The Americans have a saying - what goes around comes around, and it now seems they aren't always referring to the merry-go-round on the pier at Santa Monica or the baggage carousel at LAX.

July 6, 2005 (Wednesday)
Panama City (Florida) -- Plattsville (Alabama)

The Daily Telegraph is now going after Gerd Sudholt, the intended publisher of the Martin Allen book on Heinrich Himmler's death, and drags in my name for no reason at all.

A. reports that Britain has just won the bid to stage Olympics for 2012: I reply, "Yes, a pity in every sense. London will become a horror over the next years. One more reason to move out. I wonder what corruption went on behind the scenes. These things are never won cleanly. Prima facie Paris had the better claim. -- I am glad for [Mayor] Ken Livingstone of course, he seems a likeable guy despite his, ahem, proclivities." I add:

Incidentally, a coup: this is from ----'s son, living in Argentina, who contacted me via my website. What a boon that website is. I have been in touch with him for some weeks.

10:20-35 am long call from Benté, very shaken: ten plain-clothes police had come, searching our old apartment, where a gang of Russian White slavers and Eastern European prostitutes is now operating, they say; they showed her photos. They had wanted to come in through her kitchen window! They treated her very decently, but she is very shaken.

Steve Kippax's researcher Dr Arthur H. has found an excellent Victor Cavendish-Bentinck document about "liquidating" enemy war criminals, including Himmler.

July 6, 2005 (Wednesday)
Montgomery -- Birmingham (Alabama)

MAJOR bomb blasts in London. I switch on the cellphone (turned off last night for the talk); and the television. Benté phones from London within seconds. Four big bombs in Tube stations and a bus have killed 45, they say, with 150 seriously injured, 1000 less injured.

Jessica is with J. in Kensington, J. will walk her back home to Mayfair through Hyde Park. Nice that she phoned to let me know she's okay; I was waiting to phone her, as the TV said the phone system in London is largely down.

There is a briefing by competent, clean shaven, articulate, fit looking UK police and transport officers: what a difference between them and their American counterparts! The press conference appears to be in a room long prepared for the emergency, with even the speaker name-plates and backdrop all pre-printed and ready. Officer says four bombs so far. The first went off at Moorgate station at 8:41, the next at 8:56 at Russell Square, killing 21; at 9:17 a blast at Edgware Road -- the most heavily Arab-populated area of London, oddly -- damaged 3 trains, and killed five; 9:47 bus at Woburn Square, Tavistock Place, no number for the bus passengers killed yet.

Four bombs so far, no warning, no claims of responsibility. For all we know it might be the IRA again. Just like the old days. Tube shut down until tomorrow, and the mainline stations at Liverpool Street, Kings Cross, and Victoria closed at present. Buses will be back up and running later today.

NICE email from Teri K. in California about the bombings, worried. I reply: "I am in Montgomery right now, not the field-marshal but Alabama. Yup, that scoops a lot of the cream off Blair's Olympic Games cake, and it was clearly timed to coincide with the visit to London of mass-murderer George W B."

I leave the television in the corner turned to Fox News, as I feel in need of some fairness and balance this morning. It remains unrequited. First there is the ineffable stumbling George Bush himself; he shuffles his mental package and shakes out a few familiar words and phrases, like Corn Flakes, among them being condolences, hearts-go-out, and hope, and compassion, with a sugar-dusting of ideology, hate, human rights, liberty, and democracy, and then a spoonful of condolences again.

Then we are treated to Mr Sanctimonious Blair himself, speaking his own inimitable language, which appears to be a dialect originating in WordPerfect: not a thinning hair or comma out of place, he balances nicely between his now huge "British" Muslim electorate, to whom he must perforce pander, and the native English, increasingly restless, who are beginning to find these newcomers a bit of a drag.

As Tony Blair drones on, I realize that his language is not WordPerfect after all, but Hypocrisy, because he is talking about the wickedness of these foreigners who come into someone's country, uninvited, and use bombs to terrorise people into changing their accepted way of life. My perverse brain brings up the wrong images, and I see the "coalition's" cruise missiles hurtling towards Baghdad and capital cities in the Balkans, and Defence Minister Geoffrey Hoon promising that our own napalm, missiles, and bombs are infinitely kinder than those of any enemy, and the photographs of the torn bodies and shattered limbs of the victims.

In Iraq we have killed over a hundred thousand, according to The Lancet, since the Bush/Blair assault on that country began. The death roll in London today so far stands at under forty -- rather less than the smallest number of people that Mr Blair and his great transatlantic friend would hope to kill with any one of the thousands of fragmentation, incendiary, and high explosive bombs they have rained down on these distant countries under diverse, and mostly deceitful, pretexts: "But those are only Arabs," they seem to be saying. (If that is not racism, I don't know what is.) And: "They had it coming to them. They put up with that ghastly Mr Hussein, or Mr Milosevic," -- or whomever, or whatever the latest excuse for killing more innocents.

Yes, they had it coming to them. Perhaps I can hear whoever planted today's bombs in the London Tube and bus system saying much the same. The Americans have a saying -- What goes around comes around; and it now seems they aren't always referring to the merry-go-round on the pier at Santa Monica or the baggage carousel at LAX.

How Bush and the world's media gloated on Day 1, when he and his air force generals promised Shock and Awe (i.e., terror), to bring down the Hussein government. Our own Mr Blair joined in the obscene chorus of rejoicing.

Now, seeing the pictures coming over from London, I am shocked and awed, and concerned too, living as we do directly beneath the shadow of one of London's tallest hotels, in our ancient, 350-year-old building: if five thousand tons of hotel come crashing down, we're toast, and the date on this website will stand still for ever more. Yes, thank you, Mr Blair: I am sure all this is worth it -- to somebody, if not to us, who will be your electorate the next time around. 

 

It's out of control Tony Blair "waited until after election" to reveal scale of illegal immigration into UK

New York Times speculates about that troop audience "silence" during Bush pep speech at Fort Bragg; and Mr Irving's observations