WHO ARE YOU CALLING 'GUN CULTURE'?
The tragic deaths of Latisha Shakespeare and Charlene Ellis, teenagers gunned down in outside a New Years' party in Birmingham has been seized upon by the government as an example of the gun culture sweeping Britain. Chief constables joined in blaming the music industry for creating a background of violence. Home Secretary David Blunkett denounced the partygoers for confronting police investigators with a 'wall of silence'.
All of the amateur sociology about 'gun culture' only serves to implicate the victims of the attack in the crime. Instead of blaming the individuals that did the shooting, police and politicians are seeking to score points against black teenagers and their supposed lifestyle. That the Home Secretary imagines there to be a 'wall of silence' is a good insight into his own psychological distrust of the public, but tells us precious little about the attitudes and actions of young black people in Birmingham or elsewhere. On the contrary, there is no shortage of local residents queuing up to pontificate about the dangers of gang violence - the better to dramatise their own claims for attention.
That few witnesses from the party came forward is not so surprising, since the shooting took place outside, not inside. To counter their reticence police have offered rewards for evidence despite the past experience of false testimony in the Damilola Taylor case. Still, the fulminations against 'gun culture' give the appearance of doing something, while at the same time galvanising wider public fears of black teenagers.
SOUTH, NOT NORTH KOREA THREATENS US
Fifty years ago the United States provoked a war with China that divided Korea between North and South, leaving 37 000 US troops stationed permanently in the DeMilitarized Zone (DMZ). Though the US has demonised the impoverished North Korean state as a threat to world peace, its central preoccupation is with the growing national confidence in the South. While North Korea remains largely underdeveloped, South Korea emerged as the world's eleventh largest economy in 1997, and has weathered the East Asian slump.
In the last few weeks the US has provoked more conflicts with North Korea ordering her exports to Yemen be intercepted and denouncing her atomic programme. Most recently President Bush denounced North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il for 'starving his folks'. But despite the weight of press coverage, the real rise of anti-American sentiment is not North of the 38th parallel, but South.
After an American military court acquitted soldiers of killing two schoolgirls just north of the capital Seoul, and following an apparently insincere apology from read out by the US ambassador, South Korea was gripped by anti-American protests. The new president Roh Moo Hyun called into question America's hostile attitude to the North, echoing the protests of many Korean politicians at the inclusion of Kim Jong-Il's regime in George W Bush's 'axis-of-evil' speech.
Though older Koreans who grew up under President Park's authoritarian regime are more sympathetic to the US, many younger Koreans identify with the liberalisation of the country, and its emergence from American tutelage. A growing sentiment for rapprochement with the North - the 'Sunshine policy' set by the last South Korean President Kim Dae Jung - threatens America's monopoly over the country's foreign policy. In particular the US wants to perpetuate the division between North and South as the justification for its continued and weighty military presence in the area, and its ultimate command control of South Korea's army.
-- James Heartfield
http://www.heartfield.demon.co.uk/james1.htm