At 10:04 12/07/2005 -0700, you wrote:
Keith, I was not ignoring Great Britains extensive experience with home grown terrorists or history of empire and occupations. I simply meant that I hope in this most recent experience, the British do not fall prey to excesses of emotion and political chicanery as we did here. Add to that the ulterior motives of the PNAC neoconservatives. We are a new kid on the blockin superpower terms, but were a big kidand our successes and failures loom large.
I know you weren't -- I was just taking the opportunity to go slightly off-thread. Anyway, by now you'll have received the latest info on the London bombings.
Good point that Londons banking industry is more important that defence contracts.
From memory I believe that defence contracts amount to about 2% of all foreign exports earnings (that is, including stuff we sell to America). I don't know what the figure for financial services is but it is likely to be of the order of 20% at least. Tourism earns about 15% of our exports. (Incidentally, what is coming up very fast in our balance of trade are earnings from foreign students.)
Same applies to international credibility, something Blair may be reconsidering. Lawry speaks for many experts and commoners alike who predict that American integrity and its role as a messenger for democracy have been profoundly damaged, and it may take many years to recover.
Sometimes it is really very difficult to contain anger when analyzing the extreme consequences that have been triggered by the risky and deceptive decision to invade an oil-rich Middle Eastern country after routing the Taliban in Afghanistan post-9/11. Bush and Blair gave bin Laden what he wanted, ignoring expert analysis and traditional measures of caution. But I feel more comfortable about Blairs next moves and Browns advice/agenda than their counterparts here, especially if we have a 7/7-type event here. kwc
So do I but I'm not excessively optimistic. The fact that Blair went along with Bush and that we now that Blair knew that he was grossly inflating the merest speck of evidence (itself from a dubious source) into something that could have become a national panic (a risk of 45 minutes' WMD attack from Saddam Hussein) is something that can't really be forgiven. I didn't believe him for one minute when he said this in the House of Commons and about 30 or 40 MPs didn't either, but the rest did (or say they did, anyway -- many people love a pretext for a war so long as they're not in it themselvesa) and millions of people in the country did.
Keith
Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
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