Current mood:	calm
Current music:	Talking Heads

OK so I am quoting Michael Portillo with approval. I am beyond help. Actually my liking for him has been sneaking slowly up on me, compounded by that TV programme a few months' back when he tried being a single parent mother of several children for a week. Anyway, he wrote an article for the Sunday Times yesterday where he talks plainly but with feeling about his Spanish family, and going to the vigil outside the London Spanish embassy. The final few paragraphs are the ones that caused me to cut the article out.

I guess it may have been Al-Qaeda and I guess they may wish to intimidate the public in every democracy so as to weaken the efforts of their governments in fighting back against terror. It’s important we get something straight. No country can opt out of the struggle against terror, sitting on the sidelines like a wallflower at a village dance.
The Saudis who were blown up in Riyadh and the Moroccans slaughtered in Casablanca were not murdered because their governments stood shoulder-to-shoulder with America in Iraq. They were massacred because Al-Qaeda aims to replace their governments with fundamentalist regimes. Terrorism did not start when we ousted Saddam. It didn’t even begin with September 11, 2001. New York was attacked when America was perceived to be unwilling to defend itself, after a decade of weak responses to Al-Qaeda atrocities and to defiance from Saddam.
The terrorists offer us no way out. They do not guarantee that if we distance ourselves from America or bring peace between Israel and the Palestinians they will leave us alone. Appeasement would make us more vulnerable, not less.

This is why I started this blog I guess. Despite being educated and articulate, I don't seem to be able to express myself very well when it comes to politics, which is why despite my political activism, I never tried to become an MP - I couldn't face Question Time. I have an aversion to political arguments. But I do want to argue against a lot of things that chattering, liberal middle class people like me are supposed to believe unquestioningly - namely the evils of globalisation, multinationals, GM food and now the war on terrorism. So with a blog I get to quote those people that do articulate these arguments so much better than I would, and I suppose try to formulate or re-articulate those arguments for myself.