Up until this point I haven't mentioned THE WAR because I haven't been sure that it fits into the parameters of this project. War is about racism normally of course - in order to justify killing people rhetoric about the enemy's subhuman-ness proliferates - but this war and the rhetoric around it is well trained on the individual Saddam Hussein. In fact, the Islamaphobia that was rampant just a few weeks ago has quietened down. The usual ways of igniting a nation's fear have been left behind and now we are told to focus on the individual Saddam and the individual soldiers (OURS of course).
The anti-immigration and anti-asylum venom uttered by the press and Members of the Government has ended. My guess is that will last until we are 'at peace' again and searching for a new enemy to distract us from reality. My MP, Oona King, and the neighbouring MP, Jim Fitzpatrick are both pro-war. Baroness Uddin of Bethnal Green, member of the House of Lords, urges us to put pressure on the Prime Minister to end this war. She is Muslim. The other 2 aren't. Is that relevant, I don't know. The church is also against the war.
I have been quite depressed since this war began. All the anti-racist things I try to do in my life seem pointless. On the one hand the government sponsors anti-racist initiatives and on the other it actually incites racism. A Muslim cleric goes to prison for 9 years for incitement to hatred. He'll then be deported to the Carribean, where he was born while David Blunkett, Home Secretary almost weekly incited fear, hatred, racism and implies all sorts of racial and ethnic slurs and yet he is still in Government, a member of the Cabinet.