaries or domestic violence cases, or attending minor crimes.
Often these days a lot of newer officers aren't trained on driving on blue lights which means their better-trained colleagues who are more likely to be attending the riot will be away, so they're responding to immediate-grade calls without being able to drive on blue lights because they aren't qualified, which means they take a lot longer to get there.
Plus this affects rural areas and small towns more as their officers are drafted in to cover the towns whilst the town officers are off at the riot, meaning you end up with a shortage of police in other areas again, meaning they have to attend from further away etc etc etc.
So the riot may be policed, but policing is suffering massively elsewhere.
I think the "masks and balaclavas" part is a bit of a red herring. This isn't necessarily about identifying people whilst they are rioting (it's easy enough to kettle them with riot police and arrest them without knowing their identities when they start throwing bricks at the police and setting fire to things). This is more about preventing known thugs from travelling to their riots, and finding out where they are in the transport system. They're presumably not wearing those face masks when they're getting on a train or queueing for a bus, so if they breach their court orders by travelling to an area where there is a planned "protest" (and I use that term in inverted commas, because violent disorder is neither legitimate nor effective protest), they can be picked up in their ones-and-twos, rather than the police having to fight another running battle with 200 coked-up knobheads.
Personally, I question the usefulness, effectiveness, and proportionality of using live facial recognition on the population as a whole, for a number of reasons, not least of which is, if they know they're going to get photographed going through a station concourse, or at certain city-centre locations, they'll probably just cover their faces at those points.
*I'm more for making these vermin wear tags at all times, and severely restricting their freedom to travel beyond their home, the local Wetherspoons, and the dole office.
*This sentence is hyperbole, I don't actually think this is a sensible solution, but it's not much dumber than LFR.
These acts of supposed "mindless hooliganism" are clearly being orchestrated and coordinated by somebody with a definite political purpose. And not that idiot Tommy Robinson because he doesn't have the brains for it. We will probably never know who is actually behind it or why.
But I don't think that facial recognition is the answer. The problem seems to be that the British police aren't allowed to use sufficient force to deal with such situations. They just get beaten up and can't fight back. In many countries, a scumbag beating a policeman with a iron bar or torching a building would be immediately shot dead, and that tends to discourage them from doing it again and others from joining in. That's what needs to happen here in such situations.
> The problem seems to be that the British police aren't allowed to use sufficient force to deal with such situations.
No, the problem is a failure of intelligence and organisation on the part of the police. You'd have thought that they would at least have infiltrated the neo-Nazi organisations -- not to mention their social media -- and anticipate where the thugs are going to turn up.
Increased physical force by the police is reactive, and simply escalates the situation - far from "discouraging" them, it's what the thugs want, so they can scream "provocation" and "police brutality".
We don't shoot people dead at the drop of a hat in GB (for historical reasons, I've left the "and NI" bit out there). We'll leave that to less civilised nations.
They have every right to do so. But it is, thankfully, rare here, and was against a background of unusual paranoia. And recall the outrage at those events, which eventually lead to heads rolling in high places.
There have been other unwarranted shootings - but the UK, on the whole is, in international terms, comparatively benign when it comes to trigger-happy police.
"And recall the outrage at those events, which eventually lead to heads rolling in high places."
Not in the case of the de Menezes murder. The police officer in charge of that operation didn't get punished at all. She got promoted. Clarissa Dick eventually ended up as the Metropolitan Police Commissioner.
Henry Bruce Stanley in Hackney. Very unlucky. If you were a police officer who had been told an there was a man with a shotgun wrapped in a bag who then turned to face you with said "shot gun", what would you do? Ironically he was a convicted armed robber too, not that they knew that apparently.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Harry_Stanley
I think there is a degree of cherry picking here. If all you have is poor Henry and Jean Charles de Menezes (you also forgot Mark Duggan), then you're really not doing too well on convincing me that plod are a murderous force of thugs and rapists hell bent on killing, stamping and/or raping everyone they see. Most just want to keep the peace.
No, the problem is a failure of intelligence and organisation on the part of the police.
Is the failure on the part of the police, or is it political? We have had, until very recently, a fairly hard-right government that wasn't shy of using anti-immigrant rhetoric, and demonising any vaguely left-wing protests, whilst almost actively courting the far-right. Equivocation between large peaceful protests, and small, violent ones is part of this. The police can only do as directed by their senior leadership, and when they figuratively say "come down hard on those climate protesters who have glued themselves to a road, but let Billy Thugman over there smash up a Greggs, he's just letting off steam," the hands of the police are tied. Note here that I am not advocating the methods of certain climate protesters, I think glueing yourself to roads is pretty dumb, but it's also peaceful compared to rioting.
There's also the added factor that people who join the police to become officers tend to have a bias towards type-A personalities, especially riot officers, even more so armed officers, and, seemingly, top of the officers of questionable morals heap are the political protection officers. Let's face it, such people aren't going to want to go into a career as a nursery nurse. Either way, officers act as directed by their superiors, and should be applying the law equally. If a bunch of bad and heavily biased laws have been passed, this is a political issue, and the coppers who are sworn to uphold the law of the land have no option but to apply them, or resign as a matter of conscience. Given that the average copper's salary is pretty poor, the odds are that the second option is not a practicable choice.
Depends on your definition of pretty poor I suppose. The starting salary for a constable is around £35K, rising to £46K. The lowest paid cop gets about the same as the average annual salary. Which means most of them are getting much more than that.
https://www.polfed.org/resources/pay-scales/constable-pay-scales/
£35-£45k is fuck all for working unsociable hours, and being subject to having your holidays and "rest days" (weekends to you and me) cancelled at short notice to go and have bricks thrown at you.
The fact that the low end of this is similar to the UK's average salary only shows that there are far too many people employed in low-security, low-paid jobs (including zero hours "gig economy" jobs). If I was being paid the average salary in the UK, I'd hand in my notice and go and walk into an equivalent job elsewhere for a significant pay increase. Even after a decade of slightly-below-inflation pay "increases" which have left me worse off in real terms now compared to a decade ago, I still earn significantly more than that, and I don't consider myself to be especially well paid. My wife, who works as civilian staff for the police, earns about £10k less than this, at the top of her pay grade, and her work is highly skilled and demanding. Police officers and staff are not well paid for what their job involves.
> You'd have thought that they would at least have infiltrated the neo-Nazi organisations -- not to mention their social media -- and anticipate where the thugs are going to turn up.
They have, which is why the protests in places over the last week (especially the one in Whitehall) were policed from the very start and were relatively contained.
The reason that destruction has been suffered is because there aren't enough police to defend every building and car all of the time.
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Somebody's been obviously doing a lot of lobbying trying to sell their magic solution to the home office, and I guess the "ready to go" proposal got quickly extracted from the drawer again.
As has been pointed out already, it is completely useless when most of the rioting idiots are covering their faces. However, I bet every single one of them had a smartphone with them, to help direct them to the aggro, and mobile phones track and record their locations. Many of them who travelled from out of town probably bought train tickets or other things with them too, as well as using mapping apps, etc. So, if police need to find evidence of who turned up from out of town to destroy other people's home towns, I suggest this is a much easier place to start looking.
And before anyone starts complaining about absolute privacy being more important than keeping people safe from rioting mobs, take a second to think about how you'd feel about that if swastika-tattooed nazis had come down your street, smashed up your car and home and torched your local amenities. You wouldn't be demanding that the police shouldn't be able to see who was there using phone records. Using legally obtainable info to prosecute organised far right violence is not "the thin end of the wedge".
Since the late 1960s in Belfast I've often thought that riot control technology should take a hint from ornithologists. One of the techniques for bird ringing is the use of rocket propelled nets - the rockets take the leading edge of the net forward too fast for escapes. The net is then dropped over an area and whatever's immobilised under it can be dealt with at leisure.
One of the techniques for bird ringing is the use of rocket propelled nets - the rockets take the leading edge of the net forward too fast for escapes. The net is then dropped over an area and whatever's immobilised under it can be dealt with at leisure.
Net launchers already exist, and kinda work. Sometimes. Problem with netting a crowd is the net would probably get caught on all the CCTV, ULEZ cameras etc. But the police already have most of a good solution, ie the good'ol kettle. Force the angry mob into a confined area, and wait for them to blow off steam. But this is also where there are other problems with urban planning.
So I'm currently living in the land of bricks, ie Milton Keynes. Sure, all the brick and block paving everywhere looks kinda pretty, unless I'm tripping over bricks that have settled unevenly. But when stuff like this happens, those nice, pedestrianised areas just end up providing easy ammunition getting thrown at police officers. At least in Belfast, they had to lift paving slabs and break those up before hurling them. But it's also one of those situations where Boris Johnson had the right idea buying water cannons. Which Javed promptly got rid of..
I wonder how much of the rioting is through allowing non-peaceful protests that caused huge disruption and the police mostly allowed it. When just stop oil idiots sat in the road it was victims being prosecuted because these village idiots were causing real damage. When it looks like nothing will be done about misbehaviour you get more misbehaviour.
@LionelB
"Sat violently in the road? Hm."
You dont think so? Trapping people is an offence and that is what they did. They caused death by blocking the roads needed by ambulances. They have caused how much economic damage by stopping people from living their lives and going earning a living. How many innocent victims have lost money, lives, damaged health and legal issues because these thugs decided to detain innocent people?
Extremely annoying, anti-social, disruptive, economically damaging, and yes, I think they are idiots.
Violent? There were two documented deaths after a car crash which might plausibly be associated with a traffic jam caused by one protest. Of course there are thousands of traffic jams weekly, which cause deaths, economic damage and major disruption to people's lives (should we call the poor schmuck involved in a fender-bender which closes a couple of lanes a violent thug?) Contrary to reports in the gutter press, the ambulance services categorically stated that they were not delayed by the protest - and an air ambulance was on the scene well before that anyway (you may have missed those bits in the Sun and Mail articles... oh, wait, they weren't there).
Yet you put these protests in the same ball-park as mobs of Nazis high on booze and pure hatred, calculatedly exploiting the agony of the victims of a horrific attack and their families - crossing the country to torch shops and mosques, invading refugee centres and attacking police with bricks and paving stones.
@LionelB
"Violent? There were two documented deaths after a car crash which might plausibly be associated with a traffic jam caused by one protest."
Again they were trapping people. The only way to do so is by force otherwise people would just push past. That was the point of gluing themselves to the road and blocking the roads as they did.
"Of course there are thousands of traffic jams weekly, which cause deaths, economic damage and major disruption to people's lives"
There is normal traffic. These idiots caused blockages of the roads with the intention of doing so! People die all the time but intentionally causing someone to die is a crime. Intention does matter.
"Contrary to reports in the gutter press, the ambulance services categorically stated that they were not delayed by the protest"
Thats lucky. And I dont read the papers you mentioned. However the protests DO put lives in danger-
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/just-stop-oil-waterloo-bridge-ambulance-b2443700.html
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/11/08/paramedic-life-or-death-emergency-just-stop-oil-protest/
"Yet you put these protests in the same ball-park as mobs of Nazis"
Interesting choice of words, are they nazis? I am not defending them but are they actually nazis? I dont view these current protests much different from the other recent protests, but I wouldnt call the Roma nazis, nor Bangladesh community either.
As to the question, I thought I was fairly clear when I said "I wonder how much of the rioting is through allowing non-peaceful protests that caused huge disruption and the police mostly allowed it.". When the police seem incapable then further advantage will be taken.
> Again they were trapping people.
Of course - their deliberate aim was to cause obstruction. In some cases that was deemed criminal, and many protesters were jailed.
> People die all the time but intentionally causing someone to die is a crime. Intention does matter.
Yes, it does. If their overt intention was to kill people (obviously it was not) -- and it were shown that people died as a direct consequence of that intention -- they would be banged up for murder by now, don't you think? Luckily, in this country we have a (reasonably impartial) legal system to make those judgements. Some protesters have been (rightfully) banged up - but not for murder.
> Thats lucky. And I dont read the papers you mentioned. However the protests DO put lives in danger-
As I said, two people died arguably (but not incontrovertibly, nor directly) as a result of traffic jams caused by a protest. The ambulance services clearly stated that they were not delayed by the protest.
Football matches, large pop concerts and other public events are also known to cause disruption and serious traffic jams (not "normal" traffic!) Do we ban them because (according to your logic) they thus put lives in danger?
> Interesting choice of words, are they nazis?
Um, yes: by any definition. The swastika tattoos that have been much in evidence are a bit of a giveaway, don't you think? Perhaps you're not from the UK, but if you are, and cannot recognise the British variety of neo-Nazis, I don't know where you've been the last 50 years. (Got beaten up by a bunch of those thugs myself once back in the early 80s, for... I have no idea... being in the wrong place at the wrong time.)
> I dont view these current protests much different from the other recent protests,
Come off it, that is completely disingenuous, or at best woefully naive. All protests have some agenda - and those agendas are not all the same.
> but I wouldnt call the Roma nazis, nor Bangladesh community either.
Fine, because they're not.
> As to the question, I thought I was fairly clear when I said "I wonder how much of the rioting is through allowing non-peaceful protests that caused huge disruption and the police mostly allowed it.". When the police seem incapable then further advantage will be taken.
I don't think there's an easy answer to this. There'll always be a tension between freedom of expression and disruption to society. The police are caught between a rock and a hard place here. On the one hand, I think they are partly to blame for how they handled the recent events - they were clearly caught on the hop, and there seems to have been a failure of intelligence and organisation. But ultimately, it should not be their decision: these are political and legal issues. Saying "Oh, they just need to go in harder" is a knee-jerk - that can (and frequently does) escalate matters and more people end up getting hurt (especially policemen). I suppose we could go the whole hog, and police society like Russia, China, North Korea, ... but that's a heavy price to pay for "peace on the streets".
@LionelB
"Football matches, large pop concerts and other public events are also known to cause disruption and serious traffic jams (not "normal" traffic!) Do we ban them because (according to your logic) they thus put lives in danger?"
There is a huge difference between traffic due to people going about their daily lives vs intentionally stopping people from going about their lawful business. It isnt just lives in danger, it is economic harm and harm to lives and livelihoods. When people are allowed to cause harm publicly and get away with it the law enforcement looks weak. When statues get pulled down and covid rules dont apply to the 'right' kind of protest the police look weak. And the thugs then take advantage of that.
"Um, yes: by any definition. The swastika tattoos that have been much in evidence are a bit of a giveaway, don't you think? Perhaps you're not from the UK, but if you are, and cannot recognise the British variety of neo-Nazis"
For those with swastika tattoos sure it is a fair guess they are. What about the rest? Immigration has been an issue in the UK for a while and made part of the argument about the EU because of how badly mismanaged immigration has been in this country. Yes I am from the UK, and I also recognise that it isnt just nazis who are concerned about immigration but also normal every day people. And it isnt just white people who are concerned.
At the protests in my area a young lad who works in the city centre was chased away not by the anti-immigrant protesters but the muslims counter protesting who also decided to go clash with the protest. This lad got out of work, was nowhere near the anti-immigrant protests, he was just some white lad near the non-white protesters. Luckily no harm came to him and he just ran off.
"Come off it, that is completely disingenuous, or at best woefully naive. All protests have some agenda - and those agendas are not all the same."
What they are protesting for may be different. Burning, smashing and destroying is all the same.
"Fine, because they're not."
Yet they had violent protests recently. In the Roma case they chased away the police and set alight a bus. I point these out because you said- "mobs of Nazis high on booze and pure hatred" who are performing the same thuggish behaviour. Violence and attacking people and police, destruction of property, I dont see any difference when one group does it or another. Sorry you had a bad experience with UK nazis, I am not surprised and I expect they gave you similar treatment as other gangs of thugs would.
"I don't think there's an easy answer to this."
I do agree with your conclusion. While we dont want N.Korea or China style policing we do need a law enforcement who wont stand by as criminals do what they want. When people dont see any law enforcement or see them as weak they take the law into their own hands. We have seen police stand by as protesters block roads. We have seen statues defaced and destroyed by idiots. The police and councils looks away as sex trafficking went on under their noses and allowed it for racial reasons. We have seen how covid rules dont apply if you are the right kind of protester. Police forever demand more money but faith in policing just doesnt seem to be there (from what I have seen and heard).
> There is a huge difference between traffic due to people going about their daily lives vs intentionally stopping people from going about their lawful business.
Yet at the same time, we're a tolerant society with respect for the right to protest and express our views. And protest is, almost by nature, disruptive. We tolerate that - up to a point, which is moot, and inevitably a balancing act.
> For those with swastika tattoos sure it is a fair guess they are. What about the rest?
The tattoos, the sieg-heiling, the racist slogans, ... it's all there. Those are the thugs I have clearly been talking about - the ones who have been attacking mosques, refugees, innocent bystanders and the police. They appear to have been largely non-local, organise via social apps, post lies and disinformation on social media, and are loudly cheered on by our favourite demagogues. I have no argument with the peaceful protesters, even if I vehemently disagree with their anti-immigrant stance. I tolerate that as their right to express their views (see above).
But re. Nazis, Roma, etc., I also think that, thuggery aside, there is a fundamental difference between "protesting" in favour of (racial or religious) discrimination, and protesting against the same. Perhaps it's down to my personal story (Jewish family who fled the Nazis in the 30s, then, ironically, growing up in South Africa during peak apartheid), but I have a visceral reaction to racism, discrimination, "othering" and bullying (for that's what it is) of any flavour. I am unapologetic about that. We know where it leads.
"That was the point of gluing themselves to the road and blocking the roads as they did."
Personally I'd just have left them glued there and directed the traffic round them. The novelty would wear off pretty quickly and they wouldn't even be able to pass themselves off as martyrs for the cause, just hungry idiots with, eventually, soiled underwear.
They caused death by blocking the roads needed by ambulances.
We've all seen this claim, repeatedly. It's just weird that nobody parroting it has seemingly bothered to fact-check it.
Yes, the "glue yourself to things" brigade need to learn a thing or two about effective methods of protest, and yes, disrupting the lives of people you need on your side is pretty fucking counterproductive, but there's no evidence of anyone dying because an ambulance couldn't bet to them as a result of these protests. Claims of such look an awful lot like targeted misinformation put about by those with vested interests, and swallowed whole and regurgitated by useful idiots.
For instance, doing a simple google search on fact-checking of this claim turns up this: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/just-stop-oil-dartford-ambulance-not-delayed-m20-accident/.
Fact-checking sites are readily available all across the internet, and I'd suggest taking a quorum of them to be absolutely sure of validity. I'd also suggest not trusting claims in the Sun or Daily Mail, the outlets which appear to have originated this particular urban myth. As it happens, the Daily Mail was the very first source to be treated as an untrustworthy source by Wikipedia, due to its repeated dissemination of misinformation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources. The Sun is also on that list of unreliable sources.
@Elongated Muskrat
"We've all seen this claim, repeatedly. It's just weird that nobody parroting it has seemingly bothered to fact-check it."
You are right, I got caught out with that one, instead they just put people at serious risk of death by delaying ambulances but no directly attributable death.
"trusting claims in the Sun or Daily Mail"
Interestingly I dont read either of those. I am wondering what source I heard it from. I accept I am not infallible
When people glue themselves to the road I'd rather they were just left alone with their protests. Maybe a courtesy road cone a couple of yards upstream. Likewise when people climb gantries, just leave 'em there. They'll be down, one way or another. Hang a net under the gantry if you don't want passing drivers splatted if gravity beats hunger.
@Ian Johnston
"Likewise when people climb gantries, just leave 'em there."
I do agree with this although I would forgo the net (if something did happen I would feel sorry for the driver and feel they should have repair costs and therapy covered by the gravity tester dead or alive). Also if the idiots glue themselves to something useless then yes I agree with leaving them, but when they are in the road and especially gluing themselves in the road I think they need to be removed as forcibly as necessary to remove the obstruction.
Putting up cones and re-routing traffic has its issues of causing the disruption they want. Watching the French police rip hands off the floor and the Germans removing the concrete sticking someones hand to a runway (but leaving his hand stuck in it) is the right way to deal with them. Some poor woman had legal trouble for nudging one of these thugs with her car trying to get her kid to school.
I am told that in Germany they had a better way of dealing with those that glued themselves to the road.
The Germans can be good at dealing with useful idiots. My favorite example was this 'protest'-
https://www.autoevolution.com/news/gluing-yourself-to-the-porsche-floor-and-then-complaining-about-conditions-is-bad-activism-201814.html
The protesters complained about the poor “conditions” they were put in, when Autostadt staff turned off the lights and the heating at the end of the workday. They complained that the premise was shut off and supporters couldn’t get in to bring them food, so they had to contend with the food VW brought for them. They complained about the glue on their hands (which they had placed there, in case you need reminding), and then said that VW denied them medical assistance. They said VW refused them basic needs by not providing them with bowls to urinate in. They complained of “random” security checks throughout the night, which kept them from getting a proper night's sleep.
Ignoring them until they go away is somewhat harder to do when they're playing on the roads, but also where water cannons could come in handy. Just drench them until they decide to move along. But they're an example of our 2-tier policing system. Massively disruptive, obstructive, and risked more serious public order offences as frustrated road users tried to remove obstructions. And mostly solvable by issuing the police with bottles of release agents. Their 'human rights' could also have been respected by simply re-gluing their hands together around lamp posts where they'd be out of the way.
I wonder how much of the rioting is through allowing non-peaceful protests that caused huge disruption and the police mostly allowed it.
I think the rot set in when the police tolerated mobs on the street calling for the murder of Salman Rushdie, but that may just be the earliest example I can remember.
Some say, they deliberately let things get out of control so Sir Stammer can enforce draconian laws and surveillance state, you have to wonder?
Pro-Palestinian marches little or no police presence, lots of laws broken and nothing done, right-wing lots of coppers, some minor disturbances but nothing major and heavy handed police.
Not going to go all political, but Policing in the UK is a shambles and inconsistent but what grinds my gears is when Sir Stammer puffs out his chest and says he will get tough, were was he getting tough when head of CPS and did nothing during grooming scandal due to the powers that be not wishing to upset a certain racial/religous group!!
The Labour nightmare is starting to come true !!
Resorting to complaining about childish replies is quite amusing, when said MP perpetrator is himself well known for being thoroughly childish.
Maybe you're one of the perpetrators too.
Frankly the right wing growth in this country should be scaring the shit out of you and everyone you are bothered about. If you have any doubts, read up on the Night of the Long Knives, and other such well known warning signs.
Frankly the right wing growth in this country should be scaring the shit out of you and everyone you are bothered about.
Increasing political division is the thing that should really be scaring people, and is being exploited to ram authoritarian measures down our throats. If you're leaning to the left, then anyone who disagrees with you is automatically right-wing. The further you drift to the left, the more 'extreme right wing' people might seem to be. And the government and media encourage this division. If you question immigration policy and it's effects, you're automatically right wing, or extreme right wing. Same if you were pro-Brexit, don't immediately criticise Trump, Musk, or whatever the far-left's cause de jour happens to be.
Israel's a great example, especially wrt the dear'ol Bbc. They're generally pro-Palestine and critical of Israel's behaviour. That's been in the news because Netanyahu's been "mowing the lawn" and in the process of ethnically cleansing Gaza. Criticising Israel for this is anti-Zionist, not necessarily anti-semitic. But there have been massive protests, including violence and mostly from the left in support of Gaza. Those protests have often been organised by groups/people with their own agendas and attended by useful idiots who have no real clue about the history and politics wrt Israel & Palestine, but will happily wave flags & chant slogans.
And that situation is probably about to get a whole lot worse. Netanyahu, in typical fashion recently escalated tensions by assassinating a Hamas leader in Tehran, just before their Presidential inaugaration. Iran has to respond. They did this in a limited way after Israel bombed Iran's consular buildings in Syria, assassinating more Iranians. That time, Iran managed to hit Israeli airfields, and Iran had warned that next time, any retaliatory strikes would be larger. But Netanyahu staged another provocation, and seems determined to start a war with Iran, Lebanon and still try to manage the situation it's created in Gaza.
Which of course risks futher protests and violence from anti-Israeli groups, because for some people, the UK is the 'Lesser Satan'. The US is, of course the 'Great Satan', and they have their own illegal immigration problem. Plus thanks to policy failures like Ukraine, the West is increasingly seen as weak and impotent. And that's not just Biden. That foreign policy maven as managed to misread a lot of current flashpoints. So we have the US focusing on their elections, the shitshow in Ukraine with the prospects of escalation from Russia. Israel's trying to start more wars, Bangladesh has just had a coup increasing Muslim/Hindu tensions. Yemen's still yeeting missiles at passing ships, and some strange goings on in Mali-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaoBOJjXLhk
Which explains some of the background to that one. Also why France is currently butthurt about Russia given it was 'decolonised' out of Mali. That one's a little strange given Ukrainian involvement on the al-Qaeda side. But behind claims for Malian or Tuareg independence, there be gold.. Along with the rise of radical Islamic groups fighting over that and displacing populations from North and Sub-Saharan Africa, creating yet more problems for the EU and UK to deal with.
So we're living in interesting times, with the prospects of those getting a lot worse and more excuses for people to riot over in the UK.
The Wests policy for Ukraine isn't a failure, it will just take quite a while bleeding Russia before the FSB allows a change of leadership
Objectively, it has been. The schlock & awe sanctions that were supposed to have left Russia's economy in tatters haven't exactly worked out as planned. Neither did regime change operations featuring a rather racist chap by the name of Navalny. But as long as it's only Ukrainians & Russians being killed (oh, and some other Western 'volunteers'), it's all good, right?
Meanwhile, in other news you won't see widely reported in the West, Budnanov's extra-special forces invaded Russia. Which you might have read about, if only it had worked. Instead it worked about as well as the previous time Nazis went to play in Kursk. Ukraine lost a couple of SAM systems, which it really can't afford to lose along with AFVs and of course its soldiers. Oh, and Budanov also tried an ambphibious assault across the Black Sea into Odessa. It's almost as if Budanov's trying to help Russia win their war of attrition.
> If you're leaning to the left, then anyone who disagrees with you is automatically right-wing. ...
Of course in that entire paragraph, you can swap left and right.
> Israel's a great example, especially wrt the dear'ol Bbc. They're generally pro-Palestine and critical of Israel's behaviour.
They have most certainly been critical of Hamas and fellow jihadis. And Israel's behaviour most certainly merits criticism. Bias, as always, is inevitably relative (who decides where the "middle ground" lies?) and largely in the eye of the beholder.
> Criticising Israel for this is anti-Zionist, not necessarily anti-semitic.
It is not necessarily either. It may (I would say should) be purely on humanitarian grounds.
> Netanyahu, in typical fashion recently escalated tensions ...
This for me is the scariest thing: Netanyahu needs conflict and escalation to stay in power. If it weren't for the Hamas atrocity, Netanyahu would most likely be out on his ear, quite likely sitting in prison. Now, to stay in power, he needs to be a "war leader", and to keep the religious crazies and settlers on-side. Ironically, Hamas also need(ed) conflict to stay relevant and maintain their grip on power; and they were fully prepared to throw their own constituency to the wolves to do so: the Oct. 7 massacre was calculated deliberately and cynically to provoke what theyknew would be a brutal response - one which would play right into their hands, at the expense of the lives and livelihoods of Gazans. Israel's brutal response was - from a sane perspective - appallingly miscalculated: they had the opportunity to take the moral high ground and get the international community on side. Of course under Netenyahu that was never going to happen - and Hamas knew that full well.
Oct. 7 massacre was calculated deliberately and cynically to provoke what theyknew would be a brutal response - one which would play right into their hands, at the expense of the lives and livelihoods of Gazans. Israel's brutal response was - from a sane perspective - appallingly miscalculated: they had the opportunity to take the moral high ground and get the international community on side. Of course under Netenyahu that was never going to happen - and Hamas knew that full well.
Indeed. Oct.7 was, as you say a calculated attrocity that achieved it's desired effects.. Much of which were playing to a global, or regional audience. Israel had been normalising relationships with parts of the Arab world, but now that's pretty much off thanks to Netanyahu's response(s). Especially after bombing Beirut and Tehran. Provoking a war on three fronts is generally not a good idea, especially when there are limits to Israel's manpower, and munitions that could be supplied. There are also dangerous risks wrt Hezbollah and Iran's expected retaliations, especially if they're co-ordinated. Those are expected, but maintaining a high state of alert is expensive and exhausting.
But there are also the global implications, so Netanyahu's actions also come at the expense of lives and livelihoods of Jews living around the world given they may become targets for radical Islamists or other assorted nutjobs seeking revenge for nothing they had anything to do with.
Seems pop media is only reporting part of the rioting neglecting to report the progressive leftists that are involved.
Instead, they only seem to focus on "far-right" protestors.
Its not like the media has an agenda or anything, right?
Maybe Starmer could also use facial recognition to determine if his office parties are permissible events or to track the thousands he claims to have prosecuted.
Then he could use "fecal recognition" to find his own arse.
Wait... is there some alternative reality where "progressive leftists" have been lurching pissed-up around the country torching cars and premises, mobbing mosques, invading refugee centres and pelting the police with bricks and paving stones? Not the one I live in.
> Instead, they only seem to focus on "far-right" protestors.
Yeah... perhaps that's because the "protestors" (who as far as I can make out appear to be protesting against the existence of people of a different colour or religion to themselves) are of the far-right. No, let's call them what they are: Nazis. I seem to recall we fought a war against their ilk, once.
There is a reality where leftists have been burning down churches
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/church-fires-canada-1.7055838
A fake news story was pushed claiming that the Canadian authorities were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of indigenous children and that mass graves had been found. Turns out it was complete bollocks and excavations of the 'graves' turned up absolutely nothing.
And lets not forget 2020 where leftists burnt cars, buildings, pretty much anything that would burn and even shot up 2 young lads in their car killing one of them.
> There is a reality where leftists have been burning down churches
Seriously? Your reply to my comment was to dredge up a confused (and weirdly reported) issue, which I don't pretend to understand, involving Native Americans in Canada four years ago (and which doesn't even mention "leftists")?
The world has surely seen violent protest over just about any issue you can think of, and by people of just about any political stripe, since time immemorial. However, the article we are commenting about concerns far-right neo-Nazi thugs -- this last week, in England -- exploiting a tragic and painful local event, to push a racist anti-immigrant agenda. Shall we stick to the topic, or go off on some pointless exercise in political posturing? Wait, don't answer...
"go off on some pointless exercise in political posturing"
You asked if there was a reality where progressive leftists burnt and smashed stuff and I pointed out that in fact yes there was. Now you are trying to deflect as lefties always do.
The article was from earlier this year, not 4 years ago.
The Canadian media whipped up a storm in a teacup trying to blame the white 'colonisers' for 'mass murdering' indigenous children as there has been a long held conspiracy theory in Canada that the govt would take children away from their parents and send them to church run schools. There is some truth in that yes children were taken away from their parents but the mass deaths is so far false.
The result of this story being a sudden spate of churches being vandalised or burning down.
Even the beeb reported on this:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-57291530
Well, turns out that the 215 bodies were not bodies. They'd been using ground penetrating radar rather than excavation and they'd misinterpreted the results. What they actually found appears to be the old soakaway field for the septic system.
https://www.coastalfront.ca/read/three-years-later-no-remains-found-at-kamloops-residential-school-site
So we have people exploiting a (false) tragic event and 'getting revenge' by performing some mindless destruction of property. Exactly like what is going on now in the UK.
> You asked if there was a reality where progressive leftists burnt and smashed stuff and I pointed out that in fact yes there was.
What I said: "Wait... is there some alternative reality where "progressive leftists" have been ..." [my emphasis]
I was clearly referring to the recent (and ongoing) neo-Nazi thuggery in the UK.
Your only response was a remote (and irrelevant to the topic) incident in another country several years ago.
> So we have people exploiting a (false) tragic event ...
There was nothing false about the tragic event which sparked the thuggery here. What was false, was the misinformation deliberately and calculatedly spread about the event.
Right and left is irrelevant. It's thuggery and it's organised. Talking about right and left is a politcial weapon to eliminate opposition to a neo-feudal agenda. There's a much bigger game being played to destroy nation states, democracy and republicanism to enable global authoritarian control. Labour is just pushing faster than Torys were willing to.
It was the poster I responded to originally who brought up the whole right-left thing.
So sure, organised thuggery is organised thuggery, but I don't honestly think you can simply ignore political motivations as if they weren't a thing. They are (that "organised" is the clue), and to pretend otherwise is disingenuous.
I broadly agree with your last couple of sentences, though; which are, of course political. If you're trying to say -- and I'm not sure you are -- that left vs right is a less relevant axis than authoritarian vs anti-authoritarian, then I wouldn't entirely disagree either.
Collectivists have always had a tendency for authoritarianism. What has happened in the last 40-50 years is the peace loving hippy free love types grew up to be the incredibly smug 'progressive' midwits who think they know what is best for everyone and nothing will stop them from enforcing their whims on you cos they know better.
And yet... it is the anti-collectivists - the tinpot dictators and kleptocrats from Russia, to China, to North Korea; the so-called populists and neoliberals like Trump and Bolsonaro; and the theocrats, monarchs, autocrats and corruptocrats in the Middle East who have, in fact, had the most dire impacts on world peace and stability. They do not give a hoot about what is "best for everyone" - only what is best for them. Nope, not a hippie in sight. Perhaps you need to update your narrative.
Oh please stop linking far right with Nazis, we all know what the Nazis did, you seriously cannot say the far right have done anything near this, yes they have some nut jobs going overboard, so do the far left, but the majority of right wingers are complaining about becoming the forgotten 2nd class citizens as our leaders drive for woke PC multiculturism, which isn't working as those demanding equality are not integrating. I suggest you watch the Enoch Powel interview he on US television, very interesting and a lot of what he predicted back in the 60s is now true. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WR-Fwy8TqAs
What's currently happening is only one step removed from the Nazis. Creating chaos while blaming particular ethnicities for that chaos is exactly what Adolf and his goons did to seize control at the expense of everyone else.
$Deity help us all if Britain falls further down the rabbit hole than it already is.
By identifying yourself as a complainer about the "woke PC multiculturals" all you've really done is identify yourself as another racist cunt.
Disambiguation, see also Smeg; which works in phrases such as Smeg Head, Smeg Off, and the like, each with different meanings.
If people are downvoting me because of the choice of words; that's on them. I think the rather more important issue at hand are the lunatic rioters and those that put them up to rioting - such as the scum that is known to be posting from their sunbed in Cyprus.
Be offended by the causes of the problems, not the language.
Far too much ignorant use of the word "Nazi" around here. Historically it has a very specific meaning: it is the combination of Fascism with obsessive/pathological anti-Jewish bias. You have to have both for any accusation of Nazism to stick, whatever student politicians might think.
The left hates Jews but is not Fascist so the left is not Nazi. The current racist protests are aimed at Muslims and not Jews and so they are not Nazi either.
Of course misuse of the term Nazi doesn't always arise from ignorance. It's also used quite deliberately to downplay the crimes, and in particular the Holocaust - of actual Nazis. Even that isn't Nazism, just (sic) antisemitism.
That symbol is used in a lot of places.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coat_of_arms_of_France
No axe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Memorial#/media/File:The_Lincoln_Memorial_Statue,_with_inscription_in_background.jpg
It was on the US dime until 1946 and still features on the wall of the senate chamber
https://romeonrome.com/2016/01/mussolinis-architectural-legacy-in-rome/
Mussolini credits Georges Sorel and Hubert Lagardelle, both noted French socialists.
Speaking as a Jew, I disagree. The Nazis had a pathological hatred of anyone who was not white, European, Christian, and indeed fully-abled. Besides Jews, they were quite happy to send the Roma and disabled to the slaughterhouse (and communists, but that was presumably just political expediency). If there'd been any sizeable population of African heritage in Germany (and beyond) they'd have got exactly the same treatment as Jews. (Hitler considered black people to be subhuman, Southern Europeans just a bit degenerate; he despised Franco, much to the chagrin of the latter.)
Neo-Nazis buy into the full package.
Speaking as a Jew, I disagree. The Nazis had a pathological hatred of anyone who was not white, European, Christian, and indeed fully-abled.
So far, so racist. But, as I wrote, it's pathological hatred of Jews (on top of fascism) which defined and defines Nazis.
The Nazis shared their hatred of black people with much of the US, their hatred of non-Europeans with much of the UK, their hatred of non-Christians with much of Europe and their hatred of people with mental and physical impairments with enthusiastic proponents of eugenics like the Swedish and the Swiss. None of those hatreds were, alas, particularly unusual for the time. It was their obsession with Jewish people which defined them.
Let's not waste a specific and useful term on other evil groups.
So far, so racist. But, as I wrote, it's pathological hatred of Jews (on top of fascism) which defined and defines Nazis.
Nope, not really. That's kind of a bit of historical revisionism and part of the whole 'Never Forget' thing that some people are forgetting, along with what happens when you dehumanise large sections of a population. So Lionel is absolutely correct, and there is plenty of historical evidence to support it, eg-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_concentration_camp_badge
Treatment may have varied by group, so some immediately executed, others were sent to work camps and worked to death.. Plus pre-war, Himmler rounded up the usual suspects like political opponents, protestors, intellectuals etc and put them in prison camps 'for their own protection'.
The Nazis shared their hatred of black people with much of the US, their hatred of non-Europeans with much of the UK, their hatred of non-Christians with much of Europe and their hatred of people with mental and physical impairments with enthusiastic proponents of eugenics like the Swedish and the Swiss. None of those hatreds were, alas, particularly unusual for the time. It was their obsession with Jewish people which defined them.
Yes and no. Eugenics, and critical race theory* were certainly popular amongst some intellectuals and early social media influencers pre-war. So as an example, Germany had a "Law for the Fight Against Gypsies, Vagrants and the Workshy" passed in the 1920s. The Nazis just took existing laws and prejudices, amped them up to 11 and started exterminating anyone they didn't like. Somewhat ironic with the Roma given they arguably had a better claim to being 'Aryan' than the Nazi's blue-eyed blondes. But the Nazis were obsessed by many things, like phrenology. Or Hitler's pathological hatred of Slavs.
Let's not waste a specific and useful term on other evil groups.
Agreed, but many people happily break Godwin's Law because they only have a vague understanding of history. It's much the same with fascism, which is mostly characterised by authoritarianism, and only relatively recently had 'right wing' added.
*making 'race' a signifier or identifier has rarely worked out well, other than defining groups to hate on and opress. See also religious discrimination & persecution.
"Or Hitler's pathological hatred of Slavs"
Lets not forget that most European Jews at the time were also Slavs.
Another point to note is that Margret Sanger, founder of what became Planned Parenthood, was very interested in eugenics and what was going on in 1930s Germany.
Lets not forget that most European Jews at the time were also Slavs.
The Nazis had a solution for that with the concentration camp badges being combined. They were as efficient as they were homicidal.
Another point to note is that Margret Sanger, founder of what became Planned Parenthood
Yep, there was a lot of it about. A famous example being that captain of industry, Henry Ford. Automotive pioneer, but also frothing at the mouth eugenecist and anti-semite.
> The Nazis shared their hatred of black people with much of the US ...
Those sentiments existed in those places (and still do). However, none of those nations industrialised the slaughter of the targets of their racism/ableism.
You're correct that the pathological hatred of Jews and the Holocaust does "define" Nazism in many (but not all) people's minds - but as I said, their pathological hatred extended far beyond just Jews. I'm personally not inclined to nitpick and categorise virulent racism in terms of the targets. What defines Nazism for me, is the desire, and the will, to actually obliterate those targets.
Those sentiments existed in those places (and still do). However, none of those nations industrialised the slaughter of the targets of their racism/ableism
Yep. The Nazis were very weird in the sense that they created a collective psychosis that enabled the creation of gas chambers, or justified working prisoners to death at places like Dora. But that was the dark arts of propaganda, or just imprisoning anyone who dared to say "Hey, maybe this is wrong?".
But the big 3 genocides were the Ottoman Empire's Armenian Genocide, the Nazi's Holocaust and Cambodia's Genocide under Pol Pot. All had a common theme, mostly race, but also anti-intellectuals or just eliminating any dissent. Create an in-group, a selection of out-groups, then use groupthink to eliminate any wrongthink. Which we're busily doing still with creating political and racial divisions and groupings.
The media doesn't help, so there was heavy focus on a protestor who had a swastika tattoo.. so probably fair to assume they were a Nazi, other stuff may have been misinterpreted. So there were photos of protestors giving Nazi salutes, which doesn't automatically mean they were also Nazis, but may have just been implying the police officers they were saluting were. Most people wouldn't do that because that salute is just abhorent. Plus if anyone did that to me, or called me a Nazi in person, I may well give them an impromptu jiu jitsu demostration. But this is also why I'm not a fan of Ukraine, especially the Ukrainian nationalists and useful idiots who chant the 'slava Ukraine' thing without understanding it's origins, or the massacres that went along with it. It's basically the OUN's version of 'Heil Hilter', and along with the hand-on-heart gesture, acting the same as the Nazi's salute. If people knew that salute and greeting was the same as was used during the Volhyna Massacres, or the Lviv Pogroms, they may not be as keen to chant it.
But then education is usually the solution to a lot of these problems. Educate kids (and adults) to hate the out-group, don't be suprised by the outcomes.
The last time I spent any significant time in the UK was a decade or more ago and there was some rioting and looting going on by young people and minorities. The police were criticized for their hands-off approach but in reality they contained the unrest to a few areas and recorded everything they could. For months afterwards people involved in the riots were greeted by a knock on the door, an arrest and a subsequent court appearance. (The sentencing didn't have to be too heavy because the fear of the knock on the door.)
(..and then there was the bus bombing in 2007. Never forget the speed that the puerps were identified and their movements were tracked.)
While facial recognition has been vastly improved by the introduction of advanced AI pattern recognition, there is still one issue that baffles boffins. The recognition software does not work on Gingers! This is an issue that seemingly cannot be overcome by throwing money and AI at it.
Considering concern over fascist yobo berserker behavior this past week, the wish/hope/dream for live facial recognition is obvious. Setting aside the fact that actual working live facial recognition would open a vast array of abuse of the technology...
The fact remains that live facial recognition remains a statistical FAILURE. It's far more likely to be wrong in its identification of individuals than right. False positives are more likely than successful identification. As such, the technology is a DETRIMENT in all use cases, if left on its own.
Wishes, hopes and dreams do not a successful technology make. So stop pretending!
Obtaining high resolution, high frame rate images of criminals, is on the other hand, a helpful puzzle piece. Just don't let the faulty failure software do what it requires the HUMAN MIND to do with far more success. IOW: Do it right, please.
I mean I havent seen the far right taking entire cities hostage, burning down stores, businesses and postoffices, trying to light police stations of fire, robbing and looting, setting vehicles on fire, defacing historical landmarks, tearing down statues, and patrolling their captured territory armed with guns. But Ive seen BLM, Antifa and the far left do all of these things on multiple occaisions. Why are their scores of legal proceedings for the J6 participants but they never seem to have this geofencing cellular data, facial recognition and other evidence for the widely reported and telivised far left riots?
Things that make you say "hmmmmmm"
This post has been deleted by its author
Serious question. How far can social media be considered accessories to the thousands of crimes committed?
Identifying and shutting down the voices of the ringleaders cannot be that difficult to do. Surely.
The discontents on the ground just needed a flag to rally behind. The ringleaders have given them one. It disgusts me that education has failed that many, that badly. It also does not surprise me at all.
Old fashioned police work seems to be much more efficient. After the first day or so of rioting it became clear that the idiots taking part were being identified from videos of the events. So the thugs started wearing balaclavas and (perhaps ironically) surgical masks. In Rotherham the police came up with a simple solution to these measures of obfuscation. They gathered CCTV footage from local shops of people buying balaclavas and masks on the day of the riots with clear shots of their faces. They then studied footage of the riots looking for people wearing those face coverings and the same clothes they were wearing in the shop CCTV. Identification was apparently aided by the fact that some of these people paid by card.
Morons are usually easy to catch.
Like the bloke photographed wearing a balaclava but clearly displaying his distinctive tattoos.
I wonder if "two tier Kier" will also use facial recognition to find the participants in the Muslim mobs that have been hunting for and beating up White people in cities such as Birmingham and Middlesbrough in the last few days? The videos have been shared online, though the BBC just speaks of "youths" of course.
Problem - Reaction - Solution.
It's a state setup to justify dystopian controls. "Far right"? what nonsense, just thugs that have no clue of politics left or right. Probably funded by some Marxist NGO. People need to stop going along with divisive politics as useful idiots for the manipulators behind the scene. If you don't you will have less freedom than during Covid (another scam).
> Far right"? what nonsense, just thugs that have no clue of politics left or right.
How naive (or disingenuous). Personally, I thought the swastika tattoos and sieg-heiling were a bit of a giveaway.
And we know who at least some of the manipulators are: criminal thug guy currently sunning himself in Cyprus (and, hopefully, about to get his arse extradited)... gurning numpty guy sitting in Parliament. And quite likely Russian cyber warriors always more than willing to sow discord in the West.
......failed to protect Sarah Everard....
......from a "thug" with a warrant card.....
......because, of course, the "thug" was -- by definition -- not a "person of interest"!!!
So.......until all "thugs" are correctly labelled, Keir Starmer is simple playing the old game......"We in Westminster are doing something"!!!!!!!
These riots are obviously organized and it strikes me that intelligence agencies had no inkling that they were coming. This means that the encryption on popular communication programs like WhatsApp is working as designed.
Most likely the organizers also use "disappearing messages" to remove all traces of their conversations, making prosecution difficult.
MI6 never infiltrated the IRA in any significant numbers. The IRA gave up because destroying a nation state simply isn't feasible for a small terrorist group. The best they could hope for is a better negotiating position when the war came to an end and in that sense they achieved their goal.
The IRA gave up because the UK gave up first and showed willingness to talk. Although Tony Blair usually gets credit for that - because of the Good Friday Agreement - it was really John Major who took the decisive step.
There was also some discrete diplomatic pressure around 9/11 and the US declaring "War on Terror". It was just a tad inconvenient shouting about that, when 'Irish' Americans were still busily fundraising for PIRA.
Just as the US as a whole discovered on 9/11 what it was like to be on the receiving end of the sort of terrorism they had been funding for years, so the Boston Marathon bombing showed the people there just what they had been funding in Ireland and the UK for a couple of decades. Unfortunately they don't seem to have learned much from either experience, perhaps because of a lack of compassion but more likely because Americans don't understand irony.
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Except for Elon Musk I haven't heard the term drop yet, but in my opinion it's obvious the EDL are attempting to instigate a civil war in the UK. By continuously attacking ethnic groups with large mobs injury and death are almost certain to occur. At some point they may proclaim a civil war and the government will be forced to impose martial law. This will ruin the entire economy and be a fertile breeding ground for even more discontent and the situation spiraling out of control.
Musk claims that "If incompatible cultures are brought together without assimilation, conflict is inevitable." I personally agree with him.
Civil war? Martial law? For a couple of hundred thick thugs having some summer holiday rioting fun? Not a chance. Even Reform, the political wing of UK racism, xenophobia and thuggery, only got 14% of the votes, mostly as a protest.
Musk claims that "If incompatible cultures are brought together without assimilation, conflict is inevitable." I personally agree with him.
Note the word "incompatible" there. No true Scotsman wears anything under the kilt.
Good to see the usual suspects out in force proposing yet more curtailment of freedoms.
Also great to see the other usual suspects out in force apologising for people acting in unison with racists and white supremacist scum. And then trying to draw parallel with other less malevolent (but extremely annoying) protesters such as Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion. Epic scale whataboutery.
If you are making excuses for people joining in with a racist mob with, "some of them are good people" you need you take a reaaaal good hard look at yourself in the mirror of a morning.
I am, in a small way, amused that the worst Director of Public Prosecutions in my living memory, Sir Kneelalot Starmer, the man who refused to proescute Jimmy Savile or the Rotherham Grooming Gangs, is going to set up an "army" of police office to tackle these riots.
Shades of the Special Patrol Group and Flying Squad.
I'd laugh if it was funny.
And the elephant remains sitting quietly in the corner in that the UK has been irrevocably changed by uncontrolled legal and illegal migration, and that integration of many immigrants is never going to happen as they remain in ghettoes with their own race / religion / countrypeople.
I am old and I despair.
[/off rant]
Saying things doesn't make them true.
"Mr Starmer was head of the CPS when the decision was made not to prosecute Savile but he was not the reviewing lawyer for the case"
https://fullfact.org/online/keir-starmer-prosecute-jimmy-savile/
"Keir Starmer became head of the Crown Prosecution Service in 2008. Although he later admitted that victims of grooming gangs had faced a “lack of understanding” during his time in charge, we can find no evidence he tried to block prosecutions due to concerns over Islamophobia."
https://fullfact.org/online/starmer-muslim-grooming-prosecution-crime/
It needs far more than just facial recognition, though: what we need to have is a nation-wide 'track-n-trace' system that identifies everyone everywhere, all the time and links this data to an ID database real time (just ask Tony). By looking for mobile phone data, use of debit cards, digital-currency, etc, a 101 digital footprint 'prism' database can be formed and who is with who can be recorded, so correlations between potential actors can be identified. (see who was in the pub with one prisioner last week and see where they were on the day in question). This is exactly how the US military tracked individuals in Iraq, identified their associates so they could just kidnap and torture them. That is the only way to stamp-out these 'far-right' terrorists (or we could gun them down from helicopters to save any further bother - as happened in Iraq).
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