London undone - but Blair isn't done
The London blasts took on the hectic quality that has now come to be expected of international network coverages of what are deemed epic events. 9/11 hogged the screen for weeks, so did the tsunami. Now, the London blasts are leaving room only for paid advertisements extolling the qualities of pimple sprays and exercise-machines that deliver everything but Nirvana.

But the local news was a respite, and turning onto one channel, the discovery was made that America is not funding the P-TOMS for the North East of this country. It is illegal to do so, considering that the LTTE has been declared a terrorist organization, said a communiqué from the United States embassy.

In one small way at least, this was ironic. Here we hear that London is been bombed and blitzed, in the worst attack on the city since the smoky days of the World War. But there is no communiqué from the British embassy saying that it shall not contribute any funds to the tsunami mechanism in Sri Lanka because the LTTE is a terrorist organization.

I switched the channels half expecting Tony Blair to say from Gleneagles that all terrorist organizations will be viewed with equal suspicion from now on, or something to that effect, but all that I saw was my namesake Monita Rajpal on CNN asking a hastily buttonholed expert on terrorism ''what could have been done to prevent these attacks?''
The terrorism expert was expected to say the usual in terms of what's printed in the terrorism prevention manuals, which is full of gobbledygook such as Orange Alert Yellow Alert and Maximum to Full Preparedness.

The expert didn't say "As long as Western politicians wage their wars and their colleagues in the Muslim world watch in silence, young people will be attracted to the groups who carry out random acts of revenge..'' He did not say "if Tony Blair did not wage his war, this attack would have been preventable.''

But that's' precisely what Tariq Ali said, hidden from those pummelling network broadcasts and the surreptitiously interrupting pimple cream adverts. While Tony Blair hectored the world audience from Gleneagles with a red tie which contrasted badly with the somber expression on his face, Tariq Ali was saying that Tony Blair got his analysis wrong.
Ali wrote: At the beginning of the G8, Blair suggested "poverty was the cause of terrorism". It is not so. The principal cause of this violence is the violence being inflicted on the people of the Muslim world. And unless this is recognized, the horrors will continue.''

In the world of pimple advertisements interspersed with expert comments on terrorism, a man like Ali is essentially shielded from public view. But his comments are reminiscent of a racy comment by Malcolm when John. F. Kennedy was assassinated. Said X. pithily: "The chickens have come home to roost.''

Tony Blair's chickens came home to roost, and that's what Tariq Ali is trying to say with a little less acerbic language than Malcolm X's. (Malcolm X stirred up a hornet's nest when he said "chickens have come home to roost'' about John F. Kennedy after the U.S. president was assassinated, possibly alluding to the alleged Kennedy -backed C.I.A. attempts on Fidel Castro's life.) America' chickens have always come home to roost, which is probably why the American government today is in a rear-guard, not being inclined to fund the Sri Lankan P-TOMS --- because it is ''illegal'' and the LTTE has been banned by US law.
But, the American ambassador was not unmindful of the fact that the agenda of America is never complete without the catspaw of its allies. Soon after the US embassy made clear last week that it cannot contribute to the P-TOMS fund, ambassador Lunstead in Colombo issued a clarification in which he stated - - we presume he wrote with a straight face -- "however other donors can contribute to the fund and America approves of the P-TOMS arrangement.''

Between the pimple adverts, its Tony Blair who gets up then and speaks from Gleneagles about terrorism as if it was something the poor sods of the world have got upto because of a slight omission on the part of the G8: the fact that its rich men were a tad negligent about the poverty in the rest of the world. ("The cause of terrorism is poverty.")
Blair has America's approval to say this, as much as Blair has the approval of America's Ambassador in Sri Lanka to contribute to the Sri Lankan tsunami P-TOMS, even though America itself will avoid doing so due to the technicality of the law which makes the LTTE a terrorist organization!

Travelling on the British underground, I was always a bit anxious that the chickens may come home to roost in the London subway while I was there last year. The underground is a surreally competent place at least by standards of our transport, because, whatever the Londoners say about delays, I could set my watch by the train schedules. It is a place, also, as the Lonely Planet guidebook says, where people will apologize to you and say ''sorry' even if it is you who accidentally stepped on their feet.

So, a bomb there can easily be seen as an attack against something that's so cool and efficient that it will fundamentally be a civilisational attack. But then, lives that ride on a train that comes on time are no more precious than lives that depend on late-coming and lethargic trains as in Colombo or Baghdad.

Plus, those days there were no long-playing pimple advertisements when the LTTE bombed the train in Dehiwela -- after which the British government issued a communiqué along with the American government that the government of Sri Lanka should immediately negotiate with the LTTE and "arrive at a political settlement''.

Those days, only we had our umbrage against saboteurs and bombers, and while we lived with that, the British and the Americans encouraged us to deal with these saboteurs and bombers. This of course amounted to spawning terrorism in our lands - - and that's discounting other incentives such as provision of arms and asylum, all of which were presents that came the way of these subversive organizations from Western governments.

But when 9/11 happened, the Americans had to start waging that war on terrorism. But, it could not retract from what it was used to however - - which was the spawning of terrorism in other parts of the world. But, since America cannot live in schizophrenia and wage war against terrorism and spawn terrorism at the same time, America got others like Blair to do the job of encouraging bombers and saboteurs in our countries - - which is why America says other donors (read England Germany etc.,) should be encouraged to contribute to the Sri Lankan P-TOMS which is signed with a banned terrorist organization in the US - - even as England itself is being blitzed by other terrorists.

That's why Blair has got it all mixed up -- the poor bloke as Tariq Ali points out has a strange association of ideas. Being in Gleneagles, he thinks that terrorism has to do with money as money is all that the rich boys club up in Scotland can think of. When terror strikes at the heart of London -- all he can say in-between the pimple advertisements is that the terrorists will never win. He cannot upset the rich man's club because its Captain, Bush is looking over his shoulder, literally. He can't' say 'George, we might as well rethink the war.''

That's because America sees all in economic terms, and it has trained Blair to articulate that message almost by rote. Ergo Blair's announcement "poverty was the cause of terrorism". It is not so, as Tariq Ali says. But Bush doesn't like Blair saying things as they are, which is that poverty has little to do with global terrorism - - its his and Bush's war on Muslims that has spawned it. It won't look good to say the truth -- alongside all the money that Americans make with those pimple advertisements.

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