In England, at the moment, the news is actually exploding. When this blog goes out tomorrow morning, it may have actually disappeared altogether. The newspapers will collapse altogether. Then on Saturday, people will come blinking into a new dawn, and be drying animal hides on the roads.
They say a blog is like a public diary. I don’t know who says this, but they do it with a sneer, because they look down condescendingly on casual outpourings of half-baked, immature thoughts as if they were somehow less useful than other kinds of journalism.
But my blog is more of a non-public diary; it’s like a cult diary, or maybe just a normal diary. I can hear the faint sound of a news explosion on the other side of the channel, but over here, in this quiet continental room, there is nothing but the hypocrisy of another German arms deal ringing in the ears.
This time it is 200 tanks, sold to Saudi Arabia. It’s not the biggest arms deal that Germany is currently involved in. Germany is also helping to build Eurofighters for that dictatorship, but tanks are different. Firstly, they’re very, very German. Completely built by German companies, and Panzers are associated with the German army in a frightening way. Secondly, they’re very good for breaking up pro-democracy demonstrations. Here’s a helpful video in case you have some pesky demonstrators on your road.
