guns and wars; don't hate the player, hate the game

bristol | drugs and crime | opinion/analysis Tuesday August 28, 2007 17:03 by saltmarsh

guns on the streets of bristol and kabul

I saw this video on YouTube and it got me thinking..thinking about all the shootings, about the kids hanging around, about Iraq and iPod and how they all seem connected to me. The picture with this is from a video called “im a bristol man” and shows guys in St.Pauls rapping and one of them showing his gun off.

"im a bristol man" so he says

There has been a lot of hand-wringing in the papers over the last few days about the murder of kids (by kids) with guns. Is music, video games, black culture, lack of role models, single mums and all the usual suspects to blame? Here we go again. There is a reggae song that goes “don't hate the player, hate the game.” I hate the game. All this finger pointing at who is to blame for the street violence without looking in the mirror. C'mon – who buys the most gangsta rap? White middle class kids. I bet there is more cash spent on it in the ivory towers of Clifton than St.Pauls. This is not a class issue, this is not a race issue, this is not a music, games, black culture, lack of role models, single mums issue. This is a total culture issue. We are all to blame. Politicians are to blame because they do the same thing – what else is Iraq than a street robbery with soldiers instead of gang members and bombs instead of 9mm and robbing oil instead of iPods. Shops and ads are to blame because they ask us to buy things without thinking about who got hurt in the process – does it matter if your iPod come from a kid who was mugged in Barton Hill or the cip inside it is made of coltan from a country that got mugged and made by a worker who got mugged for wages in a sweatshop? Its all wrong. And the police? They are busy going round using anti-terror laws on greens and taking peace protesters to court while leaving the inner cities to rot – and why are they doing this – because business is ALL. We have a gimme, gimme, gimme culture that we collude with – instant credit, buy now pay later, want, want want - new sofa or PFI or climate change. We are all to blame for a culture that is kill us and the earth.

So Bristol Indymedia was taken out by the MAN for stuff about climate and people doing things about it – will the police see this video and take out YouTube? No, cos it has adverts....

PS and to the guys in “im a bristol man” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHbPGccijv4 - you need to see “when the smoke clearz” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DY0cVtQlD8s