Bushy Rabbit is still occupying the garage. No serious gnawing yet, but he knocked over a broomstick. He seems to have thought it was a minaret, so he takes himself for a Swiss vigilante. I hope the Swiss will now go all the way and ban the building of churches with belfreys - bell-free churches only please! No seriously, how Nazi can you get without being Nazi? Don't they remember what Hitler did to Jews?

The big joke is that people claim Muslims are against pluralism. Goodness! Don't they know that Muslims restored pluralism to the Eastern Mediterranean after the Byzantine emperors had spent three centuries trying to eliminate every religion except orthodox Christianity? It was the British who enabled most of Palestine to be turned into a state for one religion, endangering the peace of the whole region.

I've just watched a mind-numbing set of interviews with Sarah Palin fans. It seems that the best qualification for being U.S. President is that no one knows your policies, as long as they are thought to be far-right. One bloke thought that Obama's books were about Marxism-Leninism. There was a nice spelling mistake: Sarah Plain! www.dontpaniconline.com/magazine/original/sarah-palin-supporters-are-stupid

Undermined!

How shocking that Obama's administration has announced that it will not sign a treaty banning land-mines! Does he imagine that they present any military advantage that will out-weigh the negative impact on his image? And where are we on cluster bombs and biological weapons? I don't follow military diplomacy, but I don't expect any surprises there either. This is all beginning to look like Clinton mark two.

On the home front I have been invaded by a rabbit whom I can only call Bushy. As soon as he arrived in the house he set about occupying my Iraqi carpet. He never crossed the frontier on to the Algerian one though. Lucky I don't have an Afghan rug. After a fortnight's occupation he suddenly launched himself at my ankle like an exocet, teeth foremost. He did it twice just in case I didn't understand the first time. My only offence was to walk across 'his' carpet. Next morning I offered him his democratic rights and left the French windows open. After five minutes thought he chose the garden. Now he has occupied the garage. I wonder whether a rabbit can gnaw a hole in a bicycle tyre.

I would have liked to get him vaccinated, but he never gave me a chance to catch him. I reckon he needs psychoanalysis. He was probably taken away from his mother too young, and his six weeks in a pet shop must have been traumatic. I am not in favour of pet-keeping anyway, so the whole episode has reinforced my prejudice.

It was amusing to see the conservative press shedding tears because the EU has not chosen A. Blair as the President of the Council. He is apparently the man 'who could stop the traffic in Peking'. Why not Baghdad? If he stepped into a road there several cars would drive straight at him, and good riddance. But I suppose all this is useful confirmation that the said Blair is the darling of all true-blue market fundamentalists. I haven't heard recently how he is getting on in his job as adviser to J P Morgan on their Iraq investments; perhaps business is not booming quite as he had hoped - or perhaps there are too many booms!

I read Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine recently. One of the most interesting chapters describes how G W Bush privatized war. The US Army has been reduced to a provider of bodies for corporations to dress, feed, transport and arm. Haliburton, ex-VP Cheney's company, has done particularly well; they receive soldiers in gigantic camps that they have built all over Iraq and Afghanistan, just like a sort of military Butlins. All these corporations make huge profits out of supplying the army with everything it needs, and of course the US taxpayer foots the bill. The nasty thing is that if so many shareholders do so well out of war, they have a strong incentive to press for more wars. Now how about bombing Iran, you guys?

Having said that I can't resist the chance to have another dig at this horrible expression 'you guys'. It seems the word 'you' is just too short, like Spanish 'vos', which can't stand on its own but has to drag 'otros' along behind. Anyway, 'guy' is masculine. You couldn't possible call Madonna a guy. In the same language she is a 'doll'. So it gives me the creeps to hear a young woman saying to a group of women 'Hey you guys'. Just when we've all learnt that a minister or a doctor is not necessarily 'he', here comes sexist language again by the back door.

Somebody has complained about me not blogging. That is the nicest thing that has happened for months, and here is the response.

There was a news item a couple of days ago that really took my breath away. Obama is planning to send thousands of civilian advisers to Afghanistan to tell the Afghans how to run their country. There was a clip of these civilians training in their flak jackets and steel helmets. They will have to go around with military escorts and Afghan translators, so you can imagine the scene: 'Howdy folks! I'm your new civilian adviser; don't take no notice of these soldiers, they're just here to keep me company. Now Ahmad, explain that in Pashtoo.'

I had a visit from an American friend today. He's been in Saudi Arabia for most of the last twenty years, so he knows what happens when well-meaning Americans tell other countries how to run their affairs. He agreed that this idea of civilian advisers is just pathetic. I suppose it all goes back to the days when self-righteous puritans crossed the Atlantic to get away from the corruption of the Old World and set up their ideal society. They seem to have succeeded in handing down the idea that America is uniquely good, 'God's Own Country'.

It would be nice if we knew how to run our own countries. I came across a blog recently, saying that Labour has ruined this country 'as they always do'. In fact the financial collapse of the past two years is the long-term result of decisions taken in 1979, when Mrs Thatcher came to power. She subscribed to the thoery that countries progress from a primitive state in which they mainly produce raw materials, through an industrial stage, to become finally a 'service economy' that earns its way in the world by supplying services such as banking and insurance. Her government set about systematically demolishing the regulations that controlled the financial sector. The City has since just grown and grown. Labour's great mistake - and it was heartily embraced by Brown - was to continue this policy to the bitter end.

Barking mad!

It was very sad to see Americans on TV barking at each other over health care reform. They really seem to hate each other. One young man yelled at a 50-something stranger that she was too old to survive under Obama's system. There are lunatic claims that public provision is nazism or communism - or both!

The town-hall meeting looks like anything but democracy, more like a lynch-mob. There seems to be no procedure, no formal proposing and opposing of a motion, just a roomful of people shouting at the tops of their voices. How can you have democracy when people won't even let each other speak, let alone listen to what they say.

I begin to despair of America. Perhaps the only way to save the world from its excessive weight is for the US economy to collapse. It used to seem that sooner or later there must be a run on the dollar, but no country dares to sell some of its dollars for fear of seeing the rest lose their value. And one of Saddam Hussein's 'crimes' was wanting to be paid for oil in euros.

Equality

I've just read The spirit level: why more equal societies almost always do better by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. It is a brilliant book, though I'd like to have had more information on some of their graphs. The conclusion is that great inequality such as exists in America and Britain makes most aspects of life worse for everyone and not just for the poorest.

I conclude that Obama's effort to reform health-care in America is misplaced; the prime objective should be to reduce the levels of inequality, after which the cost of health care would be much reduced. He is risking defeat on a reform that will make only a marginal difference. The same applies to the British NHS, which has become a National Sickness Service, struggling to pay for a lot of treatments that ought never to have become necessary.

Looking back I wonder where Britain took a wrong turning. Back in the 1950s and 60s we seemed to be becoming a less unequal society; many people from poor backgrounds were rising in society and there was a lot more trust. Perhaps the greatest mistake of the Attlee government in the 1940s was to leave ownership of the newspapers in the hands of millionaires; they should have facilitated trustee ownership. Also, that was the moment to take away the charitable status of public schools, which have never been for the public in general.

Mrs Thatcher knew who she owed her success to, and one of her main projects was to make newspaper ownership more profitable and to allow combined ownership of different media. The result has been a general dumbing down of the sources of information and the victory of the hollow celebrity culture. Can the internet help to find solutions? Take a look at the website of the book: www.equalitytrust.org.uk

Back!

Sorry (if there's anyone to apologize to!) - I'd almost forgotten I had a blog. Partly because it doesn't seem to get any comments, which makes it a lonely business. I've been very busy writing the ecology book that I've promised myself to do. I've drafted 14 chapters out of 18, but some of the early ones will have to be substantially rewritten because the project evolves as it goes along.

Having stopped reading newspapers and listening to the Today programme (because we have a washing-up machine, so I don't spend time at the sink in the morning), I have had to fall back on Channel 4 for the best of a bad bunch of TV news programmes. At the moment we have 20 minutes a day on Afghanistan, where our troops were supposed to go "without a shot fired". Now they talk about us having to stay for 40 years.

When are these idiot politicians going to understand that occupation is the problem? Ever since Lloyd-George decided to take over the Ottoman lands we've had nothing but trouble. Now, instead of seeing that invasion was a mistake, they are talking about how to dig in further. And with the recession, army recruitment is booming. I am staggered by the remilitarization of British culture. Back in the 1960s we thought we were going to turn into a peaceful country like Switzerland or Norway.

Part of the trouble is that it seems to pay off. Having left Parliament to a standing ovation, Prof Blair is now combines five jobs - Peace Envoy to the Middle East(!!!), Advocate for Africa, Adviser on Climate Change, Iraq Consultant to J P Morgan (he knows such a lot about oil!) and Professor of Religious (sic) Studies at Yale. And he hopes to become President of Europe!!!! It makes you dizzy!