FELLOW-TRAVELLERS

Keith Durham and his wife Brenda are long-term motorhomers, travelling in a Hobby 650. Self-retired from work in further education teaching and management training, Keith combines his travels with a deep concern for personal freedom and social justice, both of which can be subjugated by economic and political decisions. He expresses this concern in a series of Broadsides, which he describes as 'some unspun facts for busy people who care about the world in which they live'.

If any of his writing grabs your attention, excites or frustrates you, Keith would love to hear from you – email: . In addition to discussing his ideas, he can put you on his emailing list so that you receive future Broadsides directly.

Here's an idea of the kind of books a radical motorhomer takes with him on a long journey:

Here is Broadside Six.

Lies, damn lies and … British democracy.We in the UK have taken great delight in poking fun at US politics and their rhetoric on democracy, particularly over Dubya Bush and the infamous 'swinging chads'. Bush lost the election on votes but was inaugurated as President of the US by the Federal Judges who had been appointed by his Dad. Well, here we are several weeks after our general election and things are back to normal; the Tories are engaged in yet more navel gazing and arguing about how best to choose a new leader, B.Liar continues to avoid the general public whilst his mates Read and Goldsmith move up a gear on 'homeland security' and hit-man Blunkett has been brought back again, this time to further screw those 'Prols' (see Orwell's 1984) who dare to retire before they die, following Brown's theft of their pension fund.

Meanwhile, the media has continued to play its part in our democracy by ignoring and minimising the effect of the biggest con since 1832 – Labour 'winning' 55% of the seats in Parliament when only 15% of the British population voted for them. When confronted with evidence on 'difficult' issues, a Syrian acquaintance of mine, working with the Druze in Israel, always replied - 'But how can this be?'

Given the population of Great Britain is approximately 60 million, some 16 million are immediately excluded from our remarkably democratic process on account of their age, nationality or lack of personal freedom. There are doubtless many people under the age of 18 who are either more politically aware than many of their elders or feel more passionate about the world in which they live and who feel let down by the men in grey suits. There are countless people living, working and paying taxes to this government but who are ineligible to vote because they are not British nationals. Britain's prisons are now at record occupancy, thus reducing further the number of eligible voters. For some, simply being out of the country at the time of the Electoral Registration was sufficient to be excluded.

Of the 44 million (73.4%) people who were eligible to vote almost 40% of them chose not to exercise their right. Why people chose not to vote is a matter of speculation. Successive governments have feigned concern over the continuing low turnouts; attempts at postal voting met with less than enthusiastic response and on-line and text voting appear to be all too difficult concepts for this government. Perhaps 17 million people have recognised either the total lack of democracy inherent in our First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) system or the role of the new 'professional' politicians whose sole aim is to secure a victory, curry favour by sycophantically supporting their leader rather than enacting the will of their constituents and doing nothing to jeopardise their pension (currently 24% of salary, of which the taxpayer contributes 15%).

The presidential style of B.Liar and his inability to tell the truth has tarnished all politicians; with very few exceptions, nothing has been done to encourage people to vote. Parliament has marginalised itself to such an extent that not only has it lost touch with the ordinary voter, it no longer cares. As long as the main parties continue to do the bidding of the wealthy and keep middle-England moderately happy by punishing the poor for 'anti-social' behaviour, all will be well.

For one reason or another therefore, only 44.9% of the total population were eligible or chose to vote in May 2005; what a sad indictment of our society. But it does not end there; of the 27 million who did vote, 9.48 million (15.8%) voted New Labour and were rewarded with 356 of the 645 parliamentary seats, whereas almost twice as many (17.46 million i.e. 29.1%) voted for the other parties but received only 289 of the 645 seats, 'But how can this be?'

It would appear that all voters are equal, but some are more equal than others; changes to the electoral boundaries over the past few years in our FPTP system seem to have favoured New Labour. By careful manipulation it now takes only 26,500 votes to secure a seat in parliament for New Labour, but the Liberal Democrats need some 95,000 votes to secure a seat in the same House. It begs the question as to what the Green Party has to do; it attracted 457,600 votes but does not have a single MP. Hardly seems fair, let alone democratic.

Yet this is a government that trumpets long and loud on national, European and world stages and has the audacity to lecture, and even invade, other sovereign nations over issues of democracy. This is a government which promised in its 1997 manifesto 'we are committed to a referendum on the voting system. An independent commission on voting will be set up … to recommend a proportional alternative to the first-past-the-post system'. Obviously winning under such a system makes a big difference; the Jenkins Report (1998) on proportional representation came and went and the commitment to a referendum was simply another of B.Liar's lies. There is little, if any evidence of the 'old socialists', who pledged to 'fight from within' to regain some of the original socialist values, actually doing so. What price principles?

If B.Liar had fulfilled his manifesto pledges the recent results would have been much different. With PR New Labour would have only 227 seats and the rest 418 seats (Tories 209, Lib Dems 142 and Others 67, including 7 for the 'Greens'). Perhaps PR is the answer to the government's problem of low turnout where every vote cast will count, but perhaps it's an answer they don't want. In addition to the 100 seats already lost, a further 129 New Labour MPs would have lost their jobs and New Labour its absolute power.

B.Liar is also reforming the House of Lords; many of the hereditary peers have gone but only to be replaced by those attracting honorary knighthoods – as a reward for their donations to New Labour. For the first time in British history the Labour party has a majority in the House of Lords. This total reformation of both houses of parliament is the only way B.Liar can get all the planned repressive legislation onto the statute books, democratically! We, the 'Prols', now literally must stand by and look on in amazement. Not only are the Houses of Parliament surrounded by concrete blocks in an attempt to keep out would-be car bombers, but from August a half-mile exclusion zone is being enforced so that MP's no longer have to witness the people protesting. Contrary to many people's belief, Orwell's 1984 was not about communist Russia, it was about middle-England; Britain is no longer a democracy, it is an elected dictatorship.

Those Evil Bombers …

On July 7^th 2005 we witnessed the results of a series of bomb blasts in London, three on the underground and one ripping apart the iconic red London bus. Ambulances and police cars filled our TV screens for twelve hours and reporters interviewed eye-witnesses, police officials, politicians and psychologists together with Middle East and Terrorist experts. As the dust literally began to settle the number of casualties emerged, 2 became 37 became 49 with more missing, dozens seriously injured and hundreds treated for cuts, broken bones and smoke inhalation. This edition examines the media's coverage of this tragic event and exposes some of the hypocrisies and double standards used by British and US Governments to perpetuate their agendas.

Whilst many in the City watched as the FTSE 100 dropped alarmingly by 4% and hoteliers trebled their prices in response to people's inability to return home due to the complete closure of the London Transport System, the rest of the country began to engage in self-congratulation. Suddenly the media announced that the nation was united; our ambulance service became the best in the world; our hospitals became second to none and our police, disciplined and well organised. We were praised by the Government and media for our bravery under difficult circumstances and our stoicism as we likened the bombings to the 6 years of the blitz; our ability to walk home from work epitomised the 'British spirit'. We sought out our heroes like the Tube driver who opened the emergency doors to let himself and passengers off the train. Many Islamic and Muslim leaders appeared before TV cameras denouncing the bombings and finally the media has extracted condemnation from the grieving families of the bombers, though our revenge was still incomplete.

This media message was echoed by the politicians. B.Liar together with our greatest ally G W Bush appeared at Gleneagles and the self-adulation continued; we were told that 'we will not be cowed'. The media dealt up continuous interviews with all those whose views reflected those of the politicians (with the exception of George Galloway) and are in accord with what we want to believe about ourselves – that we are always good and incapable of any evil and that the perpetrators of this atrocity are totally evil and incapable of any humanitarian feelings. We ask ourselves with a mixture of disgust and incredulity 'what sort of person could do such a thing?' We could.

We did this.

Doubtless this claim will exacerbate the feelings of outrage and anger in many people. This is not what we want to see or hear. We refuse to believe that we are equally guilty of such heinous crimes and we provide well rehearsed excuses for our own behaviour. It might be unpalatable but it doesn't prevent it from being true and as long as we allow ourselves to be encouraged to 'get back to normal' and engage in the speculation on who might have been responsible and where 'they' are and how many of 'them' might be in this country, B.Liar and Bush to go unchallenged in pursuit of their own agendas. Whilst the forensic teams continue their grim work the politicians are massing all their propaganda machinery to ensure that their opinion becomes THE truth; their lies are mutated into historical reality. However there are those unwilling to accept the word of our warlords B.Liar and Bush and pursue truth through questioning, challenging and critical debate.

In 1991 Britain and America began 12 years of the worst sanctions ever inflicted on any sovereign state. One million innocent Iraqi civilians were deliberately killed as we withheld food, water and medicines from Iraq; acts so abhorrent that we prefer not to acknowledge them. Since then this Government has taken Britain to war three times, with Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq. We still have 'peace-keepers' in Bosnia, the fighting continues in Afghanistan and Iraq and now we are engaged in a war against terrorism (one which is incapable of being won - a future topic for The Ranter). We now have witnessed for ourselves the destruction, grief and suffering caused by four 10lb. home-made bombs and yet we the British people, in tandem with America, have caused destruction beyond belief when we detonated thousands of 500lb. bombs across these countries. We have killed hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians and yet easily dismissed 'their' deaths as collateral damage and ignored 'their' grief and suffering. Our bombing of Baghdad was every bit as cold-blooded, callous and calculated as that in London. As Bush gleefully entertained us with images of 'shock and awe', what emotions must have been felt by the Shia and Sunni Muslims? We speak of 'daisy cutters' and 'pink mist' to describe our massive bombs and the carnage they subsequently inflict. We created our own mass graves by deliberately buring alive dozens of 'their' wounded soldiers. We are rightly outraged when 'they' cause us this amount of pain so surely we can imagine 'their' pain when we destroy 'their' families a thousand fold but yet we can't even be bothered to count 'their' deaths. We have tortured 'their' possible suspects, held 'them' illegally in prisons for years without trial, we abuse 'their' religion and ridicule the Qur-an and we have shot 'their' children when they failed to understand English (American). We readily ignored the massacre of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica when the UN handed them over to the Serbian forces that pursued them; the catalogue of our violence towards 'them' is endless. Anyone in any doubt about the atrocities committed in our name in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq should visit the web sites of Robert Fisk, John Pilger or even al Jezeera!

Additionally we have heard Bush's rhetoric – we will bring 'them' to justice or take justice to 'them' and read Huntington's right-wing myopic conclusion (in The Clash of Civilisations) that 'the underlying problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilisation whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power.' Muslim academics may well reflect upon the value of such statements but for those throughout the world who believe that Muslims have been and continue to be repressed by American empire building, it merely strengthens their argument. Finally, the daily bombings in a coalition protected Iraq receive little attention in Britain; some 60 explosions like that in London in June alone, 16 in the past week killing well over 200 equally innocent civilians. The two minutes silence held across Britain to mark our 55 dead compared to our unwillingness even to count 'their' thousands only helps to reinforce our apparent lack of empathy. Similarly, the lack of media interest in war torn Afghanistan belies the return of the warlords and the killing that continues across the country.

B.Liar's response to the question 'why us' is to insist that 'they' are trying to destroy our way of life and that our involvement in Afghanistan or Iraq has nothing whatsoever to do with it. However, many commentators, including the well respected Royal Institute for International Affairs argue the contrary (full report at www.riia.org). The London bombers are dead so no one will ever know whether or not this had any influence on their decision. However, it defies belief that B.Liar, so blatantly wrong in his assertion that Saddam Hussein had WMD, can be so adamant that he alone is right. No one can ascribe these specific bombings to the invasions of Iraq or Afghanistan but similarly, no one can pretend that they might have been a contributory factor. B.Liar's simplistic retort is both insulting and degrading, not only to millions of Muslims but also to those who hold different political, social, economic, cultural and environmental perspectives from our right-wing, Christian fundamentalist leaders. Given the years of British and American bombings and aggressive interventions throughout the Muslim world they might be forgiven for thinking that in fact 'we are trying to destroy their way of life'.

In Britain we are not surprised to have been bombed, it was expected. We have hung onto the shirt tails of the US Administration which, following the bombings in 2001 had the sympathy of the entire world but whose thirst for bloody revenge has made it the focus of global hatred. The US has proved time and time again that it needs war; it has bombed 23 countries in successive years since the end of WWII, carried out pre-emptive attacks on sovereign states contrary to the Geneva Convention and even sponsored terrorism abroad to achieve its political and economic goals. Since 9/11 the US has 'detained' some 70,000, mainly Muslims, outside US sovereign territory without charge. It uses violence to deal with violence, choosing the Christian fundamentalist 'an eye for an eye' strategy rather than 'turning the other cheek'. Britain and the US are the world's largest manufacturers and suppliers of weapons, why on earth would they want to jeopardise such economic power even though many of the weapons sold are either trained back on allied soldiers and civilians or used by repressive regimes to commit mass murder and torture? Regardless of nationality, race, culture or religion there are no 'good' bombers, all are evil and all are intent on securing their own agendas by violent means. World peace will not be achieved by bombs; the British problems in Northern Ireland are nearer to a solution as a result of negotiations with 'the terrorists/freedom fighters', the chances of some form of settlement in Palestine/Israel is more likely as a result of a willingness to talk to Hamas. The American homeland emerged unscathed from the Second World War as a major player on the world stage and has built its entire economy based on war. The advances in science and technology are entrenched in its military; it runs and sustains the most formidable war machine in history. Whilst the US projects itself as the bastion of peace and a haven of democracy the reality is quite different. War has become America's raison d'etre; it must not become ours.

So far the response to the London bombings has been to burn down several Mosques, set fire to the homes of Muslims and attack Sheikhs. More publicly, the police followed an innocent Brazilian, working in London, from his flat and onto a bus. From there around London streets until he entered a tube station where three plain clothed police officers brought him to the ground and shot him eight times, seven times in the head. For many it may be difficult not to see these events as revenge or how the latter differs from the 'cold-blooded, barbaric extra-judicial killings of innocent civilians' in Iraq. After several days B.Liar finally apologised for 'this tragic accident' but excused the officers 'who are working under difficult circumstances'; strange how the innocent civilians that we kill are either tragic accidents or collateral damage rather than acts of terrorism. B.Liar's response is intended to 'normalise' such killings and thus prepare us for the time when they become an everyday occurrence. Perhaps a Muslim's view of these events just might take on a less rosy tint; but if this were to be the case, obviously 'they've' got it wrong. Got it wrong in the same way that they have that Asians and Blacks are 12 times more likely to be stopped by the police; that unemployment amongst these ethnic groups is much higher than their white peers and that even Graduates are less likely to secure work if they are Asian; hardly encouraging messages.

What happened in London was tragic and such actions can never be condoned but in addition to searching for accomplices and possible networks it is imperative that we seek answers to this wider question of why? Failure to do so only serves to perpetuate our ignorance, reinforce our denial and encourages the US Administration and the British Government to continue this cycle of violence. Hopefully the British public, rather than engage in self-obsessed, xenophobic egotism, will begin to question B.Liar's rhetoric and stop the cynical application of double standards. We need to engage more with minority groups, not just on religious or cultural issues but to create a much wider understanding and start to view the world through different sets of eyes. We must provide equal opportunities for others to explain their thoughts, beliefs, perceptions and rationales rather than dismiss them because they are different. There are far more fundamental similarities amongst all the peoples of the world than there are differences. Difficult though it may be, we should end the hubris and stop believing that we can bomb the world into our version of righteousness. Those in power can only survive so long as we allow their rhetoric and decisions to go unquestioned and their opinion to be passed off as fact.

National pride should not be derided but neither should it become a substitute for political debate.

If any of the above has grabbed your attention, excited or frustrated you, Keith would love to hear from you – email: . In addition to discussing his ideas, he can put you on his emailing list so that you receive future Broadsides directly.