Posted on February 21, 2015March 1, 2020 by Toria — Leave a comment

Chelsea Headhunters Racism caught on camera in Paris Underground

Taken from The Guardian newspaper We’re racist, we’re racist. And that’s the way we like it.” Just in case there was any possibility that the group of Chelsea hooligans were preventing a man from boarding a train on the Paris Métro for a reason more obscure than the colour of his skin, they helpfully illustrated their actions with a chant. They are racist.

They like being racist. What further justification than their liking of racism could they possibly need? It’s quite menacing, I think, the counterpoint in that chant, with the understated use of the word “like” confirming that half the fun is in embracing a powerfully destructive and hateful identity in a casual way, as if it’s merely a mild preference. These guys don’t feel passionately racist. It’s just something they “like”. No big deal. What’s all the fuss about?

Chelsea and the U.N condemn fans who pushed black man off Paris Métro Read more Are these men still finding their self-identification as racists enjoyable, now that a fellow passenger has filmed them in their petty aggression and taken it to the media? These men will be identified, banned from attending Chelsea matches at the very least, and perhaps face with criminal charges.

In the meantime, we can be assured of further why-oh-why discussion as to why football should continue to attract racists, despite the game’s years of concerted effort to disassociate itself from racism. Maybe I’m missing something here, but it always seems to me that football support is all about feeling that you’re part of one group and are opposed to another group.

In that way it surely shares at least some of the mentality of the racist. Then there’s the even more tiresome question of why these racist men support Chelsea even though it has so many black players. Yes. Why would a racist enjoy cynically exploiting the skills of black people? Such a baffling mystery. When, in human history, has that ever happened? No doubt these men are now feeling that they are the victims – victims of the political correctness that they think it so clever to defy.

It’s a shame, in a way, that the term “political correctness” even exists, that being against ignorant prejudice and vicious hatred can be characterised not as civilised but as “political”, not as right but as “correct”. The phrase implies heavily that a set of rules that should be followed has been brought into being in some arbitrary, faceless, undemocratic power-grab. The saddest thing is that men such as these men, who “like” hating strangers of whom they know nothing, really do feel that they are the ones being oppressed by a sinister ideology, when all that’s oppressing them is their own nasty, small-minded resentment.
By Deborah Orr

Not undermining, the fact a gang of drunks abusing a rail passenger is a pathetic act, its probably worth looking at the root of where the British football hooligan comes from. The rough end of the council estate. Brought up on a gang mentality. Has much changed in 30 years? Perhaps only the colour of skin

But in the scheme of things, should it really warrant such a high level of BBC media coverage Does anyone remember this being broadcast so loudly?

Posted on February 20, 2015March 1, 2020 by Toria — Leave a comment

Facebook deletes The Great Skinhead Reunion Group

It seems once again the corporate dictatorship, which is Facebook, has deleted our community group page, for no apparent reason. We at subcultz , have been building the Reunion event over the last 5 years, with no problems at all. We have successfully mixed all non political skinhead music genres together, and are seeing a mass of skinheads, and ex skinheads, young and old, from across the globe coming the Brighton every year. The most frustrating thing, is there seems no right of appeal, or even contact ability, with whoever it was, that pressed the delete button. We have lost our event page and hundreds of photos, held on the page. Its completely against democracy, to take peoples right of free speech and communication away.

The Skinhead Reunion itself is doing really well. We have the best reggae DJ’s on the planet booked up again, We have around 9 bands, and presales tickets are up over 150, on 2014. If anyone out there knows of a way to communicate with facebook please let me know. But otherwise we have to just grit our teeth and keep moving forward. We have no interest at all in Bullshit skinhead politics of left or right. We are here to party and have fun. Everyone is welcome, from whatever background you come, To meet and have a good time, drink some beer and listen to great music. Keep the Faith

However much i hate to have to keep relying on facebook, this is our subcultz page

Great Skinhead Reunion page

Whatever Facebooks motivation was to delete us, the most ironic thing, is that Their big Brother HQ is in Dublin. And we have a young band booked to play from there, called the Dodgy Few. we have Skinheads who lived through the troubles in Northern Ireland, from both sides of the sectarian divide, drinking together, with Ex British soldiers. We have created something undreamed of 25 years ago. When the powers that be, had the working classes killing eachother, in a civil war.

What happens when you ‘report abuse’? The secretive Facebook censors who decide what is – and what isn’t abuse

A report from the Independant newspaper UK

The first thing that catches the eye of a visitor entering the lobby of Facebook’s European headquarters is the array of motivational posters stapled to the far wall. “Proceed And Be Bold”, orders one. “What Would You Do If You Weren’t Afraid?” asks another. “Done is Better Than Perfect”.

Stepping inside the gleaming, jagged glass building in Dublin’s docklands is like passing through a portal to San Francisco. Staff wearing hoodies and jeans and clutching Apple laptops negotiate their way through an obstacle course of low-hanging Frank Gehry lights, orange beanbags and ping pong tables.

But appearances can be deceptive. The joyful pop soundtrack in the canteen and the urban art adorning the walls belies the fact that some of the hundreds of people employed here are carrying out some very serious – and very sensitive – work.

To mark Safer Internet Day on Tuesday, The Independent became the first newspaper to be given access to Facebook’s Community Operations team: the men and women tasked with responding to reports of abuse by the site’s users. They are trained to cover everything from low-level spam all the way up to serious cyberbullying, hate speech, terrorist threats and suicidal cries for help.

Dublin is Facebook’s most important headquarters outside California. The Community Operations team based here does not just cover Europe, but also examines reports sent in by millions of users across the Middle East, Africa and large parts of Latin America. In the words of Sonia Flynn, the managing director of Facebook Ireland, they are “the front line between Facebook and the people who use Facebook”.

She adds that while the “vast majority” of reports received require no further action, when a serious concern is raised the team needs to act quickly and decisively. For this reason, a Community Operations person covering Spain cannot simply get away with speaking fluent Spanish – they must also have a good cultural knowledge of the country. Forty-four different nationalities are represented in the Dublin team alone.

“We put emphasis on hiring people from the different countries with the right language expertise and cultural understanding,” says Flynn. “When someone creates a piece of content – whether it’s a photo or a comment – there’s what’s said and what’s meant. That’s why it’s really important for us to have people who understand not just the language, but the culture of the country that they’re supporting.”

The offices of Facebook in Dublin, where the community operations teams is based
In the past, Facebook has been criticised for lacking the human touch in its interactions with its ever-growing army of users (at last count, there were 1.39 billion of them across the world). A notable example occurred at the end of last year, when American web designer Eric Meyer highlighted what he described as the site’s “inadvertent algorithmic cruelty”.

Mr Meyer had been invited to try out the site’s Year in Review feature – an automatically generated list of his Facebook “highlights” from 2014 – only to be confronted by a picture of his daughter Rebecca, who died earlier in the year. The product manager responsible for the feature later emailed him to personally apologise.

Content policy manager Ciara Lyden, who used to work on the Community Operations team, says she often saw first-hand how the public perceive Facebook. “Every so often I’d help someone out with a query that they had, and then they’d be like: ‘Thanks – if you’re a person or a robot, I don’t know’. I’d have to write back to tell them that I really am a person,” she says.

While she admits that Facebook could “do more” to show its human side, she points out that the site has to be built around the fact that it has more than a billion users who are online 24 hours a day. The company has put a lot of effort into what it calls “compassion research”, taking advice from academics at Yale’s Centre for Emotional Intelligence on how to help users interact with each other so they can resolve their differences without Facebook taking any action at all.

Previously, if one user said something that another found offensive, Facebook would simply look at whether the content broke any rules and if it did, take it down. Now it can act as a sort of digital counsellor, giving the offended person the chance to explain to the other why they were hurt.

Facebook could “do more” to show its human side (Getty Images)
Instead of just typing into a blank box, the offended user is given a set of possible phrases to describe how they feel. The choice depends on their age: a teenager will see words more likely to be in their vocabulary (“mean”), whereas an adult will see more sophisticated options (“inappropriate”, “harassing”).

The approach seems to be working, as in the vast majority of cases, the person responsible for the post deletes it of their own accord. “In the real world, if you upset me I’d likely go and tell you that you’ve upset me, and we’re trying to make that mirror what happens through our reporting flows,” explains Flynn.

However, the company is keen to stress that every single report of abuse is read and acted upon by a human being, not a computer – a fact that might surprise most users. The system is constantly monitored by staff based across four time zones in California, Texas, Dublin and Hyderabad in India, so there is never a “night shift” with fewer staff on hand.

When a user clicks “report”, it is graded for its severity and guided to the right team. “If there’s a risk of real-world harm – someone who is clearly cutting themselves, or bullying, anything touching child safety in general, any credible threat would be prioritised above everything else,” says Julie de Bailliencourt, Facebook’s safety policy manager for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Although she says the company does have a set of response times by which it aims to help people, it will not make them public – or divulge how many abuse reports it receives overall. Security around the Community Operations team is also strict: to protect users’ privacy, a sign near where they sit reads “No Visitors Beyond This Point”.

Most reports are relatively benign. In Turkey, for example, every time the football team Galatasaray plays one of its big rivals, Facebook notices a spike in reports from supporters of both teams complaining about each other. The same is true of derby-day football matches in the UK.

Most Facebook reports are relatively benign (Getty Images)
“People tend to report things that they don’t like, not necessarily things that are abusive,” says de Bailliencourt, who has worked at Facebook for five years. “It’s not like we can pre-empt things, but we know that during big sporting events we’re going to have an increase.”

News events also cause spikes in abuse reports. In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attacks in France, a sudden surge in the number of controversial posts and heated debate resulted in more complaints. Or as de Bailliencourt puts it: “Anything that happens in the real world happens on Facebook at the same time.”

Very serious reports – such as someone threatening to kill themselves – are fast-tracked to the police or security services, she adds. “If we feel someone has taken some pills and they’ve posted on Facebook: ‘Goodbye world, that’s it, it’s the end’, we’re obviously not going to send them our usual supporting documentation – we need to go much faster.”

She adds that Facebook has “absolutely” saved people’s lives through swift intervention and has “equally as many good stories” as it does controversies, such as the row over its removal of breastfeeding pictures, which she describes as a “human mistake”. She says it is a myth that the more users that report something, the more likely it is to be removed. “One report is enough.”

Facebook has a clear code of conduct which users must respect, but there are always grey areas. Staff are also aware that a decision to remove something from the site – or leave it up – can be far-reaching, like a powerful court setting a global precedent. Under pressure, the multi-cultural team often has heated arguments.

“We don’t hire people to just press the same button X amount of times per hour,” says de Bailliencourt. “We hire people with very different backgrounds, and they sometimes disagree. It feels almost like the UN sometimes.”

Post deleted: Abuse reports on Facebook

Breastfeeding pictures

In 2011, Facebook deleted the page of a breastfeeding support group called The Leaky B@@b, informing its founder Jessica Martin-Weber that she had “violated our terms of use”. Facebook said later the deletion had been a “mistake” and the page was reinstated. The site says it generally tries to “respect people’s right to share content of personal importance”.

Inciting violence

A Facebook page calling for Palestinians to take to the streets in a violent uprising against Israel was removed in 2011. The page, entitled “Third Palestinian Intifada”, had already attracted the condemnation of the Israeli government, which said it was inciting violence against Jews. Facebook said while the page began as a call for “peaceful protest”, it had descended into “direct calls for violence or expressions of hate”.

Free speech

Facebook refused to remove a “fan” page dedicated to James Holmes, the man accused of shooting 12 people dead at a cinema in Colorado in 2012. Facebook said the page “while incredibly distasteful, doesn’t violate our terms” as it was within the boundaries of free speech.

Suicide prevention

In 2013, New York police intercepted a teenager who was on his way to jump off a bridge after he posted a message on Facebook. When officers were alerted to post, they sent him a message on the site and handed out his photo to nearby patrols. He called the police station and was taken to hospital.

Skinhead.. 2 Me, it began in 82-83 (for me ).. at age 14-15.. my mothers an alcoholic, father unknown.. we were kids on the street, who dident ave a chance against those, back in school, whom had everything, famillies… we formed our own… we were learnt by nature 2 stick together whatever the cost.. cause we knew, we were the ones to pay the price,, i started of as punk, but oi kicked in and i was hooked.. somehow, IM SO GLAD TO SEE ALL THESE YOUNGSTERS OF today, hookin up.. it is with great sense of pride, really.. im myself close to the 50s now… n i dont fuckin regret a minute of it, if i could re- lived my life.. I WOULD!!! At THAT time… in and out of trouble was the only thing we had, i can only speak for my self here, but i know, that trough time, back in that day.. a hell of a lot of us.. came from broken homes, broken families etc.. AND WE WERE ABOUT TO FORM OUR OWN PATH, so to speak.. our own little FIRM.. at that time, i wouldent give a fuck, weither the kids were swung to metal.. or weither they were swung to reggae.. we simply had our own, and we were ready, to fuckin swing YOU, by the neck… brotherhood, pride and loyalty. and u know, well what… were still havent got that kind of recognizion, that we deserve, but on the other hand.. we never wanted it or even asked for it… at this very writing moment.. proud of my bruvs and sis… SKINHEAD TILL THE DAY I DIE!! This … The Great Skinhead Reunion.. Channels all that… through all generations, and different age groups, politics, etc… SKINHEADS MADE THIS ONE CLEAR.. That we can cellebrate the LIFE OF SKINHEAD and take pride in the fact, that we were, we are.. And no one EVER will bring us down or take the history off from us.. EVER!!.. The lost generation!! and ere we are.. Cheers.oioi. // Eddy// Sweden… ps See u all in June -15. Cheers. and double and tripple and a half.. 🙂

Eddy Nord. Sweden

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Posted on February 7, 2015March 1, 2020 by Toria — Leave a comment

Strength Thru Oi! Fitness Experiment

In 1981, Decca Records released Strength Thru Oi!, a compilation album featuring 22 bands associated with the Oi! offshoot of UK punk rock. The title was reportedly a play on Strength Through Joy, an early LP by the Scottish group the Skids, though some charged curator Gary Bushell with co-opting a popular Nazi slogan. Bushell denied the accusations, but either way, the record was meant to introduce Oi! as a style of music capable of invigorating listeners—fortifying their bodies, minds, and souls.

The title may have been tongue-in-cheek, but music and exercise have long gone hand-in-hand, and with that in mind, we asked three New York City fitness enthusiasts to experiment with an all-Oi! soundtrack during their workouts and help us answer the question of whether one truly can gain strength through Oi!

Our methods, it must be pointed out, were quasi-scientific at best, as this music is—and this is no knock—some of the absolute dumbest shit imaginable.

BACKGROUND (Edited by Subcultz)

In its original incarnation, British punk rock was deceptively simplistic. Genre figureheads the Clash and Sex Pistols were intelligent, self-aware 20-somethings who’d been to art school and attained a set of skills—squatting, figure drawing, discussing politics while drinking and speeding—that left them with few viable career options. Thanks to svengali managers like Malcolm McLaren and Bernie Rhodes, these and other unemployable dole collectors were able to form rock ‘n’ roll bands, and while the music was fast and loud—three-chord 50s rock played with all the anger and frustration you’d expect from underachieving young people—early punk anthems like “God Save the Queen” and “Career Opportunities” bristled with a covert idealism that belied the subculture’s nihilistic reputation.

As exciting and influential as it was, punk was artistically limiting, and by the late 70s, the music had run its course. The Sex Pistols broke up, the Clash branched out into classic styles like reggae and R&B, and other bands—the Damned, the Stranglers, etc.—plugged in synthesizers and joined the ranks of the emerging post-punk and new Wave groups. The music grew artsy and pretentious, and that led to the birth of Oi!—the only style of music whose name is always capitalized and followed with an exclamation point.

Influenced by groups like Sham 69. Angelic Upstarts and Cock Sparrer. 4Skins and Blitz made it real. Championed by members of the UK skinhead subculture—a movement emerged from the British council estates—Oi! is proudly working-class music. Its blunt, aggressive songs center on drinking, fighting, football , and, “Fuck Maggie thatcher, and her boys in Blue, A V’s up to the British class system. I’m not gonna waste my life working at your factory.” Musically, it was and is ’77-style punk stripped of all subtlety. Because the choruses sound like football chants, every song is an anthem, giving voice to the lives many young people were living in 1980’s Britain, Police harassment, and mass youth unemployment. Oi! gobs in the face of authority—the government, banks, the military, teachers, parents, people who don’t like Oi!—and that makes it adaptable and timeless. The music has permeated all corners of the globe, and “Oi! Oi! Oi!” sounds pretty much the same in any language.

In the USA Strength Thru Oi was used in experiments.

EXPERIMENTAL METHOD

For the purposes of this study, we enlisted three individuals from different age groups with unique workout habits:

Kristen, a 32-year-old Pilates instructor, graduate student, and punk fan who hopes to make the synthesis of music and exercise an integral part of her practice once she becomes a doctor of physical therapy.

Spencer, a 28-year-old proponent of CrossFit—a popular exercise philosophy based on high-intensity interval training, weightlifting, and other extremely demanding exercises.

Francis, a 40-year-old runner, computer programmer, and member of the South Brooklyn Running Club.

All three were given an eight-song Oi! soundtrack composed of the following songs:

Cockney Rejects, “Bad Man”
Cock Sparrer, “Riot Squad”
The Business, “Suburban Rebels”
Red Alert, “We’ve Got the Power”
Blitz, “Fight to Live”
4 Skins, “One Law for Them”
Sham 69, “I Don’t Wanna”
The Templars, “New York”

The Oi! mix leans heavily on UK genre favorites from the late 70s and early 80s, though the final selection, “New York,” is a 1994 cut by the Templars, an American band formed in Long Island. “New York” was selected for geographical reasons, as we were interested in finding out whether (a) US Oi! songs stand up to their British antecedents and (b) whether an NYC-centric song might have added emotional resonance with our participants. (Note: None of the selections—and indeed, no aspects of this study—have anything to do with racist strains of the Oi! or skinhead subcultures. We like our punk rock dumb, not ignorant.)

Each participant was asked to rate each song on a scale from 1 to 10, as well as offer a score capturing Oi!’s overall usefulness as a workout aid. Through a series of follow-up questions, we were able to further analyze the athletes’ attitudes toward the music and garner their expert opinions regarding its pros and cons. Again, because we’re dealing with music that’s defiantly lugheaded and generally resistant to evolution, our methodology is extremely suspect and bound to provoke anger in real scientists and medical practitioners. It’s only marginally smarter than what a gang of drunken skins might sketch out on a barroom napkin after their ninth round of Guinness.

RESULTS

Assessing Oi!’s overall fitness benefits, our participants submitted scores of 8 (Kristen), 8 (Francis), and 4 (Spencer). That averages out to 6.3—a respectable number only Spencer would likely argue with.

“On the musical-taste front, I’ll caveat all of my below thoughts with the fact I acknowledge I have really eclectic (read: lame) taste in workout music,” Spencer says. “A random workout playlist is equally likely to contain Metallica, Eminem, Britney Spears, Beastie Boys, club music, classic rock anthems, 90s rock, and miscellaneous Top 40 from the last one to two years. It’s not inconceivable something from Les Mis sneaks in as well. Which is all to say (1) my girlfriend never lets me pick music, and (2) I seriously doubt I’m the general Oi! demographic.

“That said, I was excited to try working out to something new. And now that I have I can confidently say I do not enjoy working out to Oi! I seriously could not differentiate these songs while they were playing; it all sounded like a cat from the East End of London being beaten with a Stratocaster.”

Spencer cites the “cool accents” and fact that the music is “better than speed metal” as its major selling points. The cons, he says, are that it “does not provide the workout fuel of James Hetfield/Adam Levine.”

“Not liking it makes me feel like I’m yelling at kids to get off my lawn,” he says.

Relative to the other test subjects, Spencer’s preferred form of exercise involves arguably the most intense physical exertion, and his testimony would seem to refute the idea there is, in fact, strength to be derived through Oi! The music may, however, have benefits for people involved in activities like running, where a steady rhythmic pulse helps offset fatigue. Unfortunately, our findings suggest, the positive effects are negated when the music gets too fast, and any Oi! worth its salt is way the hell too fast.

“Overall, Oi! music has an aggressive upbeat beat that can give your mind something to stay focused on during an intense workout,” says Francis. “I found myself looking forward to the songs with more catchy hooks. The cons of Oi! music was that I found the tempo too fast for running, so it was hard to stay relatively in synch with the music. It felt like some of the songs were urging me to run faster than I could or wanted to during the workouts.”

Oi! might also be good for the core muscle groups, as Kristen has emerged from the experience “definitely inspired to create a Pilates punk playlist.”

“This genre has the ability to inspire energy and hard work which is great for a high abdominal endurance type of workout that is Pilates,” she says.

In terms of individual song scores, the Templars fared best, suggesting that hometown pride plays a role in enjoying Oi! This is not surprising, given the music’s association with packs of loutish London lads getting blitzed and head-butting one another at their local pubs and football stadiums. Oi! is tribalistic, and songs are pegged to specific cities and neighborhoods in a way that first-wave British punk wasn’t. All three athletes were asked to pick a favorite lyric, and Kristen’s comes via the Templars: “New York City is where we wanna be!”

“NYC is always a motivating factor,” she says.

Cockney Rejects and Cock Sparrer also proved popular among our participants, achieving average scores nearly as high as the Templars. Both “Bad Man” and “Riot Squad” have anthemic qualities that, while found in all eight selections, are arguably more pronounced, and that might explain the scoring.

The song-by-song ratings are below. The first number is the total score, followed by the average in parenthesis.

The Templars, “New York”: 24 (8)
Cockney Rejects, “Bad Man”: 22 (7.3)
Cock Sparrer, “Riot Squad”: 21 (7)
The Business, “Suburban Rebels”: 19 (6.3)
Red Alert, “We’ve Got the Power”: 16 (5.3)
Blitz, “Fight to Live”: 16 (5.3)
4 Skins, “One Law for Them”: 14 (4.6)
Sham 69, “I Don’t Wanna”: 13 (4.3)

“I liked Cock Sparrer’s ‘Riot Squad’ the best—I think because I found it had a catchy beat and interesting lyrics,” says Francis. “Also, the tempo wasn’t too out of synch with my running pace.”

CONCLUSIONS

Having crunched the numbers, taken a close look at the anecdotal responses, and consumed a six-pack Newcastle Brown Ale, we’re prepared to draw the following conclusions.

1. Oi! does not make you physically stronger—at least not in any way that might prove useful to hooligans looking to throw heavier objects through storefront windows or smash the jaws of street-fighting adversaries with fewer swings of their meaty fists. According to Spencer, “there wasn’t much of an energy boost for me from the music. My brain mostly seemed to tune it out after awhile. But, again acknowledging my terrible taste in music, I could easily see someone throwing down hard to this stuff. There’s clearly a ton of energy to the songs and some real anger and passion behind the lyrics, which I think could drive some solid gym time if a listener liked the sound of the music itself. And had any clue what the lyrics were.”

2. If you listen to Oi! while running or doing Pilates, you might slice your mile time or strengthen endurance in your legs, abs, hips, back, and arms. But after you take the lyrics to heart, go to the pub, and knock back a half-dozen pints of stout, you’ll likely undo whatever good you’ve done your body. That goes double if you get into a brawl on your way home, and if you’re really an Oi! fan, you will get into a brawl on your way home.

3. Oi! is far too boneheaded to warrant scientific study—even a half-assed one like this. This whole thing might have been a complete waste of time. Wanna fight?

Kenneth Partridge is not a scientist, but he plays one on the internet. Keep up with his research on Twitter – @kenpartridge