Watching the vigil for Anthony Walker, the Liverpool teenager horribly murdered by sick evil racists - who killed poor Anthony with an axe and left it sticking out of the back of his head - I'm sitting here with tears rolling down my face listening to the simple dignity of his mother, Gee Walker. I don't care who you are or what belief system you claim to support, killing is ALWAYS wrong and life SO precious and fragile.
We desperately need a better world to believe in, one where people don't kill each, where hundreds of millions of people, people damnit, aren't starving to death or living in abject poverty, where the rich people of the planet passionately feel that poverty, starvation and disease are simply unacceptable in the so-called modern world, where the colour of your skin just doesn't matter, where politicians don't control or exploit us but try to help us have better lives, where we can spend 30 billion Euros to end poverty and not 80 billion to wage war. This is the world that should be our right to live in.
A world that doesn't take these issues as simple, fundamental basics of civilised living, not vague dreams of hopeless romanticism, is not a world that is fit to consider itself ethical, moral or decent.
This piece was originally posted at Alienboy's World
Article comments
1 - Dave Nalle
I find things like this coming out of Britain which is supposed to be more racially integrated than the US purely mystifying.
In a US city of the size of Liverpool a black man and a white woman could stand at a bus stop all day long and not expect to be insulted much less have one of them murdered, and we took 60 years longer to get rid of slavery than Britain did, and had segregation up until the 1960s.
In a major US city you couldn't FIND 9 people to get together and be racist enough to murder someone if you tried, yet this is not the only case of this kind to come out of our troubled parent country.
Dave
2 - alienboy
I too find it mystifying as to how and why these things happen anywhere.
As to the rest of your claim, I instictively found it to be a rather implausible claim, but then you have consistently chosen to contrast Europe unfavourably against the USA for as long as I have known you. I have never understood why.
A search on Google for American Racist Murder returned 739,000 results so I guess there must be some instances happening.
Sure Britain is troubled but tell me somewhere that isn't? These are simply interesting times we're living in, as the ancient Chinese curse has it.
3 - Dave Nalle
>>I too find it mystifying as to how and why these things happen anywhere.<<
There are many mystifying things in the world, like the following statement:
>> but then you have consistently chosen to contrast Europe unfavourably against the USA for as long as I have known you. I have never understood why.<<
I only do that where European systems are failing which people want to adopt here in the US. I'm very pro-Europe and pro-European people. I love 'em all. But that doesn't mean I want to see us repeat their mistakes.
>>As to the rest of your claim, I instictively found it to be a rather implausible claim,<<
It's just my observation. I see bi-racial couples on the street all the time and no one is murdering them. I guess if Liverpool is the English equivalent of a small town in rural Alabama I could understand this murder, but it shouldn't be.
>>A search on Google for American Racist Murder returned 739,000 results so I guess there must be some instances happening.<<
The same search with Britain instead of America produces 520,000 results. Given the relative sizes and populations of the two countries - and the very unscientific nature of this sort of analysis - that puts Britain far ahead in per-capita google hits on the subject.
>>Sure Britain is troubled but tell me somewhere that isn't? These are simply interesting times we're living in, as the ancient Chinese curse has it.<<
Every place has its own troubles. But there's something rotten In Britian when with a 6th of the US population they have an active Nazi party with easily 10 times the membership of all the Nazi groups here in the US. The National Front has come in 3rd in national parliamentary elections ferchissakes. Something's very screwed up over there.
Dave
4 - alienboy
"I only do that where European systems are failing which people want to adopt here in the US. I'm very pro-Europe and pro-European people. I love 'em all. But that doesn't mean I want to see us repeat their mistakes."
Dave, do me a favour, go back over all the stuff you wrote and tell me how many slam Europe unfavourably against the US and how many praise it. Show me the numbers or I'll stick to my own perception a while longer.
"I see bi-racial couples on the street all the time and no one is murdering them."
Doh! So do we. The thing I wrote was about a child not a couple.
"The same search with Britain instead of America produces 520,000 results."
Dave, so what? Your point was trying to imply that it doesn't happen in the USA. I was simply showing you it did.
"Something's very screwed up over there." Again, you just choose to attack. There are 8 zillion things wrong with things in the USA, so why do you feel such a strong need to focus on pointing out our problems?
You prefer the US, I prefer Europe and couldn't imagine living in over there. Different strokes and all that.
The fact is that perfect places don't exist and the real challenge is to try and leave things around us in a better state than we found them.
5 - Dave Nalle
>>You prefer the US, I prefer Europe and couldn't imagine living in over there. Different strokes and all that.<<
Ah, but I can imagine living in Europe and have done so. You see, I have no prejudice against the people of Europe, just against bad government wherever it happens to rear its ugly head.
Dave