no comment, just sayin'. [3]

.. and to think i just watched v for vendetta last night. again.

pretty much everybody knows how this weekend went in london, and, more recently, the start of the week in birmingham, nottingham, bristol, and liverpool.

but, for the ones who live in nauru, here's a (very) quick and broad update: mark duggan, a 29-year-old man from tottenham, was shot to death last thursday during a police covert operation that went bad (here's an idea of who mark duggan was). from this, a peaceful demonstration in his memory led to violent clashes with the police forces, in various neighbourhoods and boroughs of london, and, later, in birmingham and liverpool. aside from the demonstrations against police brutality and the fact that "there's something terribly wrong with this country", we're talking serious felonies here: arson, vandalism, burglary, theft, grand theft, robbery, street violence, and so on.

from what i gathered, around 334 civilians were arrested and around 45 police officers were injured these last days in what the uk's deputy prime minister, nick clegg, referred to as being "a total, utterly unacceptable pattern of people basically taking matters into their own hands, and inflicting violence, looting, thieving in a way which is completely unrelated to the death of Mr. Duggan last Thursday. It is totally and utterly out of order." the material and financial losses after - actually, still during - this entire thing are yet to be calculated.

and now, for the good sides.

yes, there are two.

first: aside from the already 3,500 police officers that are on duty, 2,500 more volunteered to work overtime (probably meaning 24/7, under the circumstances) to help calming things down and restoring order and peace on the streets. this is from the authorities' side.

0250 zulu update, from The Big Picture (check out the link for some formidable photos):

Facing unending rioting that has spread to other cities, London deployed 16,000 police in the largest show of force in the city's history. British Prime Minister David Cameron cut short a holiday in Italy to return home to deal with the widening crisis. Army units are standing by to help restore order. To date, 563 people have been arrested, and over 100 police officers injured.

second: would you please take a look at this link: it's a community/government-tagged page on facebook and it's called Reclaim London.

here's the description, plain and simple: "Reclaiming our streets from the looters and arsonists!" - right now, 1,997 people are on it. bear in mind that this is just one page that i saw on one of my facebook friends' stream, there are probably dozens more, but you should also bear in mind that there are twitter and facebook streams and updates that the arsonists and thieves used to coordinate and communicate between them.

0139 zulu update: another 5 facebook pages that i just saw on Reclaim London: United Against the London Riots, CROYDON CLEAN UP CREW, Post Riot Clean-up - Let's help clean up London, London Riot Clean-up #riotcleanup - Help Clean Up London (there's a twitter hashtag, as well), and Supporting the Met Police against the London rioters, a page which has no less than 846,784 members, at this very moment.

all these people are there for the same reason those 16,000 police officers work overtime these days: to clean up the streets, to alert and cooperate with the authorities about the felonies, and to put an end to this mayhem. and, from what i see on the streams, it looks like it's working. these people are organized, strong, smart, decided and rising in numbers:

Whilst there is no problem with venting the purpose of the group is to see as a community how we can help people pick themselves up from this madness. Cleaning, support, clothing and being vigilant.

this is great britain. boiling blood, pride, freedom, fights, honour, backbones and intelligence. and, because it's a no comment, just sayin' article (and, by the number of the updates, it tends to transform into a post pentru presă article), i won't write my opinions on how, why, who, what if, politics, accumulated tensions, connections between the global economy, stock markets, jobs, families, and so on.

p.s. this is my first post in which i used the oxford comma. i probably did it wrong.
p.p.s. picture copyrights: press on them and look at their links, except for two, one being a screenshot i took from the Reclaim London facebook page, and the second being taken from this guy.