Tottenham Riots

Well, you seem to be saying that whatever the rioters do as an expression of their anger is A-OK with you.

Would you draw the line anywhere?

Actually it was their own rep Munro who sold them out, he admitted it later; Barrett's advise to obey the law aftr unsuccesfully fighting against it was probably wise.  Whatever his failings he was saint compared to every 'socialist' who ever won office by force, and was probably the best premier we ever had.   Don't drink too much of your own compradres' bathwater.

I'd also appreciate it if you didn't make fun of his minor weight problems or relative lack of height.  Doubt he'd care much but others might.

So, even killing people would be okay?

Has anyone in Tottenham killed anyone, other than when the police murdered Mr. Duggan?

And again, how can anyone who has benefited from the existing order be entitled to judge those who resist it?

I oppose violence...but I don't have the moral authority to tell the powerless to make it easy for the powerful to kill them.

You apparently don't care what the powerful do in the name of holding power.  Morality is only to be applied to the rebels.  Your replies, Sven, truly mark you as a person who sees himself as one of Galeano's "lords of the world"-even though, in truth, you personally gain nothing from defending the existing order and all the world's police.

Oh, and 6079 Smith, I agree that what is happening in Tottenham is tragic...but that still doesn't entitle me to make sanctimonious comments about "rioters".

I hope nobody gets killed.  Anywhere.  But you ask that question as though these people can simply be assumed to be more violent than the police, or more reckless than the system that drove them to this-as if, should they take extreme actions, we can simply assume that those actions are unjustified and that we, children of privilege, are entitled to review their choices as if we are the political equivalent of theatre critics.

Events like Tottenham don't happen in isolation.  You have to analyze the whole combination of occurrences, and understand the whole history.  We simply CAN'T just say "it's wrong that they did that", and say that as if its ever that simple or that what ever they did can be taken as a singular moment unconnected to the past and the rest of the present. 

You and I, Sven, are priveleged.  Neither of us could have any knowledge of what it feels like to be powerless.  The difference between our responses to this is that I remember that to be the case. 

I'm against attacks on innocent people, and especially against children.  I do have some limits.  But you're not really concerned about morality here.  You just want to judge the people in this situation without knowing anything about their reality.

Middle-class people, especially middle-class white people who have never experienced police brutality, or racism, or economic exploitation are obligated to shut up and listen-we have no moral authority in a situation like Tottenham.

Barrett's capitulation also helped ensure his party's defeat in the next provincial election.  Nobody who backed Bennett's hardline position on the issues involved in that strike would have voted NDP no matter what.  Only people who passionately backed the strike were going to do so.  At that point in B.C., there was no such thing as a centrist.

When violence like this takes place, Western liberal tends to view it a) as decontextualized (unrelated to decades of public policy and neglect, police brutality and enforced poverty); and b) homogeneous (motivated by a single emotion rather than variegated, paradoxical and complex). Such a move allows those insulated from such violence by geography or privilege to cast judgements upon the rioters, with whom we have little shared experience or history. They've gone "too far" (how far is too far when you have nothing to lose and have been told, repeatedly, by society that you are worth nothing?). We point, sanctmoniously, at the non-violent Civil Rights movement in America, completely ignoring its concomitant riots, violence and aggression. It's easy to set arbitrary limits--murder, assault, thievery--when you are removed from place and history.

Make no mistake: the violence seen by London over the last four nights is a spike in the trace pattern of capitalism. It's the shadow cast by the violence enacted by an economic system which not only demands inequality, it tests the limits of its margins.

You buying Beltovs' BS too Ken, or do you know something that us lifetime residents of BC never heard?  Or are you becming a kneejerk Marxist too?  My mother was personally affected by Munros collapse too, but always knew who was actually behind it.  And how little most others cared after it was over.  

Please don't compare Barrett with todays breed of neo-liberal frauds, whatever his very real flaws, not unless you want to hold every political leader up to similarly impossible high standards.   Ones in fact which most supposedly progressive voters rarely hold up consistently, when it comes to other peoples need to 'compromise' with reality. The lack of solidarity with others struggles combined with unrealistic expectations about our own have been a deadly combination for the left over the last thirty years of retreat and defeat.  But then none of us knew how far it would go back then.

I'll answer your predictable responses in another thread, as I get tired of the bs slung here by kneejerk combatants on both sides of most issues here and this is a late thread drift.  One time at Babble some balance could usually be found -eventually- if not overall consensus, as well as debate which went beyond partisan point scoring.   

And once again you should at least try to apologise for your childishly personal insults, or are those sort of words foreign to the fundamentalist left vocabulary as well?

My mother, who was eventually forced from her job because of it, and then forced to sell her home for much less than its value, always suspected but it took a few years to come out.   The Labour movements leaders unfortunately are sometimes their own worst enemies, but OC the politician trying to balance interests in an actively hostile anti-labour (green etc) environment is the one who always gets the blame.   Same on the right, but they at least pay them better when they retire and sometimes defend them against the oppositions most excessive charges.   Ya Barrett was nothing but a sellout and therefore calling him a pig is ok.  Sure.

*sigh*

I think I know that, Eric. 

I am saying that the situation is probably a bit different for people who are living through that violence right now. And I am also saying that it is not a sustainable situation. Either it will go back to the way it was or something will change, but the violence can only last so long.

I can analyze things to death too, and I agree completely with your last statement. 

I just think with all the talk of what this means and what the rioters should and shouldn't do (as if anyone is paying attention) some people are missing what a dangerous, unpredictable and unstable situation it is. I can imagine there must be a lot of absolutely fucking terrified people over there right now.

I am far more concerned about the threat of loss of life, injury, and the damage to peoples' homes and livelihood than I am about how this furthers the revolution. 

Fuck, if it's gonna come it will come soon enough, and I doubt it will depend on which of us is right or wrong. 

I'd be frightened too and I've never been a revolutionary in the traditional meaning, but if this social refusal by our elites carries on much further, which it will unless met more effectively, violent revolution may become necessary and eventually unavoidable.   I won't shed any tears for the elites if they keep playing with this fire, and the middleclass, who never take them to account, will just have to duck the fireworks for themselves.

Oh Fuck Iran's Parliament!  As if THEY can seriously talk about 'intellectual awakenings' to anyone past the age of six.  Christ, the 'radical' left has got alot of growing up to do too.  No wonder the world just keeps spinning further out of EVERYONE'S control.  Goodnight dreamers.

Closing for length. Let's try again in the morning, shall we?

ETA. Continue here.