'We're alright, Jack'

Simon Heffer's recent column on American cultural imperialism is not up to his standard. While he makes some good points, much of what he says is professional griping with alarming generalizations. He changes tone toward the end, almost as if he were apologizing for the previous shoddy reporting. Most importantly, by challenging Dave's statement about your being our junior partner in WWII he brings more attention to it than it deserves.

There has been entirely too much bitching about the US over there with the end result being we over here are becoming victims of your propaganda. It seemed to have started with the BP situation and alleged widespread UK bashing. Now its our cultural imperialism. All Simon has to do to dispel the cultural imperialism thought is to listen to some of our TV and radio adverts with their variety of British accents trying to subtly convince us that if a UK accented person flogs product A, it must be good; after all, the Brits endorse it.

Simon's moaning reminded me of my 18th year where I found myself in a cold and damp youth hostel in Earl's Court. The matron, complete with dingy gray dress and head wrap warned me that I was to behave myself as she knew full well what we Yanks were up to. She then went on to complain about our violation of the tea ceremony by the use of tea bags. It was the first time I ever heard the expression 'ducky' which, I surmised, meant me.

Let it go Simon, and we will get along just fine. Remember, the big complaint about America only a few years ago was that we were completely void of culture. Now we have so much we are exporting it. And the very idea that the Yanks are more foreign than the Frogs or the Italians, well I never. Might I expect that some Lincolnshireman will one day hang a monkey claiming he thought it was an American? My message to Simon, Dave, and all, is we (you and us) are all right, Jack. Now to business.

BP is decidedly page three news. The first of two relief wells is about to penetrate the drill stem of the DH well and has everything in place waiting for a change in the weather. We had a bit of a scare from tropical depression Bonnie which turned out to be a tempest in a teapot. The BP Lockerbie connection is lost on most readers and a bit too intangible to induce anything but apathy.

Larger headlines revealed that BP is about to start a deep oil well off the Libyan coast. To most of us here, this means that the Libyans had better beware as BP is not very good a deepwater drilling. To others, it hints at a warm relationship between BP and Qadaffi. Your welcome insights into the Libyan connection reinforce my conclusion that it is indeed done and dusted and should be left alone. I especially like Paul Foot's footnote about the Lockerbie bomber's lack of guilt.

It is quite certain now that Afghanistan has morphed into an unpopular enterprise. O convinced us during the early months of his administration that we needed to defeat al-Qaida who, along with bin Laden were holed up like wild west outlaws in mountain caves. Little by little we all realized that al-Qaida is like a ball of mercury capable of changing shape and location before our very eyes. Now, we are left holding the Afghanistan bag full of Talabans. One of our generals responded to the question of how long it will take to train Afghani security forces replied with the observation that they can't read and they can't shoot. Moreover, the national police force trainees are the primary source of ammunition for the Taliban.

I also agree with Dave that we should get out of Afghanistan ASAP. Let Karzai deal with the buggers and let them all stew in their own ignorance and convictions. O has been severely criticized as of late, and at last, for having failed miserably to focus on problem number one here, the economy. He ratcheted up the war, he proved we still can introduce health reforms, he constructed a finance reform bill, but he did not attack the job situation, the lack of credit and the underlying factors acting to protract this, our great recession.

Ben Bernanke's recent statement that he is unusually uncertain about an accelerated economic recovery does not help. My call is that Ben is making a rather clumsy effort at Greenspan-speak.

Apropos to your genetically-modified mosquito note, we have just discovered that incidents of dengue fever in Florida are more serious than previously thought. Indeed, the Florida is now officially the host of dengue bearing mossies as the illness can no longer be attributed to contact with visitors from the tropics. Well done Florida. We can now classify the mossie imports along with the Burmese boa constrictors that infest the Everglades. What's next, big cats, imported vipers, the odd orangutan?