Commenting Policy

2 comments

• Comment Link Thursday, 25 August 2011 21:15 posted by Scott Payne

  Thanks for posting this, Andrew. The Globe and Mail article is quite good. There is an interesting, if not somewhat telling, conflation going on around these riots that if you seek to explore the underlying reasons for riots and chalk them up to more than just sheer, amoral opportunism, you are somehow also condoning the actions of the rioters. This is just the worst sort of intellectual pigeonholing.
  
  It is wholly possible to believe and seek to understand how there are deeper and worrisome social and economic factors that lie at the root of these events and desperately require attention, while not believing that the destruction wrecked by the rioters was either appropriate or acceptable. That there has been as much intellectual blinder-ism atplay in trying to understand the riots is perhaps as disturbing as the events themselves.
• Comment Link Friday, 02 September 2011 01:11 posted by Andrew Baxter

  Yes Scott, agreed. It seems that there is little room in the dialogue around riots, either here in Vancouver or in Britain - and to a lesser extent in Greece and elsewhere - for any discussion of causes or underlying social and economic factors that do lie at the root of these events.
  
  People don't just riot. They need reasons. Ignoring these reasons seems to me a bit idiotic!