He may be only 16, but walking through a park in Bradford, of all places, at one in the morning is just asking for trouble.
Has his family only recently moved there from Westward Ho! or somewhere?
Poor lad. When he reaches 18 he'll be able to join the millions of others and vote how he feels about that enriched tri-axis partnership called Parliament.

Maybe you should adopt our American terminology, then these media weenies wouldn't be able to dance around the facts.

Asians are Chinese, Japanese, Malaysian, etc.
Indians are from India
Native Americans are homegrown Indians with casinos
Middle Easterners are, surprise, from the Middle East

Let me know if you'd like the full list to pass along. :-)

David

You are wrong on this point. The press and police always use racial descriptions which are obvious when describing suspects rather than religious tags which are not. Also it is no more a slur on all Asians to use that term to describe the attackers that it would be on all white people if a gang of attckers were correctly described as white .

Hold on Colm, don't y'all use the term Asian to include people of Indian descent? I never read about Indian gang youth problems or Indian terrorist problems in the UK. If you think the religious designation of Muslim as a description isn't fair, then you have to divide the two groups by region - that would be fair and descriptive.

Colm: Actually, I think you are wrong.

"Asian" encompasses such a broad geographic area - as Daphne points out includes the far east with China, Japan, Korea and perhaps even the middle east etc. The use of the word, because it is so broad, is practically meaningless.

Middle Eastern is of course far more descriptive - and it is no more difficult to ascertain than say Mexican and Black in America, or say Swede and Polish in the EU. But it is political correctness, and fear of blow-back and accusations of "racial profiling," which prevent its use.

From Wiki:

The Middle East is a historical and political region of Afro-Eurasia with no clear boundaries. The term "Middle East" was popularized around 1900 in the United Kingdom; it has a loose definition traditionally encompassing countries or regions in Western Asia and parts of North Africa. The corresponding adjective to Middle East is Middle-Eastern and the derived noun is Middle-Easterner.

Patty/Daphne

Our nations respective use of the terminology 'Asian' is based on our experiences of immigration from that continent , yours largely from the aisna pacific side and ours form the Indian sub continent including pakistan and Bangladash. Neither of us is wrong in how we use Asian, but one point that is irrelvent in the context of this story is any mention of the 'Middle East'. Here in the UK we use Middle East largely to descibe Arabic countries, we don't refer to those as Asians.

Daphne. If it unfair to use the tgeneric term Asian because it is too broad, is it also then unfair to use the even more broad term 'White' or 'Black' which is also commonly used to describe suspects ?

Patty,

Obfuscation is the name of the game, dhimmitude is the driver. The thugs were Muslims. Not all Muslims are thugs - as Daphne says, just give us the facts and leave us to make our own minds up.

We have the same media problem here too. There was a recent case of an elderly woman in Houston who woke up to a man breaking into her house, actually he was already in the house. She came downstairs, shot at him, he ran through a sliding glass door to escape her righteous gunfire and got away. We can assume the man was a bloody mess from either the glass or a bullet.

The report in the major paper and news reports just described a tall male. He was black. This information is important if you're trying to capture the bad guy. It's descriptive, nothing more.

Colm: So, David just is unaware that "Asian" is accurate because it encompasses Arabs, North Africans and Middle Easterners? And that there are so few Chinese, Japanese, Korean as to render his argument moot?

And you don't think that the wordsmiths in the media could come up with something more descriptive if they felt like it? A label that actually identified the individual's group, or "tribe?"m Rather than hid the criminal in a meaningless pack of millions.

I do. I think the media obfuscates behind the Asian terminology. Everyone else knows this as well when they read the news and so, now Asian = Muslim criminal if you read about a crime in the news. That's what people think, don't they?

No, not unfair at all Colm. Why would anybody feel degraded by an accurate description of themselves, racial, sexual or otherwise?

Is it wrong to know which group - or "tribe" - is committing a crime? If it's an anomaly, so be it. But if it's a pattern, isn't it nice to know? Important to know? We identify the dangerous neighborhoods, don't we. We know, hopefully, which parks to stroll through...we don't hide this info. do we? Doesn't the public have the RIGHT to know?

If Muslims are causing a nationwide outbreak of beatings and muggings, and it sounds like this might be the case, shouldn't the public know? Wouldn't law-abiding Muslims want to know so that they could perhaps do something about it?

Have we ditched all common sense?

Patty

Asian as a descriptive term in the UK means 'brown' . It is used as a racial identifier by the police and media when describing the colour of suspects, just as Black and White are used to describe suspects. It is done becasue Brown has never been acceptable as a racial term. It is actually used in a lot narrowier terms than it's geographical factual coverage. It is not an attempt to hide religion. The media so not shy away from describing Muslim terrorists. The group who carried out the July 7 bombings were not described as Asian terrorists becasue their motives were clearly religous. You really do not know the culture of descriptive terminolgy used here in the UK so don't try and claim it is only done to placate Muslims.

Patty

No there is nothing wrong with identifying a genuine common denominator behind a specific violent campaign, and I have no desire at all to minimise blame where Islam as a religion is the catalyst, but when police hear of a gang of youths of one particular colour assaulting someone of another colour it is perfectly logical to use racial descriptions rather than presumed religous ones. It's not a conspiracy it's common sense.

I don't know exactly what Patty thinks, but I don't think this is about placating Muslims. I think it's about the PC mindset of the media, they are so afraid of appearing racist or bigoted that they leave out, or obscure, descriptive information.

We all know that if a bunch of Fundamentalist Anglo Christians were on a burglary spree, the media would be sure to say White Fundamentalist Christian at least 100 times in their reports.

The media is full of dumb liberals.

Patty/Daphne -

This took place in Bradford, which makes the perps muslim Pakistanis. We all know it, and we all know that the MSM knows it. It's simply that they're so cowed by decades of illiberalism, they're afraid to say it even if they wanted to.

Daphne

There is a substantial segment of the print media at least here in the UK who are not at all shy of banging a politically incorrect drum - national newspapers like The Sun, Daily Mail and Daily Express, and a more refined level the Daily Telegraph, it isn't all a liberal monopoly.

Most people on this site consider those papers a joke Colm. They always poke fun and deride the post if it's sourced from those papers.

Daphne -

That's because those papers are populist and liberals are sofistikated.

All you need to know is that The Telegraph simply supports the conservative Party, even now that the Party is wholly liberal. The Sun is a brilliantly written Murdoch (i.e. Fox News, i.e. Beelzebub in human form) tabloid which knows just what the British working class likes - that's football on the back pages and tits inside the cover. The daily mail is the bible of the white, patriotic bah humbug middle class that knows we're going to hell in a handcart.

Daphne -

I found it. This is an exchange that took place in a fantastic comedy here called 'Yes Minister' some years ago. It's a conversation between the minister (Jim) and his officials (Sir Humphrey and Bernard):

Jim: I know exactly who reads the papers. The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country. The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country. The Times is read by people who actually do run the country. The Daily Mirror is read by the wives of the people who run the country. The Financial Times is read by people who own the country. The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country. The Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.

Sir Humphrey: Prime Minister, what about people who read the Sun.

Bernard: Sun readers don't care who runs the country as long as she's got big tits.

I feel better now Pete. Personally, I like The Sun (well, the tits don't do much for me) and The Daily Mail.

My daily rag, The Austin American Statesman, is a foul piece of silly progressive claptrap and it's the only game in town. At least you have choices.

Colm -

There was the famous "Will The Last Person To Leave Britain Turn Out The Lights" the day beforevthe 1992 general election when Kinnock's Labour Party was expected to win. Of course this was followed 24 hours later with "It Was The Sun Wot Won It" when the Tories won.

But my fav is their front page report of the 1986 USAF bombing of Libya. The headline: "US Rambo Jets KO Gadaffi War Base".

The Sun is passed it's peak as a paper of some power. In the eighties when Thatcherism was at it's height, the Sun was rampant and came out with some memorable headlines including 'Gotcha' on the sinking of the General Belgrano and it's most famous one 'Freddie Starr ate my hamster; (Daphne, don't ask).

When was the last time the Sun had such a good headline ?

Ok, so we're playing that game of guessing in which order the posts go.

Colm -

The MSM almost never balks at reporting suspects as being white when they're white. On the other hand, they'll often go to absurd lengths to avoid the obvious when it's our favourite adherents to the Religion of Peace. 'Plumber'?:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/4534594.stm

Pete

Your 11.11pm comment is a bit paranoid. Yes it is true about the racial/religous origin of Bradford 'Asians' but in reference to them not being called Pakistanis/Muslims by the press , when was the last time the press referred to white youths involved in crimes as 'English' or 'Christians'.

the last time I commented about the use of the word "asian" it started a re-enactment of the revolutionary war

Pete Moore

I'd be worried about that chip on your shoulder.

The elephant in the room is sky-god superstition and how it continues to promote genocide in 2008, almost 150 years after Darwin demolished organised superstition religion.

So go figure.

Troll

Most of your comments usually start a war :)

Colm:

"...when was the last time the press referred to white youths involved in crimes as 'English' or 'Christians'".

To use the term 'English' in the manner that you propose would imply that a) there was such an ethnic group as the English, and b) its members were white. Obviously such a gross heresy will never pass the lips of any MSM journalist, since, as all good liberals know, anyone can be English, so long as it's been more than five minutes since they landed in the country.
In addition, the vast majority of white people in the UK are English. Accordingly, when the term 'white' is used, most people will assume that the culprits are also English. By contrast, the term 'Asian' is generally non-specific, since there are large numbers of both Pakistanis and Bangladeshis on the one hand, and Indians on the other. 'Asian' is thus a catch-all term, in a way that 'white' is not.

As for designating white racists as 'Christians': it would be justified, if they were motivated by Christianity in carrying out their crimes. But this isn't the case all that often. By contrast, there are plenty of instances of Muslims carrying out crimes in the name of Islam, and the MSM, particularly the BBC, often goes to great lengths to avoid acknowledging this fact (as Pete's 11.40pm example shows). There is also a longstanding tradition of the MSM describing Muslims as "Asians", whenever one of their number has been caught doing anything wrong, the fact that they were motivated by religion rather than race notwithstanding.

Pete

What on earth are you on about. I never said they balked at saying white. I clearly said the opposite. Now why do they say white and not English or Christian ? You have just made my argument for me .

Shoot Peter, can you stop with the 'sky god' stuff already? Please.

Let's come up with a good alternative for you, something fresh, like "Oh Omnipotent One" you could call him ooo for short, or "Round World Creator" or "Mr. Burn in Hell if you don't worship me".

You're pretty brainy, come up with something witty. I'll be happy to stay off your ass on this if you get creative and I don't have to read 'sky god' for awhile. :-)

FR

When it comes to the sort of incidents like teenage gang violence or racial attacks like the one in Bradford it is accurate and justifiable to use racial descriptions, when it comes to organised terrorust attacks for ideological reasons it is correct to use terms like Muslim or Islamic which the media do use. When do you hear the media use the term 'Asian terrorist'. ?

One word: Bradford. That's all you need to know. Case closed.

And if that isn't all you need to know, then it's the MSM's fault for not specifying otherwise, because really, at this stage, the only thing we can do is to read between their lines/lies.

I read about the assault by 'asians' here:

http://www.bnp.org.uk/2008/04/25/national-media-blank-sick-bradford-race-hate-assault/

It wouldn't be reported by the BBC because the victim is........ white, and the perps are ......... muslim!

Peter

Darwin never proved or demolished anything that's why it's called the "theory of evolution"

Just as religion can't prove Gods existance Darwin could never prove evolution either.

Both beliefs take an act of faith.

Peter - I am with Daphne on this one, you've got one of the sharper wits here, surely the repeated use of sky god could be replaced with a little variety - perhaps The Great Pretender? Those of us poor deluded religious believers deserve a laugh with our irritation.

That's a good one Mahons!

Agree. Nice one, mahons.

You could also used The Divine Dude, Heavenly Helper, even Tetragrammaton.

My favourite is "the Unnamable Namer", heard in that "A Very Cellular Song" masterpiece by the Incredible String Band.

The Divine Dude is excellent!

Lots of good choices here Peter!