>>>
>>>Of course, your stuff was looted by the same system, but you didn't know. Before internet, corporate and government secrecy was so much easier, you actually knew very little about it. Which is why it seems so.
>>>
>>>Don't blame the mirror...
>>
>>My stuff wasn't looted by the government any more then than it is now. If you think the government is any more honest now, then you're just not paying attention. But there were far fewer rioting idiots smashing up small storekeepers windows and stealing their stock.
>
>Don't confuse cause with consequence (confuse it with a large hammer, that might work :). Back then, capitalism had competition. Now it has fallen under its own influence, and doesn't feel a bit of a need to pamper its subjects.
>
>Besides, the best (and probably the only) way to make protests unattractive to the greater populace is to plant agents provocateurs (and provocators as well) who will start smashing shop windows. That was the favorite tactic of Milošević back in the day. The organizers of the protests had to have their own security to prevent these, and when they caught the guys, they often found police walkies in their pockets. The symptom for you to catch is how come the cameras are so frequently around the looters. A protest may run for hours, and the breaking of the windows may occur at a random time... and yet the cameras of the major stations are always there, even when they don't catch other main events.


I was quiet puzzled by the police in some cases simply leaving ground, which was then swiftly turned into a carnage party by rioters.
It looked almost as if police wanted to make some kind of political statement (since rioters themselves certainly did not have any!) Like hey... We are undermanned! Underfunded! Lonely! Depressed! ... {g}
Why police did not react more energetically at very start? My guess is that if they did, there would be no big riots at all.
But once rumour spread that mob is out and city shops are defenceless, it does not take long before all kinds of hyenas emerge from darkness to try and grab their peace of meat. Of course everything was very well covered by cameras, almost like looter's reality show...

Now of course nobody can credibly argue intention, but events like this will certainly make any real demonstrations in the future very easy to discredit. Few broken shop windows will be enough for whole nation to outright reject/condemn both demonstrators and their political causes without even looking or listening. As bonus feature, you get to pass any number of freedom supressing laws that would be outrageous to even propose otherwise.

Touche, all of you leftist pigs!
Now who is the winner of (yet unestablished) 'Machiavelli award' of the year, is kind of hard to determine... {g}