Sunday, October 30, 2005

THE PC CULTURE OF DEPENDENCE

Comment from Neal Boortz

Florida Governor Jeb Bush is taking responsibility for relief delays that people are complaining about in the wake of Hurricane Wilma. Bush says "We (meaning the government) did not perform to where we want to be. This is our responsibility." Local officials complained that the state wasn't doing enough. Michael Chertoff, the Homeland Security Secretary, toured the area and asked the public for its patience.

All of this asks the question: what is the proper role of government following a natural disaster? Is it simply to restore law and order and essential services? Or is the government supposed to hold people's hand, paying for their every need and waiting on them hand and foot? This is a lesson from Katrina. More and more with each passing day Americans are being taught, and they're learning quite well we must say, to depend on government for just about everything. People who stocked up on necessities such as water, non-perishable food, batteries and other basics weren't the ones complaining. The more we depend on government the more politicians love it, and the less freedom we have. Self-sufficiency is no longer the goal for far too many Americans. Now the goal is to see how much responsibility they can turn over to the government while continuing to live the easy life.

America cannot survive this new attitude of government dependency.

Unfortunately, if the government would get out of the way after a disaster, things would go much smoother. With businesses and entrepreneurs worried about allegations of price gouging, scarce supplies and gasoline run out much sooner than they otherwise should. Immediately following a disaster, vote-hungry politicians start their warnings about price gouging. The result: artificially low prices result in shortages. Too bad. President Bush plans to tour the damage today in Florida. Expect him to be blamed for it too.



Britain: The black v Asian riots in Birmingham have roots in the politics of multiculturalism

One Asian teenager reflected on events in the Lozells area of Birmingham over the past week. It had started with a rumour about Asian men raping a Jamaican girl, and ended up with pitched battles between young British Asians and African-Caribbeans - the teenager nursed stitches in his head from a crowbar strike, and had lost teeth from a blow with knuckle-dusters.

According to the rumour, a 14-year-old Jamaican was caught stealing a wig from an Asian-run shop selling black beauty products in nearby Perry Barr. One of the shopkeepers threatened to call the police, but she pleaded with him not to ('she was an illegal immigrant, and didn't want the police to be led to her house', one black man told me). The girl agreed to have sex with the shopkeeper if he wouldn't tell the police. But then he called his friends, who came around and raped her - some say she was raped by three men, others say 13 or 19.

There is no evidence that such an attack took place. Police forensic experts have reportedly checked out the beauty parlour but found nothing. No girl has come forward, in spite of police pledges of leniency. Nobody knows her name or when the attack happened, though some claim to know her family.

The two communities are divided by the story - most local black people claim it's true, most Asians say it's a myth. But this is less about the girl, real or imagined, than about simmering economic grievances. One local black community activist told me: 'Blacks get nothing, no funding, no support. Blacks made Asians rich, we support their shops. It's a joke.' According to a 17-year-old originally from Somalia, 'The word on the street is that a war is on, and it's Asians versus blacks'. On the other side, a young Asian man claimed that blacks are 'stupid people. They go to school but don't learn anything. I don't know what they are moaning about. We did well because we worked hard'.

These kinds of sentiments fuelled the disturbances. At a rally outside the beauty parlour on Tuesday 18 October, black demonstrators carried placards reading 'Raped, violated, disrespected, how much more can our women endure?' and 'Time to unite'. Another meeting last Saturday at a local church became a flashpoint. Black youths who gathered outside the church ran through the area, smashing up Asian shops and businesses and attacking police. Young Asians came out on to the streets in retaliation. A young black man was stabbed to death in a sidestreet off Lozells Road.

Certainly, a glance down the Lozells Road shows an economic disparity between the two communities. The vast majority of the shops are run by Asians, generally British Muslims of Pakistani descent - including a substantial supermarket, a smart restaurant and two Asian clothes shops. A large new mosque is nearly finished at the west end of the road - the builders told me that the marble alone cost 600,000 pounds, and that in total the bill is well over 1 million pounds. By contrast, there are only a handful of British African-Caribbean-run shops - two takeaways, a hairdresser, and a run-down grocery store. In the past, say residents, there were more African-Caribbean- and Indian-run shops.

It's no surprise that tensions exist in a run-down inner city area such as this. This is often presented as a case of two communities hating each other, with the police standing helpless in between. In fact, the script for the conflict in Perry Barr was written at the top of New Labour's Britain. Today, different groups are encouraged to play up their victimhood and unique cultural identities, in a bid for public funds and social authority. The fireworks in Lozells demonstrate the fractious consequences.

Black campaigners were talking the language of identity politics, saying that they didn't get any 'respect' and their 'grievances haven't been understood'. '[Asians] look at Jamaican people like we are nothing', said one black woman quoted in the New Nation. Respectable community organisations have helped to broadcast the issue over the past week. Maxie Hayles, head of the Birmingham Racial Attacks Monitoring Group, has been one of the more vocal activists: he was quoted on BBC News as saying 'There are a lot of [black] people who think that the Asian people look down on African-Caribbean people'; while the New Nation recorded his comment, 'We are not going to tolerate our women being abused. We have a zero tolerance against it'. Hayles has contributed to a number of official consultations, and in 2000 was awarded the government's 'Active Community Award'. Meanwhile, one of the websites that played a role in spreading the rumours, Blacknet UK, has connections with official bodies including the Commission for Racial Equality.....

On the other side, Asians also claim that everybody is set against them, and appeal for protection. 'The government is trying to mess Muslims up, because we are doing well', said one young man. Many blame the police for the riots. 'The government can't control West Indians', said one of the builders of the new mosque. He claimed that when black youths threw stones outside the mosque, the police stood in a line and didn't do anything. 'The government makes criminals. If a thief goes into your shop, you're asked to leave him alone. The police tell me I can't put barbed wire on my wall because a thief might scratch himself.' At a meeting between the police and the Asian community on Monday night, angry locals argued that the police should have shut down the demonstrations and stopped things getting out of hand....

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