eating all the burgers at the mcdonalds? not from what i’ve herd from people who were there and they say that the place was trashed and thats it. anyway there were people giving away free burgers on the streets (not mcdog burgers) but proper ones.
as for violence, while i don’t agree with killing police men as the vast marjority are just doing their jobs, they too have a minority that are what i term “trigger happy” and are just looking for excuse to crack a few skulls or crack open the tear gas. sure some people go just for a fight, but alot of those people are also ideological, they believe in anarchy and are just doing what to them is right.
Basically you are saying that individuals ought to have sovereignty over their own actions, so should be allowed to protest however they please (“just doing what to them is right”). Do you mean that the true anarchists have a right to protest in a violent manner in order to make their point? Is that not tantamount to ideological fundamentalism and therefore the moral equivalent to, say, someone who lives in Britain but believes in the Sharia law so attacks and cuts off the hand of some bloke who ripped off his business!? after all he is just doing what to him is right… Ok so that’s a big crazy leap to make, but the point is that you can’t run around taking things into your own hands and acting as judge, jury and executioner just because you think that you are right. Violence at the May Day protests is unacceptable and pointless, whoever the perpetrators.
As for the psychotic policemen you suggest may exist, you could be right. It just goes to show why democracy’s way of delegating authority is a pile of wank and impinges on the individual’s right to self-government (see the democracy thread). But reacting on their level just creates bad press and undoes anything the protests may achieve. So be good on May Day.
woah woah, where did i say they could cut peoples hands off? what i said was it is right to them, and as with most things it takes violence for something good to come about in the end.
Of course I wasn’t advocating violence against the Police there, which is unnacceptable, but surely destroying a McDonalds is a small enough ‘sacrifice’ if it means the demonstration is given any kind of coverage.
As for the argument that it gives a bad image, thats understandable but flawed. There will always be SOMEBODY that the Red Tops/ establishment orientated papers will jump on to demonise the protesters, and if there isn’t then there will almost certainly be a few MI5 officers or special branch to “save the queen” bu acting as agent provoceteurs…
…as always the political left is forced into dirty tactics to get any kind of influence. So far no other way has been suggested otherwise, unless we can bring it down from within…
You could be right, maybe the establishment would try to smear even a peaceful protest. Even so, I cannot understand the logic behind your desperation for “any kind of coverage.” Your line of argument seems to be “…they’ll make us look bad whatever…so fuck it, why don’t we make ourselves look even worse by acting like inane hooligans! That’ll show 'em, the bastards!” You need to look at the situation with a little more emotional detachment. Let’s face it, trashing one Mickey D’s is hardly hitting them where it hurts (there are over 1000 branches in the UK), not even in its symbolic value. It is an emblem of US globalization. What do you expect Blair, serial US president arse-licker, to do about that?
Look, I find myself sympathising with the left more and more every day; I was quite stirred by the Communist Manifesto (apart from maybe the bit about family). I am not some government capitalist spy, honest! I just disagree with the assertion that “the political left is forced into dirty tactics.” No one is forcing anyone. Perhaps you are justified in fearing secret service ‘agent provocateurs.’ But surely, if you are right, you would do better by saving the effort you would have wasted by playing into their hands - trashing an insignificant fast food joint and giving capitalists everywhere a field day - and using that effort to operate some sort of coordinated exposee of the government’s dirty tricks campaign. That would show people quite clearly that our much feted “liberal democracy” is not all it is made out to be, and place the (peaceful) demonstrators in moral/political ascendency.
Or more realistically you could use your political conviction to do a George Monbiot (he wrote “Captive State,” which demonstrates convincingly how the current Labour government has become a slave to corporate power). I picked up Marx and Engels because I was so disturbed by what Monbiot was writing (he also writes in the Guardian), "not because I heard about some Eton chump trashing a McDonalds.
Adding to an intellectual struggle which could quite conceivably be won by the left is far more likely to allow inroads to be made into a society which is quite happy to continue as it is, blissfully unaware of the corruption and exploitation at its heart. Convincing the general populous that they are being wronged and more importantly, that they can and ought to do something about it, is the key to gaining political influence, and this cannot be achieved by vandalism. In fact, when people see policemen fighting back the protesters, it adds to their belief that the democratic state is there to protect ‘the people.’ How can you say that this gives the political left “any kind of influence”?
I would be interested to know why this argument is “understandable but flawed.” Also you said that “no other way has been suggested” for the left to gain influence. I have just suggested one: the route of intellectual struggle. Do you think that this would prove less effective than rioting? (and please don’t answer by saying that most people are too stupid to understand intellectual arguments - that would be a tad…capitalist).
Intellectual struggle is fine, as far as it goes. But the sheer scale of the establishment and force that the left has to fight means that simply arguing with people isn’t going to ever be on a large enough scale to mobilise popular opinion.
Maybe if in a practical way the left could mobilise the media against the establishment, some progress could be made, but the fact that from birth everyone is conditioned into a particular mindset of capitalist thinking means that it will be an almighty struggle, which ultimately leads to the ultimate division in the left- whether a minority revolution is justified.
I don’t have the answers, I just think that if the process of smashing up Macdonalds is possibly the only way smalltime leftists even get a chance to air their views in the mainstream, then it is something which has to be regretfully done.
me? i haven’t said anything about mcdonalds for ages. why do i hate it? have you ever worked there? it’s fucking shit, the pay is awful, the staff are treated like shit, you see what actually happens to the food, you see the quality of the food. other than that the whole idea of bying fast food disgusts me, it’s utterly vile, i like to know what is in my food, and i like it to be real not just a bunch of chemicals or road kill and preservatives.
NB - i haven;t worked at mcdonalds, but i have had more than enough experiance of working for other ‘service industry’ establishments/rivals of mcdonalds to know what it is like - it’s shit.
on the note of smashing a mcdonalds up - omg what a man you’ve broken a window, have a medal. while i don’t like mcdonalds people could be violent to much more receptive things, e.g. the american embassy, now thats a place i’d like to trash, or microsoft’s HQ.
as for it being the only way the left will be herd, sort of, the protests get limites coverage otherwise, but when there is violence all news sources jump on the evil anti-capitalist band wagon and then ignore the contorary evidence that come out in the offical inquirery and the arrest of several police officers and suspension of the head of police, e.g. genoa.
you’d like to trash the microsoft HQ? my bet is you’re currently using a good few microsoft products. unless you’re going to turn around and tell me you’re a mac user, which doesn’t make you much of an anarchist anyway
that part of my evil anti-capitlaist plan, mwhahahah… er no, i am using microsoft stuff but that doesn’t mean i’m not allowed to want to smash my mircosoft hq
the word “hyprocrisy” springs to mind. as does the saying “do as I say and not as I do”.
On what basis are you allowed to publically declare you wish to smash up Microsoft HQ while typing on a Microsoft made Operating System? If you advocate a certain political stance surely you should embrace it and live it rather than just screaming it at the top of your lungs and forgetting about it when you leave the house.
Seriously, I don’t see how you can be anti-capitalist and violent about it, yet support the exact thing you are trying to resist by by buying such products.
If Microsoft did not have so much control over the production of computer systems, and allowed smaller companies to prosper, then we wouldn’t all need to use them. In a world were globalisation that has taken over, you cannot criticise someone for using a product to which there are no legitimate alternatives, no matter what their beliefs.
Off the topic I know but why do the boards seem to type & # 8 2 1 7 ; (without the gaps, cos otherwise it becomes an apostrophe) whenever you write an apostrophe. I find this quite confusing. any answers?
Louise: there is an alternative and it is a realistic one.
Linux. Linux is a free Unix-type operating system originally created by Linus Torvalds with the assistance of developers around the world. Developed under the GNU General Public License , the source code for Linux is freely available to everyone.
Ben: valid point about Linux. The only problem is, for people who aren’t that good with computers (me) it’s difficult to set up and it’s a total hassle to configure programs to work with it. That’s what I’ve found anyway.
May Day: what’s the point in protesting when there are so many different causes that noone knows what you’re protesting for anyway? Also, some people were protesting for stuff like more funding for public services… pretty stupid if you ask me, as the money spent on the 6000 or so police that had to be there could have been funding NHS reform.
HVD: The support for linux is phenomenal and it comes in the form of Online communities. Some commercial Linux distributions offer help over the phone but the majority of help comes from online. This can be in a number of ways. There are HOWTO’s and Documentations which can be found at lug.org.uk. I myself am the LUGmaster for South London plug.
LUG’s or Linux User Groups are a key way of getting help on any problem you have with Linux. It is focused around a mailing list but some LUG’s also have monthly meetings where talks are given on the latest Linux programs as well as basic things such as installing. The website above will give you more information on it.
Another way of getting Linux help is via Google or Deja. A wonderful thing about Linux is that it tells you everything that it’s doing and outputs into a logfile. If there is an error therefore you can open the logfile, copy the error and paste it into Google which will invariably come up with a 100 or so posts from people who have had the same problem and the solution to it.
Jane: From what I know you first used Linux a few years ago and granted it is very difficult to get into, but things have changed a lot since then and as an example you can now get a flavour of Linux called Mandrake Linux which has an install as easy as Windows. You just put the CD in and point and click the options that you want. It couldn’t be simpler.
With regards to software, at the moment, Linux developers are attempting to develop all the equivalent software that is used on Windows. For example, StarOffice is the equivalent of Microsoft Office, and KDE/Gnome/Sawfish are the equivalent graphical interfaces which are used in the Windows Operating System.
And that is only the beginning. Personally I don’t have a problem with Microsoft so my desktop machine is running Windows XP while my two other machines run Linux. However, if you did have a vendetta against Microsoft (which is the question in hand) then there is a realistic alternative and it isn’t as difficult as many claim it to be.