Good Morning London

[omega minimo]

Here on the Left Coast, it is still the night of the terrible day you are waking up from, if you slept at all.

This morning I watched the news, the chat show infotainment clones wearing their spectacles and displaying their versatility as "serious" journalists. The what-passes-for-news here has reached such a level of irrelevance since the November "election" that most thinking Americans have turned it off for good. I swear I had the impression of watching news delivered by Kermit The Frog muppets or your own "Spitting Image" puppets.

After talking to workmates and friends, listening to the radio, watching TV and checking the Web, I refrain from having an overarching, opinionated Theory of Everything. I write to tell you that our hearts are with you.

We are being shown how "calm" and "resilient" the British people are; repeatedly reminded that you've been through the Blitz and the Troubles. Perhaps the inference being that, in comparison with Britain and Spain, countries where folks "get up and get on with it," America needs to get over itself.

There even was a former IRA member on "Nightline" telling the U.S. to be "clever, not angry" and suggesting how to get off the "hampster wheel to Hell" of terrorism.

It is not a conceit to write a letter to London, rather than a letter to Afghanistan or a letter to Iraq or a letter to Darfour..... it is not because of place, but of timing, that I write to you this morning.

Recently, you loaned us one of your Parlimentarians, who strode across the sea and showed the Congress and the American people how to "do" politics and how to speak English.

Then the minutes of important meetings were sent across in a floating bottle that we are still trying to get the cork out of.

As the American people began to wake up from a decades long nap, the Emperor's robe began to fray at the edge, despite royal decrees of righteousness and protection, delivered via a marvelous catapult. The Court Jester who bends the Emperor's ear was revealed as a traitor.

By the Fourth of July, many Americans realized that things looked so bad for the Empire, that another "spectacular" distraction might be needed. Unfortunate, but true.

London, on the furthest outpost of the Roman Empire, at the heart of the British Empire, smashed and bloodied in the demise of the American Empire.

Unfortunate. But true.

Our hearts are with you.

[Hissyspit]

1. Well-written.

I spoke to my friends in Titchfield on the south coast earlier. I think they would appreciate it.

[omega minimo]

2. Cheers then

Thank you and give them my regards.

[omega minimo]

3. "peace movement & congressional allies 2 show solidarity w/British people"

www.huffingtonpost.com
07.07.2005Tom Hayden
London Bombings Destroy Bush-Blair Strategy

So much for Tony Blair's hope to "put Iraq behind us." The dustbin now awaits George Bush's argument that "we must take the fight to the enemy over there so we don't have to fight them at home." Imperial fantasies, as shattered as the London transit system. The G-8 leaders feign innocence while the innocents die.

At first we may see the militarist impulse. As the pompous Robert Kaplan has written, "in a world of tribes and thugs, manliness goes a long way." (imperial hubris, 240).

But reality will quickly sink in. Already Denmark and Italy are warned that they are next. The "coalition of the willing" has dwindled from 34 to 20, and will continue to disintegrate, leaving the US with 20,000 stateless mercenaries subsidized by America's tazpayers as the largest ally in Iraq.

The lesson should be that Bush has put the West, including the American people, at life-and-death risk by going to war for fabrications. We will never be "safer" as long as we invade and occupy Iraq, prop up the Saudi dictators, and crawl towards only a token Palestinian state. We will be safe when we no longer forcibly occupy Muslim lands in the oil-driven search for dominance.

Before more attacks and more deaths, it is time for Congress to take the initiative from the Bush Administration and hold hearings on an exit strategy from Iraq. It is not acceptable for Donald Rumsfeld to scorn an exit strategy in favor of a victory strategy any longer.

It is time for the peace movement and congressional allies to show solidarity with the British people by getting to the bottom of the Downing Street Memorandums scandal which the smug American media continues to downplay.

It is time for dialogue with the 82 Iraqi parliamentarians - one-third of the American-sponsored regime - who are calling for a timetable for American withdrawal.

When governments, through their march to folly, fail to protect their own citizens, it is time for those citizens to push their governments aside and become the peacemakers.

[Taxloss]

4. "Clever, not angry"

Thanks, I hope we are.

[omega minimo]

5. Bless you all

Some of us have memories

[non sociopath skin]

6. Thanks for your thoughts, Friend.

The Skin

[omega minimo]

7. "Everything begins and ends at exactly the right time"

Tell us about your writing?

:smoke:

[non sociopath skin]

8. It's a quote from Peter Weir's movie "Picnic At Hanging Rock" ...

... and has deep resonances for me.

Thanks for asking. :hippie:

The Skin

[omega minimo]

9. LOVE Peter Weir

Where is our spiritual/artistic visionary filmmaker for these times?

"...begins and ends at exactly..." indeed, a resonance for the bombings in London. It was a demarcation-- the message in my message was that we cannot deny the awareness of the timing.

We cannot forget the relevant U.S. news stories that were buried in the carnage.

Even so, the human connection transcends the perversion of terrorists and the unaccountability of the American administration.

[non sociopath skin]

10. Exactly!

The Skin

[ist rad]

11. A surprising number of human beings are without purpose,

though it is probable that they are performing some function unknown to themselves.

[omega minimo]

12. What might that be?