BBC Apologizes To Darcus Howe For Calling Him A Rioter In Testy Interview

Breaking: Civil unrest spreads to Scotland

(Thanx DJ Pigg & Stan!)

Sign o'the times...(Ealing)

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♪♫ John Cale - Heartbreak Hotel (Myer Music Bowl Melbourne October 23, 2010)

Three killed in crash on night of Birmingham riots

[PIAS] announces temporary plans for distribution clients

[PIAS] has announced interim plans for its physical product distribution clients, following the previously reported fire started during riots on Monday night which destroyed the Sony DADC distribution centre in Enfield, north London. The [PIAS] distribution business, which was housed in the facility with various other companies from across the entertainment industry, held stock for over 150 independent labels. It was confirmed yesterday that the building and all of its contents had been destroyed in the fire - Beggars Group alone losing 750,000 CDs. In a statement yesterday, [PIAS] announced that temporary plans to keep what stock was still available in the distribution chain were already in motion. The company said: "Sony DADC have actioned their Business Continuity Plan and are back up and running from a new control room in Enfield. [PIAS] continue to work with them to minimise the impact on the business, a number one priority for all labels and clients. Sony DADC have identified a temporary distribution partner and it is envisaged that they will be in a position to pick, pack and ship orders in the course of next week".
Martin Mills told Music Week yesterday that it would take Beggars ten days to replenish its CD stock and three months to completely replace lost vinyl, and the company expected to recoup losses through insurance. However, he added that the main issue for all affected labels (especially those which may struggle to replenish stock as quickly) was what happens "while they don't have anything to sell".
Sunday Best owner Rob Da Bank told the NME: "Nothing's going to be sold for months, and I don't know what will happen. There's no way of distributing records. My back catalogues are all gone. I can't afford to get another run done for older releases. Everyone's going to have to think about the next few months. It's a reminder of how on a knife edge these things are - some labels and shops are going to be really affected by it. It just shows how precarious the indie thing is".
It's also not clear at this stage if all labels are covered by insurance, and what sort of payout they would get if they are.
Yesterday, the Association Of Independent Music has issued a statement calling on music fans to help the independent labels affected by purchasing records both digitally and physically - independent record shops are also faced with uncertainty as they do not know when they will be able to buy in new stock from affected labels.
In its statement, AIM said: "What music fans can do to show their support for the indie label community, and help them survive this disaster is to buy a digital download of an album from any one of the digital retailers in the UK, as well as going to their local record store while stocks last. This way, the labels will be able to remanufacture their CDs and vinyl more quickly, to resupply the record shops who are also affected by the riots".
The organisation's CEO and Chairmen, Alison Wenham added: "This is a disaster for the music community, but with the fans' help, labels and artists will survive. Please show your support for the music community by buying a digital album from an independent label today".
Writer and musician Fion Chadd has also begun organising a fundraising event for affected labels, details of which can be found here: cognitivedissonancerecords.com/labellove/
@'CMU'

The UK riots: the psychology of looting

Liverpool riots: I remember the buzz of mob mayhem from 1981

Firefighters hosing down a burning building in Liverpool, 1981. Photograph: Sipa Press / Rex Features
By the second night of rioting you could see the flames from miles away. A phosphorescent glow backlit Liverpool 8, adding a weird beauty to the madness unfolding. My pals and I watched the smoke pluming upwards and outwards, each one of us wild-eyed with excitement at the hue and cry. "Come on," I said. "Let's see if we can get a bit closer …"
That was 30 years ago, but it could just have well have been last night – with one hugely significant difference. The events that unfolded in Granby, Liverpool 8 in July 1981 (nobody called it Toxteth in those days) were triggered by the groundless arrest and manhandling of a local man, Leroy Cooper, by the loathed Special Patrol Group. That was the spark that ignited the simmering resentment that had brewing in Granby, and which developed into the most prolonged and destructive riots ever witnessed on the UK mainland. Toxteth 81 was not so much a race riot as an uprising against longstanding police malpractice. The troubles that have revisited the area these last few nights are nothing of the kind, though a similar kind of wild-eyed youth are once more in the thick of it.
In all the hours and pages of reportage since rioting returned to our cities last weekend, not one commentator seems to have touched upon the sole unifying factor that fuels and drives such unrest – excitement, fun, teenage kicks. In 1981 I could have cited unemployment (check), low-income, single-parent family (check), experience of police brutality (check) as factors in my participation, but none of the above even remotely came into my thinking then and I doubt it is stoking today's unrest, either.
I went along in 1981 because I was swept away by the mind-blowing buzz of mob mayhem. There's no justifying that – in the crudest terms such behaviour is quite simply wrong – but try telling that to a 15-year-old on a mountain bike. To him or her, it's like a Wii game come to life – a hyper-real version of GTA. You taunt the police until they chase you, then you leg it and regroup. Some of the more radical kids will throw rocks and set cars and wheelie bins alight to get them going, but sooner or later the "bizzies" (police) will charge.
About 7.30pm on Tuesday evening I walked from Smithdown Lane on the fringes of Toxteth all the way down the hill to the city centre. There was barely anybody out on the streets. The city centre, suddenly the subject of blanket media coverage in the expectation of further rioting, had closed down early and people were battening down the hatches. As darkness fell, the first police sirens of the evening could be heard, and then the relentless whirring of the surveillance helicopter. Mobs began to assemble, but what was noticeable were the groups of youth workers and community leaders quickly on the scene to reason with youngsters.
In spite of isolated incidents and the now symbolic sight of purple wheelie bins ablaze, there was nothing one could describe as insurrection. The police were visible when necessary, but seemingly content to work in tandem with the youth leaders, too. If it hadn't have been for the phalanx of reporters, no one would have known anything out of the ordinary had happened.
Speaking to reporters, one of the Toxteth youth workers, Jimmy Jagney, said that while he and his colleagues had been able to quell and disperse kids they knew well from around and about Liverpool 8, they had also identified two large gangs of youths, none of whom they recognised. His assumption was that the youths had assembled in the hope of opportunistic looting, and his team quickly advised them to take off, and take their ambitions for notoriety elsewhere. Just as myself and my mates did in 1981, they felt a bit foolish when confronted and slunk away home.
We live in a time of instant news. Whether it is camera crews sitting in medieval European squares as they wait for football hooligans to get drunk and provide rowdy footage, or plucky frontline reporters with pinhole cameras in their lapel as they maraud with the youth, our media suppliers are fanning the flames. They're making a case, and making a story that doesn't – or needn't – exist. If our politicians wants to know what's really going on, they should give Jimmy Jagney a call. In the meantime, nothing to see here – move along.
Kevin Sampson @'The Guardian'

The Secret History of Guns

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s criminal history and her hypocrisy with WikiLeaks and Julian Assange

theQuietus theQuietus 
Who thinks Michael Gira of Swans is being serious or sarcastic here? Shall we ask him? http://d.pr/8Rap

HA!

Sign on the door of Subway in Manchester.
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Cutbacks force retreat in war on meth

IQ2: Is Wikileaks a Force for Good?

Info & Download

Also well worth watching:

Raimond Gaita: WikiLeaks: Power and Consent

Plan B: 'Why do time for nicking a pizza? It's stupid'

I can't give material things to the general public as a way of giving something back for the success I've achieved, because I don't have enough to give everyone.
If I even attempted to I'd be poor and I'd be doing this all for nothing. But I deserve the things I have because I work hard for them.
Kids on the street aren't going to see that. They're going to see I've got more money than them, they're going to feel like they deserve to take it.
The real thing that's going to help these kids is some knowledge and some education about how to live, because what's the point of getting arrested and put into jail for a pair of new trainers or a fucking microwave?
The kind of places these kids are attacking, they're like retail shops. Lidl? They broke into Lidl because they want to get some frozen food, some frozen pizza for free?
What did you break into Lidl for? And you are going to do time for it? It's stupid.
And you've got people like me who are trying to change the way middle England look at the underclass, have a bit more compassion for them - how can I stand up for that any more?
No one is going to have sympathy for these guys no more.
They're just ruining the good work people are doing within the communities to change things.
It's scary because they're not attacking the Government. If this was about high taxes, things costing too much money in this country, why are you attacking the working class, the retail shops?
Some of them are big companies, corporate companies - I get that. But Greggs the bakery? This is all just an excuse for young angry kids to take their anger out and steal stuff.
This is definitely because of the way the Government and this country - us as a society, as a nation - have treated the underclass. Not giving them the support they need.
I don't think they're doing this as anger towards the Government. I don't think they're smart enough to even realise that could be an excuse.
I think they're doing it because they want some free stuff because they ain't got any and they're angry at that.
They're angry at not being able to buy the things they want to buy because they can't integrate into society properly, so they feel stuck and alone, with criminal records, no future in the white man's world.
"Everybody is out in the street rioting, everybody is looting, let's do the same." It's a free-for-all, it's a buzz and let's get some free stuff out of it. That's what they're thinking.
But it's madness because people are going to get hurt and they're messing up this country's economy.
You think about all the insurance companies who are going to go bust now, that means banks are going to go bust. I don't know and maybe I don't know what the hell I'm talking about, but surely there's a chain reaction going to happen - and why? To make everyone as poor as them?
Again, they're not even thinking about that. They're not even conscious of that.
Would they like to live in a world where everybody was poor and everybody was selling crack and everybody's mums were on crack?
Then there's no way out. At least before there was always a way out.
If you could see a way out of the underclass environment, the estates, if you could see a way out, it was there.
What are these riots in aid of if they make everybody poor? Then there's no way out, there's no other option.
The thing is, every kid who sells crack or robs another kid or commits a violent crime, they always have a choice. Right now, they don't know, but they're trying to change all that.
If people keep doing this, and destroying our economy, that's the way it's going to go.
Like communism and poverty - everyone is poor. But it won't go like that, of course not. This always picks up but as a nation we are going to be very weak.
We already have all our troops overseas, got a lack of police, we're sitting ducks. If any terrorists were to hit now we're be at our weakest.
I think it's messed up, man.
Anyway, that's all I wanted to say. If felt it needed to be said.
That's it. I'm Plan B
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(Sorry for linking to The Scum!)