• Causes of the riots: Old truths and new technologies | Editorial | Comment is free | The Guardian
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/24/riots-causes-social-media

    Eleven years ago fuel protesters held Britain to ransom, and it became a commonplace to account for their success in terms of the new-fangled mobile phones which lorry drivers were using to text message one another. A generation before, the crackling cassette recordings of Ayatollah Khomeini’s harangues which circulated in Tehran were said to have played no small part in fomenting the Iranian revolution. In an earlier epoch, the development of Dutch presses and distribution networks which churned out “libelles” targeting French royalty was, according to some historians, the catalyst for the storming of the Bastille.

    Today Facebook, Twitter and BlackBerry are commanded to attend a Home Office summit for earnest discussion about the role their networks played in the spasm of criminal disorder that gripped English streets so recently. The hysterically harsh sentences already handed down in one or two cases of pro-riot social messaging is a reminder that moral panic can often follow hot on the heels of new technology.

    #ukriots #technologie

  • Libya’s imperial hijacking is a threat to the Arab revolution | Seumas Milne | The Guardian (via @angryarab)
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/24/libyas-imperial-hijacking-threat-arab-revolution

    But the facts are unavoidable. Without the 20,000 air sorties, arms supplies and logistical support of the most powerful states in the world, they would not be calling the shots in Tripoli today. The assault on the capital was supported by the heaviest Nato bombardment to date. Western intelligence and special forces have been on the ground for months – in mockery of the UN – training, planning and co-ordinating rebel operations.

    It was the leading Nato states that championed and funded the Transitional National Council – including members with longstanding CIA and MI6 links – and officials from Nato states who drew up the stabilisation plan now being implemented on the ground.

  • Libya : a new breed of military intervention | Richard Norton-Taylor | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/25/libya-military-intervention?CMP=twt_gu

    The Libyan conflict gave birth to a new kind of covert intervention involving military advisers and special forces, not from the US – not even only from European countries, notably Britain’s SAS – but those of Arab countries, notably Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

    They were engaged in denial operations, supported not by US dollars, but by Gulf money and weapons. Europeans, mainly British, French, and Italian, provided training and communications equipment. The US, out of the limelight, supplied pilotless drones and detailed, real-time, intelligence which played an important role. As the Guardian reported, British special forces, with those from other countries, including Qatar, and rebel commanders have been planning “Mermaid Dawn” for weeks: a carefully worked out assault on Tripoli involving co-ordinated action by Nato bombers, rebel sleeper cells, and a flotilla of boats from Misrata.

    Beaucoup d’euphémismes dans ces deux paragraphes...

  • In praise of… odd offices | Editorial | Comment is free | The Guardian
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/24/in-praise-odd-offices

    It’s surprising to see that Roberto Calderoli, the Italian politician reported last week to have “lashed out” at overpaid footballers complaining about their tax bills, holds office as “minister for simplification”. Two questions suggest themselves. Simplification of what, exactly? Of tax liabilities? Of the moral choices of footballers? Or possibly of his prime minister’s private life, which could certainly do with it?

  • Looting with the lights on | Naomi Klein | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/17/looing-with-lights-off

    There have, however, been other mass lootings in recent years, and perhaps we should talk about them too. There was Baghdad in the aftermath of the US invasion – a frenzy of arson and looting that emptied libraries and museums. The factories got hit too. In 2004 I visited one that used to make refrigerators. Its workers had stripped it of everything valuable, then torched it so thoroughly that the warehouse was a sculpture of buckled sheet metal.

    #UKriots

  • “Liberalism emerged as a revolutionary ideology reflecting the ambitions of the rising bourgeoisie in relation to the abolition of feudal privilege. Liberalism won its decisive political victories in the revolutions in England, the US and France in the 17th and 18th centuries. Its rise was concurrent with the rise of capitalism. With the consolidation of capitalism, the tenor of liberalism shifted from emancipatory optimism to a more conservative stance, suspicious of grand projects of social change.”

    “Nevertheless, because liberalism proclaimed radically universalist principles – most notably, liberty and equality for all – the doctrine provided ideological resources that could be taken up by hitherto oppressed groups. Those excluded from the early realm of liberal equality and freedom – slaves, women and working-class men – drew on the universalism of liberal principles in order to demand inclusion. So the historical development of liberalism was shaped not only by the interests of the wealthy but also by the struggles of the marginalised.”

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/15/liberalism-political-economic-different-ideologies

  • Charlie Brooker | How to prevent more riots | Comment is free | The Guardian
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/14/charlie-brooker-prevent-more-riots

    As well as addressing the gulf between the haves and have-nots I’d look at TV shows that confuse achievement with the acquisition of bling

    In the smouldering aftermath, some politicians, keen to shift the focus from social inequality, have muttered darkly about the role of BlackBerry Messenger, Twitter and Facebook – frightening new technologies that, like the pen and the human mouth, allow citizens to swap messages with one another. Some have even called for the likes of Twitter to be temporarily suspended in times of great national crisis. That’d be reassuring – like the scene at the start of a zombie movie where the news bulletin is suddenly replaced by a whistling tone and a stark caption reading PLEASE STAND BY. The last thing we need in an emergency is the ability to share information. Perhaps the government could also issue us with gags we could slip over our mouths the moment the sirens start wailing? Hey, we could still communicate if we really had to. Provided we have learned semaphore.

    ....

    Back in the 80s the pioneering aspirational soap opera Dallas dangled an unattainable billionaire lifestyle in front of millions, but at least had the nous to make the Ewing family miserable and consumed with self-loathing. At the same time, shows aimed at kids were full of presenters cheerfully making puppets out of old yoghurt pots, while shows aimed at teens largely depicted cheeky urchins copping off with each other in the dole queue. Today, whenever my world-weary eyes alight on a “youth show” it merely resembles a glossily edited advert for celebrity lifestyles, co-starring a jet-ski and a tower of gold. And regardless of the time slot, every other commercial shrieks that I deserve the best of everything. I and I alone. I’d gladly introduce a law requiring broadcasters to show five minutes of footage of a rich man dying alone for every 10 minutes of fevered avarice. It’d be worth it just to see them introduce it on T4.

    If we were to delete all aspirational programming altogether, the schedules might feel a bit empty, so I’d fill the void with footage of a well-stocked Foot Locker window, thereby tricking any idiots tuning in on a recently looted television into smashing the screen in an attempt to grab the coveted trainers within.

    .....

    But perhaps it’s better to nip future trouble in the bud with the use of deterrents. Obviously a small percentage of the rioters are sociopaths, and you’ll never make any kind of impression on their psyche without a cranial drill. But the majority should be susceptible to threats. Not violent ones – we’re not animals – but creatively unpleasant ones. Forget the water cannon. Unleash the slurry cannon. That kind of thing.

    Greater Manchester police has attracted attention by using Twitter as a substitute for the “perp walk”: naming-and-shaming rioters by tweeting their personal details as they leave court. Not bad, but maybe not humiliating enough. Personally, I’d seal them inside a Perspex box glued to a billboard overlooking a main plaza for a week, where people can turn up and jeer at them. It’s not totally inhumane: they would be fed through a tube in the top – but crucially, they would be fed nothing but cabbage, asparagus and figs, and since they wouldn’t be allowed out for toilet breaks, it would be getting pretty unpleasant in there after 48 hours. And it would be a cheery pick-me-up for passersby.

    #UKriots

  • Please Britain, don’t let Mubarak inspire your response to unrest | Mona Eltahawy | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/12/riots-egyptian-mubarak-civil-liberties

    Water cannon? Calling in the army? Shutting down or disrupting mobile phone messaging services and social networks in times of civil disorder? Oh the irony of ironies. Six months after my country’s dictator, Hosni Mubarak, stepped down after 18 days of a popular uprising, British prime minister David Cameron, members of parliament and the security services were seriously discussing those draconian measures in response to days of riots.

    #UKriots