Special relationship my eye

Much excitement over Nick Clegg calling the Iraq war 'illegal' at PMQ's but why shouldn't he? This has always been the LibDem view since before the war started & the Tories were gung ho in favour of it. We haven't joined the Tory Party & don't have to support their position on everything. Much more of a gaffe was David Cameron talking about 1940. Personally I am sick to the back teeth over all this rubbish about 'special relationship' with the USA. If it ever existed it was given a cruel blow when, no sooner had WWII ended the USA was demanding repayment of our war loan. It was given a further battering when the USA (rightly) refused to support the Suez adventure. We gave it a belt when Harold Wilson (rightly) refused to go into Vietnam. One could go on - the full listing of failures of mutual support since 1945 could fill pages. The USA did not enter WWI or WWII until their own self interest was at stake. I don't object to that but for goodness sake let's stop kidding ourselves. Cameron needs to tell the USA that GREAT BRITAIN won the battle to stop Hitler in 1940 - ALONE. At the time the USA was being pretty unsupportive.

Know thyself

The UK Ambassador to Lebanon dared to observe that " The World needs more men like him [the late Ayatollah Fadlallah] willing to reach across faiths, acknowledging the reality of the modern world and daring to confront old constraints". According to reports the Ayatollah was pretty hard line & militant in his opposition to the USA & Israel. So predictably the Israeli Government protested & the 'blog' was taken down. Israel said "The British Ambassador must decide whether promoting terror and giving it religious justification can be considered a heritage to be cherished". If the Government of Israel applied this statement to itself some progress toward peace in the Middle East might just begin to be possible.

A very sick world

In a major three page story on Sunday 11th July 2010 about Haiti the Observer noted that only a fraction of the more than $5bn aid promised by the international community since the devastating earthquake on 12th January 2010 had so far been delivered. Millions are still living in tents & shacks made from essentially debris. If they are lucky they might get as much as $2 a day to live on. On the 21st January 2010 Goldman Sachs announced a bonus pot of $16.2bn. Something is surely very very sick in our homo sapiens world.