I am something of a riotologist. I love rioting. I follow rioting stories very closely and I am very fascinated by the possibility of a serious riot happening somewhere in the US in the coming years. The problem with America, though, is that we are too complacent, we will demonstrate like nobody's business, but rarely do things ever explode into violence (though when they do they are pretty epic). So I usually have to look elsewhere to find good riot stories. The rest of the world, however, isn't comprised of a bunch of pussies, and 2008 was a vintage year for rioting.

1. World-wide Food Rioting
According to Wikipedia: "The price rises affected parts of Asia and Africa particularly severely with Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Senegal, Mauritania, Cote d'Ivoire, Egypt and Morocco seeing protests and riots in late 2007 and early 2008 over the unavailability of basic food staples. Other countries which have seen food riots or are facing related unrest are: Mexico, Bolivia, Yemen, Uzbekistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and South Africa."



I'm going to go as far as to include all that rioting in Zimbabwe as Food Rioting, because while the situation there is not rooted in a sustenance based conflict, famine and rising price of imported foods did not help the situation at all. Thank you biofuels and mother earth for making this year a particularly bad year for keeping people fed. As you can see rioting was documented in various African regions, in Central and South Asia and in select parts of Latin America, so this is a pretty global issue, and hopefully the situation gets better in 2009 or we could see a real melt-down of the third world in the next five years.



2. Greek December Rioting
After the police shot 15 year old Alexandros Grigoropoulos, the entire nation's youth as it would seem went apeshit and just starting destroying and looting everything they could find a la the Los Angelos/Cincinnati race riots of the 1990s. Sparked a wave of international protests at Greek consulates and embassies world-wide and massive destruction of property in Athens and beyond. Couple po-po got torched with Molotov cocktails and greek graffiti has always been sweet so thats why the Greek Riots get the #2 spot this year. There are also still demonstrations going on that could potentially erupt into rioting so watch for this in the news (it'll be there).

You can find a ton of photographs of this sweet riot here.

3. Tibetan Olympic Rioting


China sucks at dealing with the non-Han peoples within their borders. They pretty much actively persecute ethnic groups in the ethnic groups's homeland provinces. Granted this is a drastic over-simplification, and the Tibetans certainly have negative cultural legacies of their own as far as repressive societies are concerned, but the Tibetans are not exactly a world economic power-house. So while groups such as the Uyghurs and Tibetans are not exactly innocent bystanders, they certainly don't deserve to have their homelands Sinified and their languages and cultures suppressed. We do live in the 21st century heh. So China gets a big thumbs down in 2008 despite this, but the Tibetans get a big thumbs up for this:



4. South African Rioting


South Africa sucks. The white people that live there are terrible and the native peoples that live there kinda suck too (its not really their fault though, if you grew up in the conditions these people had to deal with you'd have a lot of pent up rage too). You see, after a century of some of the most intense repression that a group of people has recently endured, the repressed group has become super xenophobic and in 2008 a gigantic riot erupted when some natives attacked migrant workers from Malawi, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. The rioting spilled into the next province and continued for several weeks before things settled down again.



5. UEFA Cup Championship Riot
This year the UEFA Cup came down to two clubs, Rangers FC and FC Zenit St. Petersberg. For those of you Americans (and Europeans who don't watch the news) who don't know much about footballing culture in Europe, this pairing is interesting. For those of us who do know, red flags are popping up everywhere. Rangers and Zenit have some of the most right-wing and xenophobic firms in all of Europe (Rangers fans hate Catholics and Zenit fans hate... non-Russians) and the two notorious groups of fans caused tensions to run high in Manchester before the Championship match. There were scuffles and skirmishing between the two groups of fans before the match, but during the game a full scale riot developed in Picadilly Gardens where a screen to broadcast the game to Rangers fans who didn't manage to get tickets to the game failed. They attacked police officers and Zenit fans, and in some cases, each other. A couple Zenit fans got stabbed but no one died and that is why this riot only gets the #5 spot.



Honorable Mention: Montreal's Double
This year Montreal saw a small scale version of the Athens riot and also some hockey riots which included a couple cars getting flipped and burned. I only include them because there was no Ohio State football rioting this year, and this was the only instance of burned out cars I saw in 2008 so they get an honorable mention for that and for having not one, but two riots, one of which was because the Canadiens beat the Boston Bruins in a hockey match.

We get it. Lists make for horrible articles.

Also, 11111.

hey I'm just doin my part man dont be hatin on riotology

Man no way, these lists are a riot!

Zing

I sort of thought this was... INTERESTING in a surreal sort of way.

And get peppered and beaten with a baton and brake a few bones and lose a few teeth in the proccess

What I like about the greek riots is that those kids are "against the system" but they don't state what they aren't against. I bet most of them don't even know what they're riotting about.
 

my dad loves the gers

well not all rangers fans are terrible obviously

but their ultras are pretty ridiculous

I was seriously never taught anything about the 1992 Los Angeles riot in school... I even took Post WWII History which makes this even more surprising.

We get it. Lists make for horrible articles.

Also, 11111.

i was gonna say this but then i thought to myself o right i am not a douche bag


seriously tho dude this place was DEAD you write a fuckin article

China sucks at dealing with the non-Han peoples within their borders. They pretty much actively persecute ethnic groups in the ethnic groups's homeland provinces.

jurchens too? I thought they accepted jurchens.

i was gonna say this but then i thought to myself o right i am not a douche bag


seriously tho dude this place was DEAD you write a fuckin article

I dont have any idea what you are talking about. what?

also do earlchip do you mean the jurcheds? there are tons of ethnic minorities in china (hello 1.3 billion people or whatever, they're not all Han)

he is saying that chainer is a douche for complaining & any activity in the blog is an improvement

riotology

man, does this exists

it would be funny

I dont have any idea what you are talking about. what?

also do earlchip do you mean the jurcheds? there are tons of ethnic minorities in china (hello 1.3 billion people or whatever, they're not all Han)

how on earth do you not understand what i was saying?