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UK Men Get 4 Years For Trying to Incite Riots Via Facebook
An anonymous reader writes "In addition to the 12 arrests from last week, a judge has sentenced 20-year-old Jordan Blackshaw and 22-year-old Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan to four years in prison for their failed attempts to use Facebook to incite riots in the UK. The judge said he hoped the sentences would act as a deterrent. The two men were convicted for using Facebook to encourage violent disorder in their hometowns in northwest England."
Where is the limit with political speech ? Is that forbidden to state the opinion that violent action is the only way to bring change in a corrupt system ? Not that I defend this opinion, but the fact that is is censored disturbs me deeply.
I'll use my right of free speech and call you a bloody idiot. This wasn't to "bring change in a corrupt system", this was about having a bit of fun destroying stuff, beating up people, and looting.
The judge said he hoped the sentences would act as a deterrent.
This could be a pretty big problem.
The Judge himself is pretty much saying here that he considers the punishment to be excessive compared to the crime but that Jordan Blackshaw and Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan should be punished more because the legal system doesn't want to bother with the rest of the criminals.
Well, it is not exactly his wording and it might not be that way in this particular case but I have seen that kind of reasoning in other cases and I seriously doubt that the two boys even would have been arrested if it weren't for a lot of other people running around causing trouble in the UK at the moment.
Compare to the average file sharing case where the plaintiff is punished because he could potentially have distributed a work to 10000 other people.
In those cases it is assumed that the plaintiff has distributed the work to 10 other people and that he should take the punishement for the crimes that those other 10 people did. (Not that it clears them from any legal action in the future.)
Prime Minister David Cameron said:
Mr Cameron is no stranger to appalling behaviour, being a former member of the Bullingdon Club, "notorious for its members' wealth and destructive binges". The club song apparently goes: "Buller, Buller, Buller! Buller, Buller, Buller! We are the famous Bullingdon Club, and we don't give a fuck!"
Cameron's 'Buller' escapades include running from the police through the streets of Oxford after a heavy flowerpot was thrown through a restaurant window.
They pleaded guilty. That tends to short-cut proceedings a little (no fancy speeches to a jury, questioning of evidence etc)
"civil unrest against a perceived corrupt political system"
Nobody involved cared about that. Seriously - you had to be there, it really was people of various walks of life just grabbing everything out of shops then setting fire to them (then attacking firemen when they tried to rescue the families in the flats above), kicking people half to death, etc. - just going nutz to get stuff and get money and get away with settling scores against specific people or whatever community they disliked.
People being violently and/or sexually assaulted, robbed or even killed in the street. Not bankers, not politicians. Their own.
Not one bank or political institution was touched, only places with Cool Stuff in, and the cars/houses/persons of the working and/or poor people in their own communities.
"a chaotic mess of angry people lashing out"
A chaotic mess of rapturously smiling laughing people taking what they wanted and doing violence to people. Families having their homes torched and their lives endangered, swathes of jobs being ended by businesses being torched when nobody can afford insurance these days.
Killings of people who tried to help the victims, attacks against ambulances trying to treat the victims, attacks against firemen trying to put out fires.
Seriously, I don't know how to explain this convincingly enough without sounding emotive - this is in the place I've grown up in. Don't let people get away with saying it was a political demonstration - I mean you had to be there but seriously it REALLY. WASN'T., I would say what we all saw and endured had no protest component to it whatsoever past about 9pm on the first night - it was just open season for the cannibalistic predators of London to hurt/take from their own.
The voters have been told in rolling news that they should be angry and focus on that..
How rude and insulting. The voters must be stupid, right?
No. The voters *experienced* the riots and are livid that members of their own communities would betray their own in such a nihilistic orgy of crime costing lives, injuries, homes, at least hundreds of jobs (of people/families in their own communities, not of the banks or politicians) and costing millions upon millions of pounds when the country is facing austerity measures, for entertainment and to put a flat screen tv and an xbox in their front room.
"Told they should be angry". Perhaps if you were injured, or your workplace* and/or home** was burned down, or your community had lots of people hurt, homeless and jobless and was looking down the barrel of rebuilding the town when it was facing cuts in every public service, you might think it warranted a serious deterrent for or at least removal of rioters, for however long is appropriate under the law.
Even if they aren't "mindless zombies controlled by the press".
Perhaps if it was YOU looking at your wrecked community or even life, you might think a little pause for thought was warranted before people labelled you malleable and stupid.
*Lots of places can't afford good insurance now btw
**Nobody can afford home insurance in the kind of deprived areas where homes were burnt down.
I'm sorry to say that but for an outside European observer the UK is becoming more and more like a totalitarian country. There are cameras everywhere
Let me guess, an outside European perspective gained from reading The Daily Mail? The number of cameras in Britain is massively over exaggerated. The number that's usually thrown around was generated by taking a mile of one of the busiest streets in central London, counting the number of cameras (including speeding cameras and privately owned CCTV cameras inside shops on both sides) and then multiplying that number by the number of miles of roads in Britain.
The more realistic number includes motorway monitoring cameras, which are not recorded, have one person monitoring about 100 of them, and are used to notify radio stations and so on of large traffic jams and dispatch emergency services to accidents. The next highest number is automated speed / red light cameras. The government controlled ones in city centres are operated by the local councils and are mostly being shut down because they provide little benefit and the councils can't afford to operate them.
and face-recognition software is used to identify people on it
Not sure why this is a sign of totalitarianism. Is it less totalitarian if you have a human matching the faces to photographs? The face recognition that's been talked about in the media recently has been matching the faces of people from Facebook who said things like 'I got a new 42" TV in the riots!' to images from shops' CCTV. How evil...
internet and phone serveillance everywhere,
Unless you think The News of the World and Phorm are government agencies, I'm not sure where this comes from.
and all big parties are decidedly right-wing
Bullshit. One of the two parties in our coalition government is still slightly left of centre, and my MEP is from a decidedly left-wing party.
it is still legal in the UK to beat up your children
any UK news source, then you'd see examples of parents being imprisoned and having their children taken into care for this.
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