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Let's Play A Game: Anarchist Or Photo Op?
from the take-your-pic dept
Last week, there were student protests in the UK, concerning massively increased fees, and apparently on the fringes of the protests there was some violence, which of course the press picked up on, because "if it bleeds, it leads." Or, in this case, if it "kicks in a glass window, it leads." Apparently a whole bunch of newspapers all carried the same photo on their front covers. I've posted all nine such covers after the jump, but here are a couple just to give you the idea:
However, as some have noted, what may be more interesting is that if you look at a wider lens version of a similar image, you see that the guy kicking in the glass appears to be surrounded by a ton of photographers. In fact, the whole thing almost looks like a setup, with every single newspaper cropping out the photographers:
It looks like the wide angle shot was taken either seconds before, or seconds after the shot used by all the papers, but it's pretty close. Of course, with so many photographers, it does seem a bit odd that the newspapers all seemed to use a single photograph for their covers. What happened to the images from the others? Anyway, see the nine covers after the jump.
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Nothing new
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From the perspective of the editing, the photographers in frame aren't interesting, and detract from the feeling of 'pure rage' from the protesters.
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Photo-op indeed.
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Get my best side...
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I suppose 49 of them are just prop actors, and only 1 of them is a professional.
....actually, that wouldn't surprise me.
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And the photographers spoiling the 'pure rage' feeling? well, we wouldn't want something like reality or even reader-interpretation to de-sensationalize the news, now would we?
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Mind you, the political party whose headquarters is being wrecked in that picture is also slashing the police budget, which will mean lay-offs and a gutted pension scheme. One can't help but feel that even if the police had been capable of putting down the riot, their hearts wouldn't really have been in it.
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agent provocateur
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=St1-WTc1kow
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I wonder how many of those Newspapers Rupert Murdoch owns...
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Re: agent provocateur
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I'm sure they only used the ones from that side because they capture that little fire there as well.
It looks like he kicked the glass several times, which is probably why everyone had time to set up.
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Knock, knock Neo.
Wake up, the Matrix has you Neo!
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The Express pic actually seems to be from a slightly different position as well, a bit to the right.
Only the Express pic seems to show the expansive gaggle of photogs as well.
The cropped version is a great shot, imo, if not telling the whole story. Not surprised it's being so widely used.
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One more thing
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Photo Ops
I don't know if this is a smoking gun, since at the Toronto G20, the photographers almost outnumbered protesters and police combined. It wouldn't have taken them long to close ranks around this guy.
Anyways, the experience here in Toronto proved that the thing to look out for is the feint rather than outright provocation. The police drove a bunch of police cars up, menaced the crowd briefly, then fell back - an open invitation to douchebaggery in the service of globalization. http://www.cp24.com/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20100626/100626_G20_protests/20100626/
From the article:
James Ruehle, a 49-year-old contractor from Pickering, a half hour's drive from Toronto, saw the burning of the three police cruisers.
Ruehle was stopped in his truck at the lights at the corner of King and Bay streets in the city's financial district as the protesters approached.
Three police vehicles zipped past the line of traffic into the intersection, where they stopped with lights flashing. A group of about 20 to 30 police then began to congregate but an officer Ruehle thought was a police captain ordered them back.
"The cop was yelling at them 'Back up!' 'Put your batons down!"' said Ruehle.
The police in the cars, he said, then amazed him by backing off, leaving the cruisers running in the middle of the intersection with their lights flashing and doors open.
"It was like an invitation G(to the protesters)," said Ruehle.
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Guess what images were all over the media?
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Re: Get my best side...
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Re: One more thing
Everyone just wants the government to enforce their own version of what they think the rules should be. People who claim they want "less" government are full of crap and just want differently focused rules.
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This just in: pointing a camera at someone changes their behavior
Of course the same applies to officials and law-enforcement: as soon as there's awareness of a camera, postures/tone/behavior changes.
You can't fully trust any photo or video as an accurate representation of the same area without a camera.
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They have been good fear-mongering mouthpieces for decades, no sense starting to hold them accountable to the law like commoners.
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Re: Re: One more thing
You would make a terrible anarchist.
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> Without rules, whoever can will obviously just take over and makes their own rules
> Everyone just wants the government to enforce their own version of what they think the rules should be
You should look up Libertarianism - by which I mean the modern sense of the term. It avoids both these pitfalls by making it the government's job to protect individual rights and *nothing else*. The principle is to remove the initiation of force and fraud from human relationships.
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Take a small child sobbing and sobbing because he or she didn't get their way. They stop long enough to look out of the cradle of their arm to make sure you still see them and cry even louder.
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What's up with the glass?
Now that I look even closer, those aren't three different pictures taken within a fraction of a second, those are three different kicks. That's why the one guy isn't in the Guardian picture, he had time to walk out of frame.
Unless that guy was acting, that glass should have changed is some significant way. That guy didn't do that damage to that window.
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call it....
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Re: What's up with the glass?
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Re:
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Re: Re: Re: One more thing: Libertarianism is a disguise for plutocracy.
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Re: Re: One more thing
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1. The theory or doctrine that all forms of government are oppressive and undesirable and should be abolished.
2. Active resistance and terrorism against the state, as used by some anarchists.
3. Rejection of all forms of coercive control and authority:
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Back to School
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http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3221110/Rioting-students-storm-Tory-HQ.html
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Re: Re: Get my best side...
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Re: Re: Re: One more thing
My favorite illustration of this is from Something Positive: http://somethingpositive.net/sp12102002.shtml
"This is anarchy! Where the strong rule the weak and guess where your place is Puglsey? Anarchy is your sixth grade gym class for all eternity!"
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