Branscombe Looters Show the Way!
Jan 22 2007 19:07
Hi
Branscombe Looters Show the Way!
http://www.channel4.com/player/v2/player.jsp?showId=4405
“Unofficial Salvage” indeed. Ho Ho. Hope they storm the beach tomorrow, cops are gonna close it apparently. Damage to seabirds too. This doesn't get any better.
Love
LR
Jan 22 2007 19:43
#1
Offline
Jan 22 2007 19:45
#2
SHIPS?
-----BASTARDS!
Jan 22 2007 19:48
#3
au contraire comrade:
Jan 22 2007 20:03
#4
They told me I was mad when I said I could perform appendectomies with an iron. Well, look who's laughing now.
Jan 22 2007 21:11
#5
I'm not sure when perfume and DVD players became "toxic waste" in the sense that they're a danger to human life, but it's certainly an innovative use of the term.
Jan 23 2007 13:21
#6
I am so jealous i don't live there, it looks like a lot of fun.
Jan 23 2007 14:18
#7
the BBC is reporting that looters are ignoring police and carrying on, and they've found one farmowner whose possessions have been nicked (it's mostly commodities in transit as far as i can tell) in order to show the "sheer greed" of the looters. i mean it fell off a ship, they're lucky it's in a state to be nicked, but there you go.
Jan 23 2007 14:21
#8
radio news were talking about how police is now saying it is organised criminal gangs who are arriving to the area. proper demonisation going on!
Jan 23 2007 14:30
#9
JDMF wrote:
organised criminal gangs
by which they mean autonomous self-organised groups of workers re-appropriating bourgeois property 
that ain't demonisation, that's high praise from the class enemy 
Jan 23 2007 15:09
#10
It's a centuries-old tradition down there - alot of the old cottages in the western coastal areas are built from wrecked ship's timbers. There are legends (never proven) of coastal villagers luring ships onto the rocks on stormy nights by putting lanterns on the cliffs so the ships would mistake them for lighthouses, confusing their navigation. The last big ship looting on the north coast of Devon was in 1982, it was very similar to this one - hundreds decended on the ship and stripped it overnight.
For all the demonisation, it's not actually illegal to take the stuff if you eventually report the find by filling in a form. Rumour has it that the main looters these days are lifeboatmen, perks of the job etc.
Jan 23 2007 15:12
#11
Quote:
Rumour has it that the main looters these days are lifeboatmen, perks of the job etc.
I wouldn't doubt it peelers and firefighters were always first in the queue for bomb damage stuff in Northern Ireland and a mate of mine whose da was in the cops always had a new coat and Playstation games when Nuts Corner Market got raided for counterfeit goods.
Jan 23 2007 15:16
#12
yeah there's a lifeboatman in the office joking about how he wished the Napoli made it a bit further up the coast 
as far as i can tell, it's illegal if you conceal or refuse to surrender 'found' goods - so ebay listings are legal
Jan 23 2007 17:56
#13
Thing is though - surely the onus is on the shipping companies insurance to pay out, so why would anyone care what they lost if they will get it all back eventually...
Jan 23 2007 18:21
#14
supposedly some people have lost personal possessions ("family heirlooms")- although the one family the BBC found who said this are having their stuff returned by the evil looters who didn't realise it was personal property
Jan 23 2007 19:10
#15
Pirates, wreckers and smugglers, as Ret says, all very traditional part-time occupations in the south west. Bloody hell, we should call in Survive and claim that the British state is trying to eradicate the ancient culture of West Country.
The drummed up moral outrage is extraordinary, I was fuming listening to the self-righteous gits phoning 5Live this afternoon. The woman who claimed to have lost family heirlooms freely admitted that she had made no attempt to inform either coastguard or the police that she had personal items on the beach but she was quite happy to have a rant on the radio. Her goods were on their way to South Africa where she has bought a vinyard, her life's ambition!
Jan 23 2007 19:21
#16
Quote:
Her goods were on their way to South Africa where she has bought a vinyard, her life's ambition!
Hey, hardly the most evil thing of all time mate. I know plenty of people with dreams like that.
Jan 23 2007 19:25
#17
Dundee_United wrote:
Quote:
Her goods were on their way to South Africa where she has bought a vinyard, her life's ambition!Hey, hardly the most evil thing of all time mate. I know plenty of people with dreams like that.
I've a funny feeling that some folk you know don't really have to dream it...
Jan 23 2007 23:00
#18
rkn wrote:
Thing is though - surely the onus is on the shipping companies insurance to pay out, so why would anyone care what they lost if they will get it all back eventually...
The coverage is so blatant it´s laughable. Grim faced reporters reading police statements about looters over footage of people running up the beach carrying disposable nappies. In fact it wasn´t just looting - some people were starting fires. On a beach. Civilisation has clearly broken down, they´ll be bumming their kids next.
The problem is so obviously not ´theft´ but that people are getting stuff without paying for it - or rather without it being sold to them.
Jan 23 2007 23:12
#19
The fucked thing is that there is no work-credit system in place so how do people really know what they're entitled to?
Jan 23 2007 23:50
#20
jason wrote:
The fucked thing is that there is no work-credit system in place so how do people really know what they're entitled to?
I hope you´re not suggesting a future economy based on grabbing stuff from sunken ships.
I for one would be against such a proposal.
Jan 24 2007 01:07
#21
has anyone ever seen the excellent Ealing film "Whisky Galore", in which a second world-war cargo ship is beached coming round an outer hebridean island which has just ran out of whisky (rationing and all) leading to general social decomposition, depression etc? As it turns out the ship's full of whisky, so all the locals obviously get set to salvage it - but the (english) head of the home guard takes it upon himself to frustrate their plans in the interest of legality. Leading, of course, to all sorts of comic misadventures & subversion.
properly funny film. eh.
Jan 24 2007 02:21
#22
Si
No i've not seen that one but i've seen other Ealing comedies and i think as well as being v. funny they are pretty much spot on with some of the social observations and political satire aspects...
Love
LW X
Jan 24 2007 08:05
#23
Watching people scavenge through the broken bones of other people's lives, like vultures. A real expression of the dignity of our class. Right.
Jan 24 2007 08:27
#24
well it's mostly commodities in transit being looted - oh no wait, sorry my mistake, it's further proof of decadence - people never used to scavenge shipwrecks pre-1917! 
Jan 24 2007 09:20
#25
I'm pretty certain that container of Pampers actually belonged to some Catholic family savy to the benefits of bulk buying.
Demogorgon303 it's not like anyones suggesting this as a future economic model for communism but it's hardly terrible that people are salvaging Use values from commodities that would have been written off by insurance.
Jan 24 2007 10:21
#26
The point is its not just commodities. Lots of the stuff is peoples personal belongings in transit. But even if it was "just commodities" do we have to degrade ourselves like this?
How does picking over wreckage at a beach advance the class consciousness of a fighting working class? The scenes are reminscent of the working class's earliest history: one of vagabondage, brutalisation and moral degradation. We spent several hundred years fighting against the impositions of capitalism that turned the early industrial proletarian areas into sinkholes of crime and misery, with our ancestors fighting like rats in a sewer.
They rose themselves above this by developing the most basic elements of solidarity, by declaring "thieves beware", and organising in their own defence.
The whole reason the bourgeosie is giving this such coverage is because they know exactly that it is this kind of behaviour that undermines class solidarity. It's their opportunity to say "look at the masses in action", "woe to human nature", etc.
This doesn't mean revolutionaries have to simply say the opposite of the bourgeois moralists. Class conscious minorities should be pointing out that this is not the revolutionary activity of a "working class", rather that this degradation is a product of the moral erosion of humanity brought about by the pernicious effects of commodity production and alienation, the system that these moralists defend.
This is not a minor issue. The conduct of the proletariat demonstrates its contradictory position in society: on the one hand, it represents the most concentrated loss of humanity as its early nature demonstrated. On the other, its anger and fury at its fate drives it to reconquer its humanity, expressed in solidarity and class struggle.
Jan 24 2007 10:34
#27
jason wrote:
The fucked thing is that there is no work-credit system in place so how do people really know what they're entitled to?
Surely they'd just be looting the work-credits stored on the ship instead of the goods, and we'd be right where we started. I wonder if work-credits are good for making beach fires?
(That actually got me to laugh out loud. :biggrin: In public. 
)
Jan 24 2007 10:35
#28
LOL!!!
fucking genuis!
I'm loving how you're so quick to relay the bourgeois medias bullshit about personal belongings.
What's your opinion on mass looting in riots?
Jan 24 2007 11:53
#29
Demogorgon303 wrote:
Class conscious minorities should be pointing out that this is not the revolutionary activity of a "working class"
i don't think anyone is seriously claiming this is "revolutionary activity"
Demogorgon303 wrote:
The whole reason the bourgeosie is giving this such coverage is because they know exactly that it is this kind of behaviour that undermines class solidarity. It's their opportunity to say "look at the masses in action", "woe to human nature", etc.
which they say to everything - katrina was far more characterised by self-organisation and state violence in maintenance of capitalist property than a hobbesean war, not that the press were interested in reporting that.
Demogorgon303 wrote:
this degradation is a product of the moral erosion of humanity brought about by the pernicious effects of commodity production and alienation ...
Jan 24 2007 12:01
#30
What does mass looting in riots (or riots themselves for that matter) have to do with the proletariat, revol?
In the Russian Revolution, the most class conscious Petrograd workers condemned looting on the grounds it would disgrace the revolution in the eyes of the world proletariat.
There's a simple way to work out if "looting" is part of the class struggle:
- is it the organised seizure of goods, mandated by organs of class struggle;
- is the aim to ensure distribution amongst workers and the dispossed because the normal organs that manage this social function have broken down either through disaster (as some did during Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans) - or because the workers themselves have destroyed them and are in the process of setting up their own organs of control.
This kind of activity is actually very difficult to do in riots because their general chaos precludes organised activity. The directionless violence of riots is a distraction from the political assault on the state - this is why the bourgeoisie go to such lengths to provoke and publicise them.
As far as the whole personal possessions thing goes, a) it wasn't the core of my argument which you haven't responded to yet and b) it IS the case according to someone at work who actually went down there to take a look.
Personally, I can think of worse things to get outraged about, but presenting this with a revolutionary gloss is patently absurd!