Bill Sykes' Newsletter
from America.
(January 2005)
An ex-Brit gives his views - (without
fear or favor) - of the American Scene
Christmas
in Iraq:
Christmas,or
no Christmas - the war took its toll of both American
and Iraqi lives, starting with the deaths of fifteen
American soldiers, and seven civilian support personnel,
(plus the wounding of at least sixty other individuals),
when a suicide bomber detonated a deadly explosive
device in a military mess tent  just as the Americans
were sitting down to lunch. This deadly attack occurred
on Wednesday the 22nd of December, 2004 at the American
Military Forward Operating Base Marez, located near
the Mosul airport.
The toll taken on the Iraqi people
has yet to be accounted for.
I feel the need to repeat a verse from the poem by
Mr. Lawrence Vaincourt of Canada. This time the words
of the poem are aimed not at what some of the Iraqi people
declare to be the occupiers of their country - but the
Iraqi people themselves who condone the killing of the
young American soldiers who believe, rightly or wrongly,
that they came to Iraq in order to free the Iraqi people
from the tyranny of the Saddam Hussein regime and institute
democracy in a land that never has had a democratic governing body. (The
full poem can be found in the December
issue of "View from America").
It’s the ones who build the weapons, it’s the ones who lust for
fame,
It’s the ones who hate, without a reason why,
Who support the awful carnage that the world still knows as war,
And feel its right that someone else should die.
Christmas 2004 in America:
There are
many families in America this Christmas time who will
mourn the deaths of their loved ones killed in Iraq,
and there are many Iraqi families who  also will mourn
their own dead, and it is with a heavy heart that I also
mourn the deaths of many people worldwide regardless
of their backgrounds, rich or poor, Muslim, Christian,
Arab, or Jew, believer or unbeliever, and any other person
or persons who have died loyally serving their country,
or perhaps in my mind a greater tragedy - all the people
who have given their lives serving their political or
religious masters for the wrong reasons.
The
rich get richer and the poor get poorer - yes, there
are poor people who live in this affluent society even
though the people of the world at large perceive America
to be a land of the rich and famous.
It has been reported that the rich are pouring an excessive
amount of money into the up-scale retailers such as
Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue who have seen their
sales, (profits), soar this holiday season whilst the
discount  stores such as Wal-Mart and the lower priced
stores are struggling, because many of the lower echelon
people are having to contend with lower incomes and
higher prices, including the cost of food, energy, and healthcare to name
but a few. The top 20% of households, ranked by income
from all sources and earning more than $127K per annum
account for more than 40% of all consumer spending
this holiday season.
We welcome feedback about any of the contents of these
newsletters. Please send all correspondence to bill_sykes@huddersfield1.co.uk
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