Well, if you had read as many threads on babble as I've read over the years, my comment wouldn't appear to be as "intentionally dense" as you may think.
I probably have read as many posts as you have over the years. I have read your posts for many years and I think you are the resident expert at tip toeing down the troll line. IMO you intentionally misquoted me for fun and games. Close to the definition of trolling but maybe not quite.
IMO you intentionally misquoted me for fun and games.
Can you show me two...just two...of your quotes that I've "intentionally misquoted"?
More likely, I've read some of your quotes and asked you pointed questions about them that may have made you uncomfortable. That's not "misquoting" you. Sorry.
And this isn't even to mention the really wealthy, like Gates, Cuban, the Waltons, Jay-Z, Oprah, Zuckerberg, Buffet, etc.
$100,000.01? Are you serious, Catchfire???
I make well over $100,000 a year and can assure you that my life is pretty different from that of Bill Gates and Jay-Z... unless Jay-Z just changed a dirty diaper and Bill Gates cooked a pot of spaghetti...
Complain to the mods about Sven's joking about the deaths of others. Don't waste your time arguing with such tripe.
Yet another attempted lynching of Sven. Sigh. ikosmos, perhaps if catchfire stepped down you'd like to be a mod? Because based on your postings to date I'm sure you'd be amazing - maybe almost as good as catchfire.
I wish I could be called "rich" by Catchfire...
While I agree with you, BdC, don't be distracted by these red herrings and smoke screens. Sven and Mr. T are merely gesticulating in the hopes of undermning my statement that
"the rich" grouped together in a monolithic class are a much smaller and much more dangerous group than "the poor" grouped together in a monolithic class.
which of course, has nothing to do with the difference between Mr. T, Sven, and Oprah; or who was the last person to change a dirty diaper.
I think that BA's and city managers or engineers are well off and their lifestyles have little in common with a person making only $40,000 a year. Where I live you are scrambling to try to get ahead at $40,000. At $100,000 you are in an elite class but hardly rich. I would think that at $250,000 a year a person would be rich.
Things are getting worse in Canada as well. Note how the bottom 20% lost 23.7 and the top 20% gained 22.6. This covers the period of the "free trade" deals and closer integration into the American economy. As an anti-free trade activist I wish saying I told you so would make me feel any better.
The UK is only slightly worse. But then that is not surprising given Thatchers role in the neo-con revolution that spread like a virus throughout western democracies. That virus has destroyed the social fabric of all the countries it has been imposed upon.
Muslims Tackle Looters and Bigots
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/08/201181210928899563....
"Two weeks ago, under the banner United East End, neighbors of all faiths and none gathered at the London Muslim Centre in Whitechapel to express solidarity with their Muslim neighbors who are the target of another provocative English Defence League demonstration planned for 3 September. It is no co-incidence that Anders Breivik found common cause with the EDL.."
as does the EDL's allies -(JDL) Jewish Defence League-Canada, whose openly Islamophobic campaign against Muslim students of the TDSB enjoys growing mainstream support, with no such solidarity expressions alas.
I think that BA's and city managers or engineers are well off and their lifestyles have little in common with a person making only $40,000 a year. Where I live you are scrambling to try to get ahead at $40,000. At $100,000 you are in an elite class but hardly rich.
One out of every five households in American (the top quintile) earn about $90,000 per year or more. So, I agree with you that a person making near the low-end of that quintile is hardly rich.
ETA: Actually someone working and earning $40,000 per year has a lot in common with someone who is working and earning $100,000: They are both working and have to work to feed and clothe themselves and put a roof over their heads. In contrast, one of the billionaire trust-fund kids of Sam Walton don't have to work and they can pretty much do anything they want that money can buy. There little, if any, logic to "grouping together" those earning $100,000 per year with the Waltons, as though they are all part of some monolithic class that is "dangerous" to society.
Class identity is not just income. It is also ideology. And those who make more than 100,000/yr typically share the same ideology as the zillionaire. Whereas the person who makes 40 K is more likely to side with the rest of us, therefore talking to them is more worthwhile, etc.
Identifying social class is, among other things, a way to make a judgement about whether it's worth one's while to try to persuade someone about this or that social policy. It's better not to waste one's time.
Of course, the enemies of progress would like nothing better than for progressive people to waste their time.
Note how the bottom 20% lost 23.7...
I'm assuming those are real dollars? And, what is the source of that chart? Have you a link for it?
This covers the period of the "free trade" deals and closer integration into the American economy. As an anti-free trade activist I wish saying I told you so would make me feel any better.
I'm not sure "closer integration into the American economy" has had the effect you are describing. But, I agree with you that opening the labour market to countries like China, India, etc. has had a dramatic negative effect on the incomes of lower-income Canadians and Americans (the number of manufacturing jobs has significantly decreased here). On the flip side, the best way for those countries to have lifted themselves out of abject poverty was to leverage the power of their lower wage rates to create growth. And, particularly in China, you are starting to see the positive effects of that policy. The alternative would have been to say, effectively, "Sorry that you have per-captia income of only a thousand dollars a year, but you'll just have to learn to live with it."
Won't somebody think of the investment bankers?
Won't somebody think of the investment bankers?
How many investment bankers on Wall Street make $100,000 per year? The investment bankers that wield outsided influence on our economic system are the kind guys who are each extracting millions and millions of dollars every year out of the system. Who's talking about them? I'm talking about a family like my sister's: She's a nurse and her husband is a state employee (in a non-management role) and they make a fair bit over $100,000 per year. Yet, they are "rich"?
Give our Kids a Future protest challenges right-wing backlash
Sunday, 14 August 2011 09:00
Written by Peter Stauber
The response was clear and powerful. After the government and the mainstream media had been vilifying and condemning young people for a week, around 1,500 people got together to express a different view: One that doesn't blame the riots on “sick” elements within our society, which need to be dealt with “robustly”, but instead tries to take into account the underlying causes.
Quote:
Another young protester, Lorna, expressed a similar view:
“The media response has been unintelligent, just as the government's. I don't know why the government was so surprised about the riots, and I don't know what they think they'll achieve by telling people that it's unacceptable or criminal – I think people know that it's criminal. But it was also entirely predictable – it was clear that people would get very angry sooner or later because of what they been doing to public services – it's not only this government, it goes back further than that.”....
Muslims Tackle Looters and Bigots
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/08/201181210928899563....
Great article. It is good to see some communities not letting themselves be divided over this.
How many investment bankers on Wall Street make $100,000 per year?
Cripes, Sven. Aren't you the one chastising folk for leaping to hyperbole? Who said anything about Wall Street?
Note how the bottom 20% lost 23.7...
I'm assuming those are real dollars? And, what is the source of that chart? Have you a link for it?
Sorry it is from that "leftist" organization the Conference Board of Canada. (sarcasm alert) The chart is from Statistics Canada and it clearly states it is in 2005 dollars. Geez
http://www.conferenceboard.ca/hcp/details/society/income-inequality.aspx
Cameron Faces Obstacles in Bringing in US Police Chief Bill Bratton to Head Met
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/12/david-cameron-bill-bratton-met
"David Cameron is known to be interested in appointing Bill Bratton, who headed the New York and Los Angeles police forces.."
a '0 tolerance' heavy-hitter..
Cameron Faces Obstacles in Bringing in US Police Chief Bill Bratton to Head Met
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/12/david-cameron-bill-bratton-met
"David Cameron is known to be interested in appointing Bill Bratton, who headed the New York and Los Angeles police forces.."
a '0 tolerance' heavy-hitter..
I guess the Brits think they have lost their edge since the 80s. That, or this is just a PR move because they don't really know what to do.
Well if his talents are going to be used against football hooligans, gangsers, racist skinheads, and his own officers, good. But if he thinks this is a way to deal with poverty he is just turning up the heat on the pressure cooker.
And I wonder if his tactics will be quite as effective without the threat of immediately blowing someone's head off.
Unlike M. Thatcher, Cameron has expanded his austerity to include savage cuts to police funding as well as to all the rest of his public servant victims. Perhaps it's the privatized and mercenary based wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, ... that has these neoliberal scoundrels screwing over everybody ... except, of course, their rich friends.
MI5 Joins Social Messaging Trawl for Riot Organisers
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/15/mi5-social-messaging-riot-organ...
"Intelligence agency asked to crack encrypted messages - especially on Blackberry Messenger - to help police. The move represents a change as officially MI5 is tasked with ensuring the national security of the United Kingdom from terrorist threats, weapons of mass destruction and espionage...
In England, RIM has said it will actively cooperate with law enforcement as they investigate those behind the unrest.."
the national security/surveillance state is only just warming up...
Warming up or hot already? My Post 38 refers to a 15 year old boy arrested for a comment on Facebook.
Monday 15 August 2011
Meeting Report: After the riots – Defend our young people, give them a future
200 people turned out in Tottenham on Monday for the ‘Defend our young people give them a future’ meeting. It was a passionate call for justice and hope....
As Economy Tanks, “New Normal” Police State Takes Shape
by Tom Burghardt / August 15th, 2011
Forget your rights.
As corporate overlords position themselves to seize what little remains of a tattered social net (adieu Medicare and Medicaid! Social Security? Au revoir!), the Obama administration is moving at break-neck speed to expand police state programs first stood-up by the Bush government.
http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/08/as-economy-tanks-new-normal-police-sta...
Generation F*cked
How Britain is Eating Its Young
http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/71/generation-fcked.html
Good read, Londoner. I had no idea that children were fingerprinted when they wanted a library card.
British police revealed Tuesday that they sent officers to protect major shopping centres and the 2012 Olympics sites after intercepting phone and social network messages saying they were targets for rioters.
Assistant Commissioner Lynne Owens of London's Metropolitan Police told a committee of lawmakers that police sent extra officers to London's Oxford Circus, two malls and the Olympic Park on Aug. 8 after seeing messages on Twitter and the BlackBerry devices of people who had been arrested for rioting.
Owens said that "through Twitter and BBM there was intelligence that the Olympic site, Westfields [shopping malls] and Oxford Street were going to be targeted."
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011/08/16/riots-olympics-targets.html
Here we have four years in jail for "using Facebook to incite disorder".
Max Keiser of The Keiser Report on RT made a good observation that many are making. The looters are just Thatcherites, that's all. Didn't that admirer of fascists, Margaret Thatcher, say that there is no such thing as society? Seems her misanthropic view has sunk it to the English population. If the rich can loot, then why not the rest of the population as well?
Keiser also noted that The Economist actually predicted England as a likely place for social disorder. Some kind of Social Cohesion Index or something like that. Anyway, if you get RT, then I would reccommend checking out his show. He's quite brilliant.
That's unbelieveable. Somehow I think there might be an appeal.
The Independent's coverage of that includes one bright spot - a council agreeing to pay student fees for needy people in the wake of the riots.
Also, it seems the unrest is still going on - only now frustrated people are burning down the houses of suspected arsonists.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/four-years-in-jail-for-failed...
Perhaps you could have just quoted those missives. The main link is trash.
Perhaps you could have just quoted those missives. The main link is trash.
Link works for me... but here:
Arson suspect has his home set ablaze
A man accused of starting a fire that ruined £319,000 of stock at a clothes shop has had his flat damaged in a suspected arson attack. Police are investigating the blaze at the home of Dane Williamson, who is in custody over damage he allegedly caused to Miss Selfridge in central Manchester. No one was hurt in the blaze at Broughton Road, Salford.
Mr Williamson, 18, was arrested last week after police saw footage of his alleged offence, which had been distributed on YouTube. He claims he is a victim of mistaken identity and will appear at Manchester Crown Court tomorrow.
Talk about karma... And
Council will pay poor students' fees
A local authority is to pay poor students' university fees in the first scheme of its kind in the country. The initiative was devised by Southwark Council, which said it was "more important than ever to support young people" in the wake of the riots.
It will offer scholarships to students who would otherwise be put off university by fees of up to £9,000 a year. Each year, at least five young people studying arts, sciences or vocational degrees will be funded for the duration of their courses.
Thanks BdC
I forgot that some people melt when exposed to the ideas of others. Evidently you can't please everyone. I suppose if I hadn't provided a link someone would have challenged me for being cagey about my sources.
(edit)
The CBC hourly radio news fucked this story up - they reported that the two were convicted for "playing a major role" in the riots.
The CBC hourly radio news fucked this story up - they reported that the two were convicted for "playing a major role" in the riots.
I think in journalistic terms the fact that the CBC got this type of story wrong is akin to a dog bites human story. The state media in Canada is no better than the state media in any little despotic country when it comes to stories about the imperial status quo and any kind of dissent against it.
Yes, well I phoned them and pointed out their error in any case.
Here is another good example of how the UK is descending into a police state. The kids in my neighbourhood are apparently all criminals since water fights in this nice weather have been the big thing.
The 20-year-old was arrested Friday after Essex police discovered the plans circulating on the BlackBerry Messenger service and Facebook, British media reported.
...
The unnamed man has been charged with "encouraging or assisting in the commission of an offence" under the 2007 Serious Crime Act, police said.
...
An event with the same agenda was held in Iran last week during which security forces arrested several boys and girls over a water fight at a seaside park in the southern parts of the country.
Western media outlets, including the British newspapers and their websites gave a vast coverage to the event in Iran with the aim of questioning the country's dealing with youths and the so-called human rights issues which they have always used as a tool.
Now, a fortnight later, in Britain, police have charged a man with conspiring a water fight gathering on his Facebook page and through text messages. This is democracy, British style.
Bauman: consumerism coming home to roost
The famous sociologist Zygmunt Bauman argues that the London riots point us towards a minefield of defective and disqualified consumers.
These are not hunger or bread riots. These are riots of defective and disqualified consumers.
Quote:
From cradle to coffin we are trained and drilled to treat shops as pharmacies filled with drugs to cure or at least mitigate all illnesses and afflictions of our lives and lives in common. Shops and shopping acquire thereby a fully and truly eschatological dimension. Supermarkets, as George Ritzer famously put it, are our temples; and so, I may add, the shopping lists are our breviaries, while strolls along the shopping malls become our pilgrimages. Buying on impulse and getting rid of possessions no longer sufficiently attractive in order to put more attractive ones in their place are our most enthusing emotions. The fullness of consumer enjoyment means fullness of life. I shop, therefore I am. To shop or not to shop, this is the question.
For defective consumers, those contemporary have-nots, non-shopping is the jarring and festering stigma of a life un-fulfilled – and of own nonentity and good-for-nothingness. Not just the absence of pleasure: absence of human dignity. Of life meaning. Ultimately, of humanity and any other ground for self-respect and respect of the others around....
http://roarmag.org/2011/08/zygmunt-bauman-consumerism-coming-home-to-roost/
eta: i don't buy that we become total automatons but the article raises legit issues
This is going back some ways in the discussion (post 47-60 ish), but I don't have time every day to read babble. I sent [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdVODFombco&feature=sh_e_top&list=SL][col... video - Al Jazeera's Fault Lines: The Top 1%[/color][/url] to a friend who was complaining about having lost about the equivalent of a family vacation on the stock market. She and her partner make (not considerably) over $100,000. She identified herself with the rich, not the workers on the street.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/aug/09/independent-record-labels-st...
No big deal. After all, it's just property.
Besides, I'm sure there are warehouses full of old copies of "Who's Next" and "Exile on Main Street".
That's a shame. My sister is on one of the labels affected. Of course, I couldn't help think that the world dodged a bullet after reading this quote:
The physical release of Arctic Monkeys' new single, The Hellcat Spangled Shalalala, is one of the first records to be affected, with limited quantities of the 7in version now only available on its planned release date (15 August)
There's too much Arctic Monkey in the world already. But on the whole: too bad.
Nowhere near approaching the social and civic tragedy that caused this mess, though.
I agree with you on that last point. absolutely. I am not saying it is either/or Catchfire. Because I know it is not, and that this event is pretty small compared to the people who were killed in this violence.
And frankly, a lot of the people affected by this will have insurance, where many who were burned out of their houses and smaller businesses probably did not.
Just pointing out that this is in fact a tragedy, and a little bit more complex than "the rich do it, so why not everyone". And I figured if shopkeepers caught in the crossfire doesn't elicit consideration, perhaps a blow to The Arts might.
Just pointing out that this is in fact a tragedy, and a little bit more complex than "the rich do it, so why not everyone".
There you go again, arguing with shadows.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/video/video-cameron-uk-must-reverse-...
This is an amazing bit. Cameron goes on about the "moral colapse", and everything he says applies to the financial sector, Parliament, Scotland Yard and the Media. I think if he was even cognizant of that point of view, or that way of looking at things he would have chosen a different approach.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/europe/englands-prison-populat...
"Prime Minister David Cameron has said he believes judges have been correct to impose tough sentences.
Among the most criticized sentences, are four-year jail terms given to two men for attempting to incite rioting by posting messages on Facebook.
In another case, a woman who took no part in the riots received a five-month jail term for wearing a pair of looted shorts her housemate had brought home.
She had her sentence overturned Friday by a judge who said the penalty given to Ursula Nevin had been “wrong in principle.” Judge Andrew Gilbart freed Nevin and ordered her to perform 75 hours of community service."
In thread one there was [url=http://rabble.ca/comment/1272721]Panic[/url]. Now Slavoj Zizek gives us [url=http://www.lrb.co.uk/2011/08/19/slavoj-zizek/shoplifters-of-the-world-un... of the World Unite[/url].
With these harsh sentencings, I believe the line has been drawn. The poor, underemployed are now officially the enemy. That class has been defined by Cameron as being socially dysfunctional and undesirable. How anyone can believe things will get better is perplexing to me.
If the rich have open warfare on the poor then the gloves are off. Make the rich pray! K*ll 'em all and let God sort em out. What's fair is fair.
Now Slavoj Zizek gives us [url=http://www.lrb.co.uk/2011/08/19/slavoj-zizek/shoplifters-of-the-world-un... of the World Unite[/url].
Yep. That's about right. Now what to quote?
As with the car burnings in the Paris banlieues in 2005, the UK rioters had no message to deliver....This is why it is difficult to conceive of the UK rioters in Marxist terms, as an instance of the emergence of the revolutionary subject; they fit much better the Hegelian notion of the ‘rabble’, those outside organised social space, who can express their discontent only through ‘irrational’ outbursts of destructive violence – what Hegel called ‘abstract negativity’....This was zero-degree protest, a violent action demanding nothing. In their desperate attempt to find meaning in the riots, the sociologists and editorial-writers obfuscated the enigma the riots presented.
Zygmunt Bauman characterised the riots as acts of ‘defective and disqualified consumers’: more than anything else, they were a manifestation of a consumerist desire violently enacted when unable to realise itself in the ‘proper’ way – by shopping. As such, they also contain a moment of genuine protest, in the form of an ironic response to consumerist ideology: ‘You call on us to consume while simultaneously depriving us of the means to do it properly – so here we are doing it the only way we can!’ The riots are a demonstration of the material force of ideology – so much, perhaps, for the ‘post-ideological society’. From a revolutionary point of view, the problem with the riots is not the violence as such, but the fact that the violence is not truly self-assertive. It is impotent rage and despair masked as a display of force; it is envy masked as triumphant carnival.
Some positive notes at the end on how to move toward substantive change as well. Zizek in the LRB. I'm always such a sucker for it.
I don't know, I just don't think one explanation or another can be used to explain all this away to anyones satisfaction, there may be elements of truth to a number. I'm now coming around to thinking that the best way to look at this is pretty much like other spontaneous riots throughout history. People act differently when theyre in a crowd and the usual rules are no longer enforced, yes, but there's always greivances which spark the anger and sense of alienation from 'mainstream values'. Different people however will take part for different reasons though.
Those who burned peoples homes wouldn't be the same as those who wentout to protest another kid being killed by their supposed protectors --or those who just got caught up in the moment of anarchy. And motives might change over the course of events. Some pobably were just gang members cashing in, others just getting drawn in. But none of it justifies breaking the law to supposedly defend it. Especialy after the fact. I can recall a time not so long ago, when such large scale riots might bring about some broader soul searching and some inquirey into the ultimate rather than proximate causes. But then Merry Olde England remains one of the most racist societies on earth, with one of the most deeply entrenched class systems. Thatcherism and Blairism just added another layer of illusion about Yankee style 'individualism' and overt materialism.
Just pointing out that this is in fact a tragedy, and a little bit more complex than "the rich do it, so why not everyone".There you go again, arguing with shadows.
Am I?
Well it was certainly said in the mainstream media quotes I offered, and at the very least implied by a number of comments here - the implication being that these things are only crimes because they are done by the poor.
(edit) Plus I just read #96
If I am wrong, then I have to wonder at the numerous references to the behaviour of the rich at all?
I think it is an inaccurate and insulting comparison myself, For one thing the wealthy and governments are not driven to commit crime by desparation and a feeling of powerlessness.
For that matter, neither are many of the looters, professional and otherwise, and the racists, and the hooligans who took advantage of this riot.
As well - the notion that this is a show of power is ridiculous. Those who were driven to this by desparation and powerlessness are hardly in a position of power, and they have gained nothing. As a matter of fact, this riot is being used as an excuse to make their situation far worse.
After all, people are supposed to react to difficult situations by turning on each other and erupting in violence. How can we expect them to do anything different?
Perhaps events like the march epaulo posted about can be a way for these communities to turn this to their advantage, but sorry. I don't see anything good from this riot, which was nothing but a haemorrhage.
And one way or another, it needed to be stopped.
I was in Mexico City shortly after the earthquake that happened in the mid 80s, and a friend told the that the government was doing nothing to help neighbourhoods which had been damaged. IN fact, they were pocketing international aid money.
It was only after people in those neighbourhoods began organizing themselves and setting up water, sanitation, food and other services that the government acted - because it saw it's own power being threatened - that it stepped in and took over again.
So long as governments have enough police they aren't threatened by riots. It helps sell their lies about the worst in human nature. In fact, it is just an excuse to get MORE police.
