another day, another PR exercise

It's 75 degrees out. The Charles has completely melted and people are prancing around in T shirts and shorts. The weather is just so damn weird. It feels like when I first got here last year, in September.. it feels like I should be getting ready to go home.

So, I was trotting over to the KSG this evening to get one of my coursepacks out because I have four - FOUR! - papers due next week and I thought I'd better get cracking on my humungous pile of readings, and as I'm walking towards the entrance I see policemen, people milling around with flyers and banners etc, and I think, sigh, what are they protesting about this time? When I first got to the UK in the autumn of 2002 they were protesting against the impending war in Iraq. When I visited Paris right before I left Europe in the summer of 2005 they were protesting against the war in Iraq (which'd come and not gone). And today, outside the KSG, they were again protesting against the war in Iraq and demanding that the US troops be brought home. I thought, yeah, that's a great idea, pull out now and leave the Iraqis half fucked over.

Muttering to myself I head towards the entrance to Littauer, trailing behind a group of suited men, and the one in the middle turns back and holds the door open for me. I look up, mumble 'thank you', and - stare. He's tall, salt and pepper hair, long furrowed face... and it finally hits me:

It's John Kerry.

And I think (somewhat bimbotically):

'AWESOME!! Senator John Kerry aka US 2004 Presidential Election Also-Ran just opened the door for me. ME!'

He looks just the way he looks on TV. Tall, narrow face, low gravelly voice, rather fidgety. He speaks... like politicians speak. Turns out he was here for a forum and documentary showing on Iraqi war veterans, PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) and the low quality of psychological care they're getting from the military after they come back to the US. The documentary was alright, I thought - less in-your-face than Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911, but also less.. I don't know, sharp? I just didn't feel that they were saying anything I didn't already know - that war is shit, it ruins lives, veterans don't get the support and respect they deserve both from the military and the fickle American public. There were the 'usual' tearjerker personal stories: the story of one couple's struggle to get their son admitted to the military hospital for PTSD treatment because he was clearly depressed and suicidal, and a threat to both himself and others, only to have the military tell them that they couldn't treat their son until he got his alcolism under control - and it's a bit like, what are you, stupid? People drink precisely because they are in pain and can't cope. Later on, he stops drinking for a bit, and his mother quickly tries to set him up for an appointment. It takes them three weeks to arrange an appointment for him, and the letter arrives from the hospital the same day he's found hanging from a beam in his basement. And I think - yes, maybe they should pull out before more lives and families are wrecked.

And then the Important White Men come up on stage and mouth platitudes about the bravery of the US troops and the support that good, responsible politicians like Sen. Kerry and the good,God-fearing American public are giving them.


It's hard. And I wonder what all of this is for, how it can possibly lead us out of the morass of lies and violence that is now Iraq.

OH wait, US mid-term elections coming up!
Now it all makes sense; the world goes on spinning on its self-absorbed axis.