Scribblings

Weep for Falluja

A hospital in Falluga

In 1982 I wept when I saw TV images of the Israeli assault on Beirut. I’m doing the same now when I see the US assault on Falluja in Iraq. People are being killed and we know that the great majority of them are civilians. A smaller minority will be those who are fighting in the hope of saving what’s left of their city. Only a tiny number of those killed will be the people the US likes to portray as terrorists or insurgents.

The US is bombing hospitals and schools claiming that they are used as bases and meeting points for the fighters in the city. Who knows? I certainly don’t. The only reporters left around are those embedded with the troops and even if they want to report the truth they won’t be allowed to. As Madeline Bunting said in yesterday’s Guardian, it will be months, years or maybe never before we find out what’s really going on there.

Dubya monkey

The US government is now in the grip of crazy goons fired by religion and an absolute belief in their own moral righteousness. We have no hope of having nutters like these actually listen to anything we say. Having been sold an enormous lie since September 2001, following the pretty huge lie they’d been fed in the previous 50 years, is it any wonder that the American public have re-elected these people?

It’s a strange paradox that in the most information dense country on Earth the general population knows almost nothing about what is going on in the world. Detailed background information on the loonies in the White House is available from places such as Disinfopedia but the people either don’t read it or refuse to believe that those running their country could possibly be so goddamned scary.

There are good people in America but their voices are drowned by the screeching of the religious right and those who believe that Reason is a sinister plot to deliver us all into the arms of the Devil.

Posted 9 November 2004, 22:30
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