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Politics : War -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: D. Long who wrote (3834)	9/17/2001 5:02:19 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Respond to of 23908

Re: As the days wear on, it appears as if only the British will really stand by us. Don't bet on it.... Does "Bradford Race Riot" ring a bell?? Here you are: Poverty is the new black A Sivanandan traces the roots of this summer's violence to the xenophobic culture of globalisation Special report: race issues in the UK Special report: globalisation Special report: refugees in Britain Friday August 17, 2001 The Guardian guardian.co.uk Excerpt: More to the point is the the fate of the working class in these industries. Some, such as mining and shipbuilding, had an almost wholly white workforce, whereas the steel and textile mills of Yorkshire and Lancashire had recruited labour from the Indian sub-continent. And it was these mill towns that the government failed to bring into the modern economy. White workers moved to jobs elsewhere, but racism and family ties pointed Bangladeshis and Pakistanis towards restaurant work and mini-cabbing - and the solidarity between white and Asian workers created on the factory floor was lost. Segregation in housing, resulting from local government policies, separated the communities further and led to segregation in schooling. Multiculturalism, which was really a sop to white racism (people don't need to be given their cultures, only their rights) deepened the fissures. And ethnic funding, instead of improving the local economy as a whole, helped only to improve the personal economy of a few. All of which served to brand the Bangladeshis and Pakistanis as self-segregating and better served by local authorities than the local whites. That the former were mostly Muslim Asians served to focus white hate on Islam. And it was that potent combination of racial and religious hatred that provided the breeding ground for the electoral politics of the British National party, on the one hand, and the goonda politics of the National Front, on the other - and provoked the recent uprisings of young Asians. What were the youth to do? They had been born here, schooled here, had been media-maddened by all the good things in life that should be available to them - and yet all around them were "the rocks, moss, stonecrop, iron, merds" of the industrial wastelands of Britain. Whatever leadership there was had either retreated into the safety of religion or defected to the service of local and central government, from where they condemned these youth while feathering their own nests. No economic infrastructures or hope of socialisation through work. No political parties, no ideology to unite the fragmented communities or emerge as a political force - all that had died with New Labour. Locked into their degradation by a racist police force, vilified by a racist press and violated, finally, by the true fascists. What were the youth to do but break out in violence, self-destructive, reactive violence, the violence of the violated? * Taken from "Three Faces of British Racism", a special report by the Institute of Race Relations ____________________ For the bigger picture: uk.fc.yahoo.com

To: D. Long who wrote (3834)	9/17/2001 5:32:23 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Respond to of 23908

In the same line of thought.... time.com Excerpt: The sheer scale of the migrant phenomenon has taken everyone by surprise. The center in Sangatte was originally set up to deal with 250 Kosovars who were camping out in a Calais park. Yet since it opened in September 1999, the building has accommodated a staggering 34,000 people - the Red Cross estimates that nine out of 10 eventually make it through to the U.K. Eurotunnel's security systems were never designed to cope with nightly mass assaults on its perimeter fence, while France never imagined it would have to deal with thousands of passportless migrants massed at the far limit of the Schengen free-transit zone. "Ninety-nine percent of these migrants are illegal and could be convicted under French law," says a representative from a humanitarian organization. "But the migrant streams are simply too big, making the law inapplicable. We'd have to build tens of thousands of prison places." Instead, hundreds of young men spend their days dozing in dozens of army tents and portable sheds erected inside the vast corrugated steel hangar at Sangatte. An endless food-line snakes away from the makeshift canteen. The air smells of disinfectant and bodies. Abasin, 30, is sitting on a camp bed in the doorway of his tent wearing a white T shirt, cream slacks and trendy suede running shoes. He left Afghanistan three months ago and has been in Sangatte three weeks, after traveling through Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Greece and Italy. "Every stage was organized," he explains. "I paid $13,000 to get to England. There's a place in Peshawar called Khyber Bazaar with hundreds of travel agents. Officially they're selling air tickets, but in fact they can arrange anything." Since Eurotunnel and the port in Calais began cracking down on stowaways this year, however, it has become more difficult for the travel agents to get their customers through to the destination they most commonly hype, Britain. Habib - another young Afghan - is sitting on a concrete block outside the hangar looking dejected. "Every day I spend here is a day in prison," he says. "So you go off to the tunnel and try your luck. I went there with a friend three days ago and he got through. He was lucky. I'm just waiting for my chance." As he speaks, young men have started leaving the center and making their way up the road to the hole in the fence by the motorway, hoping that tonight they'll be the lucky ones. ____________________