America is Dying

America is dying. Every Empire ends. America will soon be just another country on the planet.
It will be China, or India, or another emerging nation that invents a society, cast in the image of Lincoln and Washington, but different, very different, and better suited to the new world order.

This may be incomprehensible now, but soon it will be truth.

And then, it will not be the beginning of the end for America, for America will already be dead.

I hope that they remember that America was great people. A very great people. In the end, though, they were destroyed from within by the very hierarchies & Corporates that they invented.

The new, emerging nations will, by contrast, be flatter and more flexible.

God bless the USA; the ordinary folk & their extraordinary dreams. You have been mankind's greatest testament yet.

2007

I've been working due to financial crisis. I could not get a job quickly with the city but managed a seasonal post with a company working at the airport. It is over now but my wife wishes that I keep working, so I am applying to the council but also to a factory in Stockport where they need a driver.

I am not happy! But I understand. My wife is right. I need to look after my children with money as well as kindness.

Pedro's Caravan will be relaunched with new articles at this address soon.

Every minute of every day

Every minute of every day a male assaults a female.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/10/03/amish.shooting/index.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/5404144.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/5396272.stm

http://www.ncadv.org/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/5405586.stm

Even if we reduced this statistic by 90%, it would still be an indictment.

October, November.

October, November, January, February.
That's when you earn your money.
Shift starts at eight, seven, six.
I've seen moms carry sleeping babes in their arms, fasten them into cars, and deliver them to paid-for-carers.
That's when you earn your money.
Them babes earn mummy's money.
When the morning is black as night, wet, and twice as dead.
That's when you earn your money.
I've been shivering in the hailstones, waiting on a bus that didn't come.
And then my pay docked by a boss with a timeclock on the wall.
Them buslights as pale as the conversation within.
No-one says nothing on the way to the early clock-in.

I was a manual worker,
and manual work is different.
You earn your money on the early shift, the late shift,
When winter is here, no sun in the sky.

My family cried when I gave my job up.
But I could do it no more.

Angelika

Sometimes the news is so depressing.

God bless you, Angelika. You deserve so much more.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/5395706.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/5394620.stm

This nation is shamed by this.

Blair and the Taleban

He was the politician. Even Portillo has described him as a giant.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/5380004.stm

And yesterday, when the BBC presented an early summary of his legacy, it was very convincing to hear Geldof talk of Blair's commitment to Africa.

That goes in the credit column.

Yes, Blair was, is, the politician.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/nickrobinson/index.html

But, what is his legacy? What is it really? Well, we have to mention the war.

Bush and Blair should have put ten or twenty years of commitment into Afghanistan. They should have built a light for western values; a selfless light for Afghanistan has no oil.

This light burning would have warmed every liberal in the Middle-East.

I am naive?

But the rules of asymmetrical conflict are that ideas win. This is not a symmetrical conflict where the greatest force wins. The USA would, if they wished, conquer the whole region were this a symmetrical, military versus military, conflict.

But this is an asymmetrical conflict of ideas.

And only ideas, ideals and the quiet exercise of values will win it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/5383832.stm

The wonderful people of Kabul don't deserve the Taleban. Freeing them from this burden should have been sufficient challenge for any statesman.

Blair passed over it too lightly.

The God Delusion

Two things that may appear contradictory:

I am a fan of Richard Dawkins & agree with him in many, many ways:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/5372458.stm

But I still believe in God.

God of doubt, God of faith,
Of reaching, groping,
And shutting out.
God the deity,
God the baby,
God the process,
And one of us.


More, another time.