InjusticeFacts Injustice Facts
VA – Euro Disco – The Lost Legends Vol. 01 (CD)
8 hours ago
Thursday, 11 August 2011
A message:
Hello thar FBI and international law authorities,
We recently stumbled across the following article with amazement and a certain amount of amusement:
The statements made by deputy assistant FBI director Steve Chabinsky in this article clearly seem to be directed at Anonymous and Lulz Security, and we are happy to provide you with a response.
You state:
"We want to send a message that chaos on the Internet is unacceptable, [even if] hackers can be believed to have social causes, it's entirely unacceptable to break into websites and commit unlawful acts."
Now let us be clear here, Mr. Chabinsky, while we understand that you and your colleagues may find breaking into websites unacceptable, let us tell you what WE find unacceptable:
* Governments lying to their citizens and inducing fear and terror to keep them in control by dismantling their freedom piece by piece.
* Corporations aiding and conspiring with said governments while taking advantage at the same time by collecting billions of funds for federal contracts we all know they can't fulfil.
* Lobby conglomerates who only follow their agenda to push the profits higher, while at the same time being deeply involved in governments around the world with the only goal to infiltrate and corrupt them enough so the status quo will never change.
These governments and corporations are our enemy. And we will continue to fight them, with all methods we have at our disposal, and that certainly includes breaking into their websites and exposing their lies.
We are not scared any more. Your threats to arrest us are meaningless to us as you cannot arrest an idea. Any attempt to do so will make your citizens more angry until they will roar in one gigantic choir. It is our
mission to help these people and there is nothing - absolutely nothing - you can possibly to do make us stop.
"The Internet has become so important to so many people that we have to ensure that the World Wide Web does not become the Wild Wild West."
Let me ask you, good sir, when was the Internet not the Wild Wild West? Do you really believe you were in control of it at any point? You were not. That does not mean that everyone behaves like an outlaw. You see, most people do not behave like bandits if they have no reason to. We become bandits on the Internet because you have forced our hand. The Anonymous bitchslap rings through your ears like hacktivism movements of the 90s. We're back - and we're not going anywhere. Expect us.
abcnews ABC News
Former NSW Crime Commission investigator Mark Standen guilty of plot to import drugs.
Bass and Treble - Some Detroit Shit Mix
Tracklist:
1. Kyle Hall “Create Your Own Existence” (Moods & Grooves, 2008);
2. Bostro Pesopeo “Basic” (Permanent Vacation, 2010);
3. Stereociti “Water Strider” (Mojuba, 2011);
4. Scott Grooves “Crash” (Not On Label, 2011);
5. The Smith Hall Project “He Said” (Undertones, 2009);
6. Oasis “Thirteen” (FXHE Records, 2007);
7. Steffi “Arms” (Ostgut Ton 2011);
8. Omar S “Sarah” (FXHE Records, 2011);
9. Orlando Voorn “The Truth” (Finest Blend, 2007);
10. Brian Kage “Salmon Fishin’” (Beretta Red, 2011);
11. Los Hermanos “The Very Existence” (Submerge, 2005).
1. Kyle Hall “Create Your Own Existence” (Moods & Grooves, 2008);
2. Bostro Pesopeo “Basic” (Permanent Vacation, 2010);
3. Stereociti “Water Strider” (Mojuba, 2011);
4. Scott Grooves “Crash” (Not On Label, 2011);
5. The Smith Hall Project “He Said” (Undertones, 2009);
6. Oasis “Thirteen” (FXHE Records, 2007);
7. Steffi “Arms” (Ostgut Ton 2011);
8. Omar S “Sarah” (FXHE Records, 2011);
9. Orlando Voorn “The Truth” (Finest Blend, 2007);
10. Brian Kage “Salmon Fishin’” (Beretta Red, 2011);
11. Los Hermanos “The Very Existence” (Submerge, 2005).
Wednesday, 10 August 2011
[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.
@'CMU'
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.
@'CMU'
Liverpool riots: I remember the buzz of mob mayhem from 1981
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'
theQuietus theQuietus
Who thinks Michael Gira of Swans is being serious or sarcastic here? Shall we ask him? http://d.pr/8Rap
Who thinks Michael Gira of Swans is being serious or sarcastic here? Shall we ask him? http://d.pr/8Rap
Plan B: 'Why do time for nicking a pizza? It's stupid'
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
Via
(Sorry for linking to The Scum!)
Kesey’s Trip in Living Color
But the Pranksters were lousy moviemakers; the footage was chaotic, out of focus and all but impossible to edit. It ended up moldering in rusty cans on Kesey’s Oregon farm. Still, we saw the film another way, by reading “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,” Mr. Wolfe’s still-dazzling retelling.
And now — hold on — with that merry band long dispersed or dead, the amazing moment has arrived after all. “Magic Trip,” a new documentary by Alex Gibney and Alison Ellwood, rescues the old footage, and Kesey’s vision, through a miracle of digital restoration and editing.
To which we can only say: Whoa! How often does that happen? A book gets its own corroborative video, 40-some years late. The same indelible images, the word made fleshy. Here’s Kesey in his prime, his legendary charisma made obvious. There’s Neal Cassady, hopped-up at the wheel, and, man, he won’t shut up. And there are those other young men and the women they loved, ogled, chased and ignored. There’s Stark Naked at Larry McMurtry’s house, tripping badly. Here’s Generally Famished, pregnant and tired and mostly not acting like an idiot. The whole story of what free love was like for women in the prefeminist ’60s is captured in her weary, wary eyes.
Nearly 50 years on, the film shows why squares in shiny shoes thought the Pranksters were ninnies. It helps explain why the ’60s were necessary, if not always interesting. And it only deepens our admiration for Mr. Wolfe, who married a wild imagination to a writer’s discipline, and got his raw material into shape. In 1968.
@'NYT'
Film Hitches a Weird Ride on Kesey’s Bus
Kim Salmon: Spare a dollar for the maker, music doesn't play itself
When I began working as a musician in Fremantle some 35 years ago, I earned around $600 per week. I had a regular gig and it was ongoing. Nowadays I'd think myself very lucky to make that sort of wage playing music. It's usually much less. And compared to many musicians, I'm doing very well.
Last year in Melbourne, the city's entire live music industry rallied to get the Victorian government to recognise the industry's cultural and economic contribution to the state.
This town's reputation as the best live music scene in the country was trumpeted proudly throughout the media. Much was made of a loved pub, the Tote, being forced to close as a live music venue thanks to restrictive licensing laws. It became the symbol of the struggle to maintain a vibrant music scene in a heartless environment of profiteers, bureaucrats and dollar-driven decisions.
Thanks, however, to the industry figures and musos who took part in the rally, public awareness of the importance of the industry grew and became something that government would notice. Thanks to the rally, the Tote reopened as a music venue just a few months after its high-profile closure. It was considered a victory for live music in this state.
And, one year after the Tote's historic reopening, what of the musicians who create this live music so cherished by the state? Are they able to get a guaranteed fee for playing in this victorious, symbolic pub?
Err, actually … no.
Why is it that after dedicating my life to playing music, I now earn less than ever?
People like to blame digital technology for the ease of obtaining music free, doing its makers out of their income. Technology will always change things - it is said that some theatre organists committed suicide with the advent of the talkies. Maybe true, sadly, but there are still organists.
I blame attitudes.
''It must be wonderful doing what you love for a living,'' people often say to me.
Or, ''Put yourself in my shoes, I've got a business to run,'' which is a common refrain to working musicians from those who don't want to pay much for their services. The attitude behind this remark is taken as some kind of given and perfectly acceptable.
Well, I am in your shoes, Mr Publican. I've also got a business to run. The business of paying the sound guy, fellow musos, transport, rent. I've walked more than a mile in your shoes and I'm still not where you are.
Another thing I've heard said too many times is ''Why don't you get a real job?'' as if it's too much fun to be a real job.
Others will tell you to treat your music like a hobby and if you get paid for it, that's the icing on the cake. This is a big part of the problem; in my view there are so many people who are prepared to treat it like a hobby, that the professional musician is undermined.
Dodgy preconceptions dog other professions: nurses will work unhealthy shifts for inordinately low wages because they ''have a desire to help the sick''; teachers ''only work during school hours and they get all those holidays'' - students' reports seemingly writing themselves … so they don't need to be paid as much as people from the private sector; CEOs ''are all psychopaths so we have to let them have seven-figure salaries … '' I could go on.
What I'm driving at is that the way certain professions are treated seems to be dictated by entrenched preconceptions. It seems perfectly reasonable to many that music publishers, record labels and publicans have a business to run and should be compensated for their work.
Yesterday, the government released its report into the live music industry's annual economic contribution to the state, which was calculated at more than $500 million.
It is time attitudes changed to more fairly benefit those without whom there would be no music industry - the musicians.
Via
Last year in Melbourne, the city's entire live music industry rallied to get the Victorian government to recognise the industry's cultural and economic contribution to the state.
This town's reputation as the best live music scene in the country was trumpeted proudly throughout the media. Much was made of a loved pub, the Tote, being forced to close as a live music venue thanks to restrictive licensing laws. It became the symbol of the struggle to maintain a vibrant music scene in a heartless environment of profiteers, bureaucrats and dollar-driven decisions.
Thanks, however, to the industry figures and musos who took part in the rally, public awareness of the importance of the industry grew and became something that government would notice. Thanks to the rally, the Tote reopened as a music venue just a few months after its high-profile closure. It was considered a victory for live music in this state.
And, one year after the Tote's historic reopening, what of the musicians who create this live music so cherished by the state? Are they able to get a guaranteed fee for playing in this victorious, symbolic pub?
Err, actually … no.
Why is it that after dedicating my life to playing music, I now earn less than ever?
People like to blame digital technology for the ease of obtaining music free, doing its makers out of their income. Technology will always change things - it is said that some theatre organists committed suicide with the advent of the talkies. Maybe true, sadly, but there are still organists.
I blame attitudes.
''It must be wonderful doing what you love for a living,'' people often say to me.
Or, ''Put yourself in my shoes, I've got a business to run,'' which is a common refrain to working musicians from those who don't want to pay much for their services. The attitude behind this remark is taken as some kind of given and perfectly acceptable.
Well, I am in your shoes, Mr Publican. I've also got a business to run. The business of paying the sound guy, fellow musos, transport, rent. I've walked more than a mile in your shoes and I'm still not where you are.
Another thing I've heard said too many times is ''Why don't you get a real job?'' as if it's too much fun to be a real job.
Others will tell you to treat your music like a hobby and if you get paid for it, that's the icing on the cake. This is a big part of the problem; in my view there are so many people who are prepared to treat it like a hobby, that the professional musician is undermined.
Dodgy preconceptions dog other professions: nurses will work unhealthy shifts for inordinately low wages because they ''have a desire to help the sick''; teachers ''only work during school hours and they get all those holidays'' - students' reports seemingly writing themselves … so they don't need to be paid as much as people from the private sector; CEOs ''are all psychopaths so we have to let them have seven-figure salaries … '' I could go on.
What I'm driving at is that the way certain professions are treated seems to be dictated by entrenched preconceptions. It seems perfectly reasonable to many that music publishers, record labels and publicans have a business to run and should be compensated for their work.
Yesterday, the government released its report into the live music industry's annual economic contribution to the state, which was calculated at more than $500 million.
It is time attitudes changed to more fairly benefit those without whom there would be no music industry - the musicians.
Via
Exile On Fleet Street
In the same year, the BBC — keen to understand the man who some said would transform British media — dispatched one of its cherished sons to interview Murdoch. David Dimbleby — then a 30-year-old reporter, today the august host of the BBC’s flagship political debate program — set about Murdoch with the clipped vowels and polished cunning that will be familiar to viewers of Question Time. Halfway through the report Dimbleby speaks to Murdoch’s second wife, Anna. Here, he strikes on a more informal line of questioning, and says with an almost coquettish lilt in his voice:
“I expect it’s awful to be the wife of a media tycoon. I mean, don’t you feel cut out of so much of his life?”
Anna considers for a moment. Then she says:
“I don’t like it when people call him a tycoon. Tycoon is a sort of Americanism. He’s a good Australian businessman, and he’s come over here.” The beginnings of a smile flicker over Anna’s face; she suppresses it, and adds: “And he’s going to show you how to do it.”
That answer was an impromptu, perfect encapsulation of the Murdoch project as it was then conceived. For 30 years Murdoch has considered himself the ultimate outsider at the heart of the British establishment, a man “over here” and determined to bring a value system shaped by the colonial experience — one that insists on egalitarianism, robustness, and competition — to bear on an old British elite that he considered hypocritical, complacent, and, above all, beholden to repulsive class prejudice. That outsider mentality has lain behind everything Murdoch has done, from the culture of tabloid sensationalism pioneered at the News of the World, to the breaking of the print unions in Fleet Street in the 1980s, to the assault launched on Britain’s sleepy- four-channel television landscape by the Sky pay-TV network. It drove him to sell the British people a new idea of themselves, and their country. In our millions, we bought it...
Continue reading
David Mattin @'LA Review of Books'
These riots show the cost of consumption
Every society must bring the aggressive instincts of its individual members under control. This can never be achieved simply by outright repression or by moral precepts, but only by sublimation, that is by providing legitimate outlets for dangerous feelings.Different cultures -- traditional and modern -- achieve this in different ways of course. However, in market economies there can be little doubt that such sublimation is achieved mainly by consumption. It is the great driver of human endeavour and aspiration. Indeed, in an advanced economy like the UK, consumption makes up around two thirds of all economic activity.
But as anthropologists would point out, the sort of consumption most readers of this blog will be familiar with -- the simple and complex decision-making involved in the purchase of particular types of goods and services -- is far from universal. It therefore cannot be explained simply as a "natural" aspect of human behaviour by the sort of "rational choice" theory beloved by economists.
Instead, it is necessary to dig deeper and ask why certain categories of goods and services available in our society are valued differentially by different groups of people.
Yesterday and today, UK political leaders have been keen to point out that the looting of shops in London and other UK cities has little if any connection with the shooting by the Metropolitan Police's Operation Trident team last week of Mark Duggan, a 29-year-old black man from the Tottenham area of North London.
But are they right? I am not so sure. Whatever the truth of the matter, politicians are certainly wrong to fall back on a variety of explanatory clichés, like "mindless acts of violence and destruction" and "mindless criminality" carried out by "mindless thugs". Mindlessness would create randomness, but the events unfolding are far from being random.
Instead, I would argue that what we are witnessing is a significant symbolic statement about the way power -- the power of life and death exercised by police officers as well as the power to consume -- is arranged in British society.
There is a further point. Given the accusations of "mindlessness", it has been interesting to monitor the behaviour of the mainly young people -- predominantly male, but also female -- involved in the social disorder that has affected London and other major cities in England. One intriguing aspect of events has been the selection of targets by young people involved in the disturbances, which have mainly affected so-called "inner-city" areas.
There have been some odd choices -- last night on BBC TV, for example, I saw that a small shop selling items for children's parties had been ransacked in one part of London -- but by and large the focus has been on breaking into major electrical retailers like Currys and Dixons, mobile phone chains like Carphone Warehouse, supermarkets including Tesco, jewellers, and top-of-the- range "casual" and sports clothing stores.
This is why most of disorder has occurred either in high streets, shopping malls or out-of-town retail park locations. Put simply, these young people, most of whom I would guess live on the margins -- that is they do not come from comfortable middle-class homes -- wanted to access physical products which typically have high financial and symbolic value either within their primary peer group or because they can be sold on to others.
But they also wanted something more: the sort of social power -- even temporarily -- that is normally only exercised by affluent Britons equipped with nice houses, nice cars and credit cards.
The other interesting feature is that most of the violence has been directed by the rioters at the police, but not -- apart from one unlucky victim who was shot in Croydon last night and died in hospital today -- so far at ordinary groups or individuals. This may change as social tensions around race and ethnicity surface but at the moment these scenarios seem unlikely given the multi-ethnic make-up of those participating in the disorder.
But given the fact that property theft is a prototypical criminal offence in a Western-type economy, where affluence forms the bedrock of the dominant culture, it is little wonder that British Prime Minister David Cameron and Mayor of London Boris Johnson have cut short their holidays or that Parliament is to be recalled on Thursday. The political class and many other ordinary citizens evidently feel that the very fabric of society is under threat. Where now for the big society?
Sean Carey @'New Statesman'
London riots: Twitter says all tweets must continue to flow
The spokesman referred to the post, which is entitled 'The Tweets Must Flow', when asked by The Telegraph as to whether any rioters' accounts had or would be shut down. It says: “Our goal is to instantly connect people everywhere to what is most meaningful to them. For this to happen, freedom of expression is essential.
“Some tweets may facilitate positive change in a repressed country, some make us laugh, some make us think, some downright anger a vast majority of users. We don't always agree with the things people choose to tweet, but we keep the information flowing irrespective of any view we may have about the content.”
Twitter’s spokesman refused to reveal whether the company was working with the police to help locate people who have used the service to organise lootings and riots.
They also refused to disclose whether they had already handed over contact details of certain Twitter users to the authorities.
During the Arab revolutions earlier this year, attention focused on Twitter’s role in organising the protests, but for the looters and rioters of Tottenham, Enfield and Brixton, the communications tool of choice has apparently been BlackBerry Messenger (BBM). It appears to have acted as their private, encrypted social network over the past two nights’ violence.
However, many of the rioters have also used Twitter as a platform to announce their next targets and as a rallying cry to fellow looters.
The police are now understood to be scouring all tweets which have incited hatred or violence and have promised to bring their original authors to justice.
Emma Barnett @'The Telegraph'
However, many of the rioters have also used Twitter as a platform to announce their next targets and as a rallying cry to fellow looters.
The police are now understood to be scouring all tweets which have incited hatred or violence and have promised to bring their original authors to justice.
Emma Barnett @'The Telegraph'
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
