Every time a government performs brutal acts like this in ‘revenge’ for some other atrocity they make the world a more dangerous place for our children.
Terrorists, freedom-fighters, insurgents, call them what you like; they can never be stopped through violence. There is only one solution in Israel, in Chechnya, in Kashmir and in all those other places where violent people are licensed by their communities or their governments to behave so appallingly. That solution is always a political one. Most politicians don’t have the courage to turn the other cheek and ignore provocations and it is they who are ultimately responsible for allowing these spirals of violence and misery to continue. These cowardly people who pretend that tough-talking and threats will lead to anything but more suffering shouldn’t be given authority over a dog, let alone a country.

I know that the Presidential elections in the US are important and interesting to my American friends and relations, but I think their importance to the rest of us is being overstated. It won’t make much difference to American foreign policy if Bush goes. What will happen is that the pressure driving the current questions being asked about the war in Iraq will be relieved by his departure. In some ways I’d rather Bush stayed and the pressure grew. I love the way that liberals in the US feel driven towards radicalism by their terrible government.

The new “Freedom Tower” that’s probably going to be built at the former site of the World Trade Centre is going to be 1,776 feet tall. 1776 is the year that the US gained independence from the British Empire. The ceremony at which the cornerstone of the new tower was laid was held on 4 July, Independence Day in the US. It is touching that people in North American are still defining themselves by their relationship with Britain but I know what I’d think of someone who still celebrated the day that they broke up with their first girlfriend.

What is a bit ironic is that the American war of Independence introduced several military tactics which have now become commonplace but which were considered fairly radical at the time. Sneak commando raids and the deliberate killing of enemy officers were just a couple of the tactics which were previously considered unacceptable in warfare but which the Americans were forced to resort to out of desperation. Suicide bombings and the deliberate targetting of civilians might be two more innovations which become standard practice in the future. Let’s hope not.

It is maybe an unfortunate thing in some ways, for reasons I’ll go into later, but the English are not a very demonstrative nation. We don’t go in for showing-off or boastfulness, we are inclined to understate out achievements and we sometimes take a gloomy satisfaction from failure. Our culture has developed an inclination to see things from other people’s point of view. Whether this is from being continually invaded and occupied in our early history or a result of our more recent history of invading and occupying other people’s countries I couldn’t say. Whatever the reason, the upshot is a distaste for showing-off and a tendency to look down on boastful flag-waving and fanatical nationalism. That’s why we have a patron saint who isn’t English, didn’t live in England and couldn’t speak English. If you read a history of Saint George you’ll see that he never even set foot in England. This doesn’t matter because we don’t really need a patron saint, almost anyone would do. We are calmly confident of our national identity with no need for metaphors and symbols.

So who are these people I keep seeing with English flags flying from their windows and from plastic sticks on their cars? They are clearly not English. In fact a closer examination of their flags and cars and even the England football shirts they sometimes wear will show that most of those items are actually made abroad, mostly in China. And maybe that’s the problem. These people don’t feel confident about their identity because they can’t work out where it lies. Everything they buy is made abroad because they can’t afford things made in England. They listen to American music, their newspapers are owned by a republican Australian and the food they eat is never produced locally. They are bombarded by any number of aggressive, flamboyant and glamorous cultures and their own culture is not one that inclines them to fight back. So they have abandoned Englishness in favour of a type of mildly ironic sub-American form of flag-waving.

That is the problem with Englishness. Its very tolerance demands a lot of us. It’s very hard to stand by in the face of all these vulgar, showing-off foreigners and smile inwardly, accepting their culture as perfectly valid while knowing one’s own to be rather better. Hollywood constantly tells us that knowing something is not enough; you must articulate it for it to be worthwhile. And we are stuck with a culture that is based on not articulating, on keeping a stiff upper lip. How can we express our patriotism without denying our culture? It’s a conundrum, that’s what it is.

This would go at the ADSL end – CANCOM | D-Link ADSL DSL-604 Router with Wireless LAN Access Built in 4 Port Switch