Liebe Freundinnen und Freunde,

mit den weltweiten Protesten am 15. Oktober fiel der Startschuss zu einer neuen Bewegung. Der Zorn gegen Bankenmacht, Demokratieabbau und Sozialraub wächst: Seit Beginn der Finanzkrise 2008 haben die Regierungen die Kosten systematisch auf die Mehrheit der Bevölkerung abgewälzt, zu Gunsten der großen Banken und der Vermögenden.
Wir fordern: Die Politik muss den Interessen der Menschen, nicht Profitinteressen dienen! Deshalb wollen wir am 12. November mit vielen tausenden Menschen das Frankfurter Bankenviertel und das Berliner Regierungsviertel umzingeln und verlangen von der Politik grundlegende, wirksame Veränderungen.

Wir sind empört und wir sind viele – gemeinsam machen wir mit der Umzingelung unsere Forderungen deutlich:
Banken entmachten! Reichtum umverteilen! Demokratie erkämpfen!
Sei auch Du, seien auch Sie dabei!

- Dabei sein!
Aktuelle Informationen zu den Aktionen in Frankfurt und Berlin finden sich unter http://www.attac.de/umzingeln.

- Weitersagen!
Wir wollen zeigen: Wir sind viele! Bitte diese Mail deshalb an alle Freundinnen und Freunde, Bekannte, Verwandte, Nachbarn oder Kolleginnen w eiterleiten, die vielleicht auch nicht mehr länger tatenlos bleiben möchten.

Damit die doppelte Umzingelung als eindrucksvolle und wirksame Aktion gelingen kann, brauchen wir Deine und Ihre Unterstützung!

Mit herzlichen Grüßen

Jutta Sundermann / Vorbereitungsgruppe Umzingelung

P.S. Wann, wenn nicht jetzt? Wir wagen es, eine große Aktion in kurzer Zeit zu stemmen. Deine und Ihre Spende kann helfen, die Umzingelung und die breite Mobilisierung dafür auch finanziell zu bewältigen.

The crowd gathered outside Chalk Farm tube station at 1am on Tuesday morning was representative of those who had been at the frontline of other riots over the previous 72 hours.

Anyone who has witnessed the disturbances up close will know there is no simple answer to the question: who are the rioters? Attempts to use simple categorisations to describe the looters belies the complex make-up of those who have been participating.

Some who have been victims of the looting resent attempts to rationalise or give meaning to what they perceive as the mindless thuggery of an “underclass”. Others want an explanation of who has been taking part – and why.

In the broadest sense, most of those involved have been young men from poor areas. But the generalisation cannot go much further than that. It can’t be said that they are largely from one racial group. Both young men and women have joined in.

Take events in Chalk Farm, north London. First the streets contained people of all backgrounds sprinting off with bicycles looted from Evans Cycles. Three Asian men in their 40s, guarding a newsagent, discussed whether they should also take advantage of the apparent suspension of law.

“If we go for it now, we can get a bike,” said one. “Don’t do it,” said another. Others were not so reticent; a white woman and a man emerged carrying a bike each. A young black teenager, aged about 14, came out smiling, carrying another bike, only for it be snatched from him by an older man.

They were just some of the crowd of about 100 who had gathered on the corner; a mix of the curious and angry, young and old. It was impossible to distinguish between thieves, bystanders and those who simply wanted to cause damage.

A group of about 20 youths were wielding scaffolding poles taken from a nearby building site. They used their makeshift weapons, along with bricks and stolen bottles of wine, to intermittently attack passing motorists or smash bus shelters. A man in a slim suit stood on the corner recording the violence on his mobile phone.

Most of those he was filming had covered their faces. One had a full balaclava with holes cut out only for the eyes and mouth. “Is that you, bruv?” an older man, aged about 30, hands in pockets, asked the man in the balaclava. Recognising his friend, he laughed and added: “Fuck. Don’t stand near me – you’re going to get me arrested.”

Seconds later there was a smash as the minicab office around the corner was broken into. Teenagers swarmed in, shouting: “Bwap, bwap, bwap.”

The arrival of a line of riot police from Camden, where a branch of Sainsbury’s and clothing stores had been looted an hour earlier, signalled it was time for everyone to move on.

But there was no rush; the group knew from experience that police would hold back for the time being. “Keep an eye on the Feds, man,” said one youth.

Overheard snippets of conversation gave an insight into how the disparate groups were deciding where to go.

One man said: “Hampstead, bruv. Let’s go rob Hampstead.” Another, looking at his BlackBerry, said: “Kilburn, it’s happening in Kilburn and Holloway.” A third added: “The whole country is burning, man.”

And as multi-ethnic areas from London to Birmingham, Liverpool and Bristol burned, a myth was being dispelled: that so-called “black youths” are largely behind such violence.

In Tottenham on Saturday many of those who gathered at the police station to protest against the shooting of Mark Duggan were, like him, black. But others were Asian and white.

By the following day, as the looting spread to other north London suburbs, there appeared to have been a slight shift in the demographic, which started to look younger. In Enfield most of those who gathered in the town centre were white. The youngest looked about 10-years-old.

Those taking part in the battles in Hackney’s Pembury estate on Monday included many women. Teenage girls helped carry debris to form the burning barricades or made piles of rocks.

One, with a yellow scarf across her face, was seemingly at the forefront. She helped set a motorbike alight, walking away with her hands aloft. Other women shouted instructions from the windows of nearby flats and houses.

“Croydon is burning down,” shouted one woman who looked about 40, from her flat above a shop. Another warned the crowd when police were spotted nearby.

The mix was visible around the same time several miles south, near Peckham High Street. The fact that many youths covered their faces with masks made identifying them almost impossible.

A few young men sculpted impromptu masks out of stolen pharmacy bags, making them resemble members of the youth wing of the Ku Klux Klan. An older girl with them reached into a bag and pulled out a giant bag of Haribo sweets. The atmosphere was akin to a school sports day or a visit to a rowdy open-air cinema.

A few of them tried in vain to start a fire. The girl handing out sweets said: “Why don’t they do the hair shop, have you seen the products they keep in the back?”

When another group finished ransacking a pawnbroker’s and started cleaning out a local fashion boutique, an angry young black woman berated one of them. “You’re taking the piss, man. That woman hand-stitches everything, she’s built that shop up from nothing. It’s like stealing from your mum.”

A girl holding a looted wedding dress smiled sheepishly, stuck for anything to say.

Jay Kast, 24, a youth worker from East Ham who has witnessed rioting across London over the last three nights, said he was concerned that black community leaders were wrongly identifying a problem “within”.

“I’ve seen Turkish boys, I’ve seen Asian boys, I’ve seen grown white men,” he said. “They’re all out there taking part.” He recognised an element of opportunism in the mass looting but said an underlying cause was that many young people felt “trapped in the system”. “They’re disconnected from the community and they just don’t care,” he said.

In some senses the rioting has been unifying a cross-section of deprived young men who identify with each other, he added.

Kast gave the example of how territorial markers which would usually delineate young people’s residential areas – known as ‘endz’, ‘bits’ and ‘gates’ – appear to have melted away.

“On a normal day it wouldn’t be allowed – going in to someone else’s area. A lot of them, on a normal day, wouldn’t know each other and they might be fighting,” Kast said.

“Now they can go wherever they want. They’re recognising themselves from the people they see on the TV [rioting]. This is bringing them together.”

A late evening walk down the Walworth Road revealed that the Argos and various electrical stores had been smashed up. Police were sealing off banks and retail outlets with tape. A platoon of youths came in from Peckham in the early evening, a man still sweeping up the remains of his shop window said. They cordoned off the road before they began looting, which suggests some level of criminal organisation.

A middle-aged Afro-Caribbean man explained that some young people were targeting Asian and Afghani shops, the result of petty local disagreements. And there’s no denying that a small minority are simply out to hurt people. A Chinese student, the same man said, had been set upon by a gang and beaten quite badly, simply for taking a picture.

All the same, there’s more than brute criminality here. When incidents like this happen the authorities are fond of saying that troublemakers have been bussed in from outside.

But there’s none of that here. Neither is there any sign of the anti-globalisation or anarchist crowds.

This is unadulterated, indigenous anger and ennui. It’s a provocation, a test of will and a hamfisted two-finger salute to the authorities.

Additional reporting by Mustafa Khalili

Many in the UK are reeling after days of images of brazen thefts and wanton damage during the riots, but just where is the tipping point when people think they can start looting?

There have been some extraordinary scenes in London and other cities this week, from burning buildings and running street battles, to people unashamedly walking into a shop and leaving with a flat-screen television under their arms.

Many of the looters have not bothered to cover their faces as they raided electrical stores, sports shops and off-licences.

Some have even posed for a picture afterwards, proudly showing off their haul and posting the images on social-networking sites.

Prof John Pitts, a criminologist who advises several London local authorities on young people and gangs, says some of those taking the lead in the looting will be known to the authorities, while others are swept along.
Car burning Rioters have set fire to cars and buses

He says looting makes “powerless people suddenly feel powerful” and that is “very intoxicating”.

“The world has been turned upside down. The youngsters are used to adults in authority telling them they cannot do this or this will happen. Then they do it and nothing happens.”

He says a large number of youngsters are involved in these riots because it is the school holidays and the nights are longer.

Numbers are all important in a riot and the tipping point comes when the rioters feel in control, he adds.

“You cannot riot on your own. A one-man riot is a tantrum. At some point the bigger crowds confronting the police realise that they are in control.”
Psychopathic tendencies

Psychologists argue that a person loses their moral identity in a large group, and empathy and guilt – the qualities that stop us behaving like criminals – are corroded.

“Morality is inversely proportional to the number of observers. When you have a large group that’s relatively anonymous, you can essentially do anything you like,” according to Dr James Thompson, honorary senior lecturer in psychology at University College London.

“Part of that is down to safety in numbers. There may only be 20 or 30 people who are leading the trouble but the presence of several hundred onlookers makes it far less likely they’ll get caught.”

He rejects the notion that some of the looters are passively going with the flow once the violence has taken place, insisting there is always a choice to be made.

Watching people getting away with it can act as a motivation for others to start looting, says psychologist Dr Lance Workman.

“Humans are the best on the planet at imitating. And we tend to imitate what is successful. If you see that people are walking out of a shop with a widescreen TV and trainers, a certain kind of person thinks why shouldn’t I do that?”

Workman argues that some of those taking part may adopt an ad hoc moral code in their minds – “these rich people have things I don’t have so it’s only right that I take it”.

But there’s evidence to suggest that gang leaders tend to have psychopathic tendencies, he says:
“If you compare it to the riots in the 1980s, there’s a lot more stuff you can loot easily”
Dr Paul Bagguley Sociologist

This idea of a mob mentality can be found in football hooliganism. Former Manchester United hooligan Tony O’Reilly, says there is a similarity between this week’s looting and the football violence he took part in for three decades.

It boils down to the buzz, he says. “It’s an excitement. You can’t take away that thrill – the roar of the crowd. That sense of a group of men, something’s happening.”

For most, the motivation is the thrill, with the “free stuff” just a bonus. But not for the ringleaders who manipulate the mob to target high-value shops.

He recalls a rampage through Swiss Cottage in the 1980s when Manchester United fans ended up looting a jewellery store. “The mob itself wasn’t looking for jewellers but a few of the bright criminals used the mob and bystanders and the mob joined in because of the buzz.

‘Just thuggery’

For law-abiding citizens setting fire to a bus or stealing from a shop is simply unthinkable. But academics say socio-economic factors cannot be left out of the equation.

Dr Paul Bagguley, a sociologist at the University of Leeds, says young men are usually engaged in confrontation with the police, while looters tend to include young children and women.
Locksmiths with smashed window Shops and homes have been damaged

“It’s very likely that a lot of people stealing the stuff would not have done it before. There’s a sense in these situations that the normal rules don’t apply.”

He says while looting occurs in most riots, it has dominated this week and they could be called the “consumer society riots“.

“If you compare it to the riots in the 1980s, there’s a lot more stuff you can loot easily, such as portable electronic gadgets, mobile phones and flatscreen TVs.

“For a lot of looters, it’s just opportunity but it also expresses a sense of how else am I going to get a hold of these things?”

Prof Pitts says riots are complex events and cannot be explained away as “just thuggery”.

They have to be seen against the backdrop of “growing discontents” about youth unemployment, education opportunities and income disparities.

“They have no career to think about. They are not ‘us’. They live out there on the margins, enraged, disappointed, capable of doing some awful things.

A social psychologist’s view

For most people looting is opportunistic. And greed is certainly a factor.

But some people approach this situation not necessarily with bad intentions. They are swept away by the crowd, for a variety of reasons highlighted by social psychologists.

One concept is called deindividuation. Normally people’s behaviour is guided by their own identity and values, which tell us to not do certain things – like taking things without paying for them.

But in some situations they take on the values of the group. Our own internal values and norms become less salient.

The second idea is called emergent norm theory. Most of these people have probably not been in a riot like this one before. They are unsure of what the appropriate behaviour is.

So they look at what other people are doing. And if other people are doing this, it suggests it’s normal. Or at least maybe it is something that I can get away with.

Source: Jason Nier, associate professor of psychology, Connecticut College, speaking to BBC World Service

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14463452

The concert in question occurred on Friday the 25th March 2011, in the “Helene-Nathan” library in Berlin-Neukölln. The artists, Polynushka perform under the sub-title: “Authentic Russian Folklore in Urban Culture” (NB. the original German sub-title is “Authentische Russische Folklore in der Großstadt“, a more accurate translation is “Authentic Russian Folklore in the Metropolis”). At least two of the members of Polynushka are active ethnomusicologists and the group works in conjunction with the Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv (which in turn is a part of the inappropriately titled Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin-Dahlem) so they are quite qualified to notice the cultural displacement that occurs when performing music of a particular tradition outside of its original context. Assuming the group are aware, they still accepted the invitation from the organisers of HN’s quite drably titled project “Musik der Kulturen” or “Music of Cultures”. I assume they accepted for social reasons, i.e. to donate a piece of culture to a locally and publicly funded community organisation because artistically I found the concert to be damaging to them. To begin with; the venue. HN is a rather large library however the audience was crammed into a side room, the seating plan showing little consideration for the given geometry of the room. An organiser informed me the artists requested a semi circle to perform in, but the semi circle was set off-centre along the long-side of the room, therefore meaning that the opposite end to off-centre semi circle developed into a chaotic mix of irregular rows of chairs, and people tetris-ing their way between the stacked up tables that had been moved to make space for the near side to the semi circle. The room in itself also had faults. The library is located on the top floor of the shopping centre; Neukölln Arcaden, a capitalist monstrosity on the Karl-Mark Str. Therefore it’s an easy assumption to make that when the architects were discussing building materials, and especially for the library, acoustic resonance wasn’t as high on their list of priorities as say, cost effective, light but sound-proof, easily (and again cost effectively) repairable/maintainable. That’s possibly why every note sung (additionally in a very full room) fell flat on the cheap carpet instead of gently colouring the air as tones mixed on their travels from voice box to ear. I really felt for the group as they attempted to sing with gusto and unbridled intense Russian emotion, only to hear the fruits of their labours to be a barely audible, amateurish presentation. To blame everything on the acoustics is obviously speculative, the group had faults themselves other than choosing to perform in this terrible location. Their chosen repertory was, according to my Russian-speaking companions, rather bizarre. The folk songs were mostly old Russian children’s songs, seemingly randomly interspersed with liturgical songs and texts from, culminating in a mock passover ceremony Easter cry [thanks to Berlinsky for the correction] (Христос Воскресе! Воистину Воскресе!) which some Orthodox Christian members of my group found rather ridiculous and offensive. From a purely musical perspective it was interesting to be able to compare the harmonic variations between sacred and secular song, however the question still remains whether a live concert is the place to display such variations.

We then come to, and most bizarrely, the general atmosphere and the audience. As in many community based (and free) events, the mix of types in an audience will inevitably be more extreme than a more traditional concert setting where an average type will usually be perceived. Let’s contrast the concert under discussion with a hypothetical more traditional setting. If Polynushka were performing their sacred repertory within say, a Russian Orthodox church, then we would expect the audience to consist of mostly Russians, who would be to some extent religious. In a more traditional concert setting for the folk repertory, for example a hall or concert space (hopefully without carpets and polystyrene ceilings) which was frequented on a prepaid-ticket basis, the audience would probably be again, mostly Russian or interested in folk music. In both hypothetical scenarios, we expect that the audience has some prior knowledge of Russian culture, Orthodox Christian doctrine or the folk music Europe. In the HN concert, the audience was an eclectic mix of obviously Russians and folk fans, but also people who came to the concert via the library, i.e. those who aren’t particularly in-tune with this tradition, consider themselves either a culture-vulture, want to support the library, or simply are up for anything that’s free. This part of the audience had no point of reference for the tradition that was about to be presented and therefore a very strange atmosphere ensued. Here, I beg of the reader not to misinterpret my musings that people shouldn’t try something new and exoticout, of course they should, in fact I would be extremely upset if the concert’s audience would have lacked dare I say, outsiders, I’m purely attempting to highlight the common failings that occur through poor organisation of WM concerts, i.e. a lack of contextual understanding by the majority of the audience which is the principal responsibility of the organisers. Civility wasn’t lacking, well most of the time, the open door policy meant that there was a constant stream of traffic in and out of the room as people tried it out and then promptly left. Also some members seemed strangely preoccupied with their own relationship (and tying each other’s shoelaces – I said it was a strange situation) throughout the whole concert, much to the other audience member’s disgust and typically German tutting, lip-pursing and brow-furrowing. Add into the mix a very hot room with a particularly stuffy-smell, a few babies, small children, and the typical uncertainty as to whether we should all applaud now or not, then what results is a rather obscure situation.

I’d like to think that Polynushka as a group consider the aforementioned factors too, and as their sub-title suggests they think of their concerts not only displays of a tradition but also social experiments into transmission and audience perception in der Großstadt.

and now because I once gained a “copywrite strike” for a posting a video I believed to be under a creative commons license (with me in it) which wasn’t I can’t post videos as “unlisted”, ever. I need to create a new account, but with a different google email address, which I don’t have or want. I also can’t log in directly from the youtube site as the address I’m using, my university one which uses google mail. The password isn’t accepted for some reason so I have to change my password from within MUSE, which I also don’t want to because all my university passwords are synchronised. Why do I get the feeling sometimes google are trying to control my life a little bit too much…