BACK FROM GREAT BRITAIN

Just got back yesterday afternoon from a wonderful trip to Great Britain. The nine-city (town) trip was arranged by GN member Dave Knight who drove me over 1,500 miles from Leeds to London and then on to Glasgow in Scotland and then back to Yorkshire. In all I spoke to a couple hundred people, did interviews on radio (including BBC), and saw wonderful rolling green countryside lined with stone walls and stone homes built hundreds of years ago. The picture above is of the U.S. space spy satellite base at Menwith Hill in North Yorkshire where I spoke in the rain last Saturday at a protest organized in conjunction with Keep Space for Peace Week. Then the next day, Sunday, Dave took me out to the moors where we joined a tree planting within earshot of the Fylingdales U.S. radar system that is being upgraded for Star Wars. A weekend peace camp was set up just outside the gate at Fylingdales and I was asked to plant the tree in memory of an American jazz musician who had moved to the area years ago and had recently died. He was a long-time supporter of the many peace camps and demonstrations at Fylingdales.

While on the trip, during the Q & A following my talks, I was always asked why the American people allow the U.S. to go around the world doing preemptive military invasions, and now sit back and watch plans for domination of space. How do the American people respond to your message I was asked over and over again? What are they doing to stop this "nonsense?" How can they let Bush get away with this? Why does the U.S. think they have the right to destroy the U.N.? Why don't Americans speak out more about corporate globalization?


I had answers for each of these questions, as you can imagine. But how would you answer them if you had been in my shoes? What would you tell a room of questioning Brits? How would you respond when asked why Americans let the corporations take over our democracy?