This video of a clearly injured boy being robbed of his rucksack is making the rounds today.
Aside from the sheer spectacle of London being beset by looters and rioters, it is interesting to see that there does not seem to be too much of a racial or ethnic dimension to the riots. Hoodlums from all ethnicities and backgrounds seem to be taking advantage of the breakdown of authority to vent frustration, anger, and of course behave like crass thieves.
This is a departure from the typical dynamics of other youth-riots in the UK and western Europe in recent years, which tends to be outpouring of rage by socially disadvantaged children of immigrants and ethnic minority youth. The 2001 Oldham riots in the UK and the widespread civil unrest in France in 2005 and other similar flare-ups were very much organized around ethnic and racial lines.
These riots seem to be something new — a victory for UK multiculturalism, I suppose.