News?

[singlemomcanada]

My heart goes out to those in London.  I can't imagine living what they're living through right now!  I don't know details, I just know that I have online friends living through it right now.

I go here www.happynews.com/index.aspx when things get me down or I just want some good news for a change.

My sons tell me that someone brought a knife to a

Comments

[petite_lambda]

Thank you! :-)

London: I'm also very saddened by what's going on there. What bothers me the most is the looting and general anarchy perpetrated by "normal" people. It looks like the only thing many of them needed was an example. "We're showing the police we can do what we want" -- one of them was quoted saying. Is that what they want? Steal, vandalize, terrorize? Scary...

[singlemomcanada]

From the little bit I've heard....I think that since they're young people they don't know WHAT they want yet.

Some wants are easy..what do I want for supper, what do I want to do for vacation. Others not so much....what do I want to do with my life?

My memory's a little hazy on this story since it was so long ago but someone reminded me this morning that it wasn't really all that long ago that there were riots in Los Angeles, California.

http://ftp.nizkor.org/hweb/orgs/canadian/canada/justice/hate-motivated-violence/hmv-006-00.html

OK, it will be 20 years next year that the riots happened.

[petite_lambda]

Young people who don't know what they want from life is pretty common.
But usually they don't go around torching cars, looting, vandalizing and beating up policemen.
Our society can only function on the premise that people don't want to hurt each other -- or, rather, that people who do want that are rare. Police is able to protect us from lone loonies, but if enough people start to act violently, there is nothing anyone could do about it. We live on the premise that people in general don't want to steal, loot or vandalize. What happens in London made me wonder about this premise.

I don't think it's fair to compare this to the King riots, or to the Stonewall uprising, or other acts of protest. From what I read in the paper, this one is not an act of protest. It's more of an act of "we suddenly realized that we can totally do it and they cannot stop us". That scares me.

[cassandra63]

It's not just London. My daughter found three burned out cars and two ramraided stores outside her house in Liverpool. 1600 people have been charged and the courts aer running all night. Some have been jailed already. There are kids of 11 who stolen a chocolate bar up in court, but it rained the other night which scared them off. A man has died from his injuries.

[singlemomcanada]

It's just plain scary that young people could get so out of control. Mind you older people can get just as out of control. The difference is the young people don't have as much life experience and.....common sense to draw on to help them make more responsible decisions.

I'm not saying they shouldn't be charged with the crimes they committed, far from it.

I wonder though, how much of it was pack mentality and how much of it was a lone person acting on their own?

Sorry, got distracted by phone calls & dishes so lost my train of thought :(.