Flashing amber, crossroads ahead

Present-day America is neutral at best towards its allies:

The Obama administration’s decision to remain neutral in the dispute between Great Britain and Argentina over the Falkland Islands is a shameful decision that will go down very badly across the Atlantic. As The Times has just reported, Washington has point blank refused to support British sovereignty over the Falklands, and is adopting a strictly neutral approach.

Writing as a British husband and father of Americans, here's the deal: I don't care if Obama betrays my country. I don't want his approval, nor Hillary Clinton's, nor the approval of the rest of the clowns who represent America today. But it does behove other Americans to support Britain against the likes of Argentina and Venezuela. So Palin, Romney, Limbaugh, Beck and other decent Americans who are naturally focusing inwards right now, speak up when it matters. If not, then you lose people like me.

In 1956 America betrayed Britain, France and Israel over Suez while we waged war against the Arab nationalist, Nasser. That betrayal became a deep psychological motive for many British conservatives to pull away from America and creep towards the essentially anti-American EU. That tension was the deepest motif of Thatcher's struggle in the Conservative Party and led directly to her political downfall as she was stabbed in the back by the likes of Heseltine and Howe.

My opinion doesn't matter, but if you lose me, you lose many British conservatives and will find yourselves weakened even after you recover from your current sickness. I do not speak of the British governing class, they are mostly as bad as yours. This is more important.

A more emotional view from the author of "How to Lose Friends and Alienate People".

British politics

A General Election looms, so naturally the press is full of demeaning stories about politicians (all true). There's a labyrinthine meme about Gordon Brown as bully. 'Bullying' is the new black in un-pc vices, often in the eye of the beholder, and so a deliciously malleable accusation for modern witchfinders. Since the witchfinders are usually Nu-Labour apparatchiks, it's apt that Brown is on the receiving end of strongly sourced charges that he hits his flunkies and pushes secretaries around. His answer is to go all weepy in a cringeworthy, humanising interview with Piers Morgan. It is sad, but what kind of scumbag uses such personal grief to win votes ? But this reconstruction from Taiwan almost makes me want to vote for him. If he socks Obama between now and May, then I will.

Disgrace

I don't know why I am ashamed by Obama's insults to the Dalai Lama; I'm not even American and he's equally contemptuous to my country. But I am.


Maybe the Dalai Lama is the wrong religion. Maybe Obama wants to appease China. Probably both.



Altho the Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, can be a bit of a twit on political theory, his holiness and symbolism exceed those of any other living leader despite having the Nobel Peace Prize. Americans who see their President treating him with disdain may weep to recall that the Dalai Lama holds the Congressional Gold Medal....like George Washington. It makes me angry to write it, but the Dalai Lama would be the last to take offence. He'd see it as no problem or Obama's problem.



The mystique of the Dalai Lama in the psyche of adventurous boys of my generation is hard to overstate. 'Seven Years in Tibet' by Heinrich Harrer is a sensational story guaranteed to make a boy head for the mountains; I stress the book not the movie. In part it deals with the moment when remote Buddhism met modernity and modernity's monster in the attic, communism. That tragedy is personified by this man whom Obama puts out with the trash.



When one day Obama is awarded the Nobel Prize for Phoniness and the Prize for Narcissism and the Prize for Appeasement, let there be added a Nobel Prize for Gracelessness. Then let the medal's mould be smashed.

Sherpas are Tibetan Buddhists who emigrated across the Himalayas to Nepal 300 years ago. Their strength, bravery and sense of fun were qualities I read about as a boy and found to be real when I first climbed in the Himalayas. As a palate cleanser here's a picture of my friend, DaGombu Sherpa, in front of the Everest massif: