© Unknown
London's Burning
I don't want to say I told you so, but I did. Ok, so maybe I didn't tell YOU, but I've said often enough over the years that one of the benefits to the British state of the occupation of the six counties of Ulster was the opportunities for training their foot soldiers in 'Urban warfare' - training that could later be applied to the 'mainland'.

As part of this training during the last 30 years of the 20th century, British soldiers and the sectarian Northern Ireland police force (the RUC) fired thousands of 'rubber bullets' or 'baton rounds' (as they were later called) at unsuspecting members of the Irish community. At least 18 people were killed by these 'non-lethal' rounds, including 8 children, and hundreds more were left paralyzed, brain damaged and blind.

© Unknown
Emma Groves' daughter, Maura, holds the rubber bullet that blinded her mother
The first 'baton rounds' were made of teak wood and used in the crown colony of Hong Kong during periods of intense labor strikes and anti-British protests in the 1960′s. These wooden rounds were deemed "too dangerous" for use in Northern Ireland, so hard rubber was used instead, with no less lethality however. A case in point: Emma Groves, an Irish Catholic, was sitting in her home one evening when British soldiers were conducting raids in the area. Emma was apparently playing the song 'Four Green Fields' loudly on her record player when a British soldier fired a rubber bullet through the window from about 10 feet away striking Emma in the face. She was blinded.

Although official regulations stated that rubber bullets should be fired from no less than 20 meters and at the ground in front of the target in order to minimise damage and target the lower body, in practice they were often fired at close range at the upper body, including the head. Between 1970 and 1974, 55,000 of these were fired on the streets of Northern Ireland, virtually all of them at members of the Irish community and with little or no cause. The first fatality was an 11-year-old boy, shot from 5-6 metres. In what would become common practice among soldiers and police, a witness said a large 'D'-style battery had been used instead of the rubber bullet to increase its weight and impact.

In 1975 the 'rubber bullet' was replaced by the 'plastic bullet' because it was deemed to be less dangerous. In the next 11 years 14 Irish people were killed by these kinder, gentler plastic bullets fired by British forces. Throughout this period, the police on the 'mainland' (the rest of the UK) were banned from using any form of 'baton round' for crowd control. Maybe they thought the Irish had thicker skins than the English. In 1982, the European Parliament banned the use of plastic bullets by any European national security forces, but the British security forces ignored the ban when it came to the Irish and continued using them.

All of which brings me to the point. In response to the recent apparent breakdown of the rule of law and three successive nights of rioting, looting and burning by residents of London's suburbs, the British Metropolitan police (via the government) have said they will use plastic bullets against Londoners if they continue to expose the fact that life in the UK is a lot less pleasant than Midsomer Murders would have us believe.

On that point; the UK, and London in particular, had this coming for a long time. The British political and social elite, through their greed and incompetence, have successfully 'bred' millions of poor, uneducated and frustrated Britishers. Members of 'minority' communities (i.e. non-whites) are regularly 'racially profiled' and abused and harassed in the street by police and left in no doubt that the 'system' does not work for them the way it works for the more 'socially upwardly mobile' and affluent. When we add years of corporate poisoning (arguably by design) via brain-jellifying 'frankenfoods' to the mix, we have a recipe for disaster, sooner or later. It's total disenfranchisement by other, more covert (and significantly more damaging) means.

In light of that, there's something that caught my attention about the recent 'disturbances'. I've noticed that, while the British police have no problem harassing people on an individual and daily basis in the street, over the past few nights they seem to have been under orders to just stand around and allow the looting and burning to proceed unchallenged. So, are we dealing with another example of high-level incompetence, or could there be some other more insidious scheme playing out? Something along the lines of 'stoke the fires of social unrest among a certain demographic and then stand back and allow the rest of the middle and upper class 'whiteys' be 'utterly appalled' at the anti-social behavior of the rioters'. Divide and conquer, or just 'divide and screw up the whole world'.

Anyway, here's a short video, with some very pertinent comments from a man who appears to know what he's talking about, but which also left me 'utterly appalled' at the attitude of the interviewer. Don't miss the maddeningly obtuse 'knock on effect' discussion among the media whores at the end.