Across The Pond

Some interesting commentary on the riots and such in Britain. From today’s New York Times. Read the entire piece, here:

A street of shuttered shops, locked playgrounds and closed clinics, a street patrolled by citizens armed with knives and bats, is not a place to build a life.

Americans ought to ponder this aspect of Britain’s trauma. After all, London is one of the world’s wealthiest cities, but large sections of it are impoverished. New York is not so different.

The American right today is obsessed with cutting government spending. In many ways, Mr. Cameron’s austerity program is the Tea Party’s dream come true. But Britain is now grappling with the consequences of those cuts, which have led to the neglect and exclusion of many vulnerable, disaffected young people who are acting out violently and irresponsibly — driven by rage rather than an explicit political agenda.

America is in many ways different from Britain, but the two countries today are alike in their extremes of inequality, and in the desire of many politicians to solve economic and social ills by reducing the power of the state.

Britain’s current crisis should cause us to reflect on the fact that a smaller government can actually increase communal fear and diminish our quality of life. Is that a fate America wishes upon itself?

And for an example of the total clueless apparent across the pond right now, take a close look:



America is indeed very different from Britain in many ways. Immigrants and young Brits of color live alongside institutions that in many ways are constant reminders that they will never, ever reach the highest echelons of powers – a monarchy they cannot marry into, an official-state church they do not belong to, and an educational system that in tracking children at a young age leaves newcomers never able to play catch-up. Yes, what we are seeing is the result of the austerity measures, but within the context of a web of institutionalized, systemically entrenched, and all-too-powerful institutions that ensure certain sectors of society will never ever be, all that they can be. The messages are very clear.

Here in the United States, we live with the myth of the American Dream. Not sure what has to happen here to have that myth completely shattered. But if and when it is, that’s when we might see something like what is happening in Britain.

London Burning

A must read today, by Maria Margaronis, in The Nation:

But it’s taken years to brew the toxic mix of hopelessness, frustration and disenfranchisement, envy, anger and boredom, greed and selfishness, humiliation and recklessness that’s erupted in Britain this week--years in which the gap between rich and poor grew wider, racism was allowed to fester, consumerism and celebrity culture replaced community. While we in the middle classes got on with our oh-so-busy lives, averting our eyes from the poverty just a few blocks away, sending our kids to schools where there are other “motivated parents,” talking politics, we allowed the rifts in our own neighbourhoods to deepen until they became almost unbridgeable.

This morning, down the road, people stared at the broken shops, shaking their heads in disbelief. “It’s mad,” they said. “Just mad.” Small groups of women set out with brooms and dustpans to sweep up the broken glass. There is a kind of solidarity taking shape, a wish to protect what we have, now that it’s under threat. People are talking to each other, asking if everything's all right. The challenge, when all this dies down, will be to stay awake, to keep on doing that, until solidarity spreads.

A country that must seriously take a look at how their entrenched, institutions of power and control subtly ensure that “the other” is told on a consistent basis that they can never achieve the highest ranks. A country – by all means not terribly religious nature – that in maintaining an official “state religion” inextricably ties religion and the state together in such a manner as to elevate the importance of membership in one faith above all others.

A country that tracks students to make decisions at such a young age about what to study, that any elementary school-aged immigrant arriving in London will already find him or herself unable to play the catch-up necessary to complete in the academic realm.

And of course, the monarchy. While it can be argued that the monarchy has no real power, until the new royals adopt a baby of Pakistani heritage and announce he will be the future King of England, the institution only serves as yet another reminder of what is, and is not accessible to all members of society.

In “Defence of British Values" And On "National Culture"

I think British Prime Minister David Cameron and Arizona Governor Jan Brewer could be great friends-in-the-making.

In a major speech tackling the threat posed by Islamic extremists, the Prime Minister warned that "hands-off tolerance" of unacceptable practices by minority communities had only served to encourage extremism.

He called for a "muscular" defence of British values.

Speaking to a conference in Munich, Mr Cameron said that the threat of terrorism must be confronted not only though intelligence and surveillance, but by taking on the ideology of Islamist extremism at home.

"Frankly, we need a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and much more active, muscular liberalism," the Prime Minister said.

While a "passively tolerant" society allows its citizens to do what they like, so long as they do not break the law, a genuinely liberal country "believes in certain values and actively promotes them", Mr Cameron said.

And maybe they can sit around together and watch the popular BBC show “Top Gear” together.

LONDON (Reuters) – The BBC apologized to Mexico's London ambassador on Friday after presenters on the popular motoring show "Top Gear" said he would be too sleepy to protest as they described Mexicans as lazy and feckless.

But it defended the original remarks, saying jokes centered on national stereotypes were part of the humor both of the show and of Britain in general.

The publicly funded broadcaster said the show's executive producer had written to Ambassador Eduardo Medina Mora and apologized for the comments made about him.

The diplomat had said he was infuriated by "offensive and xenophobic" remarks made by hosts Richard Hammond, Jeremy Clarkson and James May during Sunday's edition of the cult show, which has been sold to television channels around the world.

The BBC said it was sorry if the presenters' comments had offended some people, but defended the comic use of a stereotype as a "robust part" of British humor.

Gov. Brewer may also be able to provide Prime Minister Cameron with some advice on how to deal with the results of a recent poll on immigration. She is after all, a master at the art of re-election.

Britons are much more hostile towards immigration than other developed nations, according to a poll of people in the US, Canada and across western Europe.

This was in stark contrast to the response from the other countries, including the US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain. Among those, only one in 10 Italians thought it was the biggest issue and only 3 per cent of Spanish people, even though both of those countries have experienced large influxes of foreigners.

The other western nations tended to be more concerned about unemployment, although Germany’s main worry was education.

The Transatlantic Trends survey was carried out on behalf of international bodies including the German Marshall Fund of the US, a think-tank, and the UK’s Barrow Cadbury Trust. It also showed that almost half of British people thought there were too many foreign-born people in the country. This compared with an average of three out of 10 people in the other European countries and just a quarter in the US, despite recent controversies about immigration policy there. Britons were also more likely to think foreign arrivals damaged “national culture”.

Sorry for the snark, but reading the British papers this weekend really brought tears to my eyes. And sarcasm was all I could muster.