Tottenham riots

Well, everyone already knows that record distribution centre was burnt down, but Warp has made an official announcement about it. Affect mostly international customers, but strikingly, "Unfortunately some releases may never be available physically again.".

:(

With any luck it's just Maximo Park stuff.

  On 8/11/2011 at 1:33 PM, Obel said:

With any luck it's just Maximo Park stuff.

  On 8/11/2011 at 11:15 AM, the anonymous forumite said:

Mindhacks blaming the Daily Mail, (and Watmm) :

 

  Quote

As the cacophony of politicians and commentators replaces that of the police sirens, look out for the particularly shrill voice of those who condemn as evil anyone with an alternative explanation for the looting than theirs. For an example, take the Daily Mail headline for Tuesday, which reads “To blame the cuts is immoral and cynical. This is criminality pure and simple”

 

  Quote

If I’ve got them right, this means that when considering what factors contributed to the looting, identifying government spending cuts is not just incorrect, but actively harmful. For the Mail, the issue of explanations for the looting is of such urgency that they are comfortable condemning anyone who seeks an explanation beyond that of the looting being “criminality pure and simple”.

 

  Quote

The Daily Mail editors feel they are in a moral community in which society is threatened by the looters and by those who give them succour, ‘the handwringing apologists on the Left’ who ‘blame the violence on poverty, social deprivation and a disaffected…youth’ (to quote from the rest of Tuesday’s editorial). For some, the looting is an immoral act of such a threatening nature that to think about it too hard, to react with anything other than a vociferous condemnation, is itself worthy of condemnation.

 

 

The sad thing about adopting this stance is that it prevents media commentators from thinking about how they themselves might have contributed to the looting. The footage on TV and in newspapers such as the Daily Mail has been vivid and hysterical. Television has shown the most dramatic footage of the looting, while headlines have screamed about the police losing control and anarchy on the streets. You don’t have to be a scholar of psychology to realise that this kind of media environment might play a role in encouraging the copycat looting sprees that sprung up outside of London

 

  Quote

Some, like the Daily Mail, see any attempt at explaining the looting as excusing the looting. The looting, like so much for them, is a moral issue of such virulence that they see people who understand society differently as part of the same threat to society as the looters.

 

http://mindhacks.com...-becomes-a-sin/

  Quote

I don't think it helps to call the looters and arsonists "disaffected". Apart from anything else, it's an understatement. But also, crucially, anything that smacks of bleeding-heart explanation or excuse alienates many other people in this country. Those people believe that this simply removes personal agency and responsibility from individuals, and is therefore part of the problem. You know what? I'm afraid they are right.

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/10/uk-riots-society

  On 8/11/2011 at 6:35 AM, Smettingham Rutherford IV said:

  On 8/11/2011 at 6:05 AM, eugene said:

  On 8/11/2011 at 4:43 AM, chenGOD said:

  On 8/11/2011 at 2:07 AM, eugene said:

  On 8/10/2011 at 10:19 PM, Smettingham Rutherford IV said:

  On 8/10/2011 at 9:08 PM, eugene said:

  On 8/10/2011 at 8:42 PM, chenGOD said:

Eugene -

Did you read what i wrote? South Korea's growth (and Taiwan's and now China's) was based on the developmental state. This is a model where the state has a high level of intervention in growing companies and the nation's GDP. South Korea and Taiwan are now both democracies, and yet there is still a high level of government intervention in their political economy. In fact, in the case of South korea, the conservative government in power now has increased state control compared to the previous government (more socialist leaning).

When the US and England underwent their growth periods, they did so by using economies that in no way, shape or form represented a "free market".

I'm not trying to evade anything - your ideas on political economy and the history of industrialization are simply a fairy-tale.

i don't have any ideas on economy at all, this area is major black hole for me, lol. i just got dragged into a territory i shouldn't have. you couldn't probably infer that i kinda easily juggle free market and capitalism in general...

 

i'm simply still stuck at your argument that "dogmatic free market is no better than communism"..which still sounds absurd.

lets try to rephrase it, do you think that economic systems that were having more in common with communism than democracies and capitalism and all that jazz are just as bad ?

 

it is just as bad. its dogmatic. that's very different from witnessing the historical effects in reality.

 

Pre-Leninist Marxists and even post-Lenin Marxists would have told you that the USSR was no more communist than Caesar's Rome was democratic.

 

 

by turning it into a "which one has done better", you are essentially demanding an answer that cannot, at least historically, be forthcoming. we could be witnessing capitalism's slow decay, which may or may not be contrasted with the Soviet bloc's immediate collapse in less than a century.

 

it would be like saying the Roman Empire was "better" than other empires simply because it lasted longer.

 

this kind of detached overview is of no use in practice. we obviously can't know where current capitalism leads but we've had about 70 years of those two systems juxtaposed, that's a whole lifetime, it matters.

i think you should ask what system proved to be better this last century, im not talking longevity either, there's more than enough data about quality of life.

I think you should learn about what the system the west (global north is the academic term) actually used to achieve their prosperity was. Here's a hint - it's not free market capitalism. Here's another hint - it depended very much on the exploitation of poorer nations, and the use of many many unequal treaties that were able to be enforced due to superior weaponry.

yeah thanks, but what are you implying exactly ? that this was a more important factor than the political and economic system that defined the two blocs for decades ?

 

alright, Eugene, I tried to be nice, but you are a fucking idiot.

 

"I don't have any ideas on economy"-this is what you said

 

im about to drop a bombshell on you (and chenGOD should agree):

 

Capitalism has NEVER BEEN THE SAME CAPITALISM IN REGARDS TO FREE MARKETS

 

see:

 

 

Joseph Schumpeter

Milton Friedman (quote "hardline Reagan conservative") which, if you might have spent more time you'd understand the guy was incredibly frustrated with the U.S. economy

Francis Fukuyama

 

the power of Capitalism is that its ELASTIC. it is not bound to free market rules. It creates and adapts itself to whatever target you want, hence, corrupt democratic republics in africa, in asia, in latin america, and so on and so forth.

 

Try asking someone in Guatemala or Honduras how well the capitalist system works for them.

 

I cannot in good faith take your complaints seriously anymore. I am sorry.

i admire yours 2 wish to take this very academically, but i get a feeling you're just arguing for the sake of arguing ignoring a very simple point im trying to make, the sort of thing chengod had against bread in that other thread.

so yes ok so capitalism is a very amorphous and i used the term free market recklessly

maybe a concrete example will help,

the collectivization in the countryside in china prior to the "great leap forward", where you can see easily that it goes bad and ineffective the more people lose the sense of property and direct reward for labor involved. and then you can see the trend reversed in the restoration period after the great leap, when people are allowed more freedom and control over their produce, when the collective units are smaller and in addition a re-formation of markets - the economic situation improves rapidly. i think you can see something similar with lenin's nep.

now i don't know if its academically correct to associate collectivization and the lack of private property and private enterprise to communism as we've seen it and the reverse of those to the systems that defined the western bloc but i doubt im far off, i'm totally ok with being proven wrong though ! its just that so far you've been nitpicking, missing the larger picture.

Let's beat the Now Playing Thread!

lol

  On 8/10/2011 at 1:02 AM, Dan C said:

http://epetitions.di.../petitions/7337

 

Anyone seen this special little thing?

I would like to say that I am strongly opposed to this petition. It is nothing but another one of the Conservative government's attempts at hoarding money by taking away people's benefits. The people affected by this petition would already be punished accordingly for their crimes by imprisonment, fines, or other penalties, and taking away their benefits would be nothing but an unfair and undeserved additional punishment. Their justice should be decided by a judge, not the emotionally biased victims of their crimes.

Also, if the petition does pass, it would open the door to many more people loosing benefits, and eventually, the Tory-held dream of benefits being abolished altogether would come true.

Perhaps you should start a counter-petition then for people to sign if they want the rioters to be able to keep their benefits. Good luck in getting anywhere near 100,000 signatures.

BENEFITS

Just think what the word means.

If you go around being a scum bag looting and stealing, why the fuck should the govenerment and the tax payers fork out for you to receive money?

Im fed up with seeing people on the tv going on about how they and their kids have nothing. They are stood their fully clothed, outside their council given house. They have electricity, running water, free school education and a health service. Sure, its not equal across the whole of the UK, but you could be a lot worse off if you lived in Somalia or some other famine raviged 3rd world country.

/rant

  On 8/11/2011 at 4:12 PM, feltcher said:

?

Im fed up with seeing people on the tv going on about how they and their kids have nothing. They are stood their fully clothed, outside their council given house. They have electricity, running water, free school education and a health service. Sure, its not equal across the whole of the UK, but you could be a lot worse off if you lived in Somalia or some other famine raviged 3rd world country.

I'm sure you would be complaining too if you were one of these people. It doesn't matter if it's not the absolute worst case scenario - it's still not nice to live like that. Don't be a tool.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUxG6cHPfko

This is surprisingly great.

  On 8/11/2011 at 3:42 PM, pattern recognition said:

lol

http://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=28978.0

fat bitch looting crisps and juice! seriously lock her up and give her a nice criminal record

she's not faaaaaaaaat

she has a fat head and a fat mind to think 'omg free crisps and juice!' when the world starts looting.

free empty calories, getting nothing for nothing.

the flavour combination of crisps and chocolate washed down with carbonated drinks is gross.

yeah hope she learned that the hard way tauboo! the bitch.

the bitter taste of guilt might add some depth to the flavour

  On 8/11/2011 at 6:14 PM, keltoi said:

she has a fat head and a fat mind to think 'omg free crisps and juice!' when the world starts looting.

lol. fat mind. lol.

call me chav scum but if i was walking past a tesco express that was getting freely looted i would blatantly nick a load of booze and fags

am i alone?

no, im with you there. tescos can get the looting right up them.

i saw that their profits had dropped from 3.3 to a mere 2.6 billion the other day and was happy.

id loot the ready made sandwich section too, get all the 2.50 tescos finest badboys. and wraps.

Is it worth going to court over Tescos food? Go Sainsbury's.

i dont think i'd run into Tesco but if i'd already been inside and then a mob of 200 people came in and looted it, maybe..