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Violent Conditions Generate Violent Revolts: The Logic of Rebellion
Violent Conditions Generate Violent Revolts: The Logic of Rebellion
My eyes were glued to my television set as I watched civil unrest unfold in Baltimore. Yet, as a historian who has studied urban rebellions, I was not surprised. Since last August, the question for me has not been why, but when.
I watched CNN’s and MSNBC’s coverage. What I noticed was not surprising, but vexing, nonetheless. Commentators like Al Sharpton, Dr. Jamal Bryant, and others resorted to condemning and condescending participants and denying the uprising’s political significance. The assumption that violence is senseless and apolitical was embedded in their sanctimony.
Now, I do not aim to advocate for the use of collective violence, but I believe it is imperative that we analyze its political significance. In yesterday’s press conference, President Obama argued that the “riot” distracted us from the pursuit of reform. I argue otherwise, the Baltimore rebellion not only highlights the problem of policing, it opens a space for analysis and conversation of all of the structural problems that President Obama mentioned in his reactions yesterday. Rebellions historically have also created political opportunities for reform. Dismissing collective violence as senseless, criminal, and apolitical narrows our frame for understanding the history of interconnected problems plaguing cities and municipalities like Baltimore and Ferguson such as racial and economic segregation and redlining, deindustrialization, overpolicing, the emergence of mass incarceration, and even criminal activity. I argue that collective violence is protest politics. Violent protest does contain a logic, even if it appears chaotic.
The pressing question underlying live analyses of the Baltimore uprising was: Why do African Americans rebel?
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96 Percent Of Americans Expect More Civil Unrest In U.S. Cities This Summer
96 Percent Of Americans Expect More Civil Unrest In U.S. Cities This Summer
Are you ready for rioting, looting and mindless violence in major U.S. cities all summer long? According to a brand new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, 96 percent of all Americans believe that there will be more civil unrest in America this summer. That leaves only 4 percent of people that believe that everything will be just fine. In this day and age, it is virtually impossible to get 96 percent of Americans to agree onanything. So the fact that just about everyone agrees that we are going to see more civil unrest should really tell you something. The anger that has been building under the surface for so many years in this country has finally started to erupt. If you have been following my website for a while, you know that this is something that I have been warning about for a very long time. Many people may have thought that I was exaggerating when I talked about the civil unrest that was coming to American cities. But I was not exaggerating at all. In fact, if anything I was downplaying it. In the years to come, we are going to see things happen in our cities that are going to absolutely shock the world.
Ever since the violence first erupted in Baltimore, what has surprised me more than anything has been the level of hate that I am seeing all over the Internet. I am seeing white people openly proclaim how much they hate black people. I am seeing black people openly proclaim how much they hate white people. I am seeing things said about the police that are absolutely horrifying.
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Civil Unrest Has Begun In Baltimore And This Is Only Just The Start Of Something MUCH Bigger
Civil Unrest Has Begun In Baltimore And This Is Only Just The Start Of Something MUCH Bigger
On Saturday night, the city of Baltimore resembled a warzone as protests over the death of Freddie Gray turned wildly violent. One eyewitness reported watching the streets around him and his friend “turn into madness” as they left a baseball game between the Boston Red Sox and the Baltimore Orioles. Car windows were smashed, stores were robbed, chairs were thrown and large numbers of random bystanders were attacked. One prominent Democrat claims that those committing the violence were “mainly from out of town“, but how would he know that? Today, there are approximately 2.7 million people living in the Baltimore metropolitan area. It is an area that has been known for poverty, crime and drugs for many years, and as racial tensions continue to increase in this country it is a powder keg that could erupt at literally any time. We got a preview of what can happen on Saturday night. If this is how people will act while economic conditions are still relatively stable in this country, what in the world is going to happen when things really start falling apart?
On Saturday, April 11th, I delivered a presentation down in Dallas, Texas in which I warned about the rioting and civil unrest that are soon coming to this nation. On slide number 145 of the presentation, I specifically named the city of Baltimore as one of the cities where this would happen. But I had no idea that the rioting in Baltimore would begin so quickly. And the violence that we saw on Saturday night was at a level that was quite shocking. The following is how the Daily Mail described some of the chaos that ensued…
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PRISON DISPATCHES FROM THE WAR ON TERROR: CONFESSED PLOTTER GIVES INSIGHT INTO RADICALIZATION
PRISON DISPATCHES FROM THE WAR ON TERROR: CONFESSED PLOTTER GIVES INSIGHT INTO RADICALIZATION
In 2006, 21-year-old Fahim Ahmad was arrested and charged with leading a group of young men who planned to bomb power stations, take hostages and “behead politicians” in order to compel the Canadian government to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan. Ahmad was also accused of planning to travel abroad to join Islamist insurgents fighting in foreign conflicts.
While the group he led was described by authorities as “Al-Qaeda inspired,” it was not believed to have direct links to the group or any other designated terrorist organizations.
Born in Afghanistan, Ahmad moved with his family to Canada at the age of 10, and became a naturalized citizen. He lived in the working-class inner suburbs of Toronto, where he married and had two children. At the time of his arrest in 2006, he was unemployed.
After serving several years in pre-trial custody, Ahmad pleaded guilty to terror charges in 2010 and was sentenced to 16 years imprisonment, minus credit for time served. He is currently incarcerated at a facility outside Toronto, and is scheduled to be released in 2018.
Speaking to The Intercept from prison, Ahmad offered some insight into the process that led to his own radicalization.
What started you down this path of radicalism and advocating violence?
It didn’t come from a bad place, originally. It came from a place of concern. At the time I started coming to these views, I was a teenager. It was 2002, 2003, the invasion of Iraq; it made it seem like there was really a war going on. It forced an identity check on me. At the time, you think by doing something like this you’re doing something that’ll in the end make a positive difference.
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Athens on fire as rioters mark anniversary of police killing of teen — RT News
Athens on fire as rioters mark anniversary of police killing of teen — RT News.
Greek police used tear gas and water cannons to disperse crowds during clashes in the capital. Athens was gripped with protests marking six years since police shot dead an unarmed teenager during an anti-austerity rally.
At least 8,000 demonstrators marched in Athens on Saturday commemorating the sixth anniversary since the police slaying of Alexandros Grigoropoulos. Grigoropoulos’ murder on December 6, 2008 sparked violent clashes across Greece, with cars being burned, shops looted, and police attacked in a number of Greek cities.
The violence on Saturday began at 19:30 in the evening by a group of some 200 black-clad masked men, local media reported. They started setting on fire cars and bank ATMs and threw Molotov cocktails and other projectiles at police in the bohemian neighborhood of Exarchia, where Grigoropoulos was killed.
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EITHER YOU’RE THE BUTCHER OR YOU’RE THE CATTLE « The Burning Platform
EITHER YOU’RE THE BUTCHER OR YOU’RE THE CATTLE « The Burning Platform.
I know many people have no interest in watching the boob tube because 99% of the programming is either mindless drivel or government sanctioned propaganda. It’s the 1% that reflects the deeper themes and moods engulfing our society. Television shows like Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, and The Walking Dead reflect the darkening mood of this intensifying Fourth Turning. I wrote one of my more pessimistic articles called Welcome to Terminus in April regarding the season four finale of the Walking Dead series. I essentially argued we are approaching the end of the line and the world is going to get real nasty.
In the six short months since I wrote that depressing article, we’ve seen men beheaded on Youtube videos by terrorists no one had ever heard of at the beginning of this year. Somehow a ragtag band of 30,000 Muslim terrorists, using American military equipment supplied to fight Assad in Syria and taken from the Iraqi Army when they turned tail and ran away, have been able to defeat 600,000 Iraqi and Kurd fighters with air support from the vaunted U.S. Air Force. Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan descend into never ending religious based warfare. We’ve even had passenger planes mysteriously disappear in Asia with no trace.
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