Did not see that coming.

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mdsimpson92
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Did not see that coming.

Post by mdsimpson92 » Wed May 22, 2013 8:29 am

Julia: It's all... a dream...
Spike Spiegel: Yeah... just a dream...

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Metacrock
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Re: Did not see that coming.

Post by Metacrock » Thu May 23, 2013 5:49 am

that for real? gotta see what QT says about it.
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QuantumTroll
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Re: Did not see that coming.

Post by QuantumTroll » Thu May 23, 2013 9:58 am

No time today for a real post, but here's a quickie:

This isn't like rioting around Paris or anything, or race riots in Michigan or Chicago. It's a maybe a couple dozen of disenfranchised youth who are acting badly at night. Life can be shitty even if you have food and a roof over your head, because you're not made to feel like a participant in society.

I'll have more for you some other time.

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Metacrock
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Re: Did not see that coming.

Post by Metacrock » Fri May 24, 2013 6:43 am

QuantumTroll wrote:No time today for a real post, but here's a quickie:

This isn't like rioting around Paris or anything, or race riots in Michigan or Chicago. It's a maybe a couple dozen of disenfranchised youth who are acting badly at night. Life can be shitty even if you have food and a roof over your head, because you're not made to feel like a participant in society.

I'll have more for you some other time.
To think, these guys used to be Vikings! :mrgreen:
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QuantumTroll
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Re: Did not see that coming.

Post by QuantumTroll » Fri May 24, 2013 8:53 am

No, actually. Most of these youths are immigrants themselves or have immigrant parents. If you have the wrong sort of last name in Sweden, then you have much more difficulty in finding a job. This exacerbates a youth unemployment that is already high, so in these neighborhoods up to 3/4 youths have nothing to do and see few prospects in their future. They are a new lower class, poor and without power. The actual working class in Sweden is now solid middle class, and all the unions and political parties that used to help the poor middle class is still serving the workers, using the same old slogans and sentiments that were successful before. This means that there is no organization, no party, no union, nothing at all for the new lower class. Combine that with a quiet (and not so quiet) racism, and the reaction is totally understandable.

In addition, ubiquitous recording devices are playing an unexpectedly devious role in this. Newspapers of course pay money for good pictures and videos, and the faster the better. If an unemployed kid can get 4000 kr (over $500) for a couple of pictures of a burning car, it seems like a pretty good chance that at some point a car is going to be set on fire. Stupid, of course, but the streets of Husby are reportedly swarming with journalists giving out their phone numbers to interested kids.

Lastly, there's a childish aspect to it as well. Boys from "tough" neighborhoods like to go around and feel "tougher" than other guys, so there's a competition about which neighborhood is the "toughest". The rates of crimes like armed robbery and violence that are a problem in real tough neighborhoods are still lower in these suburbs than in city center, which is not considered "dangerous" in the same way. The perception of crime is very different from the actual incidence of crime in Swedish cities. Burning cars is very serious, of course, but to stupid kids it's just a game.

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