I like reading your posts Buddha. We live very different lives but I normally can see where you are coming from but then these little comments let you down in my opinion.
Opportunists smashing into stores to nick the latest wide screen telly are not joining your civil uprising. They are opportunist filth taking something that doesn't belong to them.
They aren't stealing to feed their family they are stealing consumer goods that you dont need to survive but looks good on their wall.
Someone stealing a loaf of bread I dont have issue with. A 60 inch Sony I do.
Mark, I'm not really an advocate of looting. But it is, I think, an unavoidable consequence of the rioting. As AK put it (very well), " people feel powerless and its a way to try to gain back the feeling of power." I'm the same as AK, I might not agree with the looting but I sure as fuck can understand it.
Stealing isn't right, I don't condone it and I am no thief. You very correctly draw a distinction between stealing to feed yourself/your family and stealing something like a television. They are indeed very different things.
And I agree that the opportunists who go looting aren't joining in a civil uprising. But you have to look at it from their point of view. When people feel that they have been disenfranchised and abused by a racist and corrupt system they become enraged and want to take the power back. Although it's only an illusion, looting serves to make (some) people feel that they are striking back.
As much as the looting may be regrettable in some ways, it represents only a tiny fraction of the theft and violence that the state engages on a daily basis.