G20 Financial Fool's Day Riots

Yeah. Why couldn't we be suffering from an excess of DEEP thinkers, for a change?

Yeah, I agree. Busting windows is a stupid idea, unless they were going to use them to gain access to the building and shut it down.

To shut "it" down? Do you mean the building? The conference? The Bank? While I suppose some of the people who did something like that might FEEL better for an hour or two (until the snipers took them out), such an action would set the protest movement back at least a decade. In the public mind, they would mutate in about 15 seconds from oppressed majority to violent criminals. The UK would suffer the most, of course, because it would be their failure to secure the premises that would take the secondary blame behind the protest movement.

The current economic crisis is, at least in my opinion, the greatest opportunity that has ever been handed to the protest movement. To a great many people, the crisis is exactly what the protesters have been warning people about for years now. Violence and vandalism, however, is just about the best possible way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Trust and public opinion are fragile things.

Hey Al,

Post industrialized history would seem to indicate that Cztheday's comments are valid and true. Unless the betterment of the poor isn't a concern.

History, you can either learn from it or be a victim of it.

Wow...

advocating violence, quoting Martin Luther King Jr., and then claiming to understand history....

lol...perhaps you might just want to review history a bit.

AL, your initial response to my post indicated that you felt the only alternative to violent protest was "writing angry letters." As a student of history, surely you know that there are many alternatives beyond THOSE two options. Just a few that come immediately to mind are: finding a potential political candidate that shares your views and working your butt off to get him or her into the legislature (or parliament or Congress or whatever), persuading one of the literally THOUSANDS of interest groups to file one or more lawsuits challenging the legality of the conduct you deplore, persuading an EXISTING member of the legislative branch to sponsor one or more pieces of legislation CHANGING policy -- whether at the national level or at the local level. Other things one can do, of course, are to form your OWN nonprofit organization dedicated to educating people with respect to the wrongness of the policies and activities you oppose. There are starving writers on nearly every college campus -- offer to pay one of them a nickel a word to write a moving, factual piece on your side of the issues and then shop that article to various magazines. If the writing is good, I can just about guarantee you that SOME publication will pick it up. I admit that I may be wrong on this point, but I give speeches all over the country in my particular field, so before and after those speeches I discuss all kinds of issues with the people I meet. My very strong sense is that if there is one thing people are sick and tired of, it is violence. There are simply too many instances of people taking out their frustrations at work or at school or even in church with their fists or with weapons. People are NOT going to be persuaded by violence. They will only want to see the violent group alienated from society and locked up.

Response to Al:

No, I am saying that King understood history very well. In fact, perhaps you would like to read some of his words

"... nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral question of our time -- the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression."

And just to continue to educate you, that (if I remember correctly) is adapted from Gandhi's statement that Civilization and violence are antithetical concepts.

Now...what were you saying about King?

More response to Al

I believe you need to learn from King. I've included some parts of Pilgrimage to Nonviolence where King discusses Gandhi

1) nonviolent resistance is not a method for cowards (but violence can be)

2) nonviolent resister must often express his protest through noncooperation or boycotts, but he realizes that these are not ends themselves; they are merely means to awaken a sense of moral shame in the opponent ... The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community, while the aftermath of violence is tragic bitterness.

3) A third characteristic of this method is that the attack is directed against forces of evil rather than against persons who happen to be doing the evil

4) A fourth point that characterizes nonviolent resistance is a willingness to accept suffering without retaliation, to accept blows from the opponent without striking back. 'Rivers of blood may have to flow before we gain our freedom, but it must be our blood

5) The nonviolent resister not only refuses to shoot his opponent but he also refuses to hate him

6) the believer in nonviolence has deep faith in the future. This faith is another reason why the nonviolent resister can accept suffering without retaliation

I hope that helps

Yes, King was arrested for "violent' civil disobedience...but evidence, film clips, eye witnesses claim (and other than his very early phase, it seems in line with his words) that he was not violent. BTW, exactly what do you think a southern white sheriff @ that time would have charged him with..

You're lying to yourself if you think King or Gandhi justify your or other's violent acts. The very fact that you seem to be looking so hard for justification would seem to indicate that your actions are wrong.

In closing, I think King said it best.
(from jail): "My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure"

BTW, my people say something similar...spilled blood doesn't heal the earth.

Al,

Did I read what you wrote…well I pretty much obliterated your comment about king’s arrest for "violent' civil disobedience.

As far as your comment about property destruction…I’ve answered that long ago…please re-read Pilgrimage to Nonviolence, parts 2-4. Oh, and King would had directly objected to your comment about property destruction. History even indicates that it was the lack of violence and lack of property destruction that caused such a favorable shift in the public’s will.

I’ll say it again…the very fact that you are working so hard to justify the actions tends to prove that the actions are not justified. (Perhaps better stated - Lies are revealed, truth is for all to see)

I’ll say it again (and to help you out since you couldn’t understand last time, to understand the statement is to go beyond its literal interpretation) Spilled blood doesn’t heal the earth.

Not all anarchists are about distablizing society. They are simply focused on distabilizing the inherent system of controls administered to check the ability of the people to govern for themselves. Just because one believe in self-rule, does not mean they believe in chaos. Although, chaos is not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself.

Doubling their numbers with a peaceful protest would have done a lot more good than breaking things like an angry teenager.

Some people just want to watch the world burn . . . and that is what chaos lets loose. I'd rather prop up a miserable excuse of a government then to hand it over to the anarchists.

Protest intelligently, not violently . . .

it actually would, the Royal Bank of Scotland recieved over £37billion from the british government.