29.11.10
With Tom Geoghegan about the German Model
Thomas Geoghegan is the author of several must read articles, and a great book, Were You Born on the Wrong Continent?: How the European Model Can Help You Get a Life.
Cablegate: Ambassador labels mid-80s Britain as 'Dickensian'
that was the time of Thatcher-Reagan
Thursday, 31 October 1985, 14:21
C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 08 LONDON 24287
E.O.12356: DECL: OADR
TAGS SOCI, PINS, UK
SUBJECT: URBAN VIOLENCE IN BRITAIN -- THE CHALLENGE
Summary
1. The race riots that rocked Britain in the mid-1980s inspired the then US ambassador to say the UK was unprepared for dealing with the impact of immigration and had looked on 'complacently' while America struggled with civil rights disturbances in the 1960s. Key passage highlighted in yellow.
2. Read related article
OF A RACIAL UNDERCLASS WORRIES THIS CONSERVATIVE SOCIETY
1. CONFIDENTIAL - ENTIRE TEXT.
2. SUMMARY. DEPRESSED AREAS IN SEVERAL OF THE U.K.'S INNER CITIES ERUPTED IN RIOTS IN THE PAST MONTH. THE BRITISH SEE MANY OF THEIR DOMESTIC WOES THROWN INTO HIGH RELIEF BY THE RIOTS AND THE SUBSEQUENT NATIONAL DEBATE ABOUT CAUSE, EFFECT, AND WHO IS TO BLAME. THE RIOTS HAVE HIGHLIGHTED:
--- THE LONG-TERM ECONOMIC MALAISE IN BRITAIN, WITH A HIGH UNEMPLOYMENT RATE AND A NEAR-COLLAPSE OF THE SMOKE-STACK INDUSTRIES IN THE NORTH OF ENGLAND;
--- RACIAL TENSION BETWEEN WHITE BRITAIN AND THE BLACK AND ASIAN POPULATIONS WHO HAVE SETTLED IN THE U.K. SINCE THE 1950'S;
--- PERSISTENT PROBLEMS OF SOCIAL DISADVANTAGE IN AREAS OF THE INNER CITY, WHICH EXTEND TO HOUSING, EDUCATION, INCOME, AND EMPLOYMENT;
--- A VIGOROUS NEW DRUG CRACKDOWN WHICH IS INADVERTENTLY THREATENING THE UNEASY BALANCE BETWEEN POLICE AND COMMUNITIES IN MANY INNER CITY AREAS;
--- THE PROBLEM OF POLICING THE MULTI-ETHNIC INNER CITIES EFFECTIVELY AND SENSITIVELY WITH A NEARLY ALL-WHITE POLICE FORCE WHICH IS FACING NUMEROUS POLITICAL PRESSURES AT PRESENT;
--- THE LACK OF AN AGREED RESPONSE TO THE PROBLEM ON THE PART OF BRITAIN'S NATIONAL POLITICAL LEADERS.
ALL THE FACTORS THAT CONTRIBUTE TO THE RIOTS ARE AND HAVE BEEN PRESENT IN THE U.S., AND IN GREATER MEASURE, AND THE RIOT DESTRUCTION HERE IS ON A MUCH SMALLER SCALE THAN IT WAS IN THE U.S. URBAN UPHEAVALS OF TWO DECADES AGO. THE AMERICAN RESPONSE (EEO LEGISLATION, AFFIRMATIVE ACTION, GIVING MINORITIES GREATER AVENUES FOR POLITICAL EXPRESSION) RESULTED IN SIGNIFICANT CHANGES IN SOCIETAL STRUCTURE AND POLITICS IN THE U.S. IT REMAINS TO BE SEEN WHETHER THE BRITISH POLITICAL SYSTEM WILL PROVE FLEXIBLE ENOUGH TO MEET THE CHALLENGE THIS UNREST POSES. WITH THE AUTUMN CHILL COMING, THE RIOTS MAY HAVE ABATED, BUT WHEN THE WEATHER GETS WARM AGAIN, IF NOT BEFORE, THERE COULD BE A REPEAT OF THESE INCIDENTS. END SUMMARY
ARE THEY DEPRESSED BECAUSE THEY'RE DEPRIVED?
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3. HEADLINES IN THE U.K. IN THE PAST MONTH HAVE RECORDED CLASHES BETWEEN RIOTERS AND POLICE, THE KNIFING TO DEATH OF ONE POLICEMAN, AND CROWDS OF YOUTHS PELTING BRICKS, STONES, AND MOLOTOV COCKTAILS AT RIOT-SHIELDED POLICE IN THE DEPRESSED AREAS OF LONDON, BIRMINGHAM, LIVERPOOL, AND LEICESTER. FOUR YEARS AGO, AFTER SIMILAR SCENES IN THE BRIXTON NEIGHBORHOOD OF LONDON, LORD SCARMAN, THE JUDGE WHO HEADED A COMMISSION OF INQUIRY, FOUND THAT THE PRINCIPAL CAUSES OF THE RIOTS WERE: UNEMPLOYMENT, POOR HOUSING, LACK OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING PROSPECTS FOR YOUTHS, POOR RELATIONS BETWEEN THE COMMUNITY AND THE POLICE, AND AN INCREASINGLY LARGE NUMBER OF BLACKS WHO FELT ANGRY AND ALIENATED FROM A SOCIETY WHICH THEY PERCEIVED AS RACIST AND HOSTILE.
4. THE RIOT AREAS ARE SHARPLY MORE ETHNIC AND YOUNGER THAN THE POPULATION AS A WHOLE. THE OVERALL PERCENTAGE OF FAMILIES HEADED BY A WEST INDIAN, INDIAN, OR PAKISTANI IN BRITAIN IS 4.7 PERCENT, BUT IN THE HANDSWORTH AREA OF BIRMINGHAM, THE FIGURE IS 53.1 PERCENT. THERE IS ALSO A CONCENTRATION OF YOUNG PEOPLE IN THE RIOT AREAS; THE PERCENTAGE OF THE POPULATION THAT IS BETWEEN 16 AND 24 IN HANDSWORTH IS CLOSE TO 40 PERCENT, WHEREAS IN BRITAIN AS A WHOLE IT IS ABOUT HALF THAT.
5. MUCH OF THE SITUATION IN THE INNER CITIES WHICH SCARMAN POINTED TO AS CONTRIBUTING TO THE RIOTS OF 1981 HAS NOT CHANGED. IN FACT, THE PAST FEW YEARS HAVE SEEN THIS PICTURE GROW BLEAKER. UNEMPLOYMENT FIGURES IN HANDSWORTH STAND AT OVER 30 PERCENT, AND IN TOXTETH IN LIVERPOOL, ANOTHER RIOT SITE, AT 47 PERCENT.
6. THE INNER CITIES HAVE THE HIGHEST NATIONAL RATES OF MENTAL HOSPITAL ADMISSION IN BRITAIN, THE HIGHEST PERCENTAGE OF SINGLE-PARENT HOMES (TWICE THE NATIONAL AVERAGE) AND THE MOST HOUSES DECLARED UNFIT FOR HUMAN HABITATION. FOR MANY THE PROSPECTS FOR ESCAPING UNEMPLOYMENT SEEM INCREASINGLY NON-EXISTENT; THE RATIO OF VACANCIES LISTED TO PEOPLE UNEMPLOYED WAS 1 TO 8 IN THE INNER CITIES IN THE DAYS OF THE FIRST BRIXTON DISTURBANCES, BUT THE FIGURE IS NOW 1 TO 491, ACCORDING TO A SEPTEMBER ARTICLE IN THE LONDON TIMES. JUNE FIGURES IN TOXTETH WERE 10,000 INQUIRIES FOR 126 VACANCIES.
IS THERE AN UNDERCLASS?
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7. A CRUMBLING INFRASTRUCTURE, HARD-CORE UNEMPLOYMENT, AND DISINTEGRATION OF THE SOCIAL FABRIC IN THE INNER CITIES IS NOT A NEW PROBLEM IN BRITAIN: DICKENS DESCRIBED THE SQUALOR, OVER-CROWDING, AND POVERTY IN BRITAIN'S CITIES OVER A CENTURY AGO. WHAT HAS CHANGED IS THAT THE PEOPLE AFFECTED ARE INCREASINGLY LIKELY TO BE MEMBERS OF MINORITY GROUPS. PARTICIPANTS IN THE RECENT RIOTS WERE BOTH BLACK AND WHITE, AND STILL MANY OF THE POOREST PEOPLE IN BRITAIN ARE WHITE, BUT THE NUMBER OF MINORITIES WHO ARE "AT THE BOTTOM OF THE HEAP" IS VASTLY OUT OF PROPORTION TO THEIR TOTAL NUMBERS IN THE POPULATION.
8. NATIONWIDE, THERE ARE STRIKING DIFFERENCES IN THE EXPERIENCES OF WHITES AND MINORITIES IN HOUSING, EDUCATION, EMPLOYMENT AND INCOME. A STUDY RELEASED LAST MONTH BY THE POLICY STUDY INSTITUTE, A WELL-RESPECTED GROUP, REVEALED THAT BLACKS AND ASIANS IN BRITAIN ARE ON AVERAGE FOUR TIMES AS LIKELY AS WHITES TO BE PASSED OVER FOR JOBS FOR WHICH THEY APPLY, A STATISTIC WHICH CANNOT BE ACCOUNTED FOR BY DIFFERENCES IN EDUCATION OR TRAINING. WITH COMPARABLE EDUCATION, THE SAME DIFFERENCE PERTAINS. AMONG PEOPLE WITH ONE OR MORE "O" LEVELS (ABOUT THE EQUIVALENT OF A U.S. HIGH SCHOOL DIPLOMA) THE UNEMPLOYMENT RATE IS 9 PERCENT FOR WHITES, 18 PERCENT FOR ASIANS, AND 25 PERCENT FOR BLACKS. THE PROSPECTS FOR THOSE WITHOUT THESE QUALIFICATIONS, AND IN AREAS THAT HAVE BEEN HIT HARDEST ECONOMICALLY, ARE EVEN BLEAKER.
9. BIRMINGHAM, THE SECOND LARGEST CITY IN BRITAIN AND UNTIL 15 YEARS AGO THE SECOND WEALTHIEST WHEN MEASURED BY AVERAGE HOUSEHOLD INCOME, IS NOW THE POOREST CITY IN THE U.K. IT LOST 1/3 OF ITS MANUFACTURING JOBS BETWEEN 1978 AND 1984, ACCORDING TO THE FINANCIAL TIMES REGIONAL SURVEY. IN THAT SORT OF ECONOMIC CLIMATE, BREAKING INTO THE JOB MARKET IS NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE, AND OF THOSE WHO LEFT SCHOOL AT 16 LAST SUMMER, ONLY 18 PERCENT OF WHITES, 16 PERCENT OF ASIANS, AND 5 PERCENT OF BLACKS HAD FOUND WORK AT THE END OF 6 MONTHS, ACCORDING TO THE DEPARTMENT OF EMPLOYMENT.
10. LIVERPOOL SIMILARLY HAS DECLINED DRASTICALLY IN RECENT YEARS. ACCORDING TO A SERIAL CASE STUDY OF THE AREA PUBLISHED IN THE GUARDIAN NEWSPAPER, THERE WERE 11,000 DOCKWORKERS EMPLOYED IN THE PORT OF LIVERPOOL IN 1972, BUT TODAY THERE ARE FEWER THAN 2,000. INDUSTRIAL PLANTS IN TOXTETH EMPLOYED 22,000 THAT YEAR, BUT NOW EMPLOY 2,000. UNEMPLOYMENT FOR LIVERPOOL AS A WHOLE IS 21 PERCENT, BUT IN CERTAIN POCKETS SUCH AS TOXTETH, THE RATE IS AT 70 PERCENT FOR ADULTS AND 96 PERCENT FOR YOUTHS. FOUR-FIFTHS OF TOXTETH'S CITIZENS RECEIVE SOME WELFARE BENEFITS. CLEARLY IT IS NOT ONLY NON-WHITES WHO FACE MAJOR OBSTACLES, BUT IT IS THE NON-WHITES WHO ARE MOST APT TO FIND THEMSELVES STYMIED AS MEMBERS OF AN ECONOMIC AND RACIAL UNDERCLASS.
11. DIFFERENCES IN HOUSING BETWEEN BLACKS AND WHITES ARE STRIKING. ACCORDING TO THE POLICY STUDIES INSTITUTE'S COMPREHENSIVE SURVEY "BLACK AND WHITE BRITAIN", BLACK HOUSEHOLDS ARE TWICE AS LIKELY AS WHITES TO SHARE A DWELLING. FOUR TIMES AS MANY ASIANS AND THREE TIMES AS MANY WEST INDIANS AS WHITES LIVE IN OVERCROWDED CONDITIONS, DEFINED AS TWO OR MORE PEOPLE TO A BEDROOM. OVER HALF THE PAKISTANI-HEADED FAMILIES IN BRITAIN LIVE IN HOUSES WITHOUT HOT WATER, INDOOR TOILETS, AND BATHS, WHEREAS THE FIGURE FOR WHITES IS 17 PERCENT.
12. THERE ARE DEEP DIFFERENCES IN THE MEASURED EDUCATIONAL ACHIEVEMENT LEVELS OF WHITES AND MINORITIES. CHILDREN OF WEST INDIAN PARENTS ARE FOUR TIMES AS LIKELY AS WHITE CHILDREN TO BE CLASSIFIED AS EDUCATIONALLY SUBNORMAL. AND FEW BLACK YOUNGSTERS GO BEYOND SECONDARY EDUCATION. THE PROBLEM, ACCORDING TO ONE ANALYST, IS NOT SO MUCH OUTRIGHT DISCRIMINATION AGAINST THE BLACK CHILDREN AS "WELL-MEANING LOW EXPECTATION" ON THE PART OF TEACHERS. TEACHERS DECIDE SUBCONSCIOUSLY THAT THE CHILDREN ARE LIKELY TO BE FAILURES AND GIVE UP ON THEM, LEAVING THEM TO MARK TIME IN REMEDIAL EDUCATION UNTIL THEY CAN LEAVE SCHOOL AT 16.
13. THE AVERAGE WAGE FOR BLACKS IN BRITAIN REMAINS 20 POUNDS LESS PER WEEK THAN FOR WHITES. ASIANS EARN 18 POUNDS LESS, ACCORDING TO THE COMMISSION FOR RACIAL EQUALITY, AND THIS STARTS FROM THE LOW NATIONAL AVERAGE FOR WHITES OF ONLY 139 POUNDS PER WEEK.
14. FROM BEHIND THESE STATISTICS EMERGES A PICTURE OF AN ALIENATED THIRD-WORLD NATION WITHIN BRITAIN, AN UNDER-CLASS OF THE DEPRIVED, THE HOPELESS, AND THE DISPOSSESSED, IN LARGE PART BUT BY NO MEANS ENTIRELY MADE UP OF MINORITES.
WHO ARE THE RACIAL MINORITIES?
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15. UNTIL RECENTLY, MOST IN THE U.K. BELIEVED THEY LIVED IN A RACIALLY HOMOGENEOUS SOCIETY. BRITONS LOOKED ON RELATIVELY COMPLACENTLY WHILE AMERICA STRUGGLED WITH RACIAL ISSUES IN THE 1960'S: "WE DON'T HAVE SUCH TROUBLES HERE". THE ONE ACERBIC EXCEPTION CAME IN 1968, WHEN ENOCH POWELL, A CONSERVATIVE M.P., MADE A NOTORIOUS SPEECH IN WHICH HE PREDICTED "RIVERS OF BLOOD" IN THE STREETS IF THE TIDE OF ASIAN AND AFRICAN IMMIGRANTS WAS NOT STEMMED. HOWEVER CRUDELY AND UNACCEPTABLY TO MOST OF HIS AUDIENCE, HE HAD PUT HIS FINGER ON A PROBLEM; BRITAIN APPEARS UNPREPARED TO DEAL WITH THE PROFOUND CHANGE IN THE COMPLEXION OF ITS SOCIETY WHICH HAS BEEN BROUGHT ABOUT BY AN INFLUX OF IMMIGRANTS. THEY CAME FROM THE COMMONWEALTH AT FIRST, AND WERE FOLLOWED BY IMMIGRANTS RECRUITED FROM THE CARIBBEAN TO FILL WORLD WAR II LABOR SHORTAGES. IMMIGRATION GREW AS TROUBLES AFFLICTED ONE POST-COLONIAL TERRITORY AFTER ANOTHER IN THE 50'S AND 60'S. THOSE WHO WANTED TO MOVE COULD USE THEIR COMMONWEALTH PASSPORTS, A POSSIBILITY WHICH WAS REDUCED BY CHANGES IN THE LAW IN THE LAST DECADE.
16. STILL, THERE ARE ONLY ONE MILLION BLACKS AND BROWNS IN BRITAIN, OUT OF A POPULATION OF 54 MILLION, AND BY NOW HALF OF THESE ARE BRITISH-BORN. BUT THEIR OUTSIDER STATUS PERSISTS. THEY ARE STILL DISPROPORTIONATELY STUCK AT THE THE LOWER END OF THE PAY SCALE, IN SHIFTWORK AND PART-TIME WORK. OF THOSE IMMIGRANTS AND THEIR CHILDREN IN THE U.K. WHO HAVE FOUND WORK, 50 PERCENT ARE ESTIMATED TO BE OVERQUALIFIED EDUCATIONALLY FOR THE WORK THEY DO, ACCORDING TO THE BOOK "STAYING POWER: A HISTORY OF BLACK PEOPLE IN BRITAIN", BY PETER FRYER.
17. BRITAIN HAS ALWAYS BEEN A STRATIFIED SOCIETY, WITH EACH NEW GENERATION INHERITING THE CHARACTERISTICS AND ATTITUDES THAT PRESERVED THE CLASS STRUCTURE AND ITS OWN PLACE WITHIN IT. AS SUCH IT WAS ILL-PREPARED TO IMPORT AND ASSIMILATE MILLIONS WHO WERE OUTSIDE OF THIS FAMILIAR WORLD ORDER, AND WHO IN MANY CASES HAD THEIR OWN CULTURAL TRADITIONS AND DID NOT ASPIRE TO SLIDE HORIZONTALLY INTO THE BRITISH SYSTEM. MANY BRITONS FEAR THE CONFUSING CHANGES THAT THE IMMIGRANTS HAVE HELPED BRING INTO THEIR FORMERLY BOUNDED AND ORDERLY WORLD. THEY VIEW THE NEW-COMERS WITH SUSPICION AND WORSE.
18. POPULAR PRESS REPORTING OF THE RECENT RIOTS HAS REFLECTED THE RABBLE-ROUSING RACISM WHICH IS STILL EASY DISCOURSE IN MODERN BRITAIN. TABLOIDS DESCRIBE THE "ZULU-STYLE WAR CRIES" OF THE RIOTERS AND RE-CYCLE THE COMMENTS OF WHITES CALLING THEM "BARBARIANS" AND "ANIMALS". BUT LIFE IS NOT SO SIMPLE; AT LEAST A QUARTER OF THE YOUTHS IN THE MOB AT TOTTENHAM, AND ONE HALF OF THOSE WHO APPEARED BEFORE THE MAGISTRATE SUBSEQUENTLY, WERE ESTIMATED TO BE WHITE. BOTH BLACK AND WHITE YOUTHS ARE NOW CHARGED WITH THE MURDER OF THE POLICE CONSTABLE AT TOTTENHAM. THE PUBLIC HOUSING NEAR MOST OF THE RIOT LOCALES IS MORE INTEGRATED THAN WAS THE CASE IN THE U.S. IN THE 60'S; BROADWATER FARMS, THE PUBLIC HOUSING DEVELOPMENT AT THE CENTER OF THE RIOTS IN LONDON'S TOTTENHAM AREA, HOLDS APPROXIMATELY A 50/50 RACIAL MIX.
19. IN ADDITION TO THE DIFFICULTY THE LARGER WHITE POPULATION IS HAVING IN ABSORBING IMMIGRANT POPULATIONS (THERE IS NO 'MELTING POT' TRADITION IN BRITAIN), THERE ARE TENSIONS BETWEEN RACIAL GROUPS AMONG THE IMMIGRANTS. THE TWO GROUPS WHICH HAVE IMMIGRATED IN THE LARGEST NUMBERS ARE ASIANS (PRIMARILY INDIANS AND PAKISTANIS) AND AFRO- CARRIBEANS. THE BLACK IMMIGRANTS ARE SAID TO RESENT THE RELATIVELY MORE PROSPEROUS ASIANS. THE ASIANS, WHO TEND TO BE THE ONLY SHOPKEEPERS LEFT IN THE INNER CITIES, HAVE BEEN ESPECIALLY HARD HIT BY THE LOOTING AND BURNING THAT HAS TAKEN PLACE DURING THE RIOTS. THE ONLY TWO CIVILIAN FATALITIES AS THE RESULT OF THE RIOTING HAVE BEEN TWO ASIAN BROTHERS, KILLED WHEN THEIR STORE IN HANDSWORTH WAS BURNED TO THE GROUND AFTER THEY WERE LOCKED IN. PRESS ACCOUNTS NOTED THAT THEIR STORE WAS THE PLACE THAT MOST OF THE LOCAL RESIDENTS CASHED THEIR WELFARE CHECKS, AND THUS TO SOME OF THE RIOTERS THE STORE MAY HAVE SYMBOLIZED THE SYSTEM AGAINST WHICH THEY WERE LASHING OUT.
20. IT IS PERHAPS POSSIBLE TO OVERSTATE THE RIVALRY BETWEEN ETHNIC GROUPS IN BRITAIN. THIS RIVALRY DOES HAVE PARALLELS IN U.S. CITIES, SUCH AS THE RESENTMENT CERTAIN BLACKS EXPRESSED AGAINST CUBANS IN THE MIAMI RIOTS, AND IT HAS SIMILAR CAUSES.
21. BLACKS COMPLAIN THAT THEY ARE LESS LIKELY TO BE GIVEN WHAT FEW FUNDS ARE AVAILABLE FOR SMALL BUSINESS DEVELOPMENTS IN THE CITIES. (SINCE 1981 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT HAS ALLOCATED ONLY 200,000 POUNDS FOR THIS PURPOSE TO THE RIOT AREA OF HANDSWORTH, IN SPITE OF THE SCARMAN REPORT, WHICH EMPHASIZED HOW EFFECTIVE SUCH GRANTS WOULD BE IN REHABILITATING THE RIOT AREAS.) THESE COMPLAINTS ARE SUPPORTED BY STATISTICS; OVER 50 PERCENT OF APPLICATIONS FOR GRANTS FOR SMALL BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT (INNER CITY PARTNERSHIPS) WERE SUBMITTED BY BLACKS, BUT THEY ULTIMATELY RECEIVED ONLY 13 PERCENT OF THE GRANTS. ASIAN BUSINESSES FOUNDED WITH THESE GRANTS ARE ALMOST INVARIABLY FAMILY OPERATED AND RARELY EMPLOY BLACKS.
22. THERE IS LITTLE IN THE WAY OF A BLACK MIDDLE CLASS IN BRITAIN. THE ONLY ROLE MODELS THAT BLACK PEOPLE HAVE IN THE ESTABLISHMENT ARE MUSICIANS, SPORTS FIGURES, AND A HANDFUL OF T.V. JOURNALISTS, AS THERE ARE NO NATIONAL LEADERS, NO MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT, AND ONLY ONE LOCAL GOVERNMENT LEADER WHO IS BLACK (AND EVEN HE WAS NOT ELECTED DIRECTLY IN THE STYLE OF U.S. MAYORS). ASIANS, BY CONTRAST, DO HAVE ROLE MODELS IN BUSINESS AND COMMERCE, AND THEY HAVE THEIR OWN RELIGIOUS AND COMMUNITY LEADERS. THUS, ALTHOUGH THEY ARE NOT FULLY ACCEPTED INTO BRITISH SOCIETY, ON THE WHOLE ASIANS ARE "PART OF THE SYSTEM", AS ONE OBSERVER PUT IT.
THE POLICE: ARE THEY THE PROBLEM OR THE ANSWER?
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23. THE ROLE OF THE POLICE, AND THE RISING PRESSURES ON THEM TO RESPOND TO SUCCESSIVE SOCIETAL CHALLENGES IS WORRISOME TO MANY HERE. FIRST IRA TERRORISM, THEN POLICING THE MINERS' STRIKE, AND NOW THE INNER CITY STRIFE HAVE STRETCHED THEM DANGEROUSLY THIN. MEANWHILE, THE POLICE FORCES WHICH ARE NOW BEING ASKED TO CONTAIN THE URBAN UPHEAVALS ARE OFTEN LESS THAN ONE PER CENT BLACK OR ASIAN (OVERALL, 700 MINORITY POLICE OUT OF A FORCE OF 120,000, ACCORDING TO NEWSPAPER SOURCES. LAST YEAR, HOWEVER, OF 1208 TRAINEES IN THE LONDON METROPOLITAN POLICE, 36 BELONGED TO MINORITY GROUPS, A HIGHER PERCENTAGE THAN IN PREVIOUS YEARS AND ABOUT IN PROPORTION TO POPULATION. A WELL-PUBLICIZED STUDY PREPARED BY THE INSTITUTE FOR RACE RELATIONS FOR THE ROYAL COMMISSION ON CRIMINAL PROCEDURE AND PUBLISHED IN 1979, CHARACTERIZED MANY OF THE POLICE IN BRITAIN AS RACIALLY INSENSITIVE, AND ALLEGED THAT MANY OF THEM USE DEROGATORY LANGUAGE WHEN REFERRING TO MINORITIES, THAT THEY STEREOTYPE BLACKS AS PIMPS AND LAYABOUTS, AND THAT THEY CONSISTENTLY APPLY MORE PRESSURE AND AGGRESSION IN ENCOUNTERS WITH BLACK CI|IZENS THAN THEY WOULD WITH WHITES. THE NEGATIVE IMAGE OF THE POLICE THAT THIS STUDY HELPED CREATE IS ONE FACTOR THAT MAKES THE PRESENT RECRUITMENT OF MINORITIES INTO THE POLICE SO DIFFICULT.
24. A RECENT BBC TELEVISION PROGRAM COMPARED THIS SITUATION TO THAT IN THE NEW YORK POLICE FORCE, IN WHICH 40 PERCENT OF LAST YEAR'S TRAINEES WERE BLACK, AS A RESULT OF INTENSIVE RECRUITMENT EFFORTS AND, MORE PROFOUNDLY, A RETHINKING OF THE ROLE AND RELEVANCE OF THE POLICE IN THE CITIES. NOTHING ON THIS SCALE IS CONTEMPLATED HERE, ALTHOUGH THERE HAVE BEEN SOME HALF-HEARTED ATTEMPTS TO BOOST RECRUITMENT OF MINORITIES, AND THE HOME SECRETARY HAS NOW URGED THE METROPOLITAN POLICE TO HIRE MORE BLACKS.
25. ONE MUST ALSO NOTE, HOWEVER, THAT THE POLICE FORCE HAS BEEN THE ONLY INSTITUTION TO TAKE THE 1981 SCARMAN REPORT TO HEART, AND REAL CHANGES HAVE OCCURRED SINCE THEN. POLICE NOW TAKE TRAINING IN CULTURAL SENSITIVITY AND RACE RELATIONS, AND THE CONCEPT OF COMMUNITY POLICING (GETTING THE POLICEMAN COMFORTABLE AND FAMILIAR WITH THE PEOPLE ON HIS BEAT, AND THE PEOPLE USED TO THE PRESENCE OF THE POLICE) HAVE MADE PROGRESS IN IMPROVING THE CLIMATE ON THE STREETS. PERHAPS IT IS IRONIC THEN, THAT IT WAS POLICE ACTIONS IN TWO INSTANCES WHICH APPEAR TO HAVE SPARKED THE RIOTS. THE FIRST WAS THE ACCIDENTAL SHOOTING IN SEPTEMBER OF A MIDDLE-AGED BLACK WOMAN, OCCASIONED WHEN POLICE BROKE DOWN THE DOOR OF HER HOUSE AND BURST IN, LOOKING FOR HER SON ON A WEAPONS CHARGE. THE SHOOTING HAS LEFT HER A PARAPLEGIC, AND HAS FOCUSSED RESENTMENT AGAINST WHAT IS SEEN AS POLICE HEAVY-HANDEDNESS. THIS INCIDENT WAS FOLLOWED CLOSELY BY THE DEATH OF A BLACK WOMAN DURING A SEARCH OF HER HOME. ALTHOUGH SHE DIED OF HEART FAILURE, HER FAMILY HAS CHARGED THAT THE POLICE WHO WERE CONDUCTING THE SEARCH DELIBERATELY IGNORED HER PLEAS FOR MEDICAL ATTENTION AND ALLOWED HER TO DIE UNNECESSARILY FOR WANT OF AN AMBULANCE.
26. POLICE HEAVY-HANDEDNESS IS CITED REPEATEDLY AS A CONTRIBUTING FACTOR TO THE RIOTS. TWO SOCIOLOGISTS WHO EXPLORED THE ROLE OF THE POLICE IN THE INNER CITIES IN A MONOGRAPH PUBLISHED THIS SUMMER CONCLUDED THAT THE POLICE WERE IN FACT CONSTANTLY MAKING THEIR PRESENCE FELT TO YOUTHS IN THE HANDSWORTH AREA, BY FREQUENTLY STOPPING THEM AND QUESTIONING THEM. THE AVERAGE RATE AT WHICH YOUTHS WERE STOPPED FOR QUESTIONING WAS FIVE TIMES PER YEAR, FOR BOTH BLACKS AND WHITES. WHAT WAS PARTICULARLY STRIKING WAS THAT ALTHOUGH THEY WERE STOPPED AT THE SAME RATE, BLACK YOUNGSTERS DISTRUSTED THE POLICE MUCH MORE, AND THEIR ATTITUDES WERE FAR MORE OFTEN HOSTILE. IT IS INEVITABLE THAT POLICE WILL HAVE TO BE ACTIVE IN NEIGHBORHOODS WITH HIGH CRIME RATES AND A HIGH PERCENTAGE OF YOUTH (THOSE STATISTICALLY MOST LIKELY TO COMMIT CRIMES). IT IS JUST AS INEVITABLE THAT ENCOUNTERS UNDER THOSE CIRCUMSTANCES WILL CREATE STRAINS. BUT IT IS ALSO TRUE THAT MANY BLACKS ARE LASHING OUT AT THE POLICE, WHO SYMBOLIZE A SYSTEM WHICH THEY FEEL IS HOSTILE TO THEIR INTEREST.
27. THE GOVERNMENT RESPONSE TO THE RIOTS HAS BEEN TO CALL FOR MORE SWEEPING POLICE POWER, AND AUTHORIZATION OF THE USE OF TEAR GAS AND PLASTIC BULLETS IN RIOT CONTROL (THE SAME PLASTIC BULLETS WHOSE USE IS BEING SO HOTLY CONTESTED IN NORTHERN IRELAND, WHERE THEY HAVE ON SOME RARE OCCASIONS CAUSED DEATH). THE CONSERVATIVES, AS THE "LAW AND ORDER" PARTY, HAVE MADE THEIR PRINCIPAL RALLYING CRY FOR DEALING WITH THE RIOTS A PLEDGE FOR INCREASED SUPPORT FOR THE POLICE, UNDER PRESSURE FROM THEIR RIGHT AND MUCH OF THE MIDDLE CLASS IN BRITAIN, THE "DECENT WORKING PEOPLE."
28. NONETHELESS, THE POLICE HAVE REACTED IN FRUSTRATION TO THE CHARGES THAT HAVE BEEN LEVELED AGAINST THEM. IN AN EMOTIONALLY CHARGED GATHERING LAST WEEK, THE ANNUAL MEETING OF THE METROPOLITAN BRANCH OF THE POLICE FEDERATION, THE RANK AND FILE ACCUSED THEIR LEADERS OF COWARDICE, SAYING THAT THEY WERE AFRAID OF MAKING TOUGH DECISIONS FOR FEAR OF POLITICAL OR PROMOTIONAL CONSEQUENCES. THE POLICE ON THE BEAT COMPLAIN THAT THE BRAKES ARE PUT ON THEM BY THEIR SENIOR OFFICERS AND BY LOCAL POLITICIANS. IN TOTTENHAM, THE FIRST RIOT IN THE U.K. MAINLAND IN WHICH GUNS WERE USED AGAINST THE POLICE, AND WHERE ONE POLICEMAN WAS KILLED AND 163 INJURED, THE POLICE WERE RESTRAINED FROM GOING INTO THE AREA EARLY ON TO MAKE ARRESTS. THIS, POLICE CLAIM, WAS BUT A CONTINUATION OF AN OFFICIAL "HANDS-OFF" POLICY WHICH HAS FRUSTRATED THEM SINCE ITS INCEPTION AFTER SCARMAN, AND WHICH THEY BELIEVE IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE HIGH CASUALTY RATE THAT FOLLOWED.
29. AT THE MEETING LAST WEEK, JOHN NEWMAN, A CONSTABLE AND CHAIRMAN OF THE METROPOLITAN BRANCH OF THE POLICE FEDERATION, DEMANDED AND WAS GRANTED A "THOROUGH REVIEW OF POLICY AND TACTICS" BY METROPOLITAN COMMISSIONER SIR KENNETH NEWMAN.
30. MINORITY AND OPPOSITION LEADERS HAVE COMPLAINED THAT THE POLICE ONLY WANT STUDIES OF THE ISSUES THAT SUIT THEM, AND NOTE THAT THE GOVERNMENT AND THE POLICE HAVE REFUSED TO CONDUCT AN INDEPENDENT INQUIRY INTO THE TRIGGERING INCIDENTS OF TWO OF THE RIOTS.
THE POLITICS OF RACE
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31. THE THEME OF HOME SECRETARY HURD'S SPEECH AT THE ANNUAL CONSERVATIVE CONFERENCE IN EARLY OCTOBER, DIRECTED AT MINORITIES, WAS PARAPHRASABLE AS "YOU HAVE THE RIGHTS, NOW EXERCISE SOME RESPONSIBILITY". THE REALITY SEEMS TO BE THAT THESE RIGHTS APPEAR ALL TOO THEORETICAL, AT BEST, TO MOST OF BRITAIN'S MINORITIES.
32. MINORITY VOTERS, ESPECIALLY CARIBBEAN BLACKS, HAVE VOTED FOR THE LABOR PARTY SO CONSISTENTLY THAT THE CONSERVATIVES AND THE ALLIANCE HAVE LARGELY WRITTEN THEM OFF, AND LABOR HAS TAKEN THEM FOR GRANTED.
33. THERE ARE SOME STIRRINGS OF CHANGE. LABOR IS GROPING WITH PLANS TO GIVE BLACKS SPECIAL RIGHTS WITHIN THE PARTY STRUCTURE, A NUMBER OF ETHNIC ASIANS ARE TENDING TOWARDS THE ALLIANCE, AND SOME SUCCESSFUL BLACK AND ASIAN BUSINESSMEN FLIRT WITH THE TORIES. MEANWHILE, LEGISLATION ON THE U.S. MODEL ALLOWING GOVERNMENT TO WITHDRAW CONTRACTS FROM FIRMS THAT DO NOT EMPLOY A CERTAIN PERCENTAGE OF MINORITIES WAS RECENTLY PROPOSED BY THE HOME OFFICE. THIS PROPOSAL IS CONTROVERSIAL AND UNLIKELY TO BECOME LAW BECAUSE OF QUESTIONS ABOUT THE FAIRNESS AND EFFECTIVENESS OF SUCH MEASURES. NEVERTHELESS, THE RIOTS MAY HAVE FORCED THE PROBLEMS OF RACIAL MINORITIES BACK NEAR THE TOP OF THE AGENDA. ONE JOURNALIST INTERVIEWING AN ANGRY YOUTH ON THE STREETS OF HANDSWORTH CALLED THE RIOTS POINTLESS, BUT THE YOUNG MAN COUNTERED "OH, YEAH? HOW DO YOU FIGURE THAT? SOMETHING WILL BE DONE." AND HE MAY BE RIGHT.
PARTY POLITICS: TOO LITTLE DONE, AND THAT TOO LATE
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34. THE BROAD REACTION AMONG CONSERVATIVES TO THE RECENT RIOTS WAS SPLIT: THE HARD-LINE GOVERNMENT SUPPORTERS RESISTED CAUSAL EXPLANATIONS LINKING POVERTY AND DEPRIVATION WITH THE URBAN UPHEAVALS AND DESCRIBED THE RIOTS AS MERE "CRIMINAL OPPORTUNISM". THIS POSITION WAS PORTRAYED BY THE OPPOSITION AS A SELF-INTERESTED ATTEMPT BY THE TORIES TO WRIGGLE FREE OF THEIR PART OF THE RESPONSIBILITY FOR BRITAIN'S CONTINUING ECONOMIC DOLDRUMS AND THEIR RESULTS. OTHER MORE LIBERAL TORIES PARTIALLY CONCURRED WITH THESE SENTIMENTS; THEY CLAIMED THAT THE RIOTS PROVED WHAT THEY HAD BEEN SAYING, I.E. THAT THE GOVERNMENT'S PRIORITIES HAD TO BE RE-EXAMINED AND THE HARD LINE REVISED. PRIME MINISTER THATCHER'S ARGUMENT THAT THE WORKINGS OF AN UNFETTERED FREE MARKET WILL, IF LEFT ALONE, CREATE JOBS TO RENEW BRITAIN HAS BEEN RIDICULED BY THE OPPOSITION PARTIES, WHICH ASSERT THAT UNEMPLOYMENT FIGURES THREATEN BRITAIN'S CITIES WITH HOSTILITY AND ALIENATION THAT LAISSEZ-FAIRE ECONOMICS CANNOT RESOLVE. MRS. THATCHER'S RESPONSE TO THE RIOTS WAS TO PLEDGE MORE EQUIPMENT AND MANPOWER FOR THE POLICE, BUT HOME SECRETARY HURD HAS ALSO ACKNOWLEDGED THAT THE RIOT CAUSES MUST BE TREATED TOO. THE OPPOSITION HAS OFFERED NO CONCRETE SOLUTIONS OTHER THAN THE PRESERVATION AND ENHANCEMENT OF THE WELFARE STATE, WHILE ALLIANCE AND LABOR LEADERS MUST WELCOME THE FACT THAT THEY ARE NOT CURRENTLY IN POWER AND HAVING TO DEFEND THEIR OWN RECORDS IN THE GLARE OF THE BURNING CITIES.
35. THE CONSERVATIVES STRESS THE SIGNS OF ECONOMIC UPTURN THAT OCCASIONALLY ARISE, SUCH AS NEW FIRMS TAKING UP RESIDENCE IN BIRMINGHAM AND LIVERPOOL. THE FIRMS WHICH THEY ARE REFERRING TO DO HAVE A POSITIVE EFFECT ON ECONOMIC STATISTICS, BUT IN GENERAL ARE HIGH-TECH, CAPITAL-INTENSIVE INDUSTRIES THAT EMPLOY RELATIVELY FEW PEOPLE AND THOSE, HIGHLY SKILLED, ACCORDING TO A CONGRESS OF BRITISH INDUSTRIES STUDY. THUS THEY HAVE LITTLE EFFECT ON THE INNER CITY UNEMPLOYMENT PROBLEMS.
36. THE TORIES HAVE MADE THE REINING-IN OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT SPENDING ONE OF THEIR PRIME TECHNIQUES FOR REDUCING TOTAL GOVERNMENT SPENDING. IN PARTICULAR PUBLIC SECTOR CAPITAL BUDGETS HAVE BEEN SEVERELY CUT FROM 3.6 BILLION POUNDS IN 1979 TO 2.2 BILLION POUNDS IN 1986. WHEN COMBINED WITH THE SALE OF COUNCIL HOUSING TO ITS TENANTS, THE PUBLIC HOUSING STOCK HAS BEEN REDUCED BY ONE-THIRD DURING A PERIOD IN WHICH FUNDS FOR HOUSING RENOVATIONS HAVE NOT INCREASED IN REAL TERMS. SCARMAN'S RECOMMENDATIONS FOR IMPROVEMENTS IN HOUSING HAVE BEEN ALMOST ENTIRELY IGNORED.
37. EDUCATIONAL REFORMS SUGGESTED BY SCARMAN INCLUDED MORE AND BETTER NURSERY EDUCATION, MORE TRAINING OF TEACHERS IN THE NEEDS OF MINORITY CHILDREN, PROGRAMS TO TEACH ENGLISH TO IMMIGRANTS, AND BETTER LINKS BETWEEN PARENTS AND SCHOOLS. NONE OF THESE HAS BEEN FUNDED. IN FACT, ACCORDING TO THE FINANCIAL TIMES, DESPITE A STATIC NURSERY-AGE POPULATION IN BRITAIN, THE OVERALL CAPITAL SPENDING FOR NURSERY EDUCATION HAS FALLEN FROM 41 POUNDS PER CAPITA TO 24 POUNDS SINCE 1981.
38. SCARMAN RECOMMENDED THAT "POSITIVE DISCRIMINATION" MIGHT BE NEEDED TO REDRESS THE EMPLOYMENT AND EDUCATIONAL GAPS BETWEEN WHITES AND MINORITIES. (POSITIVE DISCRIMINATION IS BETTER KNOWN IN THE U.S. AS AFFIRMATIVE ACTION.) NO CENTRAL GOVERNMENT ACTION RESULTED FROM THESE SUGGESTIONS, ALTHOUGH PROGRAMS WERE ADOPTED AT THE LOCAL LEVEL IN SOME AREAS.
WHAT ABOUT THE ROLE OF BRITAIN'S NEW DRUGS CRACKDOWN?
39. SEVERAL PAPERS HAVE SUGGESTED THAT EFFORTS AFTER THE LAST RIOTS TO FORGE LINKS BETWEEN POLICE AND THE COMMUNITY BY INCREASING POLICEMEN'S SENSITIVITY TO THE COMMUNITIES THEY PATROL HAVE RESULTED IN THE POLICE GOING "SOFT ON CRIME." FOR EXAMPLE, THE POLICE ARE IN A DELICATE POSITION WHEN THEY ATTEMPT TO ENFORCE ANTI-MARIJUANA LAWS IN AFRO-CARIBBEAN COMMUNITIES, WHERE RASTAFARIANS SEE MARIJUANA AS AN IMPORTANT RITUAL SUBSTANCE. INTERFERENCE WITH THIS TRADITION IS LIKELY TO BRING TROUBLE DOWN UPON THE HEAD OF THE OFFICER WHO IS SO BOLD AS TO STEP IN. AT THE VERY LEAST HE INVITES CHARGES OF CULTURAL INSENSITIVITY. MEANWHILE, IN MANY AREAS DRUG SALES HAVE BECOME THE ONLY RELIABLE SOURCE OF INCOME AND ADVANCEMENT FOR YOUNG BLACK GO-GETTERS.
40. IN THE PAST YEAR, HOWEVER, THE U.K HAS FOCUSSED ON THE DAMAGE WHICH DRUG USAGE AND ITS ATTENDANT CORRUPTION CAUSE, MINDFUL OF U.S. PROBLEMS, AND IT IS ADOPTING IN A WHOLESALE FASHION U.S. ANTI-DRUG TECHNIQUES. AS PART OF AN OVERALL POLICY WHICH INCLUDES LONGER SENTENCES FOR DRUG DEALERS, AND NEW TECHNIQUES TO SEIZE PROFITS FROM DRUG SALES, THE POLICE HAVE BEEN PRESSED TO CRACK DOWN ON DRUGS, AND THIS NEW DRUGS OFFENSIVE MAY HAVE BEEN ONE OF THE SPARKS THAT FINALLY KINDLED THE TINDERBOX CITIES. BIRMINGHAM'S RIOTS WERE PRECEDED BY TWO MAJOR RAIDS RIGHT IN THE NEIGHBORHOODS WHICH WERE SOON TO BE THE SCENE OF THE DISTURBANCES. THE HOME OFFICE HAS BEEN RELUCTANT TO ACKNOWLEDGE ANY CONNECTION BETWEEN THE DRUGS SWEEP AND THE ERUPTION OF THE RIOTS, BUT A BRIGHT LABOR M.P. FROM BIRMINGHAM TOLD US, WITHOUT IN ANY WAY IMPLYING THAT DRUG DEALERS CAN BE ALLOWED FREEDOM TO OPERATE, THAT HE KNOWS THE CONNECTION IS EXPLICIT. THUS, IT APPEARS THAT THE POLICE ARE CAUGHT ON THE FRONT LINES ENFORCING A NEWLY VIGOROUS AND GENERALLY POPULAR ANTI-DRUGS POLICY, BUT ARE ALSO TRYING TO CATCH UP WITH THE IMPACT THAT IT AND OTHER SOCIAL PROBLEMS ARE HAVING ON BRITAIN'S CITIES.
CONCLUSION
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41. THE RIOTS MAY HAVE FORCED BRITAIN'S POLITICAL LEADERS TO EXAMINE THEMSELVES AND DETERMINE SUBSEQUENT ACTION TO REDRESS SOME VERY REAL AND THUS FAR INTRACTABLE PROBLEMS. BUT IN THE MEANTIME WE ARE LIKELY TO SEE MORE RIOTING AHEAD, WHICH WILL PUT EXTRA STRAINS ON THIS CAUTIOUS, SLOW-TO-CHANGE SOCIETY. WHILE THE ONSET OF WINTER MAY INHIBIT STREET VIOLENCE, SPRING CANNOT BE FAR BEHIND.
SEITZ
C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 08 LONDON 24287
E.O.12356: DECL: OADR
TAGS SOCI, PINS, UK
SUBJECT: URBAN VIOLENCE IN BRITAIN -- THE CHALLENGE
Summary
1. The race riots that rocked Britain in the mid-1980s inspired the then US ambassador to say the UK was unprepared for dealing with the impact of immigration and had looked on 'complacently' while America struggled with civil rights disturbances in the 1960s. Key passage highlighted in yellow.
2. Read related article
OF A RACIAL UNDERCLASS WORRIES THIS CONSERVATIVE SOCIETY
1. CONFIDENTIAL - ENTIRE TEXT.
2. SUMMARY. DEPRESSED AREAS IN SEVERAL OF THE U.K.'S INNER CITIES ERUPTED IN RIOTS IN THE PAST MONTH. THE BRITISH SEE MANY OF THEIR DOMESTIC WOES THROWN INTO HIGH RELIEF BY THE RIOTS AND THE SUBSEQUENT NATIONAL DEBATE ABOUT CAUSE, EFFECT, AND WHO IS TO BLAME. THE RIOTS HAVE HIGHLIGHTED:
--- THE LONG-TERM ECONOMIC MALAISE IN BRITAIN, WITH A HIGH UNEMPLOYMENT RATE AND A NEAR-COLLAPSE OF THE SMOKE-STACK INDUSTRIES IN THE NORTH OF ENGLAND;
--- RACIAL TENSION BETWEEN WHITE BRITAIN AND THE BLACK AND ASIAN POPULATIONS WHO HAVE SETTLED IN THE U.K. SINCE THE 1950'S;
--- PERSISTENT PROBLEMS OF SOCIAL DISADVANTAGE IN AREAS OF THE INNER CITY, WHICH EXTEND TO HOUSING, EDUCATION, INCOME, AND EMPLOYMENT;
--- A VIGOROUS NEW DRUG CRACKDOWN WHICH IS INADVERTENTLY THREATENING THE UNEASY BALANCE BETWEEN POLICE AND COMMUNITIES IN MANY INNER CITY AREAS;
--- THE PROBLEM OF POLICING THE MULTI-ETHNIC INNER CITIES EFFECTIVELY AND SENSITIVELY WITH A NEARLY ALL-WHITE POLICE FORCE WHICH IS FACING NUMEROUS POLITICAL PRESSURES AT PRESENT;
--- THE LACK OF AN AGREED RESPONSE TO THE PROBLEM ON THE PART OF BRITAIN'S NATIONAL POLITICAL LEADERS.
ALL THE FACTORS THAT CONTRIBUTE TO THE RIOTS ARE AND HAVE BEEN PRESENT IN THE U.S., AND IN GREATER MEASURE, AND THE RIOT DESTRUCTION HERE IS ON A MUCH SMALLER SCALE THAN IT WAS IN THE U.S. URBAN UPHEAVALS OF TWO DECADES AGO. THE AMERICAN RESPONSE (EEO LEGISLATION, AFFIRMATIVE ACTION, GIVING MINORITIES GREATER AVENUES FOR POLITICAL EXPRESSION) RESULTED IN SIGNIFICANT CHANGES IN SOCIETAL STRUCTURE AND POLITICS IN THE U.S. IT REMAINS TO BE SEEN WHETHER THE BRITISH POLITICAL SYSTEM WILL PROVE FLEXIBLE ENOUGH TO MEET THE CHALLENGE THIS UNREST POSES. WITH THE AUTUMN CHILL COMING, THE RIOTS MAY HAVE ABATED, BUT WHEN THE WEATHER GETS WARM AGAIN, IF NOT BEFORE, THERE COULD BE A REPEAT OF THESE INCIDENTS. END SUMMARY
ARE THEY DEPRESSED BECAUSE THEY'RE DEPRIVED?
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3. HEADLINES IN THE U.K. IN THE PAST MONTH HAVE RECORDED CLASHES BETWEEN RIOTERS AND POLICE, THE KNIFING TO DEATH OF ONE POLICEMAN, AND CROWDS OF YOUTHS PELTING BRICKS, STONES, AND MOLOTOV COCKTAILS AT RIOT-SHIELDED POLICE IN THE DEPRESSED AREAS OF LONDON, BIRMINGHAM, LIVERPOOL, AND LEICESTER. FOUR YEARS AGO, AFTER SIMILAR SCENES IN THE BRIXTON NEIGHBORHOOD OF LONDON, LORD SCARMAN, THE JUDGE WHO HEADED A COMMISSION OF INQUIRY, FOUND THAT THE PRINCIPAL CAUSES OF THE RIOTS WERE: UNEMPLOYMENT, POOR HOUSING, LACK OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING PROSPECTS FOR YOUTHS, POOR RELATIONS BETWEEN THE COMMUNITY AND THE POLICE, AND AN INCREASINGLY LARGE NUMBER OF BLACKS WHO FELT ANGRY AND ALIENATED FROM A SOCIETY WHICH THEY PERCEIVED AS RACIST AND HOSTILE.
4. THE RIOT AREAS ARE SHARPLY MORE ETHNIC AND YOUNGER THAN THE POPULATION AS A WHOLE. THE OVERALL PERCENTAGE OF FAMILIES HEADED BY A WEST INDIAN, INDIAN, OR PAKISTANI IN BRITAIN IS 4.7 PERCENT, BUT IN THE HANDSWORTH AREA OF BIRMINGHAM, THE FIGURE IS 53.1 PERCENT. THERE IS ALSO A CONCENTRATION OF YOUNG PEOPLE IN THE RIOT AREAS; THE PERCENTAGE OF THE POPULATION THAT IS BETWEEN 16 AND 24 IN HANDSWORTH IS CLOSE TO 40 PERCENT, WHEREAS IN BRITAIN AS A WHOLE IT IS ABOUT HALF THAT.
5. MUCH OF THE SITUATION IN THE INNER CITIES WHICH SCARMAN POINTED TO AS CONTRIBUTING TO THE RIOTS OF 1981 HAS NOT CHANGED. IN FACT, THE PAST FEW YEARS HAVE SEEN THIS PICTURE GROW BLEAKER. UNEMPLOYMENT FIGURES IN HANDSWORTH STAND AT OVER 30 PERCENT, AND IN TOXTETH IN LIVERPOOL, ANOTHER RIOT SITE, AT 47 PERCENT.
6. THE INNER CITIES HAVE THE HIGHEST NATIONAL RATES OF MENTAL HOSPITAL ADMISSION IN BRITAIN, THE HIGHEST PERCENTAGE OF SINGLE-PARENT HOMES (TWICE THE NATIONAL AVERAGE) AND THE MOST HOUSES DECLARED UNFIT FOR HUMAN HABITATION. FOR MANY THE PROSPECTS FOR ESCAPING UNEMPLOYMENT SEEM INCREASINGLY NON-EXISTENT; THE RATIO OF VACANCIES LISTED TO PEOPLE UNEMPLOYED WAS 1 TO 8 IN THE INNER CITIES IN THE DAYS OF THE FIRST BRIXTON DISTURBANCES, BUT THE FIGURE IS NOW 1 TO 491, ACCORDING TO A SEPTEMBER ARTICLE IN THE LONDON TIMES. JUNE FIGURES IN TOXTETH WERE 10,000 INQUIRIES FOR 126 VACANCIES.
IS THERE AN UNDERCLASS?
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7. A CRUMBLING INFRASTRUCTURE, HARD-CORE UNEMPLOYMENT, AND DISINTEGRATION OF THE SOCIAL FABRIC IN THE INNER CITIES IS NOT A NEW PROBLEM IN BRITAIN: DICKENS DESCRIBED THE SQUALOR, OVER-CROWDING, AND POVERTY IN BRITAIN'S CITIES OVER A CENTURY AGO. WHAT HAS CHANGED IS THAT THE PEOPLE AFFECTED ARE INCREASINGLY LIKELY TO BE MEMBERS OF MINORITY GROUPS. PARTICIPANTS IN THE RECENT RIOTS WERE BOTH BLACK AND WHITE, AND STILL MANY OF THE POOREST PEOPLE IN BRITAIN ARE WHITE, BUT THE NUMBER OF MINORITIES WHO ARE "AT THE BOTTOM OF THE HEAP" IS VASTLY OUT OF PROPORTION TO THEIR TOTAL NUMBERS IN THE POPULATION.
8. NATIONWIDE, THERE ARE STRIKING DIFFERENCES IN THE EXPERIENCES OF WHITES AND MINORITIES IN HOUSING, EDUCATION, EMPLOYMENT AND INCOME. A STUDY RELEASED LAST MONTH BY THE POLICY STUDY INSTITUTE, A WELL-RESPECTED GROUP, REVEALED THAT BLACKS AND ASIANS IN BRITAIN ARE ON AVERAGE FOUR TIMES AS LIKELY AS WHITES TO BE PASSED OVER FOR JOBS FOR WHICH THEY APPLY, A STATISTIC WHICH CANNOT BE ACCOUNTED FOR BY DIFFERENCES IN EDUCATION OR TRAINING. WITH COMPARABLE EDUCATION, THE SAME DIFFERENCE PERTAINS. AMONG PEOPLE WITH ONE OR MORE "O" LEVELS (ABOUT THE EQUIVALENT OF A U.S. HIGH SCHOOL DIPLOMA) THE UNEMPLOYMENT RATE IS 9 PERCENT FOR WHITES, 18 PERCENT FOR ASIANS, AND 25 PERCENT FOR BLACKS. THE PROSPECTS FOR THOSE WITHOUT THESE QUALIFICATIONS, AND IN AREAS THAT HAVE BEEN HIT HARDEST ECONOMICALLY, ARE EVEN BLEAKER.
9. BIRMINGHAM, THE SECOND LARGEST CITY IN BRITAIN AND UNTIL 15 YEARS AGO THE SECOND WEALTHIEST WHEN MEASURED BY AVERAGE HOUSEHOLD INCOME, IS NOW THE POOREST CITY IN THE U.K. IT LOST 1/3 OF ITS MANUFACTURING JOBS BETWEEN 1978 AND 1984, ACCORDING TO THE FINANCIAL TIMES REGIONAL SURVEY. IN THAT SORT OF ECONOMIC CLIMATE, BREAKING INTO THE JOB MARKET IS NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE, AND OF THOSE WHO LEFT SCHOOL AT 16 LAST SUMMER, ONLY 18 PERCENT OF WHITES, 16 PERCENT OF ASIANS, AND 5 PERCENT OF BLACKS HAD FOUND WORK AT THE END OF 6 MONTHS, ACCORDING TO THE DEPARTMENT OF EMPLOYMENT.
10. LIVERPOOL SIMILARLY HAS DECLINED DRASTICALLY IN RECENT YEARS. ACCORDING TO A SERIAL CASE STUDY OF THE AREA PUBLISHED IN THE GUARDIAN NEWSPAPER, THERE WERE 11,000 DOCKWORKERS EMPLOYED IN THE PORT OF LIVERPOOL IN 1972, BUT TODAY THERE ARE FEWER THAN 2,000. INDUSTRIAL PLANTS IN TOXTETH EMPLOYED 22,000 THAT YEAR, BUT NOW EMPLOY 2,000. UNEMPLOYMENT FOR LIVERPOOL AS A WHOLE IS 21 PERCENT, BUT IN CERTAIN POCKETS SUCH AS TOXTETH, THE RATE IS AT 70 PERCENT FOR ADULTS AND 96 PERCENT FOR YOUTHS. FOUR-FIFTHS OF TOXTETH'S CITIZENS RECEIVE SOME WELFARE BENEFITS. CLEARLY IT IS NOT ONLY NON-WHITES WHO FACE MAJOR OBSTACLES, BUT IT IS THE NON-WHITES WHO ARE MOST APT TO FIND THEMSELVES STYMIED AS MEMBERS OF AN ECONOMIC AND RACIAL UNDERCLASS.
11. DIFFERENCES IN HOUSING BETWEEN BLACKS AND WHITES ARE STRIKING. ACCORDING TO THE POLICY STUDIES INSTITUTE'S COMPREHENSIVE SURVEY "BLACK AND WHITE BRITAIN", BLACK HOUSEHOLDS ARE TWICE AS LIKELY AS WHITES TO SHARE A DWELLING. FOUR TIMES AS MANY ASIANS AND THREE TIMES AS MANY WEST INDIANS AS WHITES LIVE IN OVERCROWDED CONDITIONS, DEFINED AS TWO OR MORE PEOPLE TO A BEDROOM. OVER HALF THE PAKISTANI-HEADED FAMILIES IN BRITAIN LIVE IN HOUSES WITHOUT HOT WATER, INDOOR TOILETS, AND BATHS, WHEREAS THE FIGURE FOR WHITES IS 17 PERCENT.
12. THERE ARE DEEP DIFFERENCES IN THE MEASURED EDUCATIONAL ACHIEVEMENT LEVELS OF WHITES AND MINORITIES. CHILDREN OF WEST INDIAN PARENTS ARE FOUR TIMES AS LIKELY AS WHITE CHILDREN TO BE CLASSIFIED AS EDUCATIONALLY SUBNORMAL. AND FEW BLACK YOUNGSTERS GO BEYOND SECONDARY EDUCATION. THE PROBLEM, ACCORDING TO ONE ANALYST, IS NOT SO MUCH OUTRIGHT DISCRIMINATION AGAINST THE BLACK CHILDREN AS "WELL-MEANING LOW EXPECTATION" ON THE PART OF TEACHERS. TEACHERS DECIDE SUBCONSCIOUSLY THAT THE CHILDREN ARE LIKELY TO BE FAILURES AND GIVE UP ON THEM, LEAVING THEM TO MARK TIME IN REMEDIAL EDUCATION UNTIL THEY CAN LEAVE SCHOOL AT 16.
13. THE AVERAGE WAGE FOR BLACKS IN BRITAIN REMAINS 20 POUNDS LESS PER WEEK THAN FOR WHITES. ASIANS EARN 18 POUNDS LESS, ACCORDING TO THE COMMISSION FOR RACIAL EQUALITY, AND THIS STARTS FROM THE LOW NATIONAL AVERAGE FOR WHITES OF ONLY 139 POUNDS PER WEEK.
14. FROM BEHIND THESE STATISTICS EMERGES A PICTURE OF AN ALIENATED THIRD-WORLD NATION WITHIN BRITAIN, AN UNDER-CLASS OF THE DEPRIVED, THE HOPELESS, AND THE DISPOSSESSED, IN LARGE PART BUT BY NO MEANS ENTIRELY MADE UP OF MINORITES.
WHO ARE THE RACIAL MINORITIES?
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15. UNTIL RECENTLY, MOST IN THE U.K. BELIEVED THEY LIVED IN A RACIALLY HOMOGENEOUS SOCIETY. BRITONS LOOKED ON RELATIVELY COMPLACENTLY WHILE AMERICA STRUGGLED WITH RACIAL ISSUES IN THE 1960'S: "WE DON'T HAVE SUCH TROUBLES HERE". THE ONE ACERBIC EXCEPTION CAME IN 1968, WHEN ENOCH POWELL, A CONSERVATIVE M.P., MADE A NOTORIOUS SPEECH IN WHICH HE PREDICTED "RIVERS OF BLOOD" IN THE STREETS IF THE TIDE OF ASIAN AND AFRICAN IMMIGRANTS WAS NOT STEMMED. HOWEVER CRUDELY AND UNACCEPTABLY TO MOST OF HIS AUDIENCE, HE HAD PUT HIS FINGER ON A PROBLEM; BRITAIN APPEARS UNPREPARED TO DEAL WITH THE PROFOUND CHANGE IN THE COMPLEXION OF ITS SOCIETY WHICH HAS BEEN BROUGHT ABOUT BY AN INFLUX OF IMMIGRANTS. THEY CAME FROM THE COMMONWEALTH AT FIRST, AND WERE FOLLOWED BY IMMIGRANTS RECRUITED FROM THE CARIBBEAN TO FILL WORLD WAR II LABOR SHORTAGES. IMMIGRATION GREW AS TROUBLES AFFLICTED ONE POST-COLONIAL TERRITORY AFTER ANOTHER IN THE 50'S AND 60'S. THOSE WHO WANTED TO MOVE COULD USE THEIR COMMONWEALTH PASSPORTS, A POSSIBILITY WHICH WAS REDUCED BY CHANGES IN THE LAW IN THE LAST DECADE.
16. STILL, THERE ARE ONLY ONE MILLION BLACKS AND BROWNS IN BRITAIN, OUT OF A POPULATION OF 54 MILLION, AND BY NOW HALF OF THESE ARE BRITISH-BORN. BUT THEIR OUTSIDER STATUS PERSISTS. THEY ARE STILL DISPROPORTIONATELY STUCK AT THE THE LOWER END OF THE PAY SCALE, IN SHIFTWORK AND PART-TIME WORK. OF THOSE IMMIGRANTS AND THEIR CHILDREN IN THE U.K. WHO HAVE FOUND WORK, 50 PERCENT ARE ESTIMATED TO BE OVERQUALIFIED EDUCATIONALLY FOR THE WORK THEY DO, ACCORDING TO THE BOOK "STAYING POWER: A HISTORY OF BLACK PEOPLE IN BRITAIN", BY PETER FRYER.
17. BRITAIN HAS ALWAYS BEEN A STRATIFIED SOCIETY, WITH EACH NEW GENERATION INHERITING THE CHARACTERISTICS AND ATTITUDES THAT PRESERVED THE CLASS STRUCTURE AND ITS OWN PLACE WITHIN IT. AS SUCH IT WAS ILL-PREPARED TO IMPORT AND ASSIMILATE MILLIONS WHO WERE OUTSIDE OF THIS FAMILIAR WORLD ORDER, AND WHO IN MANY CASES HAD THEIR OWN CULTURAL TRADITIONS AND DID NOT ASPIRE TO SLIDE HORIZONTALLY INTO THE BRITISH SYSTEM. MANY BRITONS FEAR THE CONFUSING CHANGES THAT THE IMMIGRANTS HAVE HELPED BRING INTO THEIR FORMERLY BOUNDED AND ORDERLY WORLD. THEY VIEW THE NEW-COMERS WITH SUSPICION AND WORSE.
18. POPULAR PRESS REPORTING OF THE RECENT RIOTS HAS REFLECTED THE RABBLE-ROUSING RACISM WHICH IS STILL EASY DISCOURSE IN MODERN BRITAIN. TABLOIDS DESCRIBE THE "ZULU-STYLE WAR CRIES" OF THE RIOTERS AND RE-CYCLE THE COMMENTS OF WHITES CALLING THEM "BARBARIANS" AND "ANIMALS". BUT LIFE IS NOT SO SIMPLE; AT LEAST A QUARTER OF THE YOUTHS IN THE MOB AT TOTTENHAM, AND ONE HALF OF THOSE WHO APPEARED BEFORE THE MAGISTRATE SUBSEQUENTLY, WERE ESTIMATED TO BE WHITE. BOTH BLACK AND WHITE YOUTHS ARE NOW CHARGED WITH THE MURDER OF THE POLICE CONSTABLE AT TOTTENHAM. THE PUBLIC HOUSING NEAR MOST OF THE RIOT LOCALES IS MORE INTEGRATED THAN WAS THE CASE IN THE U.S. IN THE 60'S; BROADWATER FARMS, THE PUBLIC HOUSING DEVELOPMENT AT THE CENTER OF THE RIOTS IN LONDON'S TOTTENHAM AREA, HOLDS APPROXIMATELY A 50/50 RACIAL MIX.
19. IN ADDITION TO THE DIFFICULTY THE LARGER WHITE POPULATION IS HAVING IN ABSORBING IMMIGRANT POPULATIONS (THERE IS NO 'MELTING POT' TRADITION IN BRITAIN), THERE ARE TENSIONS BETWEEN RACIAL GROUPS AMONG THE IMMIGRANTS. THE TWO GROUPS WHICH HAVE IMMIGRATED IN THE LARGEST NUMBERS ARE ASIANS (PRIMARILY INDIANS AND PAKISTANIS) AND AFRO- CARRIBEANS. THE BLACK IMMIGRANTS ARE SAID TO RESENT THE RELATIVELY MORE PROSPEROUS ASIANS. THE ASIANS, WHO TEND TO BE THE ONLY SHOPKEEPERS LEFT IN THE INNER CITIES, HAVE BEEN ESPECIALLY HARD HIT BY THE LOOTING AND BURNING THAT HAS TAKEN PLACE DURING THE RIOTS. THE ONLY TWO CIVILIAN FATALITIES AS THE RESULT OF THE RIOTING HAVE BEEN TWO ASIAN BROTHERS, KILLED WHEN THEIR STORE IN HANDSWORTH WAS BURNED TO THE GROUND AFTER THEY WERE LOCKED IN. PRESS ACCOUNTS NOTED THAT THEIR STORE WAS THE PLACE THAT MOST OF THE LOCAL RESIDENTS CASHED THEIR WELFARE CHECKS, AND THUS TO SOME OF THE RIOTERS THE STORE MAY HAVE SYMBOLIZED THE SYSTEM AGAINST WHICH THEY WERE LASHING OUT.
20. IT IS PERHAPS POSSIBLE TO OVERSTATE THE RIVALRY BETWEEN ETHNIC GROUPS IN BRITAIN. THIS RIVALRY DOES HAVE PARALLELS IN U.S. CITIES, SUCH AS THE RESENTMENT CERTAIN BLACKS EXPRESSED AGAINST CUBANS IN THE MIAMI RIOTS, AND IT HAS SIMILAR CAUSES.
21. BLACKS COMPLAIN THAT THEY ARE LESS LIKELY TO BE GIVEN WHAT FEW FUNDS ARE AVAILABLE FOR SMALL BUSINESS DEVELOPMENTS IN THE CITIES. (SINCE 1981 CENTRAL GOVERNMENT HAS ALLOCATED ONLY 200,000 POUNDS FOR THIS PURPOSE TO THE RIOT AREA OF HANDSWORTH, IN SPITE OF THE SCARMAN REPORT, WHICH EMPHASIZED HOW EFFECTIVE SUCH GRANTS WOULD BE IN REHABILITATING THE RIOT AREAS.) THESE COMPLAINTS ARE SUPPORTED BY STATISTICS; OVER 50 PERCENT OF APPLICATIONS FOR GRANTS FOR SMALL BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT (INNER CITY PARTNERSHIPS) WERE SUBMITTED BY BLACKS, BUT THEY ULTIMATELY RECEIVED ONLY 13 PERCENT OF THE GRANTS. ASIAN BUSINESSES FOUNDED WITH THESE GRANTS ARE ALMOST INVARIABLY FAMILY OPERATED AND RARELY EMPLOY BLACKS.
22. THERE IS LITTLE IN THE WAY OF A BLACK MIDDLE CLASS IN BRITAIN. THE ONLY ROLE MODELS THAT BLACK PEOPLE HAVE IN THE ESTABLISHMENT ARE MUSICIANS, SPORTS FIGURES, AND A HANDFUL OF T.V. JOURNALISTS, AS THERE ARE NO NATIONAL LEADERS, NO MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT, AND ONLY ONE LOCAL GOVERNMENT LEADER WHO IS BLACK (AND EVEN HE WAS NOT ELECTED DIRECTLY IN THE STYLE OF U.S. MAYORS). ASIANS, BY CONTRAST, DO HAVE ROLE MODELS IN BUSINESS AND COMMERCE, AND THEY HAVE THEIR OWN RELIGIOUS AND COMMUNITY LEADERS. THUS, ALTHOUGH THEY ARE NOT FULLY ACCEPTED INTO BRITISH SOCIETY, ON THE WHOLE ASIANS ARE "PART OF THE SYSTEM", AS ONE OBSERVER PUT IT.
THE POLICE: ARE THEY THE PROBLEM OR THE ANSWER?
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23. THE ROLE OF THE POLICE, AND THE RISING PRESSURES ON THEM TO RESPOND TO SUCCESSIVE SOCIETAL CHALLENGES IS WORRISOME TO MANY HERE. FIRST IRA TERRORISM, THEN POLICING THE MINERS' STRIKE, AND NOW THE INNER CITY STRIFE HAVE STRETCHED THEM DANGEROUSLY THIN. MEANWHILE, THE POLICE FORCES WHICH ARE NOW BEING ASKED TO CONTAIN THE URBAN UPHEAVALS ARE OFTEN LESS THAN ONE PER CENT BLACK OR ASIAN (OVERALL, 700 MINORITY POLICE OUT OF A FORCE OF 120,000, ACCORDING TO NEWSPAPER SOURCES. LAST YEAR, HOWEVER, OF 1208 TRAINEES IN THE LONDON METROPOLITAN POLICE, 36 BELONGED TO MINORITY GROUPS, A HIGHER PERCENTAGE THAN IN PREVIOUS YEARS AND ABOUT IN PROPORTION TO POPULATION. A WELL-PUBLICIZED STUDY PREPARED BY THE INSTITUTE FOR RACE RELATIONS FOR THE ROYAL COMMISSION ON CRIMINAL PROCEDURE AND PUBLISHED IN 1979, CHARACTERIZED MANY OF THE POLICE IN BRITAIN AS RACIALLY INSENSITIVE, AND ALLEGED THAT MANY OF THEM USE DEROGATORY LANGUAGE WHEN REFERRING TO MINORITIES, THAT THEY STEREOTYPE BLACKS AS PIMPS AND LAYABOUTS, AND THAT THEY CONSISTENTLY APPLY MORE PRESSURE AND AGGRESSION IN ENCOUNTERS WITH BLACK CI|IZENS THAN THEY WOULD WITH WHITES. THE NEGATIVE IMAGE OF THE POLICE THAT THIS STUDY HELPED CREATE IS ONE FACTOR THAT MAKES THE PRESENT RECRUITMENT OF MINORITIES INTO THE POLICE SO DIFFICULT.
24. A RECENT BBC TELEVISION PROGRAM COMPARED THIS SITUATION TO THAT IN THE NEW YORK POLICE FORCE, IN WHICH 40 PERCENT OF LAST YEAR'S TRAINEES WERE BLACK, AS A RESULT OF INTENSIVE RECRUITMENT EFFORTS AND, MORE PROFOUNDLY, A RETHINKING OF THE ROLE AND RELEVANCE OF THE POLICE IN THE CITIES. NOTHING ON THIS SCALE IS CONTEMPLATED HERE, ALTHOUGH THERE HAVE BEEN SOME HALF-HEARTED ATTEMPTS TO BOOST RECRUITMENT OF MINORITIES, AND THE HOME SECRETARY HAS NOW URGED THE METROPOLITAN POLICE TO HIRE MORE BLACKS.
25. ONE MUST ALSO NOTE, HOWEVER, THAT THE POLICE FORCE HAS BEEN THE ONLY INSTITUTION TO TAKE THE 1981 SCARMAN REPORT TO HEART, AND REAL CHANGES HAVE OCCURRED SINCE THEN. POLICE NOW TAKE TRAINING IN CULTURAL SENSITIVITY AND RACE RELATIONS, AND THE CONCEPT OF COMMUNITY POLICING (GETTING THE POLICEMAN COMFORTABLE AND FAMILIAR WITH THE PEOPLE ON HIS BEAT, AND THE PEOPLE USED TO THE PRESENCE OF THE POLICE) HAVE MADE PROGRESS IN IMPROVING THE CLIMATE ON THE STREETS. PERHAPS IT IS IRONIC THEN, THAT IT WAS POLICE ACTIONS IN TWO INSTANCES WHICH APPEAR TO HAVE SPARKED THE RIOTS. THE FIRST WAS THE ACCIDENTAL SHOOTING IN SEPTEMBER OF A MIDDLE-AGED BLACK WOMAN, OCCASIONED WHEN POLICE BROKE DOWN THE DOOR OF HER HOUSE AND BURST IN, LOOKING FOR HER SON ON A WEAPONS CHARGE. THE SHOOTING HAS LEFT HER A PARAPLEGIC, AND HAS FOCUSSED RESENTMENT AGAINST WHAT IS SEEN AS POLICE HEAVY-HANDEDNESS. THIS INCIDENT WAS FOLLOWED CLOSELY BY THE DEATH OF A BLACK WOMAN DURING A SEARCH OF HER HOME. ALTHOUGH SHE DIED OF HEART FAILURE, HER FAMILY HAS CHARGED THAT THE POLICE WHO WERE CONDUCTING THE SEARCH DELIBERATELY IGNORED HER PLEAS FOR MEDICAL ATTENTION AND ALLOWED HER TO DIE UNNECESSARILY FOR WANT OF AN AMBULANCE.
26. POLICE HEAVY-HANDEDNESS IS CITED REPEATEDLY AS A CONTRIBUTING FACTOR TO THE RIOTS. TWO SOCIOLOGISTS WHO EXPLORED THE ROLE OF THE POLICE IN THE INNER CITIES IN A MONOGRAPH PUBLISHED THIS SUMMER CONCLUDED THAT THE POLICE WERE IN FACT CONSTANTLY MAKING THEIR PRESENCE FELT TO YOUTHS IN THE HANDSWORTH AREA, BY FREQUENTLY STOPPING THEM AND QUESTIONING THEM. THE AVERAGE RATE AT WHICH YOUTHS WERE STOPPED FOR QUESTIONING WAS FIVE TIMES PER YEAR, FOR BOTH BLACKS AND WHITES. WHAT WAS PARTICULARLY STRIKING WAS THAT ALTHOUGH THEY WERE STOPPED AT THE SAME RATE, BLACK YOUNGSTERS DISTRUSTED THE POLICE MUCH MORE, AND THEIR ATTITUDES WERE FAR MORE OFTEN HOSTILE. IT IS INEVITABLE THAT POLICE WILL HAVE TO BE ACTIVE IN NEIGHBORHOODS WITH HIGH CRIME RATES AND A HIGH PERCENTAGE OF YOUTH (THOSE STATISTICALLY MOST LIKELY TO COMMIT CRIMES). IT IS JUST AS INEVITABLE THAT ENCOUNTERS UNDER THOSE CIRCUMSTANCES WILL CREATE STRAINS. BUT IT IS ALSO TRUE THAT MANY BLACKS ARE LASHING OUT AT THE POLICE, WHO SYMBOLIZE A SYSTEM WHICH THEY FEEL IS HOSTILE TO THEIR INTEREST.
27. THE GOVERNMENT RESPONSE TO THE RIOTS HAS BEEN TO CALL FOR MORE SWEEPING POLICE POWER, AND AUTHORIZATION OF THE USE OF TEAR GAS AND PLASTIC BULLETS IN RIOT CONTROL (THE SAME PLASTIC BULLETS WHOSE USE IS BEING SO HOTLY CONTESTED IN NORTHERN IRELAND, WHERE THEY HAVE ON SOME RARE OCCASIONS CAUSED DEATH). THE CONSERVATIVES, AS THE "LAW AND ORDER" PARTY, HAVE MADE THEIR PRINCIPAL RALLYING CRY FOR DEALING WITH THE RIOTS A PLEDGE FOR INCREASED SUPPORT FOR THE POLICE, UNDER PRESSURE FROM THEIR RIGHT AND MUCH OF THE MIDDLE CLASS IN BRITAIN, THE "DECENT WORKING PEOPLE."
28. NONETHELESS, THE POLICE HAVE REACTED IN FRUSTRATION TO THE CHARGES THAT HAVE BEEN LEVELED AGAINST THEM. IN AN EMOTIONALLY CHARGED GATHERING LAST WEEK, THE ANNUAL MEETING OF THE METROPOLITAN BRANCH OF THE POLICE FEDERATION, THE RANK AND FILE ACCUSED THEIR LEADERS OF COWARDICE, SAYING THAT THEY WERE AFRAID OF MAKING TOUGH DECISIONS FOR FEAR OF POLITICAL OR PROMOTIONAL CONSEQUENCES. THE POLICE ON THE BEAT COMPLAIN THAT THE BRAKES ARE PUT ON THEM BY THEIR SENIOR OFFICERS AND BY LOCAL POLITICIANS. IN TOTTENHAM, THE FIRST RIOT IN THE U.K. MAINLAND IN WHICH GUNS WERE USED AGAINST THE POLICE, AND WHERE ONE POLICEMAN WAS KILLED AND 163 INJURED, THE POLICE WERE RESTRAINED FROM GOING INTO THE AREA EARLY ON TO MAKE ARRESTS. THIS, POLICE CLAIM, WAS BUT A CONTINUATION OF AN OFFICIAL "HANDS-OFF" POLICY WHICH HAS FRUSTRATED THEM SINCE ITS INCEPTION AFTER SCARMAN, AND WHICH THEY BELIEVE IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE HIGH CASUALTY RATE THAT FOLLOWED.
29. AT THE MEETING LAST WEEK, JOHN NEWMAN, A CONSTABLE AND CHAIRMAN OF THE METROPOLITAN BRANCH OF THE POLICE FEDERATION, DEMANDED AND WAS GRANTED A "THOROUGH REVIEW OF POLICY AND TACTICS" BY METROPOLITAN COMMISSIONER SIR KENNETH NEWMAN.
30. MINORITY AND OPPOSITION LEADERS HAVE COMPLAINED THAT THE POLICE ONLY WANT STUDIES OF THE ISSUES THAT SUIT THEM, AND NOTE THAT THE GOVERNMENT AND THE POLICE HAVE REFUSED TO CONDUCT AN INDEPENDENT INQUIRY INTO THE TRIGGERING INCIDENTS OF TWO OF THE RIOTS.
THE POLITICS OF RACE
---------------------
31. THE THEME OF HOME SECRETARY HURD'S SPEECH AT THE ANNUAL CONSERVATIVE CONFERENCE IN EARLY OCTOBER, DIRECTED AT MINORITIES, WAS PARAPHRASABLE AS "YOU HAVE THE RIGHTS, NOW EXERCISE SOME RESPONSIBILITY". THE REALITY SEEMS TO BE THAT THESE RIGHTS APPEAR ALL TOO THEORETICAL, AT BEST, TO MOST OF BRITAIN'S MINORITIES.
32. MINORITY VOTERS, ESPECIALLY CARIBBEAN BLACKS, HAVE VOTED FOR THE LABOR PARTY SO CONSISTENTLY THAT THE CONSERVATIVES AND THE ALLIANCE HAVE LARGELY WRITTEN THEM OFF, AND LABOR HAS TAKEN THEM FOR GRANTED.
33. THERE ARE SOME STIRRINGS OF CHANGE. LABOR IS GROPING WITH PLANS TO GIVE BLACKS SPECIAL RIGHTS WITHIN THE PARTY STRUCTURE, A NUMBER OF ETHNIC ASIANS ARE TENDING TOWARDS THE ALLIANCE, AND SOME SUCCESSFUL BLACK AND ASIAN BUSINESSMEN FLIRT WITH THE TORIES. MEANWHILE, LEGISLATION ON THE U.S. MODEL ALLOWING GOVERNMENT TO WITHDRAW CONTRACTS FROM FIRMS THAT DO NOT EMPLOY A CERTAIN PERCENTAGE OF MINORITIES WAS RECENTLY PROPOSED BY THE HOME OFFICE. THIS PROPOSAL IS CONTROVERSIAL AND UNLIKELY TO BECOME LAW BECAUSE OF QUESTIONS ABOUT THE FAIRNESS AND EFFECTIVENESS OF SUCH MEASURES. NEVERTHELESS, THE RIOTS MAY HAVE FORCED THE PROBLEMS OF RACIAL MINORITIES BACK NEAR THE TOP OF THE AGENDA. ONE JOURNALIST INTERVIEWING AN ANGRY YOUTH ON THE STREETS OF HANDSWORTH CALLED THE RIOTS POINTLESS, BUT THE YOUNG MAN COUNTERED "OH, YEAH? HOW DO YOU FIGURE THAT? SOMETHING WILL BE DONE." AND HE MAY BE RIGHT.
PARTY POLITICS: TOO LITTLE DONE, AND THAT TOO LATE
--------------------------------------------- -----
34. THE BROAD REACTION AMONG CONSERVATIVES TO THE RECENT RIOTS WAS SPLIT: THE HARD-LINE GOVERNMENT SUPPORTERS RESISTED CAUSAL EXPLANATIONS LINKING POVERTY AND DEPRIVATION WITH THE URBAN UPHEAVALS AND DESCRIBED THE RIOTS AS MERE "CRIMINAL OPPORTUNISM". THIS POSITION WAS PORTRAYED BY THE OPPOSITION AS A SELF-INTERESTED ATTEMPT BY THE TORIES TO WRIGGLE FREE OF THEIR PART OF THE RESPONSIBILITY FOR BRITAIN'S CONTINUING ECONOMIC DOLDRUMS AND THEIR RESULTS. OTHER MORE LIBERAL TORIES PARTIALLY CONCURRED WITH THESE SENTIMENTS; THEY CLAIMED THAT THE RIOTS PROVED WHAT THEY HAD BEEN SAYING, I.E. THAT THE GOVERNMENT'S PRIORITIES HAD TO BE RE-EXAMINED AND THE HARD LINE REVISED. PRIME MINISTER THATCHER'S ARGUMENT THAT THE WORKINGS OF AN UNFETTERED FREE MARKET WILL, IF LEFT ALONE, CREATE JOBS TO RENEW BRITAIN HAS BEEN RIDICULED BY THE OPPOSITION PARTIES, WHICH ASSERT THAT UNEMPLOYMENT FIGURES THREATEN BRITAIN'S CITIES WITH HOSTILITY AND ALIENATION THAT LAISSEZ-FAIRE ECONOMICS CANNOT RESOLVE. MRS. THATCHER'S RESPONSE TO THE RIOTS WAS TO PLEDGE MORE EQUIPMENT AND MANPOWER FOR THE POLICE, BUT HOME SECRETARY HURD HAS ALSO ACKNOWLEDGED THAT THE RIOT CAUSES MUST BE TREATED TOO. THE OPPOSITION HAS OFFERED NO CONCRETE SOLUTIONS OTHER THAN THE PRESERVATION AND ENHANCEMENT OF THE WELFARE STATE, WHILE ALLIANCE AND LABOR LEADERS MUST WELCOME THE FACT THAT THEY ARE NOT CURRENTLY IN POWER AND HAVING TO DEFEND THEIR OWN RECORDS IN THE GLARE OF THE BURNING CITIES.
35. THE CONSERVATIVES STRESS THE SIGNS OF ECONOMIC UPTURN THAT OCCASIONALLY ARISE, SUCH AS NEW FIRMS TAKING UP RESIDENCE IN BIRMINGHAM AND LIVERPOOL. THE FIRMS WHICH THEY ARE REFERRING TO DO HAVE A POSITIVE EFFECT ON ECONOMIC STATISTICS, BUT IN GENERAL ARE HIGH-TECH, CAPITAL-INTENSIVE INDUSTRIES THAT EMPLOY RELATIVELY FEW PEOPLE AND THOSE, HIGHLY SKILLED, ACCORDING TO A CONGRESS OF BRITISH INDUSTRIES STUDY. THUS THEY HAVE LITTLE EFFECT ON THE INNER CITY UNEMPLOYMENT PROBLEMS.
36. THE TORIES HAVE MADE THE REINING-IN OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT SPENDING ONE OF THEIR PRIME TECHNIQUES FOR REDUCING TOTAL GOVERNMENT SPENDING. IN PARTICULAR PUBLIC SECTOR CAPITAL BUDGETS HAVE BEEN SEVERELY CUT FROM 3.6 BILLION POUNDS IN 1979 TO 2.2 BILLION POUNDS IN 1986. WHEN COMBINED WITH THE SALE OF COUNCIL HOUSING TO ITS TENANTS, THE PUBLIC HOUSING STOCK HAS BEEN REDUCED BY ONE-THIRD DURING A PERIOD IN WHICH FUNDS FOR HOUSING RENOVATIONS HAVE NOT INCREASED IN REAL TERMS. SCARMAN'S RECOMMENDATIONS FOR IMPROVEMENTS IN HOUSING HAVE BEEN ALMOST ENTIRELY IGNORED.
37. EDUCATIONAL REFORMS SUGGESTED BY SCARMAN INCLUDED MORE AND BETTER NURSERY EDUCATION, MORE TRAINING OF TEACHERS IN THE NEEDS OF MINORITY CHILDREN, PROGRAMS TO TEACH ENGLISH TO IMMIGRANTS, AND BETTER LINKS BETWEEN PARENTS AND SCHOOLS. NONE OF THESE HAS BEEN FUNDED. IN FACT, ACCORDING TO THE FINANCIAL TIMES, DESPITE A STATIC NURSERY-AGE POPULATION IN BRITAIN, THE OVERALL CAPITAL SPENDING FOR NURSERY EDUCATION HAS FALLEN FROM 41 POUNDS PER CAPITA TO 24 POUNDS SINCE 1981.
38. SCARMAN RECOMMENDED THAT "POSITIVE DISCRIMINATION" MIGHT BE NEEDED TO REDRESS THE EMPLOYMENT AND EDUCATIONAL GAPS BETWEEN WHITES AND MINORITIES. (POSITIVE DISCRIMINATION IS BETTER KNOWN IN THE U.S. AS AFFIRMATIVE ACTION.) NO CENTRAL GOVERNMENT ACTION RESULTED FROM THESE SUGGESTIONS, ALTHOUGH PROGRAMS WERE ADOPTED AT THE LOCAL LEVEL IN SOME AREAS.
WHAT ABOUT THE ROLE OF BRITAIN'S NEW DRUGS CRACKDOWN?
39. SEVERAL PAPERS HAVE SUGGESTED THAT EFFORTS AFTER THE LAST RIOTS TO FORGE LINKS BETWEEN POLICE AND THE COMMUNITY BY INCREASING POLICEMEN'S SENSITIVITY TO THE COMMUNITIES THEY PATROL HAVE RESULTED IN THE POLICE GOING "SOFT ON CRIME." FOR EXAMPLE, THE POLICE ARE IN A DELICATE POSITION WHEN THEY ATTEMPT TO ENFORCE ANTI-MARIJUANA LAWS IN AFRO-CARIBBEAN COMMUNITIES, WHERE RASTAFARIANS SEE MARIJUANA AS AN IMPORTANT RITUAL SUBSTANCE. INTERFERENCE WITH THIS TRADITION IS LIKELY TO BRING TROUBLE DOWN UPON THE HEAD OF THE OFFICER WHO IS SO BOLD AS TO STEP IN. AT THE VERY LEAST HE INVITES CHARGES OF CULTURAL INSENSITIVITY. MEANWHILE, IN MANY AREAS DRUG SALES HAVE BECOME THE ONLY RELIABLE SOURCE OF INCOME AND ADVANCEMENT FOR YOUNG BLACK GO-GETTERS.
40. IN THE PAST YEAR, HOWEVER, THE U.K HAS FOCUSSED ON THE DAMAGE WHICH DRUG USAGE AND ITS ATTENDANT CORRUPTION CAUSE, MINDFUL OF U.S. PROBLEMS, AND IT IS ADOPTING IN A WHOLESALE FASHION U.S. ANTI-DRUG TECHNIQUES. AS PART OF AN OVERALL POLICY WHICH INCLUDES LONGER SENTENCES FOR DRUG DEALERS, AND NEW TECHNIQUES TO SEIZE PROFITS FROM DRUG SALES, THE POLICE HAVE BEEN PRESSED TO CRACK DOWN ON DRUGS, AND THIS NEW DRUGS OFFENSIVE MAY HAVE BEEN ONE OF THE SPARKS THAT FINALLY KINDLED THE TINDERBOX CITIES. BIRMINGHAM'S RIOTS WERE PRECEDED BY TWO MAJOR RAIDS RIGHT IN THE NEIGHBORHOODS WHICH WERE SOON TO BE THE SCENE OF THE DISTURBANCES. THE HOME OFFICE HAS BEEN RELUCTANT TO ACKNOWLEDGE ANY CONNECTION BETWEEN THE DRUGS SWEEP AND THE ERUPTION OF THE RIOTS, BUT A BRIGHT LABOR M.P. FROM BIRMINGHAM TOLD US, WITHOUT IN ANY WAY IMPLYING THAT DRUG DEALERS CAN BE ALLOWED FREEDOM TO OPERATE, THAT HE KNOWS THE CONNECTION IS EXPLICIT. THUS, IT APPEARS THAT THE POLICE ARE CAUGHT ON THE FRONT LINES ENFORCING A NEWLY VIGOROUS AND GENERALLY POPULAR ANTI-DRUGS POLICY, BUT ARE ALSO TRYING TO CATCH UP WITH THE IMPACT THAT IT AND OTHER SOCIAL PROBLEMS ARE HAVING ON BRITAIN'S CITIES.
CONCLUSION
----------
41. THE RIOTS MAY HAVE FORCED BRITAIN'S POLITICAL LEADERS TO EXAMINE THEMSELVES AND DETERMINE SUBSEQUENT ACTION TO REDRESS SOME VERY REAL AND THUS FAR INTRACTABLE PROBLEMS. BUT IN THE MEANTIME WE ARE LIKELY TO SEE MORE RIOTING AHEAD, WHICH WILL PUT EXTRA STRAINS ON THIS CAUTIOUS, SLOW-TO-CHANGE SOCIETY. WHILE THE ONSET OF WINTER MAY INHIBIT STREET VIOLENCE, SPRING CANNOT BE FAR BEHIND.
SEITZ
28.11.10
Black Friday Shopping vs. Protesting Airport Irradiation: 1-0
Karen Garcia
New Paltz, NY
Two days ago, there were images of anguished and angry people on the news. One segment was of the Irish people, carrying signs and protesting continuing austerity and tax breaks for corporations and bank bailouts. Another clip was of a crowd of Americans in a similar mass wave of emotion.
But the Americans weren't protesting their corrupt government. They were shoving and pushing each other in their quest to be one of the fortunate few to score a $200 flat screen TV from China.
It echoed the scene from Orwell's "1984" in which Smith hears a commotion on the street and momentarily rejoices in the false hope that a popular uprising against The Party has finally begun. But it turns out to be only group of shoppers fighting over a few cheap saucepans in a sidewalk market.
I have been encouraged that not only columnists like Frank Rich, Paul Krugman and Bob Herbert have been writing about American social injustice and class disparity - but that a large number of commenters have voiced the need for a rebellion against our own Big Brother-like government. It may not happen next year, or even in ten or twenty years, but it's bound to happen. The current system cannot hold.
As Eric Blair, aka Orwell, wrote in his dystopian masterpiece: "Until they become conscious, they will never rebel. And until after they have rebelled, they cannot become conscious."
May the long national coma come to an end before it's too late.
New Paltz, NY
Two days ago, there were images of anguished and angry people on the news. One segment was of the Irish people, carrying signs and protesting continuing austerity and tax breaks for corporations and bank bailouts. Another clip was of a crowd of Americans in a similar mass wave of emotion.
But the Americans weren't protesting their corrupt government. They were shoving and pushing each other in their quest to be one of the fortunate few to score a $200 flat screen TV from China.
It echoed the scene from Orwell's "1984" in which Smith hears a commotion on the street and momentarily rejoices in the false hope that a popular uprising against The Party has finally begun. But it turns out to be only group of shoppers fighting over a few cheap saucepans in a sidewalk market.
I have been encouraged that not only columnists like Frank Rich, Paul Krugman and Bob Herbert have been writing about American social injustice and class disparity - but that a large number of commenters have voiced the need for a rebellion against our own Big Brother-like government. It may not happen next year, or even in ten or twenty years, but it's bound to happen. The current system cannot hold.
As Eric Blair, aka Orwell, wrote in his dystopian masterpiece: "Until they become conscious, they will never rebel. And until after they have rebelled, they cannot become conscious."
May the long national coma come to an end before it's too late.
25.11.10
Ranging from pathetic to self-righteous indignation, there are still voices supporting Bush's invasion of Iraq
Berlin Efforts to Prevent Iraq Invasion
Classified Papers Prove German Warnings to Bush
By Klaus Wiegrefe
A classified document obtained by SPIEGEL shows notes from a meeting between a top German diplomat and Condoleezza Rice just weeks before the Iraq invasion. It indicates steps by the German government to prevent the war and undermines claims in George W. Bush's memoir that Gerhard Schröder indicated he would support the president should the US go to war.
Gerhard Schröder and Joschka Fischer made every effort they could. The German chancellor and foreign minister spared no effort with their appeals, whether in public or private, in small groups or with the eyes of the entire world upon them. In the end, though, it was all for naught. Then-United States President George W. Bush wouldn't allow anyone to change his mind. He was dead set on launching a war against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and thereby bringing "freedom," as he put it, to the Middle East. It was a freedom that Bush described as " God's gift to mankind."
Over time, however, this would-be gift from God has grown to become the biggest foreign-policy disaster in US history since the Vietnam War. The war in Iraq and its subsequent occupation has cost more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians and over 4,000 American soldiers their lives. Washington's credibility has been severely damaged, and Iraq will remain a trouble spot for the foreseeable future.
It is facts like these that have helped stoke the outrage since Bush recently published his memoirs, "Decision Points," in which he claims that Schröder -- the very man who won re-election in 2002 in large part based on his opposition to the war -- assured him in January 2002 that Germany would support the United States if it decided to go to war against Iraq. For his part, Schröder was quick to deny Bush's comments, claiming instead that "(t)he former American president is not telling the truth."
SPIEGEL has now obtained a previously secret copy of notes taken from a conversation in February 2003 marked "Classified Information -- For Internal Use Only." At that time, in was just a matter of weeks before US soldiers invaded Iraq. Klaus Scharioth, a Berlin-based state secretary in the German Foreign Ministry, had flown to Washington in the hope of still having a chance of changing the minds of Condoleezza Rice, Bush's national security adviser at the time, and other high-ranking members on the National Security Council.
Costs of War 'Higher than Political Returns'
According to the notes -- all in German -- the meeting amounted to 90 minutes of verbal blows, which primarily stemmed from Rice's "relatively rigorous and uncompromising" defense of the US position. The same notes indicate that Scharioth didn't budge an inch toward Washington, either. In retrospect, though, they document a high point in German diplomatic history, because the objections and predictions put forward by Berlin on that Tuesday have turned out to be legitimate and correct.
The crux of the German argument was that the political costs of a war in Iraq would be "higher than (the) political returns." While Rice predicted that Iraq would take advantage of the "opportunities for reconstruction" like the ones Germany enjoyed after 1945, the delegation from Berlin countered that the rapid establishment of a democracy in Baghdad was "not (to be) expected."
The Germans also predicted that the real beneficiary of a war in Iraq would actually be Iran, and that a US-led attack would further complicate efforts to reach a solution in the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians.
Likewise, they prophesized that going to war would precipitate a "terrorist backlash." Scharioth stressed that it was important "to win over the hearts and minds of the Muslim elite and youths," according to the notes, and that this was "not to be achieved" by going to war. He also added that doing so would greatly increase the danger of prompting an "influx to Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism."
Saddam Has 'Always Misled, Hidden and Stalled'
This remarkable conversation was held just a few days after the now-infamous speech that then-US Secretary of State Colin Powell delivered in New York before the UN Security Council. Powell had presented what he apparently considered to be proof that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. But Berlin sensed that the evidence in no way substantiated Powell's claims.
With his speech, Powell wanted to convince the Security Council to give a green light to war. Less than three months earlier, the Security Council had passed Resolution 1441, which threatened Iraq with "serious consequences" if it was found to have committed any "material breach" of arms-control sanctions. Since the end of 2002, inspectors with the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had been conducting searches in Iraq for nuclear, biological and chemical weapons -- though obviously without any success.
During this time, the Americans were growing impatient because they wanted to launch their attack before the onset of the heat and sandstorms accompanying the warmer months of the year. This, in turn, prompted Rice to push for action in a conversation with Scharioth. She argued that "everything had been tried"* over the last 12 years but Saddam Hussein has "always misled, hidden and stalled."*
In response, Berlin called for the inspections regime to be intensified and for the inspectors to be given more time. Chancellor Schröder even teamed up with then-French President Jacques Chirac and then-Russian President Vladimir Putin, forging an alliance on the Security Council, of which Germany was a non-permanent member in 2003. Rice justifiably complained that the Germans were apparently pursuing the goal of "preventing the United States from going to war."*
In the end, none of it helped. The United States went to war without any backing from the United Nations. On March 20, 2003, the bombing of Baghdad signaled the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom. And, from there, destiny ran its course.
* Please note that the asterisk following a quotation indicates it was translated from the German classified document and may differ slightly from the original, verbatim English quote.
This article originally appeared in German on SPIEGEL ONLINE's history portal, einestages.de.
Translated from the German by Josh Ward
Classified Papers Prove German Warnings to Bush
By Klaus Wiegrefe
A classified document obtained by SPIEGEL shows notes from a meeting between a top German diplomat and Condoleezza Rice just weeks before the Iraq invasion. It indicates steps by the German government to prevent the war and undermines claims in George W. Bush's memoir that Gerhard Schröder indicated he would support the president should the US go to war.
Gerhard Schröder and Joschka Fischer made every effort they could. The German chancellor and foreign minister spared no effort with their appeals, whether in public or private, in small groups or with the eyes of the entire world upon them. In the end, though, it was all for naught. Then-United States President George W. Bush wouldn't allow anyone to change his mind. He was dead set on launching a war against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and thereby bringing "freedom," as he put it, to the Middle East. It was a freedom that Bush described as " God's gift to mankind."
Over time, however, this would-be gift from God has grown to become the biggest foreign-policy disaster in US history since the Vietnam War. The war in Iraq and its subsequent occupation has cost more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians and over 4,000 American soldiers their lives. Washington's credibility has been severely damaged, and Iraq will remain a trouble spot for the foreseeable future.
It is facts like these that have helped stoke the outrage since Bush recently published his memoirs, "Decision Points," in which he claims that Schröder -- the very man who won re-election in 2002 in large part based on his opposition to the war -- assured him in January 2002 that Germany would support the United States if it decided to go to war against Iraq. For his part, Schröder was quick to deny Bush's comments, claiming instead that "(t)he former American president is not telling the truth."
SPIEGEL has now obtained a previously secret copy of notes taken from a conversation in February 2003 marked "Classified Information -- For Internal Use Only." At that time, in was just a matter of weeks before US soldiers invaded Iraq. Klaus Scharioth, a Berlin-based state secretary in the German Foreign Ministry, had flown to Washington in the hope of still having a chance of changing the minds of Condoleezza Rice, Bush's national security adviser at the time, and other high-ranking members on the National Security Council.
Costs of War 'Higher than Political Returns'
According to the notes -- all in German -- the meeting amounted to 90 minutes of verbal blows, which primarily stemmed from Rice's "relatively rigorous and uncompromising" defense of the US position. The same notes indicate that Scharioth didn't budge an inch toward Washington, either. In retrospect, though, they document a high point in German diplomatic history, because the objections and predictions put forward by Berlin on that Tuesday have turned out to be legitimate and correct.
The crux of the German argument was that the political costs of a war in Iraq would be "higher than (the) political returns." While Rice predicted that Iraq would take advantage of the "opportunities for reconstruction" like the ones Germany enjoyed after 1945, the delegation from Berlin countered that the rapid establishment of a democracy in Baghdad was "not (to be) expected."
The Germans also predicted that the real beneficiary of a war in Iraq would actually be Iran, and that a US-led attack would further complicate efforts to reach a solution in the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians.
Likewise, they prophesized that going to war would precipitate a "terrorist backlash." Scharioth stressed that it was important "to win over the hearts and minds of the Muslim elite and youths," according to the notes, and that this was "not to be achieved" by going to war. He also added that doing so would greatly increase the danger of prompting an "influx to Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism."
Saddam Has 'Always Misled, Hidden and Stalled'
This remarkable conversation was held just a few days after the now-infamous speech that then-US Secretary of State Colin Powell delivered in New York before the UN Security Council. Powell had presented what he apparently considered to be proof that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. But Berlin sensed that the evidence in no way substantiated Powell's claims.
With his speech, Powell wanted to convince the Security Council to give a green light to war. Less than three months earlier, the Security Council had passed Resolution 1441, which threatened Iraq with "serious consequences" if it was found to have committed any "material breach" of arms-control sanctions. Since the end of 2002, inspectors with the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had been conducting searches in Iraq for nuclear, biological and chemical weapons -- though obviously without any success.
During this time, the Americans were growing impatient because they wanted to launch their attack before the onset of the heat and sandstorms accompanying the warmer months of the year. This, in turn, prompted Rice to push for action in a conversation with Scharioth. She argued that "everything had been tried"* over the last 12 years but Saddam Hussein has "always misled, hidden and stalled."*
In response, Berlin called for the inspections regime to be intensified and for the inspectors to be given more time. Chancellor Schröder even teamed up with then-French President Jacques Chirac and then-Russian President Vladimir Putin, forging an alliance on the Security Council, of which Germany was a non-permanent member in 2003. Rice justifiably complained that the Germans were apparently pursuing the goal of "preventing the United States from going to war."*
In the end, none of it helped. The United States went to war without any backing from the United Nations. On March 20, 2003, the bombing of Baghdad signaled the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom. And, from there, destiny ran its course.
* Please note that the asterisk following a quotation indicates it was translated from the German classified document and may differ slightly from the original, verbatim English quote.
This article originally appeared in German on SPIEGEL ONLINE's history portal, einestages.de.
Translated from the German by Josh Ward
24.11.10
Why are we inept in wars, becuase we learn history from Hollywood?
eva c.
california
The thing about global history and the Russians is this: most Americans don't comprehend that the bulk of the soldiering in WWII was done by Soviet forces.
That is: Seven out of eight Nazi soldiers killed in WWII died fighting the Soviets.
But because we don't teach that fact in US schools, most Americans falsely believe that the US did the bulk of the fighting in Europe, and they thereby believe that the US is far more capable than it is, or ever was.
Simple-minded Steven Spielberg films like "Saving Private Ryan" that vastly overstate US contributions (though are men were indeed heroic), while omitting entirely the Soviet contribution, are to blame for failing to tell the real story of WWII, which was the Ostfront, and the inhuman and yet heroic sacrifice of Russians, Ukrainians, Kazakhs, etc. fighting under the monstrous Stalin.
So, thanks in part to that 'genius' Spielberg, we get the American delusion that brought us Afghanistan II. The sick part is Spielberg actually doesn't understand the Soviet contribution, yet he's hailed in DC and Hollywood as some kind of historian. I preferred when he made "Jaws" - it was fantasy, but it didn't sell itself as anything more.
california
The thing about global history and the Russians is this: most Americans don't comprehend that the bulk of the soldiering in WWII was done by Soviet forces.
That is: Seven out of eight Nazi soldiers killed in WWII died fighting the Soviets.
But because we don't teach that fact in US schools, most Americans falsely believe that the US did the bulk of the fighting in Europe, and they thereby believe that the US is far more capable than it is, or ever was.
Simple-minded Steven Spielberg films like "Saving Private Ryan" that vastly overstate US contributions (though are men were indeed heroic), while omitting entirely the Soviet contribution, are to blame for failing to tell the real story of WWII, which was the Ostfront, and the inhuman and yet heroic sacrifice of Russians, Ukrainians, Kazakhs, etc. fighting under the monstrous Stalin.
So, thanks in part to that 'genius' Spielberg, we get the American delusion that brought us Afghanistan II. The sick part is Spielberg actually doesn't understand the Soviet contribution, yet he's hailed in DC and Hollywood as some kind of historian. I preferred when he made "Jaws" - it was fantasy, but it didn't sell itself as anything more.
20.11.10
Bob Herbert, an honest journalist, quotes:
'The Pew Hispanic Center: in the year following the official end of the Great Recession in June 2009, foreign-born workers in the U.S. gained 656,000 jobs while native-born workers lost 1.2 million. But even as the hiring of immigrants picked up during that period, those same workers “experienced a sharp decline in earnings.”'
Karen Garcia
New Paltz, NY
When a poll shows that 80 percent of Americans are just fine with being groped and x-rayed by $10-an-hour TSA workers in the name of "safety," I'd say that people are not just in denial. They're in such despair that they've become numb. Unless the results of the survey are bogus (and that is entirely possible), we have not only given up on the American dream. We have given up on feeling human.
Of course, the denial starts at the very top. President Obama seems to think people care about bipartisanship and "the tone" - whatever that is. I shudder to think he is concerned about ordinary people losing sleep over the lack of civility in Washington. Does he really think we elected him to embrace Republicans? Does he really not get what his job description is?
Those blessed polls also showed that only three percent of Americans considered the Afghanistan War to be their priority in the midterm elections. Naturally, it's the economy and jobs that have people worried - not a faraway war that never touches them directly. So, we are kicking the can down the road for another three years before even thinking of ending th.at debacle. Have you noticed that 2014 seems to be a magic number? It's the same year the real meat of the Health Reform Act takes effect, too. Right after the elections - again. Surprise, surprise.
Forget the Republicans - they are traitors to all but their rich friends. Their only interest is keeping themselves in power and making sure the owners of most of the wealth in this country can keep what they have. Mayor Bloomberg boasts that New York City is a "luxury town." His corporate nominee for schools chancellor has bragged she takes cabs everywhere. Yet a photo in The Times showed her getting into a chauffeured limousine. These people have so much power and money, they have no need for shame.
I really don't understand Americans. In France, the people went on strike when the retirement age was raised to 62. In Britain, they rioted when university tuition was raised. A millionaire member of the House of Lords was forced to resign when he made a Barbara Bush-like statement that the common people as well-off as ever. In Hong Kong, citizens took to the streets when business tycoons offered to shell out $16 million apiece to contribute to the country's social security system. The people would rather the bigshots be taxed directly to avoid a conflict of interest. Can you imagine the Forbes List billionaires or the Koch Brothers offering to help cash-strapped Americans? Me neither.
Maybe it's because we are such an immense, culturally diverse nation that we can't find common cause. Maybe change has to start at the local level because Washington has become so irrelevant to our daily lives. Maybe we should shut off the TV and get involved in our communities to regain our humanity. Or, we could all head out to airports next Wednesday whether we have tickets or not, and protest the government violations of our Fourth Amendment rights. It has to start with us, or it won't happen at all.
Matt Connolly
Boston
We spend more on education than any other nation yet the performance of the students is still falling. More teachers, less teachers, more hours, less hours, longer years, shorter years, new techniques, old techniques it all comes down to the same result: overall educational standards are dropping.
Your solution more money will add to the deficit which you bemoan as an additional burden on the kids being born today while guaranteeing nothing will change. Even had we had a smart pill we could give to the kids today that would make them all bright, it would still be 16 years to wait for the results. So preaching education won't cut it.
The truth is America has become a fat tired Sumo wrestler. It's put on too much weight to be a contender anymore. The sad fact is there is no solution as long as we think war is the answer, use mercenary troops, and ignore our continual battles (America has fought in more wars since WWII than the rest of the nations of the world added together) then we have no hope.
Right now we use our most creative minds thinking up ways to kill people or to come up with money betting scams in our financial industry. It is not the way it was supposed to be.
Franz
Aachen, Germany
Forget the dream to get the lost jobs back.
One key aspect of Globalization is, that it creates value from the regional separation of producers and consumers. Production costs of standard goods are reduced by a transfer of production to countries with low wages, while the revenues remain high by selling the goods in the shops of rich countries. That is exactly was has happened between the USA and China.
On the short term, this system produces huge profits for the international companies that are managing it. On the long term, it is only useful for the new production regions. The sure loser are the workers and engineers of the old, former production region. Initially, they can buy cheaper goods and feel wealthier. This is a sweet poison, that the US middle class is now recognizing too late. It is only logical, that after some time they lose their jobs and purchasing power. This process ist almost impossible to revers once it has taken place.
If a country like the USA, would now perform a radical turn and handicap the import of "globalized" goods with tariffs, the first thing happening would be a crash of the stock markets. Secondly, international trade would break down, because other countries would react with counter measures. Everybody would increase tariffs to protect their home markets. Most goods would get a sharp increase of prices and almost all complex production processes would be interrupted and stand still. In other words, the world would fall in the worst imaginable economic crisis.
There are ways to improve the current situation, but they are all painful and take time. Most important is a strong political will and a social consensus to do a u-turn and to bear its consequences. This is what has happened in Germany 8 years ago and now starts to show some fruits. There were tax increases, reductions of wages, investments in education, and painful adjustments of the social services. For the USA I am not optimistic within the next 5 years, because the necessary political and social consensus is nowhere to see. Instead, there is a risk of sharp social conflicts with a radicalization of internal politics.
Lynn
CT
I live in a town where due to budget overruns, our new middle school was left with an empty library/media center. That's right, it's almost December and there are still no books, no shelving, and no furniture for 5th and 6th graders. Our re-elected Republican state senator bragged on his campaign mailer that he saved the district $425,000 on the cost of building the school. Where? The toilets constantly overflow, the drinking water in fountains is warm, the sinks dribble water to wash your hands, the intercom system doesn't work, the main office and library still have cement floors, mismatched used furniture is in the classrooms and falling apart, doors don't work, lockers are already broken, electrical outlets in the classroom malfunction, lights constantly burn out, there is no playground equipment so students stand around on recess, the internet doesn't work on classroom computers, and the white boards in most of the classrooms still can't be used (most likely due to the obvious electrical problem). You'd think parents would be protesting in front of town hall or the school. You'd be wrong. Did I mention that due to our mayor refusing to increase our education budget we laid off teachers and aides, now have pay to play sports teams, reduced school library hours (if you have a school with a functioning library), and our classroom size went from an average of 19 to 26. I live in a Republican strong-hold where our Republican mayor has kept property taxes lower than surrounding towns. During education budget discussions a small group of parents protested in favor of an increase in front of town hall. The majority of parents said they didn't want their taxes increased $100 a year to pay for the needed increase. One even remarked that our teachers were overpaid. How much should we pay them? Thirty thousand a year was her reply. Ignorance is no longer bliss but inexcusably stupid and destructive. We've had 3 bomb scares in the last 2 weeks at our high school and intermediate school. One third of the students are overweight, with a majority of those downright obese. There are few sidewalks for children to walk or ride their bikes on, our roads have potholes, and five teenage drivers/passengers were killed last year due to alcohol use or speeding. But hey, we have low taxes.
I've just sold my home. We'll be moving to a town with much higher taxes, but one where a quality public education is a priority for the residents. Where learning is not just valued, but supported and encouraged and children are given the necessary tools to compete and succeed in the 21st century.
IfAtFirst
New York, NY
Human societies decline as a consequence of the cultures they choose to adopt. Cultures are based on ideas. Americans chose to enthusiastically embrace an incomplete eighteenth century idea called the 'Invisible Hand Theory.'This theory is incomplete because it failed to think through what competition really is and what the consequences are. Competition is survival and once in the market place there is no choice for a business but to seek to dominate that market by selling the goods or services that offer the best value for money. This is known as commanding the price point. This pressure to command the price point results in a downside. Production costs need to be constantly monitored and driven down wherever possible to maintain or achieve price point pole position. This will result in a constant search to find the best opportunity costs. The larger the business the more ability it has to do this. Today large corporations are responsible for 50% of the world's output of good and services. Today these corporations scour the planet looking for the lowest wages they can pay, the least environmental pollution restrictions and the governments that are best at rigging national and international markets to further the sales of businesses operating on their territory. The executives of businesses are, therefore, so absorbed in chasing price point they fail to see the consequences of their actions. Why should they if it appears to personally benefit them with the enormous rewards they can engineer for themselves? They fail to see that not only are they causing a collapse in demand in developed economies subjected to job outsourcing. They fail to see that polluting the planet will ultimately kill off human societies ability to survive. This in brief is why the Invisible Hand Theory is an incomplete theory and why Americans need to smarten up and recognize it as such.
Desertstraw
Bowie Arizona
1. I challenge anyone to tell us where we can create the number of new jobs that we need to go back to full employment. Technology is eliminating jobs everywhere and the technology is getting better. Let him consider 3D printing and robotics which will reduce the number of manufacturing jobs even when we stop much of the importing. These technologies are making it cheaper to manufacture here than import from cheap labor countries. 2. The American educational system was destroyed by the middle class not by the bean counters. When I was a boy way back when we had a quality educational system and public institutions like City College and U.C. Berkley were better than the best ivy league schools, public education was controlled by elites not the electorate. As control of education changed the middle class elected to "protect" their own children. The first indication of change was symbolic, high school football coaches were paid more than the teachers and even the principals. Then the voters used their power to lower standards, they could not have their children with low grades, which would keep them out of better colleges, or heaven forbid fail, it would damage their pysches. So we got grade inflation. Then the middle class undermined the value of education by telling their children that they themselves, auto workers and truck drivers, made more money than their teachers. Finally the middle class made a Faustian deal with the government, it would allow the Viet Nam war if we had "guns and butter" and draft exemptions for college students. Colleges seeing a way to expand obliged by lowering standards so that people could keep their draft exemptions.
"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves," We the people of the U.S. are responsible for our mess. There will always be predators around like the Wall Street crowd to take advantage but they exploit not initiate opportunities. The recent bubbles were caused by the public desire to make money the easy way.
Changing how government acts is easy, it takes one or two elections. Changing the values that we live by is much harder.
Wack
chicago
I am first generation immigrant but this is what i feel about avg Americans: They are extremely misinformed about rest of the world specially the other industrialized nations. They still don't believe that those nations have better health indicators than USA at 1/3rd costs. They don't know that many of these so called socialist countries are more competitive than USA on all rankings. So called western Europe has more companies in top 500 than USA. And those companies do extremely well even without outsourcing and providing much better vacation, benefits and first world salaries to their employees.
Rules like filibuster are setup so that no major change can be accomplished in favor of avg Americans which puts a dent in wealth of super-rich (Lieberman blocking public option or buying in of Medicaid is a great example of that). Top 1% knows that in a democracy, then can not rule against the will of other 99%. So they are trying their best to divert the attention to whatever sticks: skin color, false war in name of security and above all socialism. Unless and until other people unite or the Manchurian army of these right wing could see thru this plan of super-rich, there is no hope.
barbara
nyc
It doesn't take very much to look around and see significant cultural shifts perpetuated by business. Democracy is a catch word empty of real content.
Information is largely generated by marketing. Journalism as noted by the recent Ted Koppel article has been replaced by opinion. Television has always been driven by $ but the support for populist shows has simply moved a political dialog into the realm of tabloid. Perhaps those politicians who seem entrenched in this kind of public interface are those who embody those characteristics. What we see mirrored back to us in a Sara Palin and Glen Beck is the face of a talk show.
We now market everything through the media and see the business model increasingly in the public sector.
We are told this is done to reduce costs. But we have also lost the notion of a public sector and the value of what it is to be a citizen. Any issue is about $. The public sector was put in place to counter the business machine. What has happened to our that? What is good for America is not a priority, consumer protection a dirty word. Business is entrenched in politics. So if business is the driving force, how has that impacted on our current state, Republicans?
Consider the losses driven by business interests: War! Trade agreements and outsourcing that work against
the American worker, our dilemma with immigrant labor.
Corporations have created the malling of America (I remember my mother complaining about how many new malls were being built in her neighborhood. She said in a few
years, they will be all be empty. What a waste!) and a decrease of small business (how many Rite Aides does any community need?)
Large corporations control the product marketing, material, production and retail. Along the way, this process has impacted on every part of our lives. We are increasingly a captive market, sheep. We sign contracts for the smallest of services and pay fees for canceling all of which have nothing to do with the ordinary consumer except to fine those least able to pay. Read the small print.
We are consuming a life style that is largely untenable....one bent on fast food, entertainment, vast amounts of stuff often plastic that is made to be outdated and marketing that prices for status. The marketing is directed at the masses who are clearly over their head.
All in all the government, and a public that is struggling to protect whatever is seems to have left is
being shifted away from what is necessary for its integrity and well being...education, public service...
protection of the environment and all of those things I may have missed that have to do with values.
In finding solutions, we need to pay attention to the bigger picture.
John Kerr
San Francisco
The United States had a free lunch for 30 years after the Second World War, with little competition. Returning service men were hard working and ambitious. They studied things like engineering and propelled the country for decades as "can do" Americans. We had an abundance of cheap energy and cheap food. They created Silicon Valley and were succeeded their by a generation of creative people, often immigrants.
Now we are faced with competing with a new world of highly educated and motivated technicians, much like our fathers, and we have to earn our way in the world. We won't achieve it by griping in the New York Times. Among other things we have to deal with:
-whether we want to grow to 400 and 500 million people so we have to create 150,000 jobs each month just to stand still.
-how do we motivate our citizenry to educate themselves at all levels in technical subjects so we can compete? We have too many lazy students with no goals in life who can't put sentences together.
-How do we get our brightest to invent, design and make things instead of joining the hoard of over-paid quick buck artists on Wall Street?
Why is Germany doing better than us? First they have fewer mouths to feed with no population growth. Second, they have a better educated and trained population selling sophisticated equipment to developing countries. Third, they have negotiated trade agreements that allow them to sell where American goods are shut out. Fourth, they highly tax gasoline to reduce the need to import endless oil. Fifth, they lack a financial center like Wall Street or the City that drain the brain pool. Sixth, the country lives within its means and people don't spend money they don't have. Seventh, they never stop training their workers, who often work for mid-sized, specialized industrial companies.
Their is no free lunch. Going back to the days when unskilled, unionized workers live like the upper middle class is not going to happen.
Our country needs to stop whining and improve the way we do things. There no longer is a free lunch.
Karen Garcia
New Paltz, NY
When a poll shows that 80 percent of Americans are just fine with being groped and x-rayed by $10-an-hour TSA workers in the name of "safety," I'd say that people are not just in denial. They're in such despair that they've become numb. Unless the results of the survey are bogus (and that is entirely possible), we have not only given up on the American dream. We have given up on feeling human.
Of course, the denial starts at the very top. President Obama seems to think people care about bipartisanship and "the tone" - whatever that is. I shudder to think he is concerned about ordinary people losing sleep over the lack of civility in Washington. Does he really think we elected him to embrace Republicans? Does he really not get what his job description is?
Those blessed polls also showed that only three percent of Americans considered the Afghanistan War to be their priority in the midterm elections. Naturally, it's the economy and jobs that have people worried - not a faraway war that never touches them directly. So, we are kicking the can down the road for another three years before even thinking of ending th.at debacle. Have you noticed that 2014 seems to be a magic number? It's the same year the real meat of the Health Reform Act takes effect, too. Right after the elections - again. Surprise, surprise.
Forget the Republicans - they are traitors to all but their rich friends. Their only interest is keeping themselves in power and making sure the owners of most of the wealth in this country can keep what they have. Mayor Bloomberg boasts that New York City is a "luxury town." His corporate nominee for schools chancellor has bragged she takes cabs everywhere. Yet a photo in The Times showed her getting into a chauffeured limousine. These people have so much power and money, they have no need for shame.
I really don't understand Americans. In France, the people went on strike when the retirement age was raised to 62. In Britain, they rioted when university tuition was raised. A millionaire member of the House of Lords was forced to resign when he made a Barbara Bush-like statement that the common people as well-off as ever. In Hong Kong, citizens took to the streets when business tycoons offered to shell out $16 million apiece to contribute to the country's social security system. The people would rather the bigshots be taxed directly to avoid a conflict of interest. Can you imagine the Forbes List billionaires or the Koch Brothers offering to help cash-strapped Americans? Me neither.
Maybe it's because we are such an immense, culturally diverse nation that we can't find common cause. Maybe change has to start at the local level because Washington has become so irrelevant to our daily lives. Maybe we should shut off the TV and get involved in our communities to regain our humanity. Or, we could all head out to airports next Wednesday whether we have tickets or not, and protest the government violations of our Fourth Amendment rights. It has to start with us, or it won't happen at all.
Matt Connolly
Boston
We spend more on education than any other nation yet the performance of the students is still falling. More teachers, less teachers, more hours, less hours, longer years, shorter years, new techniques, old techniques it all comes down to the same result: overall educational standards are dropping.
Your solution more money will add to the deficit which you bemoan as an additional burden on the kids being born today while guaranteeing nothing will change. Even had we had a smart pill we could give to the kids today that would make them all bright, it would still be 16 years to wait for the results. So preaching education won't cut it.
The truth is America has become a fat tired Sumo wrestler. It's put on too much weight to be a contender anymore. The sad fact is there is no solution as long as we think war is the answer, use mercenary troops, and ignore our continual battles (America has fought in more wars since WWII than the rest of the nations of the world added together) then we have no hope.
Right now we use our most creative minds thinking up ways to kill people or to come up with money betting scams in our financial industry. It is not the way it was supposed to be.
Franz
Aachen, Germany
Forget the dream to get the lost jobs back.
One key aspect of Globalization is, that it creates value from the regional separation of producers and consumers. Production costs of standard goods are reduced by a transfer of production to countries with low wages, while the revenues remain high by selling the goods in the shops of rich countries. That is exactly was has happened between the USA and China.
On the short term, this system produces huge profits for the international companies that are managing it. On the long term, it is only useful for the new production regions. The sure loser are the workers and engineers of the old, former production region. Initially, they can buy cheaper goods and feel wealthier. This is a sweet poison, that the US middle class is now recognizing too late. It is only logical, that after some time they lose their jobs and purchasing power. This process ist almost impossible to revers once it has taken place.
If a country like the USA, would now perform a radical turn and handicap the import of "globalized" goods with tariffs, the first thing happening would be a crash of the stock markets. Secondly, international trade would break down, because other countries would react with counter measures. Everybody would increase tariffs to protect their home markets. Most goods would get a sharp increase of prices and almost all complex production processes would be interrupted and stand still. In other words, the world would fall in the worst imaginable economic crisis.
There are ways to improve the current situation, but they are all painful and take time. Most important is a strong political will and a social consensus to do a u-turn and to bear its consequences. This is what has happened in Germany 8 years ago and now starts to show some fruits. There were tax increases, reductions of wages, investments in education, and painful adjustments of the social services. For the USA I am not optimistic within the next 5 years, because the necessary political and social consensus is nowhere to see. Instead, there is a risk of sharp social conflicts with a radicalization of internal politics.
Lynn
CT
I live in a town where due to budget overruns, our new middle school was left with an empty library/media center. That's right, it's almost December and there are still no books, no shelving, and no furniture for 5th and 6th graders. Our re-elected Republican state senator bragged on his campaign mailer that he saved the district $425,000 on the cost of building the school. Where? The toilets constantly overflow, the drinking water in fountains is warm, the sinks dribble water to wash your hands, the intercom system doesn't work, the main office and library still have cement floors, mismatched used furniture is in the classrooms and falling apart, doors don't work, lockers are already broken, electrical outlets in the classroom malfunction, lights constantly burn out, there is no playground equipment so students stand around on recess, the internet doesn't work on classroom computers, and the white boards in most of the classrooms still can't be used (most likely due to the obvious electrical problem). You'd think parents would be protesting in front of town hall or the school. You'd be wrong. Did I mention that due to our mayor refusing to increase our education budget we laid off teachers and aides, now have pay to play sports teams, reduced school library hours (if you have a school with a functioning library), and our classroom size went from an average of 19 to 26. I live in a Republican strong-hold where our Republican mayor has kept property taxes lower than surrounding towns. During education budget discussions a small group of parents protested in favor of an increase in front of town hall. The majority of parents said they didn't want their taxes increased $100 a year to pay for the needed increase. One even remarked that our teachers were overpaid. How much should we pay them? Thirty thousand a year was her reply. Ignorance is no longer bliss but inexcusably stupid and destructive. We've had 3 bomb scares in the last 2 weeks at our high school and intermediate school. One third of the students are overweight, with a majority of those downright obese. There are few sidewalks for children to walk or ride their bikes on, our roads have potholes, and five teenage drivers/passengers were killed last year due to alcohol use or speeding. But hey, we have low taxes.
I've just sold my home. We'll be moving to a town with much higher taxes, but one where a quality public education is a priority for the residents. Where learning is not just valued, but supported and encouraged and children are given the necessary tools to compete and succeed in the 21st century.
IfAtFirst
New York, NY
Human societies decline as a consequence of the cultures they choose to adopt. Cultures are based on ideas. Americans chose to enthusiastically embrace an incomplete eighteenth century idea called the 'Invisible Hand Theory.'This theory is incomplete because it failed to think through what competition really is and what the consequences are. Competition is survival and once in the market place there is no choice for a business but to seek to dominate that market by selling the goods or services that offer the best value for money. This is known as commanding the price point. This pressure to command the price point results in a downside. Production costs need to be constantly monitored and driven down wherever possible to maintain or achieve price point pole position. This will result in a constant search to find the best opportunity costs. The larger the business the more ability it has to do this. Today large corporations are responsible for 50% of the world's output of good and services. Today these corporations scour the planet looking for the lowest wages they can pay, the least environmental pollution restrictions and the governments that are best at rigging national and international markets to further the sales of businesses operating on their territory. The executives of businesses are, therefore, so absorbed in chasing price point they fail to see the consequences of their actions. Why should they if it appears to personally benefit them with the enormous rewards they can engineer for themselves? They fail to see that not only are they causing a collapse in demand in developed economies subjected to job outsourcing. They fail to see that polluting the planet will ultimately kill off human societies ability to survive. This in brief is why the Invisible Hand Theory is an incomplete theory and why Americans need to smarten up and recognize it as such.
Desertstraw
Bowie Arizona
1. I challenge anyone to tell us where we can create the number of new jobs that we need to go back to full employment. Technology is eliminating jobs everywhere and the technology is getting better. Let him consider 3D printing and robotics which will reduce the number of manufacturing jobs even when we stop much of the importing. These technologies are making it cheaper to manufacture here than import from cheap labor countries. 2. The American educational system was destroyed by the middle class not by the bean counters. When I was a boy way back when we had a quality educational system and public institutions like City College and U.C. Berkley were better than the best ivy league schools, public education was controlled by elites not the electorate. As control of education changed the middle class elected to "protect" their own children. The first indication of change was symbolic, high school football coaches were paid more than the teachers and even the principals. Then the voters used their power to lower standards, they could not have their children with low grades, which would keep them out of better colleges, or heaven forbid fail, it would damage their pysches. So we got grade inflation. Then the middle class undermined the value of education by telling their children that they themselves, auto workers and truck drivers, made more money than their teachers. Finally the middle class made a Faustian deal with the government, it would allow the Viet Nam war if we had "guns and butter" and draft exemptions for college students. Colleges seeing a way to expand obliged by lowering standards so that people could keep their draft exemptions.
"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves," We the people of the U.S. are responsible for our mess. There will always be predators around like the Wall Street crowd to take advantage but they exploit not initiate opportunities. The recent bubbles were caused by the public desire to make money the easy way.
Changing how government acts is easy, it takes one or two elections. Changing the values that we live by is much harder.
Wack
chicago
I am first generation immigrant but this is what i feel about avg Americans: They are extremely misinformed about rest of the world specially the other industrialized nations. They still don't believe that those nations have better health indicators than USA at 1/3rd costs. They don't know that many of these so called socialist countries are more competitive than USA on all rankings. So called western Europe has more companies in top 500 than USA. And those companies do extremely well even without outsourcing and providing much better vacation, benefits and first world salaries to their employees.
Rules like filibuster are setup so that no major change can be accomplished in favor of avg Americans which puts a dent in wealth of super-rich (Lieberman blocking public option or buying in of Medicaid is a great example of that). Top 1% knows that in a democracy, then can not rule against the will of other 99%. So they are trying their best to divert the attention to whatever sticks: skin color, false war in name of security and above all socialism. Unless and until other people unite or the Manchurian army of these right wing could see thru this plan of super-rich, there is no hope.
barbara
nyc
It doesn't take very much to look around and see significant cultural shifts perpetuated by business. Democracy is a catch word empty of real content.
Information is largely generated by marketing. Journalism as noted by the recent Ted Koppel article has been replaced by opinion. Television has always been driven by $ but the support for populist shows has simply moved a political dialog into the realm of tabloid. Perhaps those politicians who seem entrenched in this kind of public interface are those who embody those characteristics. What we see mirrored back to us in a Sara Palin and Glen Beck is the face of a talk show.
We now market everything through the media and see the business model increasingly in the public sector.
We are told this is done to reduce costs. But we have also lost the notion of a public sector and the value of what it is to be a citizen. Any issue is about $. The public sector was put in place to counter the business machine. What has happened to our that? What is good for America is not a priority, consumer protection a dirty word. Business is entrenched in politics. So if business is the driving force, how has that impacted on our current state, Republicans?
Consider the losses driven by business interests: War! Trade agreements and outsourcing that work against
the American worker, our dilemma with immigrant labor.
Corporations have created the malling of America (I remember my mother complaining about how many new malls were being built in her neighborhood. She said in a few
years, they will be all be empty. What a waste!) and a decrease of small business (how many Rite Aides does any community need?)
Large corporations control the product marketing, material, production and retail. Along the way, this process has impacted on every part of our lives. We are increasingly a captive market, sheep. We sign contracts for the smallest of services and pay fees for canceling all of which have nothing to do with the ordinary consumer except to fine those least able to pay. Read the small print.
We are consuming a life style that is largely untenable....one bent on fast food, entertainment, vast amounts of stuff often plastic that is made to be outdated and marketing that prices for status. The marketing is directed at the masses who are clearly over their head.
All in all the government, and a public that is struggling to protect whatever is seems to have left is
being shifted away from what is necessary for its integrity and well being...education, public service...
protection of the environment and all of those things I may have missed that have to do with values.
In finding solutions, we need to pay attention to the bigger picture.
John Kerr
San Francisco
The United States had a free lunch for 30 years after the Second World War, with little competition. Returning service men were hard working and ambitious. They studied things like engineering and propelled the country for decades as "can do" Americans. We had an abundance of cheap energy and cheap food. They created Silicon Valley and were succeeded their by a generation of creative people, often immigrants.
Now we are faced with competing with a new world of highly educated and motivated technicians, much like our fathers, and we have to earn our way in the world. We won't achieve it by griping in the New York Times. Among other things we have to deal with:
-whether we want to grow to 400 and 500 million people so we have to create 150,000 jobs each month just to stand still.
-how do we motivate our citizenry to educate themselves at all levels in technical subjects so we can compete? We have too many lazy students with no goals in life who can't put sentences together.
-How do we get our brightest to invent, design and make things instead of joining the hoard of over-paid quick buck artists on Wall Street?
Why is Germany doing better than us? First they have fewer mouths to feed with no population growth. Second, they have a better educated and trained population selling sophisticated equipment to developing countries. Third, they have negotiated trade agreements that allow them to sell where American goods are shut out. Fourth, they highly tax gasoline to reduce the need to import endless oil. Fifth, they lack a financial center like Wall Street or the City that drain the brain pool. Sixth, the country lives within its means and people don't spend money they don't have. Seventh, they never stop training their workers, who often work for mid-sized, specialized industrial companies.
Their is no free lunch. Going back to the days when unskilled, unionized workers live like the upper middle class is not going to happen.
Our country needs to stop whining and improve the way we do things. There no longer is a free lunch.
18.11.10
Make way for statistics in humanities!
"Digitally savvy scholars are exploring how technology can enhance understanding of the liberal arts."
mp, CT
Until the identity politics, that have so permeated and arguably destroyed the joy of the humanities, are removed, all the technological bells and whistles will not have limited affect.
DPatrickOceanside, CA
Humanities + data = social science
The confrontation with the issue of how to use data, what data means, indeed what "data" "is" will require those humanities scholars to confront the all the issues that social scientists, and the philosophers of social science, have been addressing since the creation of the field of sociology. Good luck!!
kathleen dublin, ireland
Google is giving a million Euros for research that supports the importance of their business; the government double that. But how much more do foundations, universities, and governments give to the core business of the humanities, which is interpretation and critical thinking? Right now it is a lot more, but will that continue? Funding digital humanities at the expense of rather than in addition to the traditional humanities is like funding libraries without funding scholars who study what is in them. And that reminds me, digital humanities are flourishing at a time when funding to buy -- not to mention write -- books is increasingly endangered at universities around the world, not to mention public libraries.
blert madison
In the post-theory war era, critics are returning to methodology, and this article barely begins to scratch the surface of the new push in the digital humanities. The searchability of digitized texts is, of course, opening them to fresh study, especially as Google Books and Scholar offer greater access. Other efforts, like Early English Books Online, have already moved the primary workplace for many scholars out of dusty books and onto computers. One of the most fascinating recent bits of literary scholarship that I've seen is the effort by Jonathan Hope and Michael Witmore in the recent Shakespeare Quarterly, which catalogs the corpus of Shakespeare and hundreds of contemporary works word-by-word to measure patterns in the language. The results revitalize the argument that authors are important (contrary to the theory-driven "author is dead" claims), and maps out genres and other literary patterns in startling precision. Theoretical work is giving way to this kind of method-driven approach...and it's about time that something new took over in the Humanities.
Sev Online
People want metrics because metrics are a shorthand for "quality," and assessing quantity is much easier than assessing quality. It's the sort of critical thinking taught in the humanities that has become so unpopular these days.
It's human nature to seek out continually more efficient processes. It's also human laziness. So we make our rubrics and metrics (SAT, FICO, US News College Ranking) and then instead of bettering ourselves towards the cause (innate intelligence, trustworthiness, education) we teach, prepare, and worship the test.
Then SAT prep becomes another barrier for low income students. We have a credit armageddon despite AAA ratings. Colleges slip towards vocational master's degrees.
Is it any wonder, really, that our best and brightest flocked to wall street in the last generation? And our response is to cut the humanities in colleges across the country?
It used to be a long shot that China could beat us on education.
It's becoming less long.
Vincent Leung Cambridge,MA
The dichotomy between "ism" and "data" is of course false. There's no data without an -ism. This celebration of data as a thing that transcends paradigm seems naively self-indulgent and self-congratulatory.
jbok
A wide understanding of history might have warned us of the dangers, of invading Iraq or of trusting Wall Street to "regulate itself", for example. Abilities in critical thinking might have allowed our politics to be conducted rationally, rather than becoming the mad circus it too often is now. The reading of literature might have allowed us the empathy and honing of intelligence to remain capable of real community rather than being atomized into tiny "consumers" facing great corporate demands.
The humanities are not for jargonized show-offs to own, as is too often the case in universities now. Nor do they depend on electronic technologies, in particular. Books have lasted thousands of years, and some in their original forms; nothing wrong with "digitizing" them, but I wonder if the eventual costs in hardware, software, updates, upgrades, and energy may make that less economical and less accessible in the end--especially in a time of falling incomes for so many.
Either way, the problem in our understanding and appreciation of the wisdom of the humanities does not lie in its need for digitalization. It lies in our own having been distracted by an entertainment culture, poorly educated in early grades, and a mythos of the value of "gut thinking" (which might work well if we had brains in our guts instead of--well, what's there instead).
As it is, if the people remain enamored of easy answers and appalled at the idea of the hard work of real education--well, Hubris, meet Nemesis.
John McCumber Los Angeles CA
This is all very nice, but it's not about the humanities; it's about tools for the humanities. Scalpels and MRI's are not medicine, and digitizers and computers are not critical reflection.
John Kleeberg New York, NY
It's important to remember what is more and less important for digitizing information for the Humanities. It is now possible to make available to everyone for free every book, newspaper, and handwritten document published before 1923. That is a worthy pursuit, not least because it will preserve archives and libraries that otherwise will be destroyed by fires, floods, and building collapses (examples: the destruction of fire of the Anna Amalia Library in Weimar, the building collapse of the Historical Archive of the City of Cologne). It will also mean that you will not have to live in New York, London, or Paris to have access to a world class library. Yet despite the great achievements in digitalization achieved in recent years (notably by Google), a surprisingly large number of common books and pamphlets from the nineteenth century are still not accessible on line.
On the other hand, just because something can be measured doesn't mean that it will produce results of scholarly significance. Much effort in recent years has been devoted to the history of human height. Unfortunately, we don't really know why people grow taller (less exposure to disease? better nutrition?) nor how good is the quality of the data (are the soldiers measured barefoot or wearing socks?). This research could easily end up being pointless. Contrast that to the vital importance of scanning and digitizing our libraries and archives so that they can be preserved and made them available to all. That way, the next time an Anna Amalia library burns up, or a Cologne archive collapses (and we know for certain that there will be a next time), at least the information will be preserved in digital form.
Timothy Burke Swarthmore
I find it depressing that so many responding to this article, despite apparently believing that they were the last people to receive real exposure to humanistic knowledge, have such a sour, parsimonious and uncharitable view of the proper character and disposition of the humanities. Not to mention the knee-jerk agitation about identity politics and theory in response to an article which is about other trends and developments. At the very least, someone who cares about humanistic knowledge should be able to respond to the issues at hand in a manner that opens up dialogue and works with the text provided rather than a canned, reflexive response about various red herrings.
For folks who actually did read the article and are interested in these trends, I think you can be reassured that digitally-mediated methods are often indeed just tools. As Eli puts it above, a way to ask questions that would otherwise have not been asked. But also, I think that many of the conversations and modes of writing that operate through digital media are less "new" than their enthusiasts and critics presuppose. One asks whether Kant could have written through crowdsourcing. In a sense, I think he did: Enlightenment writing was very much dialogic and interconnected. Every formal work by philosophers was surrounded by a cloud of letters, cafe conversations, ephemeral writings and so on. The analogy between the present and the rise of post-Gutenberg print culture, if not exact, is nevertheless illuminating. And there were defenders of pre-Gutenberg ways of writing and reading then who were just as discomforted then as some are now, some out of philosophical concern and others motivated by overt commercial or political fear at the loss of their own monopolies or distinctive forms of power.
Pete Kloppenburg Toronto
Well, in some ways this is nothing new. The humanities have long coveted science's privileged place in public discourse, its authority and seemingly unshakeable claim to ownership of Truth. So various attempts have been made to bring the flavour of science and some of its techniques and hallmarks: theoretical vigour, falsifiability, et cetera.
Philosophy, science's sibling from the cradle, has been the natural path for this kind of endeavour. And in truth, the humanities' promiscuous habit of pulling in ideas from all over the map makes this kind of statistical attack pretty much inevitable. We may note that this promiscuity has been very fruitful in the past, so we may be hopeful for this latest fling.
But (you had to know there was a but coming) we can expect a great many blind alleys to be charged down with this approach. We may gain some glimmer of insight into a Civil War battle by studying the topography of the battlefield, but we'll never turn over a rock that hides the secrets to why the Gettysburg Address continues to stand as a paragon of rhetoric. Only a fraction of the problems we encounter in the humanities avail themselves to a statistical approach. So we can be certain that we're not staring at a paradigm shift (to name-check an idea very beloved of the scientific humanities).
The real test will be how well these humanities academics can adopt the basic dynamics of sciences, as opposed to just some of the tools. Science offers the balanced pair of theory and experiment, each inspiring and doing a sanity check on the other. The humanities has long been stacked to high on the theory, and this experimental bent is welcome. But can we get to the point where an unexpected pattern emerging from the data causes some laboratory humanities professor to spot a fundamental break with orthodoxy, publish her findings, and spark a great gold rush among theorists to explain anomalous data? Will a theory be tested over and over, as science would go about validating a theory, or will we instead see just a series of one-off experiments that keep the publishing mills churning?
I'm a big fan of the humanities. I use my liberal arts education every day in business. I've seen how the dazzle of numbers can blind smart people to the fundamental human equation. Let's just hope that statistical analyses don't become the litmus test for good research. A nice bit of back and forth to test a theory and strengthen it, but both sides, please.
Lorak G. Selrak Vancouver
I am a literary scholar writing this message on my web-enabled computer. Technology is everywhere--in my research, my communications, and the classrooms where I teach. And projects like Dan Edelstein's sound wonderful.
But even as we use technology to find new ways of enhancing humanistic understanding we must also acknowledge a paradox that non-humanists are often reluctant to examine--the ways in which our technophilia leads us to take this tool of technology as something more than a tool. Turning humans into data-points reveals something, without question. And we should not be shy about the digital humanities. At the same time, the very aim of the humanist scholar (and the reason that politics will never disappear from the humanities) is to remind the world what happens when people are reduced to data points.
In that sense technology and its affiliated practices of quantification and measurement much adored by bureaucrats and businesspeople are the very antithesis of all we stand for.
Swagato C Chicago, IL
Marshall McLuhan famously stated, "The medium is the message." We increasingly move toward a world wherein we are immersed constantly in a mediated existence. Thus, traditional barriers between 'levels' of information break down, resulting in greater flow. The humanities, especially in the United States, is in dire need of a methodological change, and digitising information can only help. However, I am not so sure that 'crowdsourcing' academic ventures is the way forward. Could Kant have written his Critiques by a collaborative effort across continents and schools of thought? At some point the individual still stands apart. The tools, yes, they must indeed be refreshed as necessary.
julia hiawassee, ga
"Digital Humanities"?
Not only is this an oxymoron, it is a frightening one. Must everything be "digitized"?
How can the Arts be "quantified"? The Great God Data is, I feel, anathema to creativity and the human soul.
Technology may have proven itself valuable in the fields of science and economics, but, please leave the worlds of literature and art alone! To quote Descartes: "The heart has its reason that reason does not know."
As an artist and a humanist, "j'accuse".
Cathy ME
... perhaps if the Chinese had the opportunity to study the humanities, they wouldn't be living in a Communist stupor blinded by the state's "allowing" them to engage in capitalism as political dissidents and intellectuals are tortured in prisons and deemed insane.
Your cynicism, Thomas Clarke, is nothing more than that. It certainly is not a marker of your intelligence, something in which you are clearly lacking as evidenced by your myopic, narrow, uncomplicated, simple view of the world.
I'd love it if puerile American philistines like yourself would move to China.
Chinese students come to the US and are astounded by our libraries, archives, and humanities programs. In China, a student cannot investigate the past, because the state does not want to save and make available archival evidence that might undermine the regime.
You may take things like the study of history for granted or write them off as insignificant, but our very abilities to study history here or to simply visit an archive is indicative of just how free the United States is in comparison to your beloved China.
You want the US to be more like China? Keep advocating for more cuts to the National Endowment for the Humanities.
If you like China so much, why don't you move there? Narrow-minded automatons who think the world is black and white are China's bread and butter. You'd fit right in.
As for me, I'll stay right here in the United States where only the cynical and the stupid think it's a question of studying the humanities or the sciences.
Jim Maryland
It's called Scientism, and it arguably was John Dewey's contribution to American life. Where parochial studies once dwelled on school lunches in kindergartens, the computing power has pushed it into the university. As a former university tech worker and doctoral candidate, I am glad that data mining is coming to the humanities. However, it raises a number of foundational issues about that very division that the current Foucaudian fascinations are not prepared to handle. Cultural relativism ultimately has little to make of hard data, and materialism has no room for the rather unchanging character of humanity thought patterns. Correlating the subtle moves over time AND space that make humanities like a symphony of slightly changing variations on a theme still will require human discernment and argumentation.
Amature Historian NYC
Nice. American is trading more hard science for Women's studies, African American studies and delayed success, etc.
Maybe we can export liberal arts in the future just like we are exporting financial services now.
Who cares China has real scientists and we have fake ones. We do not like to study anyway.
Ibarguen Ocean Beach
Map or mine it how you will, however diligently, however accurately, however exhaustively, the shape of the archive is not the shape of the past.
But then scholarly confusion of the one for the other is nothing new, now is it?
Eli Boston, MA
I did a digital search of this articles for the word "question" and I found two references:
1) data can reveal patterns and trends and raise unexpected questions for study
2) We’re able to ask new questions
I also searched for the word "answer" and found no references. This is NOT a way for quantifying data to find answers. It is not half baked social science (some think [with some justification] that most of social science is half baked.) It is just an ingenious way to help raise questions that still need to address with humanistic intuition and sensibility.
This work does NOT dilute or undermine humanistic inquiry it makes it stronger.
Several comments miss an important point of this article. The reason to data mine is not to answer questions but raise questions that would not have been asked otherwise. The article gives examples of finding questions but no examples of finding answers. However it should be pointed out that often the hardest part is finding the relevant questions that answers are relatively easy to get once you have the questions.
Discovery science is not "bells and whistles" but a fabulous tool just like the microscope of the telescope that expanded the horizons of what could be studied.
F.M. Arouet Wa
"Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts." Albert Einstein
Recommend Recommended by 8 Readers .51.Paul HartnettHollister, CaliforniaNovember 16th, 20104:20 pmIt is not meaningful. Data collection is scientistic, so if one wishes to name it by its meaningful sobriquet, it is scientism. Scientism is the feigned attempt to appear scientific when picking out small datum said to reflect the world.
The entire school 'reform' movement is based on this. (Yes, I do not think of it as reform. It is a trojan horse for vouchers.) Data sets are collected within the institution, but not outside, where the cultural effect is greatest. (That is, the culture does not value education. So you're surprised the schools reflect this?)
All of this is tied to the much larger ism, professionalism. That is the ideology that has become dominant in a dog-eat-dog world.
Leo Toribio Pittsburgh, PA
There is reason for hope when the internet begins to serve the humanities as it has served science and engineering from its inception. But there is also cause for concern.
While the wealth of information on the internet can be a good source of insight into many areas, including the humanities, there is also a danger inherent in automated processes that can often trivialize or even obscure the real significance or meaning of information. That is especially true in the area of humanities.
Half a century ago, computer programs were written to perform word counts on texts by unknown writers or texts attributed to known authors with some uncertainty. The frequency of occurrence of certain key words and phrases in two texts, one known to be written by say, Geoffery Chaucer, and the other unsigned, can give us a pretty good idea if the latter writing was probably from Chaucer's hand, but it tells us nothing about the ideas expressed.
Leo Toribio
Pittsburgh, PA
juliahia wassee, ga
You see? All this talk of digital humanities has rattled my brain - I correct myself: I was quoting Blaise Pascal, not Rene Descartes. And ended with Emile Zola, although perhaps stretching his meaning. My once clear thinking has sadly succumbed to the negative effects of digitization.
mp, CT
Until the identity politics, that have so permeated and arguably destroyed the joy of the humanities, are removed, all the technological bells and whistles will not have limited affect.
DPatrickOceanside, CA
Humanities + data = social science
The confrontation with the issue of how to use data, what data means, indeed what "data" "is" will require those humanities scholars to confront the all the issues that social scientists, and the philosophers of social science, have been addressing since the creation of the field of sociology. Good luck!!
kathleen dublin, ireland
Google is giving a million Euros for research that supports the importance of their business; the government double that. But how much more do foundations, universities, and governments give to the core business of the humanities, which is interpretation and critical thinking? Right now it is a lot more, but will that continue? Funding digital humanities at the expense of rather than in addition to the traditional humanities is like funding libraries without funding scholars who study what is in them. And that reminds me, digital humanities are flourishing at a time when funding to buy -- not to mention write -- books is increasingly endangered at universities around the world, not to mention public libraries.
blert madison
In the post-theory war era, critics are returning to methodology, and this article barely begins to scratch the surface of the new push in the digital humanities. The searchability of digitized texts is, of course, opening them to fresh study, especially as Google Books and Scholar offer greater access. Other efforts, like Early English Books Online, have already moved the primary workplace for many scholars out of dusty books and onto computers. One of the most fascinating recent bits of literary scholarship that I've seen is the effort by Jonathan Hope and Michael Witmore in the recent Shakespeare Quarterly, which catalogs the corpus of Shakespeare and hundreds of contemporary works word-by-word to measure patterns in the language. The results revitalize the argument that authors are important (contrary to the theory-driven "author is dead" claims), and maps out genres and other literary patterns in startling precision. Theoretical work is giving way to this kind of method-driven approach...and it's about time that something new took over in the Humanities.
Sev Online
People want metrics because metrics are a shorthand for "quality," and assessing quantity is much easier than assessing quality. It's the sort of critical thinking taught in the humanities that has become so unpopular these days.
It's human nature to seek out continually more efficient processes. It's also human laziness. So we make our rubrics and metrics (SAT, FICO, US News College Ranking) and then instead of bettering ourselves towards the cause (innate intelligence, trustworthiness, education) we teach, prepare, and worship the test.
Then SAT prep becomes another barrier for low income students. We have a credit armageddon despite AAA ratings. Colleges slip towards vocational master's degrees.
Is it any wonder, really, that our best and brightest flocked to wall street in the last generation? And our response is to cut the humanities in colleges across the country?
It used to be a long shot that China could beat us on education.
It's becoming less long.
Vincent Leung Cambridge,MA
The dichotomy between "ism" and "data" is of course false. There's no data without an -ism. This celebration of data as a thing that transcends paradigm seems naively self-indulgent and self-congratulatory.
jbok
A wide understanding of history might have warned us of the dangers, of invading Iraq or of trusting Wall Street to "regulate itself", for example. Abilities in critical thinking might have allowed our politics to be conducted rationally, rather than becoming the mad circus it too often is now. The reading of literature might have allowed us the empathy and honing of intelligence to remain capable of real community rather than being atomized into tiny "consumers" facing great corporate demands.
The humanities are not for jargonized show-offs to own, as is too often the case in universities now. Nor do they depend on electronic technologies, in particular. Books have lasted thousands of years, and some in their original forms; nothing wrong with "digitizing" them, but I wonder if the eventual costs in hardware, software, updates, upgrades, and energy may make that less economical and less accessible in the end--especially in a time of falling incomes for so many.
Either way, the problem in our understanding and appreciation of the wisdom of the humanities does not lie in its need for digitalization. It lies in our own having been distracted by an entertainment culture, poorly educated in early grades, and a mythos of the value of "gut thinking" (which might work well if we had brains in our guts instead of--well, what's there instead).
As it is, if the people remain enamored of easy answers and appalled at the idea of the hard work of real education--well, Hubris, meet Nemesis.
John McCumber Los Angeles CA
This is all very nice, but it's not about the humanities; it's about tools for the humanities. Scalpels and MRI's are not medicine, and digitizers and computers are not critical reflection.
John Kleeberg New York, NY
It's important to remember what is more and less important for digitizing information for the Humanities. It is now possible to make available to everyone for free every book, newspaper, and handwritten document published before 1923. That is a worthy pursuit, not least because it will preserve archives and libraries that otherwise will be destroyed by fires, floods, and building collapses (examples: the destruction of fire of the Anna Amalia Library in Weimar, the building collapse of the Historical Archive of the City of Cologne). It will also mean that you will not have to live in New York, London, or Paris to have access to a world class library. Yet despite the great achievements in digitalization achieved in recent years (notably by Google), a surprisingly large number of common books and pamphlets from the nineteenth century are still not accessible on line.
On the other hand, just because something can be measured doesn't mean that it will produce results of scholarly significance. Much effort in recent years has been devoted to the history of human height. Unfortunately, we don't really know why people grow taller (less exposure to disease? better nutrition?) nor how good is the quality of the data (are the soldiers measured barefoot or wearing socks?). This research could easily end up being pointless. Contrast that to the vital importance of scanning and digitizing our libraries and archives so that they can be preserved and made them available to all. That way, the next time an Anna Amalia library burns up, or a Cologne archive collapses (and we know for certain that there will be a next time), at least the information will be preserved in digital form.
Timothy Burke Swarthmore
I find it depressing that so many responding to this article, despite apparently believing that they were the last people to receive real exposure to humanistic knowledge, have such a sour, parsimonious and uncharitable view of the proper character and disposition of the humanities. Not to mention the knee-jerk agitation about identity politics and theory in response to an article which is about other trends and developments. At the very least, someone who cares about humanistic knowledge should be able to respond to the issues at hand in a manner that opens up dialogue and works with the text provided rather than a canned, reflexive response about various red herrings.
For folks who actually did read the article and are interested in these trends, I think you can be reassured that digitally-mediated methods are often indeed just tools. As Eli puts it above, a way to ask questions that would otherwise have not been asked. But also, I think that many of the conversations and modes of writing that operate through digital media are less "new" than their enthusiasts and critics presuppose. One asks whether Kant could have written through crowdsourcing. In a sense, I think he did: Enlightenment writing was very much dialogic and interconnected. Every formal work by philosophers was surrounded by a cloud of letters, cafe conversations, ephemeral writings and so on. The analogy between the present and the rise of post-Gutenberg print culture, if not exact, is nevertheless illuminating. And there were defenders of pre-Gutenberg ways of writing and reading then who were just as discomforted then as some are now, some out of philosophical concern and others motivated by overt commercial or political fear at the loss of their own monopolies or distinctive forms of power.
Pete Kloppenburg Toronto
Well, in some ways this is nothing new. The humanities have long coveted science's privileged place in public discourse, its authority and seemingly unshakeable claim to ownership of Truth. So various attempts have been made to bring the flavour of science and some of its techniques and hallmarks: theoretical vigour, falsifiability, et cetera.
Philosophy, science's sibling from the cradle, has been the natural path for this kind of endeavour. And in truth, the humanities' promiscuous habit of pulling in ideas from all over the map makes this kind of statistical attack pretty much inevitable. We may note that this promiscuity has been very fruitful in the past, so we may be hopeful for this latest fling.
But (you had to know there was a but coming) we can expect a great many blind alleys to be charged down with this approach. We may gain some glimmer of insight into a Civil War battle by studying the topography of the battlefield, but we'll never turn over a rock that hides the secrets to why the Gettysburg Address continues to stand as a paragon of rhetoric. Only a fraction of the problems we encounter in the humanities avail themselves to a statistical approach. So we can be certain that we're not staring at a paradigm shift (to name-check an idea very beloved of the scientific humanities).
The real test will be how well these humanities academics can adopt the basic dynamics of sciences, as opposed to just some of the tools. Science offers the balanced pair of theory and experiment, each inspiring and doing a sanity check on the other. The humanities has long been stacked to high on the theory, and this experimental bent is welcome. But can we get to the point where an unexpected pattern emerging from the data causes some laboratory humanities professor to spot a fundamental break with orthodoxy, publish her findings, and spark a great gold rush among theorists to explain anomalous data? Will a theory be tested over and over, as science would go about validating a theory, or will we instead see just a series of one-off experiments that keep the publishing mills churning?
I'm a big fan of the humanities. I use my liberal arts education every day in business. I've seen how the dazzle of numbers can blind smart people to the fundamental human equation. Let's just hope that statistical analyses don't become the litmus test for good research. A nice bit of back and forth to test a theory and strengthen it, but both sides, please.
Lorak G. Selrak Vancouver
I am a literary scholar writing this message on my web-enabled computer. Technology is everywhere--in my research, my communications, and the classrooms where I teach. And projects like Dan Edelstein's sound wonderful.
But even as we use technology to find new ways of enhancing humanistic understanding we must also acknowledge a paradox that non-humanists are often reluctant to examine--the ways in which our technophilia leads us to take this tool of technology as something more than a tool. Turning humans into data-points reveals something, without question. And we should not be shy about the digital humanities. At the same time, the very aim of the humanist scholar (and the reason that politics will never disappear from the humanities) is to remind the world what happens when people are reduced to data points.
In that sense technology and its affiliated practices of quantification and measurement much adored by bureaucrats and businesspeople are the very antithesis of all we stand for.
Swagato C Chicago, IL
Marshall McLuhan famously stated, "The medium is the message." We increasingly move toward a world wherein we are immersed constantly in a mediated existence. Thus, traditional barriers between 'levels' of information break down, resulting in greater flow. The humanities, especially in the United States, is in dire need of a methodological change, and digitising information can only help. However, I am not so sure that 'crowdsourcing' academic ventures is the way forward. Could Kant have written his Critiques by a collaborative effort across continents and schools of thought? At some point the individual still stands apart. The tools, yes, they must indeed be refreshed as necessary.
julia hiawassee, ga
"Digital Humanities"?
Not only is this an oxymoron, it is a frightening one. Must everything be "digitized"?
How can the Arts be "quantified"? The Great God Data is, I feel, anathema to creativity and the human soul.
Technology may have proven itself valuable in the fields of science and economics, but, please leave the worlds of literature and art alone! To quote Descartes: "The heart has its reason that reason does not know."
As an artist and a humanist, "j'accuse".
Thomas Clarke Phoenix Ariz.
The only way Humanities can survive is by borrowing money and then sell products like Goldman Sachs / Lehmann formula as humanity default swaps. Every time humanities fails to make a contribution - someone pays some banker and vice versa.
Defunding NEH will begin next Spring... Then I hope the only "research" these pseudo-scholars will be doing is watching adult content on the internet.
How many dollars does China spend on the humanities - hmm let me guess - Zero ?
Defunding NEH will begin next Spring... Then I hope the only "research" these pseudo-scholars will be doing is watching adult content on the internet.
How many dollars does China spend on the humanities - hmm let me guess - Zero ?
Cathy ME
... perhaps if the Chinese had the opportunity to study the humanities, they wouldn't be living in a Communist stupor blinded by the state's "allowing" them to engage in capitalism as political dissidents and intellectuals are tortured in prisons and deemed insane.
Your cynicism, Thomas Clarke, is nothing more than that. It certainly is not a marker of your intelligence, something in which you are clearly lacking as evidenced by your myopic, narrow, uncomplicated, simple view of the world.
I'd love it if puerile American philistines like yourself would move to China.
Chinese students come to the US and are astounded by our libraries, archives, and humanities programs. In China, a student cannot investigate the past, because the state does not want to save and make available archival evidence that might undermine the regime.
You may take things like the study of history for granted or write them off as insignificant, but our very abilities to study history here or to simply visit an archive is indicative of just how free the United States is in comparison to your beloved China.
You want the US to be more like China? Keep advocating for more cuts to the National Endowment for the Humanities.
If you like China so much, why don't you move there? Narrow-minded automatons who think the world is black and white are China's bread and butter. You'd fit right in.
As for me, I'll stay right here in the United States where only the cynical and the stupid think it's a question of studying the humanities or the sciences.
Jim Maryland
It's called Scientism, and it arguably was John Dewey's contribution to American life. Where parochial studies once dwelled on school lunches in kindergartens, the computing power has pushed it into the university. As a former university tech worker and doctoral candidate, I am glad that data mining is coming to the humanities. However, it raises a number of foundational issues about that very division that the current Foucaudian fascinations are not prepared to handle. Cultural relativism ultimately has little to make of hard data, and materialism has no room for the rather unchanging character of humanity thought patterns. Correlating the subtle moves over time AND space that make humanities like a symphony of slightly changing variations on a theme still will require human discernment and argumentation.
Amature Historian NYC
Nice. American is trading more hard science for Women's studies, African American studies and delayed success, etc.
Maybe we can export liberal arts in the future just like we are exporting financial services now.
Who cares China has real scientists and we have fake ones. We do not like to study anyway.
Ibarguen Ocean Beach
Map or mine it how you will, however diligently, however accurately, however exhaustively, the shape of the archive is not the shape of the past.
But then scholarly confusion of the one for the other is nothing new, now is it?
Eli Boston, MA
I did a digital search of this articles for the word "question" and I found two references:
1) data can reveal patterns and trends and raise unexpected questions for study
2) We’re able to ask new questions
I also searched for the word "answer" and found no references. This is NOT a way for quantifying data to find answers. It is not half baked social science (some think [with some justification] that most of social science is half baked.) It is just an ingenious way to help raise questions that still need to address with humanistic intuition and sensibility.
This work does NOT dilute or undermine humanistic inquiry it makes it stronger.
Several comments miss an important point of this article. The reason to data mine is not to answer questions but raise questions that would not have been asked otherwise. The article gives examples of finding questions but no examples of finding answers. However it should be pointed out that often the hardest part is finding the relevant questions that answers are relatively easy to get once you have the questions.
Discovery science is not "bells and whistles" but a fabulous tool just like the microscope of the telescope that expanded the horizons of what could be studied.
F.M. Arouet Wa
"Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts." Albert Einstein
Recommend Recommended by 8 Readers .51.Paul HartnettHollister, CaliforniaNovember 16th, 20104:20 pmIt is not meaningful. Data collection is scientistic, so if one wishes to name it by its meaningful sobriquet, it is scientism. Scientism is the feigned attempt to appear scientific when picking out small datum said to reflect the world.
The entire school 'reform' movement is based on this. (Yes, I do not think of it as reform. It is a trojan horse for vouchers.) Data sets are collected within the institution, but not outside, where the cultural effect is greatest. (That is, the culture does not value education. So you're surprised the schools reflect this?)
All of this is tied to the much larger ism, professionalism. That is the ideology that has become dominant in a dog-eat-dog world.
Leo Toribio Pittsburgh, PA
There is reason for hope when the internet begins to serve the humanities as it has served science and engineering from its inception. But there is also cause for concern.
While the wealth of information on the internet can be a good source of insight into many areas, including the humanities, there is also a danger inherent in automated processes that can often trivialize or even obscure the real significance or meaning of information. That is especially true in the area of humanities.
Half a century ago, computer programs were written to perform word counts on texts by unknown writers or texts attributed to known authors with some uncertainty. The frequency of occurrence of certain key words and phrases in two texts, one known to be written by say, Geoffery Chaucer, and the other unsigned, can give us a pretty good idea if the latter writing was probably from Chaucer's hand, but it tells us nothing about the ideas expressed.
Leo Toribio
Pittsburgh, PA
juliahia wassee, ga
You see? All this talk of digital humanities has rattled my brain - I correct myself: I was quoting Blaise Pascal, not Rene Descartes. And ended with Emile Zola, although perhaps stretching his meaning. My once clear thinking has sadly succumbed to the negative effects of digitization.
14.11.10
G20: Obama said major economies had not acted assertively to address global economic imbalances and left little doubt that he considered China the source of the problem
PEL
Los Angeles
China as the source of the problem? What problem? The humongous US deficit? The total lack of competitiveness of US industries? The crumbling infrastructure of the US? The pathetic education received by US children? The feudalistic health care system? The quagmire in Iraq and Afghanistan? Did China cause all or any of that?
Who wants to bet that, even if China appreciates the Yuan, the US kids will continue to receive the same lousy education as before, that the bridges in the US continue to crumble, that 10 of millions of uninsured will only increase, that the US deficit will continue to grow, that the US industries competitiveness will continue to slide?
Take heed to what Angela Merkel said, do not force other competitive nations, countries that are doing things right, to conform to the lowest common denominator. You got it, the US is the lowest common denominator. Ouch.
Spoonless Eddie
CT, USA
People say he is a smart man. Certainly he is credentialed. That's not smart though.
How does he think China got all of our jobs and money? Does he think they sneaked up and stole them? For that matter, how do any of the rest of you think they got these?
It's bad enough that we look like fools to one another. Do we have to look like fools to the whole world?
Wise up people. The other party didn't do this to us. The president didn't do it. Your neighbor didn't do it. The Corporation did it. If we don't snap out of our sleep walk we'll lose this place permanently.
PF
Darien IL
When are the Americans going to wake up to the lies and distortions expounded by our politicians and big businesses.
Big business and the politicians in 2002 pass the tax law giving business the green light to ship their operations oversea by allowing them not to pay income tax on profits earn overseas as long as they do not bring the profits back into this country. This is why our businesses that operated overseas pays less income tax than our middle class worker (in fact most do not pay any income tax because they keep the profit in their overseas subsidiaries and past the costs to to the parent company here in the US).
Our businesses buys the merchandise from China at less than $7.00 and sell them here at a $100.00 less processing expenses and reflect the profit in the subsidiaries companies book so no income tax is paid here in the US.
Our individual taxpayers are subsidizing big business overseas and they are blaming countries overseas for the fraud on the American public.
yawning thunger
NY
Condemning other nations for not consuming too much. Is this today's America? Why don't you consume less and grow slowly? growing slowly is not bad as it sounds. it is all about distribution and healthy social system, not about the big nation with big money and jobless people.
len
san diego
Mr. Obama appeared to remove the remaining wiggle room he had on the subject of the renminbi, declaring: “It is undervalued. And China spends enormous amounts of money intervening in the market to keep it undervalued.”---
Does this mean Mr Obama wants China to stop financing our
enormous budget deficit by purchasing U.S. Treasury bonds? Be careful here and do not bite the hand that feeds you.
watchingchina
Shanghai
This is the first time the world has been strong enough to stand up to the US and refuse to be bullied into accepting the pain for US economic illnesses.
The extent of US denial is astonishing. America has huge trade deficits because they buy too much on credit and can't sell anything to anyone. But instead of curbing their purchases and making things the world wants to buy, they demand that the world stop making and selling.
It's always someone else's fault. The US apparently has no ability to accept responsibility for its own actions and the flaws in its system, and persists in bullying the rest of the world to suffer for its own sins.
Lest we forget, this entire recent worldwide financial crisis was entirely made in the USA. It was the US excessive liquidity fuelled by credit instead of savings, free money and blind greed in their deregulated banking system that combined to create and burst yet one more bubble.
But it's all China's fault.
Here is an editorial you might enjoy reading that will help to explain more of the details of the current economic scene:
US Harry Potter-Nomics
http://www.bearcanada.com...
Igidur
Kansas City
I am not sure how he intends to get Americans to consume less AND get growth in the economy that is heavily dependent on that spending.
I suppose TARP was a good start because it at least invested in infrastructure. But what now?
We finally have to apply some import taxes for Chinese companies. They do not play fair (currency, wages, environment, copyright infringements) so we should not allow them to export into the USA until they clean up their house.
Short term: Who will really hurt if we do that?
1. Johnny that can't get his XBOX
2. Mary that will have to pay more for clothes
3. Dad that won't get 56" TV for mancave
4. Mom that will not be able to equip the dream kitchen with made in China electronics and appliances
5. US Retail Corporations that will have their profits sag
6. Cell phone and computer manufacturers
...
But long term, this is all worth it. Current level of consumption is not sustainable and we have to do something about it. All in Washington should concentrate on fundamentals of strong economies: manufacturing and producing things of real value; not the nebulous exports of "financial services".
LZ
Pennsylvania
Mr. Obama, along with a majority of our politicians from both parties and the media (this includes the NYTimes) want to blame all of our economical problems on China--if only China raises their currency then our problems are solved--but the American public is not that stupid.
Many of our problems today are resulted from our own undoing. The huge deficit is still growing in an unsustainable rate, and our public schools are still having too many drop-outs, just to name two of the many problems. To become stronger again economically, instead of blaming and picking fights with another country, we need to invest more in ourselves and our future while living within our means. We can start that process by increasing the investment in our dismal public school systems and by stop risking the lives of our brave men and women in ill-afford and unnecessary military adventures overseas.
If we continue to follow the same kind of policies as before (Obama disagreed w/ Bush about the wars, but he didn't stop them once he was elected. He just shifted them), I am certain that we will be even worse off in five, ten, or twenty years from today. When that time comes, I wonder are we still going continue to point fingers at China then?
Mr. Obama and the rest of the US Congress, it is time to wake up. Instead of gridlocks and working for the special interests, let's get to work. We need some genuine reform in this country now. Blaming another country may confuses some of us and buy you some more time, but it does not help us in any meaningful and fundamental way. Let's stop postponing what needs to be done.
curt k
ny
LOL! Strong Chinese currency solves US problems? It will do virtually nothing except raising prices of everyday goods.
So how are we doing in Europe where a euro's nearly $1.40? We must be having a trade surplus with Japan now that a US dollar's 80 yens. Right? Why is it that when it comes to politics, we abandon our common sense? I guess it's easier to blame someone than be honest and tell the truth.
peace4all1
Middletown, NJ
President Obama’s demand of an appreciation of Chinese Yuan up to 20% or more is amount to half-trillion dollars of debit forgiveness from our Chinese Banker. So what did our President bring to the G20 summit as collateral? Continuously sailing advanced weapons to Taiwan despite there is a biggest peace-boom across the Taiwan Straits in the last sixty years? Or constantly stirring up issues in South China Sea between China and its neighboring countries and ganging up with Japan against China in the recent bumping incident between Japanese patrol ship and Chinese fishing boat near the disputed island? Or promoting India as a counter -weight against China even though those two were never natural rivals? Until there is mutual trust between USA and China, there will be no significant progress on the global economic issues between USA and China.
Rodrigo de Posa
Lisbon, Portugal
I'm afraid the structure of the American economy is heavily dependent on an enormous artificial growth designed to feed a financial sector worthing 40% of the GDP.
It's no use blaming China and least of all Germany (who is able to export real industrial goods even with a very strong currency). It is for the US to dismantle its own casino economy and implement a real productive economy with realistic growth. It is for the US to make the correspondent efforts and make the necessary sacrifices.
But are contemporary Americans prepared to make those sacrifices? I would like to believe that the common American is ready for that call. But is that industrious "common man", who worries not only with himself but with community and future generations, still out there?
If he is still out there he is facing a gigantic effort. Not only he has to assert his virtue, he must also fight against a deeply corrupted association between the financial elite and the political elite. I mean, he must fight against the constant efforts of that elite to corrupt him, to ease his will and his virtue with stimuli and the illusion that prosperity will derive from consumption.
If, sadly, that man is no longer there and if he no longer believes in his ability to exercise his virtue, nothing will keep the US from decline and fall. And seen from the outside, accusations against China or Germany will be simultaneously ridiculous and suspicious.
Roland Nicholson, Jr
Xian, China
I recently exchanged dollars for Yuan @ a Bank of China office in Xian.
When I first came to China I got a much better exchange rate. Too many folks in the US think a weaker Yuan will bring certain jobs back to the States. In the short term the effect would be minimal. Manufacturing firms that rely on a cheap labor model would simply move to places like Vietnam in Asia or maybe even Africa. They are not going back to South Carolina or Upstate New York. Additionally, a lot of the things some people think we could sell to increasingly more affluent Chinese, as a result of a weaker RMB are being made in China by Chinese firms. Think again.
Los Angeles
China as the source of the problem? What problem? The humongous US deficit? The total lack of competitiveness of US industries? The crumbling infrastructure of the US? The pathetic education received by US children? The feudalistic health care system? The quagmire in Iraq and Afghanistan? Did China cause all or any of that?
Who wants to bet that, even if China appreciates the Yuan, the US kids will continue to receive the same lousy education as before, that the bridges in the US continue to crumble, that 10 of millions of uninsured will only increase, that the US deficit will continue to grow, that the US industries competitiveness will continue to slide?
Take heed to what Angela Merkel said, do not force other competitive nations, countries that are doing things right, to conform to the lowest common denominator. You got it, the US is the lowest common denominator. Ouch.
Spoonless Eddie
CT, USA
People say he is a smart man. Certainly he is credentialed. That's not smart though.
How does he think China got all of our jobs and money? Does he think they sneaked up and stole them? For that matter, how do any of the rest of you think they got these?
It's bad enough that we look like fools to one another. Do we have to look like fools to the whole world?
Wise up people. The other party didn't do this to us. The president didn't do it. Your neighbor didn't do it. The Corporation did it. If we don't snap out of our sleep walk we'll lose this place permanently.
PF
Darien IL
When are the Americans going to wake up to the lies and distortions expounded by our politicians and big businesses.
Big business and the politicians in 2002 pass the tax law giving business the green light to ship their operations oversea by allowing them not to pay income tax on profits earn overseas as long as they do not bring the profits back into this country. This is why our businesses that operated overseas pays less income tax than our middle class worker (in fact most do not pay any income tax because they keep the profit in their overseas subsidiaries and past the costs to to the parent company here in the US).
Our businesses buys the merchandise from China at less than $7.00 and sell them here at a $100.00 less processing expenses and reflect the profit in the subsidiaries companies book so no income tax is paid here in the US.
Our individual taxpayers are subsidizing big business overseas and they are blaming countries overseas for the fraud on the American public.
yawning thunger
NY
Condemning other nations for not consuming too much. Is this today's America? Why don't you consume less and grow slowly? growing slowly is not bad as it sounds. it is all about distribution and healthy social system, not about the big nation with big money and jobless people.
len
san diego
Mr. Obama appeared to remove the remaining wiggle room he had on the subject of the renminbi, declaring: “It is undervalued. And China spends enormous amounts of money intervening in the market to keep it undervalued.”---
Does this mean Mr Obama wants China to stop financing our
enormous budget deficit by purchasing U.S. Treasury bonds? Be careful here and do not bite the hand that feeds you.
watchingchina
Shanghai
This is the first time the world has been strong enough to stand up to the US and refuse to be bullied into accepting the pain for US economic illnesses.
The extent of US denial is astonishing. America has huge trade deficits because they buy too much on credit and can't sell anything to anyone. But instead of curbing their purchases and making things the world wants to buy, they demand that the world stop making and selling.
It's always someone else's fault. The US apparently has no ability to accept responsibility for its own actions and the flaws in its system, and persists in bullying the rest of the world to suffer for its own sins.
Lest we forget, this entire recent worldwide financial crisis was entirely made in the USA. It was the US excessive liquidity fuelled by credit instead of savings, free money and blind greed in their deregulated banking system that combined to create and burst yet one more bubble.
But it's all China's fault.
Here is an editorial you might enjoy reading that will help to explain more of the details of the current economic scene:
US Harry Potter-Nomics
http://www.bearcanada.com...
Igidur
Kansas City
I am not sure how he intends to get Americans to consume less AND get growth in the economy that is heavily dependent on that spending.
I suppose TARP was a good start because it at least invested in infrastructure. But what now?
We finally have to apply some import taxes for Chinese companies. They do not play fair (currency, wages, environment, copyright infringements) so we should not allow them to export into the USA until they clean up their house.
Short term: Who will really hurt if we do that?
1. Johnny that can't get his XBOX
2. Mary that will have to pay more for clothes
3. Dad that won't get 56" TV for mancave
4. Mom that will not be able to equip the dream kitchen with made in China electronics and appliances
5. US Retail Corporations that will have their profits sag
6. Cell phone and computer manufacturers
...
But long term, this is all worth it. Current level of consumption is not sustainable and we have to do something about it. All in Washington should concentrate on fundamentals of strong economies: manufacturing and producing things of real value; not the nebulous exports of "financial services".
LZ
Pennsylvania
Mr. Obama, along with a majority of our politicians from both parties and the media (this includes the NYTimes) want to blame all of our economical problems on China--if only China raises their currency then our problems are solved--but the American public is not that stupid.
Many of our problems today are resulted from our own undoing. The huge deficit is still growing in an unsustainable rate, and our public schools are still having too many drop-outs, just to name two of the many problems. To become stronger again economically, instead of blaming and picking fights with another country, we need to invest more in ourselves and our future while living within our means. We can start that process by increasing the investment in our dismal public school systems and by stop risking the lives of our brave men and women in ill-afford and unnecessary military adventures overseas.
If we continue to follow the same kind of policies as before (Obama disagreed w/ Bush about the wars, but he didn't stop them once he was elected. He just shifted them), I am certain that we will be even worse off in five, ten, or twenty years from today. When that time comes, I wonder are we still going continue to point fingers at China then?
Mr. Obama and the rest of the US Congress, it is time to wake up. Instead of gridlocks and working for the special interests, let's get to work. We need some genuine reform in this country now. Blaming another country may confuses some of us and buy you some more time, but it does not help us in any meaningful and fundamental way. Let's stop postponing what needs to be done.
curt k
ny
LOL! Strong Chinese currency solves US problems? It will do virtually nothing except raising prices of everyday goods.
So how are we doing in Europe where a euro's nearly $1.40? We must be having a trade surplus with Japan now that a US dollar's 80 yens. Right? Why is it that when it comes to politics, we abandon our common sense? I guess it's easier to blame someone than be honest and tell the truth.
peace4all1
Middletown, NJ
President Obama’s demand of an appreciation of Chinese Yuan up to 20% or more is amount to half-trillion dollars of debit forgiveness from our Chinese Banker. So what did our President bring to the G20 summit as collateral? Continuously sailing advanced weapons to Taiwan despite there is a biggest peace-boom across the Taiwan Straits in the last sixty years? Or constantly stirring up issues in South China Sea between China and its neighboring countries and ganging up with Japan against China in the recent bumping incident between Japanese patrol ship and Chinese fishing boat near the disputed island? Or promoting India as a counter -weight against China even though those two were never natural rivals? Until there is mutual trust between USA and China, there will be no significant progress on the global economic issues between USA and China.
Rodrigo de Posa
Lisbon, Portugal
I'm afraid the structure of the American economy is heavily dependent on an enormous artificial growth designed to feed a financial sector worthing 40% of the GDP.
It's no use blaming China and least of all Germany (who is able to export real industrial goods even with a very strong currency). It is for the US to dismantle its own casino economy and implement a real productive economy with realistic growth. It is for the US to make the correspondent efforts and make the necessary sacrifices.
But are contemporary Americans prepared to make those sacrifices? I would like to believe that the common American is ready for that call. But is that industrious "common man", who worries not only with himself but with community and future generations, still out there?
If he is still out there he is facing a gigantic effort. Not only he has to assert his virtue, he must also fight against a deeply corrupted association between the financial elite and the political elite. I mean, he must fight against the constant efforts of that elite to corrupt him, to ease his will and his virtue with stimuli and the illusion that prosperity will derive from consumption.
If, sadly, that man is no longer there and if he no longer believes in his ability to exercise his virtue, nothing will keep the US from decline and fall. And seen from the outside, accusations against China or Germany will be simultaneously ridiculous and suspicious.
Roland Nicholson, Jr
Xian, China
I recently exchanged dollars for Yuan @ a Bank of China office in Xian.
When I first came to China I got a much better exchange rate. Too many folks in the US think a weaker Yuan will bring certain jobs back to the States. In the short term the effect would be minimal. Manufacturing firms that rely on a cheap labor model would simply move to places like Vietnam in Asia or maybe even Africa. They are not going back to South Carolina or Upstate New York. Additionally, a lot of the things some people think we could sell to increasingly more affluent Chinese, as a result of a weaker RMB are being made in China by Chinese firms. Think again.
7.11.10
when past behavior is a better predictor than hope
S B Lewis
Essex, New York
Our president came to office without military experience, without executive experience, without business experience, without any of the experience needed for his office. His primary and extraordinary accomplishment came in achieving his office in a nation wracked with racial issues since its founding. Barack Obama won. Our problems were over. Hope over skepticism.
We are learning again how important experience is. Experience is the great teacher. And the man has none.
Nothing in President Obama's past, absolutely nothing, qualifies him to make the decisions he has had to make - and he has made a number of them in such a way as to lose the congressional balance so critical to making them without rancor.
We are now asked to believe that changing the entire management team at defense and at each of the armed services is a plus for the nation - when the man leading that change has never served a day, and his policy in Iraq and in Afghanistan is essentially a bust.
Remember: Iraq was the bad war, Afghanistan was the good war. What war is good? The man has never fired a 22 rifle. He has never been drafted. Would he have dodged the draft as Clinton did?
Dwight David Eisenhower said a few things on point - and was a 5-star general with a record in management: he ran SHAPE, Columbia University, D-Day, Allied forces in WW 2.
First, beware the military industrial complex. Toss in the medical industrial complex, another place where our president has stubbed his toe and created a building disaster. Between the military and the medical, The United States is bankrupt.
Second, Ike warned us against war where the supply chain or distance was on the other side of the planet. So, JFK and LBJ ignored IKE, and buried the nation in its first defeat in war. JFK remains a hero. This is rubbish.
Dwight David Eisenhower ran the last administration where the U S government long bond traded at 2 5/8th yield to maturity, as set by market forces. IKE was furious with a $7 billion deficit - and put an end to it.
JFK, son of an unprosecuted criminal of incredible wealth - ended the balanced budget, started a war in Cuba, ramped the war in Vietnam - accomplished nothing in his senate career, and was little but trouble in his time in The White House. It's been straight downhill ever since. LBJ took the wreck of JFK's presidency and build on the Kennedy legacy of failure and gave us Guns and Butter - and lost his office in disgrace.
Strangely, JFK's seduction of the nation and the press - plus his assassination and his disastrous marriage - attracted a romantic support that could not have been less healthy for our nation or our children. Jack was the opposite of Nixon. He was Catholic. He was young, supposedly honest. Son of a bootlegger, from a family of the addicted, their history has played out... since.
Now, this president, from a family of no balance - with a history that offers nothing to give confidence - is running things at a time when the nation has rejected his judgement and tossed 560 members of his party from office - and The New York Times offers reasons why those tossed should be considered in the upcoming effort to staff the largest part of the nation's government, and the most important part of our nation's defense profile - second only to our ability to pay for it.
The 'reforms' brought by this administration to Wall Street are pathetic. There is not a word about market structure - nor has a single important person in the debt crisis stepped forward to say what he did. None have been prosecuted.
The management of the defense department and the armed services is vital stuff.
How can the nation have confidence that the messed up senate, the confused White House - and the military industrial complex will do any better than the medical industrial complex has managed to do with the nation's scandal in health care?
Is there one intelligent person who can explain why medical costs rise - and rise - and rise - and the government and 3rd party pay drive that cost - and all we can do is put more and more government and more and more insurance to the task of lowering that cost? Medical and military cost so much because government drives that cost. It's that simple.
And we are at war, in two losing battles, because these complexes want that war, and congress does what money wants it to do.
This president lacks what it takes to run his office - and he lacks what it takes to confront the run away congress.
Who in Washington has the public's trust? Name one person, any person.
2011 and 2012 are going to make 2006 - 2010 look easy.
The people cannot fix this at the ballot box. And there is no sense conveyed in Washington can do it. Where is the talent?
The parties would rather fight about it - and position themselves for 2012 and beyond.
This is a disaster - happening, right before our eyes.
And there is no sense in Washington that any of them want to fix it - or can.
Essex, New York
Our president came to office without military experience, without executive experience, without business experience, without any of the experience needed for his office. His primary and extraordinary accomplishment came in achieving his office in a nation wracked with racial issues since its founding. Barack Obama won. Our problems were over. Hope over skepticism.
We are learning again how important experience is. Experience is the great teacher. And the man has none.
Nothing in President Obama's past, absolutely nothing, qualifies him to make the decisions he has had to make - and he has made a number of them in such a way as to lose the congressional balance so critical to making them without rancor.
We are now asked to believe that changing the entire management team at defense and at each of the armed services is a plus for the nation - when the man leading that change has never served a day, and his policy in Iraq and in Afghanistan is essentially a bust.
Remember: Iraq was the bad war, Afghanistan was the good war. What war is good? The man has never fired a 22 rifle. He has never been drafted. Would he have dodged the draft as Clinton did?
Dwight David Eisenhower said a few things on point - and was a 5-star general with a record in management: he ran SHAPE, Columbia University, D-Day, Allied forces in WW 2.
First, beware the military industrial complex. Toss in the medical industrial complex, another place where our president has stubbed his toe and created a building disaster. Between the military and the medical, The United States is bankrupt.
Second, Ike warned us against war where the supply chain or distance was on the other side of the planet. So, JFK and LBJ ignored IKE, and buried the nation in its first defeat in war. JFK remains a hero. This is rubbish.
Dwight David Eisenhower ran the last administration where the U S government long bond traded at 2 5/8th yield to maturity, as set by market forces. IKE was furious with a $7 billion deficit - and put an end to it.
JFK, son of an unprosecuted criminal of incredible wealth - ended the balanced budget, started a war in Cuba, ramped the war in Vietnam - accomplished nothing in his senate career, and was little but trouble in his time in The White House. It's been straight downhill ever since. LBJ took the wreck of JFK's presidency and build on the Kennedy legacy of failure and gave us Guns and Butter - and lost his office in disgrace.
Strangely, JFK's seduction of the nation and the press - plus his assassination and his disastrous marriage - attracted a romantic support that could not have been less healthy for our nation or our children. Jack was the opposite of Nixon. He was Catholic. He was young, supposedly honest. Son of a bootlegger, from a family of the addicted, their history has played out... since.
Now, this president, from a family of no balance - with a history that offers nothing to give confidence - is running things at a time when the nation has rejected his judgement and tossed 560 members of his party from office - and The New York Times offers reasons why those tossed should be considered in the upcoming effort to staff the largest part of the nation's government, and the most important part of our nation's defense profile - second only to our ability to pay for it.
The 'reforms' brought by this administration to Wall Street are pathetic. There is not a word about market structure - nor has a single important person in the debt crisis stepped forward to say what he did. None have been prosecuted.
The management of the defense department and the armed services is vital stuff.
How can the nation have confidence that the messed up senate, the confused White House - and the military industrial complex will do any better than the medical industrial complex has managed to do with the nation's scandal in health care?
Is there one intelligent person who can explain why medical costs rise - and rise - and rise - and the government and 3rd party pay drive that cost - and all we can do is put more and more government and more and more insurance to the task of lowering that cost? Medical and military cost so much because government drives that cost. It's that simple.
And we are at war, in two losing battles, because these complexes want that war, and congress does what money wants it to do.
This president lacks what it takes to run his office - and he lacks what it takes to confront the run away congress.
Who in Washington has the public's trust? Name one person, any person.
2011 and 2012 are going to make 2006 - 2010 look easy.
The people cannot fix this at the ballot box. And there is no sense conveyed in Washington can do it. Where is the talent?
The parties would rather fight about it - and position themselves for 2012 and beyond.
This is a disaster - happening, right before our eyes.
And there is no sense in Washington that any of them want to fix it - or can.
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