[continued from previous message] 
  
 I'm different from that, and most British people are different from that, 
 when you reach them. The blood of everyone is worth the same. God didn't 
 differentiate between a dead person in London killed by sheets of flying 
 glass and red-hot razor sharp steel and someone who died the same death in 
 Baghdad. These deaths are the same. And war of the kind that we have seen 
 - -- unjustified, illegal, based on lies, in Iraq, is terrorism of a 
 different kind. Just because the President, who ordered it is wearing a 
 smart suit rather than the garb of an Islamist in the Tora Bora doesn't 
 make their orders more legitimate than orders if they were given from bin 
 Laden. 
  
 JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, George Galloway, I'd like to bring back George 
 Monbiot into the discussion. You just came back from covering the G8 
 Summit. And, of course, the press attention before yesterday was focused 
 not just on the summit but on the massive protests of the British anti-war 
 movement that was outside the summit, as well, and the anti-globalization 
 forces that had massed to protest the summit. Your sense, George Monbiot, 
 of the impact on that movement of these attacks? 
  
 GEORGE MONBIOT: Well, we have completely fallen off the news agenda. I 
 completely understand that. I'm not complaining about it. It's just what 
 happens, but unfortunately for what we were trying to do, we were really 
 making some gains. We were beginning to mobilize a lot of attention not 
 just to the issues that we were initially complaining about -- that is, 
 the tremendous power of the G8 nations over the rest of the world, power 
 exercised through the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the 
 U.N. Security Council -- but we were also very successfully articulating 
 our dissent from the line taken by Bob Geldof and Bono and the other 
 leaders of the G8 and of the Make Poverty History campaign, which has been 
 quite extraordinary and exceptional in many ways. They have managed to 
 mobilize billions of people around the world, and push the issues of 
 Africa and poverty to the very top of the political agenda. 
  
 But those of us, the many thousands of us who met in Edinburgh and then at 
 Gleneagles in order to protest against the G8 Summit drew a very sharp 
 distinction between what we were doing and what we felt that Bono and 
 Geldof were doing, which was protesting to ask the G8 Summit for favors, 
 to beg, as we saw it, for a few more crumbs from the rich man's table. And 
 in doing so, we felt that they were fetishizing the power of the G8 
 leaders. They were saying, you have the world in your hands, and you must 
 now use this power to save that world from itself. Of course, what they 
 weren't talking about was saving the world from themselves, from the G8 
 leaders and the disastrous policies they're pursuing in Africa and 
 elsewhere. 
  
 And we were -- we felt and had expressed very strongly that the Live 8 and 
 Make Poverty History campaigns in many ways were taking us back to an 
 Edwardian era of tea and sympathy, that they were replacing our political 
 campaigns with philanthropic campaigns. And they were handling the G8 
 leaders as if they were the potential saviors of the world, while 
 completely ignoring and sidelining the harm that they were doing. And it's 
 one of the -- one of the effects of these dreadful bombings is that just 
 as we were really making progress with that, it's now completely off the 
 agenda. That's fair enough, but it's just an unfortunate side effect. 
  
 JUAN GONZALEZ: And Stephen Grey of the Sunday Times, your sense of, again, 
 the impact, long term, of these attacks on British society, and on this 
 rather large and developing both anti-war movement and a movement 
 questioning the growing gap -- the economic gap in the world. 
  
 STEPHEN GREY: That's a big question. I think that -- I think the British 
 people are quite calm about dealing with these matters. I think, you know, 
 there will be some reaction. Inevitably, there will be some hate 
 generated. There will be, you know, attacks on the Muslim community, but I 
 think that these are, just as the terrorist attacks, perpetrated by very 
 small minorities. We have a very multicultural society here in London, and 
 I think that most people very well understand the very small numbers of 
 people involved. They realize that the terrorists probably disguised 
 themselves very effectively as normal citizens here, so then they will see 
 that there is no need to target anyone who, you know, looks overtly 
 Muslim. I think that we'll look at it in quite a broad sense, I think 
 sorry, quite a calm sense. 
  
 And broadly speaking, I think that as time progresses, they will obviously 
 think about the causes of all of this, but there will be a reaction. I 
 mean, the investigation itself is going to be very difficult, obviously. 
 We have seen no large scale roundup of suspects this morning. The police 
 are trying to investigate this with great sensitivity, but obviously, in 
 order to get to these people, they are going to have to make all kinds of 
 inquiries. If it does turn out that an extreme Muslim group is involved, 
 then they will have to engage with the Muslim community, have to to get 
 information, and no doubt, they'll have to -- they will be arresting 
 people, and that will cause some reaction and disturbance. 
  
 It's very difficult thing to investigate, and clearly there will be some 
 backlash. And I think everyone will have to stay quite resolute, which I 
 think they will, but it will not be an easy time, and clearly, there may 
 also be further demands for much tougher police action, security powers, 
 etc., although ultimately, I'm not convinced that through tougher security 
 and essentially a kind of semi-military response to terrorism that you 
 deal with the underlying causes, which -- and stop the recruitment of 
 these people, which is ultimately what we need to do, because as we have 
 seen, al Qaeda as an organization is becoming more of an idea that is 
 inspiring people around the world. And it's no good simply arresting 
 people you regard as a leader of this organization. You have to address 
 why it is that people are popping up all over subscribing to the ideology 
 and perhaps having no link whatsoever to the leadership in, now probably 
 in Afghanistan or if not arrested somewhere, and therefore it's the ideas 
 that are going to become paramount. And it's actually showing that the 
 ideology of al Qaeda is bankrupt and that the West has an alternative 
 which can also appeal to the Muslims who feel dispossessed. 
  
 JUAN GONZALEZ: If I may -- if I may interrupt just to get a final comment, 
 a quick final comment from George Galloway in terms of how you see the 
 impact of this on Tony Blair. You were expelled from the Labour Party for 
 your opposition to your strident opposition to the war in Iraq. Your sense 
 of how this will impact on Tony Blair? 
  
 GEORGE GALLOWAY: Well, it could go either way. It could give him a new 
 lease of political life. He may decide that his declaration of impending 
 retirement sometime in this Parliament needs to be set aside, or if 
 there's a Spanish-like phenomenon now sweeps the country, it could mean 
 the political end of him very soon. I hope it's the latter, because I 
 think we need a change of policy. And we're not going to get a change of 
 policy without a change of leader, because the leader, both here and in 
 your country, is so utterly identified with the policy that we have been 
  
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 --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05 
  * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)