There Will Be No More Letters From America.....
Life and Living it seems has come to an end after three glorious years...
But it seems like aeons ago that I started writing this weekly Letter From America.
Having been asked to do so by my great friend Mick Hobbs, after the death of Alastair Cooke,
who had been doing so on BBC Radio 4 for about 900 years....
How could I refuse?
All of my missives have been broadcast in episodes of Life and Living, on Resonance Radio.
Here are a selection.
It's a mixed up muddled up shook up world. War is over. If you want it.
Keep it up.
Stephen Wright, New York, 2006
LFA 7/25/06
Hello and welcome to this week's Letter From America, which is a bit of a misnomer as I'm actually coming to you from a hotel room in Seoul, South Korea.
As I sit here looking out of the hotel window, staring straight ahead, north, toward the border a mere 56 miles away, I can't help but think about the crazy world in which we're living.
Why do you think countries like Iran, for example, are so keen on obtaining nuclear weapons?
Simply for the same reason North Korea has; the USA keeps the shit out of the way....
There was a film made in Britain some twenty five years ago depicting what would happen in the event of a nuclear war.
That nuclear war, though then against Russia, started with complete breakdown in the middle east.
The news reports depicted then are exactly the same as today's reality.
With the world seemingly mad, doing the simplest thing like walking down the street and buying groceries seems absurd.
But of course the real absurdity, the real madness, is the fucked up world of men, as it always has been.
Those big boys and their big big toys.
That is the most appropriate use of the word mad, isn't it?
When applied to people who can't cope with the world, that's not madness, that's sanity.
That's most of us.
The most stupid ass pricks are in politics
They rule the roost with rat-run minds
Oozing bile from every orifice
We give them carte blanche
It's suicide
The most stupid ass pricks are in politics
Kick against them!
Get up on the other side of the bed without putting on blinders, the world is a beautiful place, full of peace, love, and optimism.
That's the world I choose to live in.
It's just as real, if not more so, than the other world, the world of fear, of subjugation, of bullshit orange alerts.
I have chosen to live in America.
Why, of course you'll ask?
Because that's what America is.
It's got nothing to do with Bush and his cronies.
I see Condoleeza Rice, well known bare faced liar, is going to try and do something with Israel and Lebanon.
Do what, exactly?
Give Israel more money, more weapons, then sell some more weapons to Hezbollah?
It's all a load of Hezbollocks.
Remember the Iran-Contra affair?
Oliver North selling weapons to Iran and giving the money to the Contra rebels in El Salvador?
Remember???
Generation after generation after generation always hoping to be last to truly fuck things up.
So it goes on.
But....
Wait....
GWB and Clinton are just about to turn 60!
Not our generation...!!
Come on kids!!!!!
So.
Seoul....
Well, it's not that it's just a bit different from what I am used to, it's totally different, and, as when I first went to Japan, I experienced such severe culture shock on my first venture out that I had to run straight back to the relative safety of my hotel room, just like from where I'm coming to you now.
It seems like Earth, but it could be..... Jupiter?
Actually it's interesting how the atmosphere of Venus will be identical to that of Earth if we carry on in our blinkered way.
Different as Seoul and it's people are though, I'm not inclined to go on a killing spree.
How bad do things have to get before we send all those boys off in a big blue boat and let them have their war alone?
Not so bad we can't do anything about it, let's hope.
One thing is crystal clear...
We have to grow up, and fast.
So, that's it for this week, and today I'm drinking freshly squeezed orange juice to you.
Got to get yer vitamins, go to feel the sun, got to see the horizon sometime, to keep yer mind alive and free.
It is a mixed up muddled up shook up world, but war is over if you want it.
It really is that simple.
All we have to do is say that's enough.
Ok.
Keep it up!
(This was the last Letter From America to be broadcast on Life and Living to date.)
LFA 4/1/06
Hello and a very warm welcome to this, the Letter From America, coming to you today from our apartment here in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, New York City.
Drinking my early morning cup of tea, I flicked on the TV to BCAT, Brooklyn Community Access TV.
Two young men sat facing a static camera.
One of them stated that in the 60s, the 1960s, the peace movement had to fight for change, and that we now must fight again.
"But not with guns" said the other. "There are too many police out there."
He went on to bemoan the fact that the subways are plastered with notices stating that said police have the unconstitutional right to search any bag at any time.
He also remarked caustically that many people applaud the concept of racial profiling.
A man I previously had some time for said to me just the other day that we have to watch out for "non-caucasians".
So, what color are our two friends here, I hear you ask?
Not important.
As a couple of famous New Yorkers once exclaimed, if you sat in a bag and no-one could see if you were black or white, male or female, young or old, what you said would be the most important thing; real communication.
You see, if we really listened to each other the world would be a peaceful place.
Now wouldn't that be something.
I switched off the TV and flipped open my computer to see that Jill Caroll had been released.
A US journalist, kidnapped nearly three months previously, an interview with her, filmed by her captors, was posted on the internet on the day of her release.
She said she was well treated, not abused in any way.
She subsequently come under heavy criticism over here for this.
Two points:
1) If I was being held captive by a faction very unhappy about how they felt their people were being treated by my government, I might be in fear for my life and may say what I was told on camera to stay alive.
2) She may very well mean everything she said.
When did criticism of government over here in the so called free world become tantamount to treason?
When Bush and Blair decided they would go arm in arm into rapture.
In the name of God we do the worst things to each other.
As Bush's stormtroopers plan to tighten up immigration laws even tighter thousands of people marched across the Brooklyn Bridge in protest, and around the world.
This country was built by immigrants; hurt immigrants you hurt America.
Those famous New Yorkers I mentioned earlier - immigrants.
Everything good this country stands for is being eroded by a ship of fools.
Let's just cast them off!
Ok, that's it for this week, and I'm drinking a glass of vodka to you, made by the former bogeymen, Russia.
It is a mixed up muddled up shook up world alright.
All I want is the truth.
Keep it up.
LFA 11/11/05
Hello and welcome to this week's Letter from America, coming to you today from Norfolk, no, not Delia Smith country, but Norfolk Virginia.
Just a few minutes ago alleged president George W Bush landed at an army base in north east Pennsylvania, near Scranton,
uncomfortably close to where I am about to move.
Cheney, Dick Cheney, landed somewhere else close by, on a similar mission on this Veteran's Day.
Is it only me to whom this seems strange?
Surely those two should be in prison by now.
In this country we close our minds to so much.
War in our name.
Pain and mayhem.
Nowhere do we ignore what goes on more than in the homeland, Africa.
For example, do you know what goes on in Nigeria?
Do you know that a thousand people a week are being killed?
Do you know that 25 orphaned children are being abducted every week and forced to take up arms?
Do you know that many of these children are orphaned because, for their induction, they are forced to kill their parents, as corporations rape the land?
No? Well you do now, as do I after reading all about it only yesterday.
Admittedly I had to dig deep to uncover the information, finally unearthing it on an obscure website.
It's name? The BBC.
Remember AIDS? Millions of Africans don't either.
Why?
Because they're dead, left to die by a world with the medicine to prevent it, turning blind eyes.
Was it a dream? It seemed so real to me.....
Last night though was a beautiful night.
I was lying on the grass, shooting the breeze with John, when scoops of ice cream dropped into my lap.
I looked up to see Barbara, smiling.
"This is Barbara" I said. "She's my most favorite person in the world."
In a months time it'll be 25 years since his death.
A month ago he would have been 65.
I met Barbara on the 22nd of the 2nd month of 2002.
There sure has been Some Time in New York City....
Well, that just about wraps it up for this week, and this week I'm drinking a cup of tea to you.
All governments are liars and murderers.
You know.
There's nothing you can do that can't be done.
War is over, if you want it.
That easy.
Come on everybody...
Keep it up!
LFA 10/2/05
Well, hello again and welcome to this week's Letter From America, coming to you again from our apartment
here in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, New York City.
Fall has fallen.
No-one this year could bemoan the merging of the seasons.
We went from summer to sure fire autumn via a week of torrential rain.
As I type I'm huddled close to the stove, its rings ablaze, trying to glean as much heat as I can before I pass out from the fumes.
Yep, our bastard of a landlord (and aren't they all) has yet to turn on the heat in the building,
something he should have done four days ago.
How much rent do we pay to live in the city?
Oh, that week of torrential rain? Most of it poured through the ill-fitting windows in the apartment.
Still no sign of any repairs....
I don't live in Kashmir though.
Heard Margaret Thatcher was 80 the other day....
Having spent most of my twenties and much of my thirties with her and Reagan cracking the whip, and remembering the unbridled pain of those days, I caught myself almost fondly looking back....
Well, what do you expect from in the midst of the current nightmares?
That, listeners, is why I'm drinking wine, spo-dee-oh-dee drinking wine,
Slip that bottle to me.
That's it for this week.
It is a mixed up muddled up shook up world alright,
But I'm not dumb, I do understand.
All we have to do is say no, yes?
Keep it up!
LFA 9/19/05
Hello and welcome to Letter From America coming to you this week from a hotel room in San Francisco.
Alleged president George W Bush, as you will all know, made a prime time speech from New Orleans just the other day and vowed that the city and the Gulf Coast would be rebuilt as one of the largest reconstruction efforts in history.
What he failed to mention however, in his 30 minute speech, was that he has put his top political advisor Karl Rove (or Bush's brain as he otherwise known) in charge of the reconstruction.
It will come as no surprise that Haliburton are to be awarded the majority of the contracts for rebuilding the region.
Who is on the board of Haliburton?
Bush Snr and John Major, to name but a mad hatful. Bush boy and Blair will be there when they've finished laying waste to the ecosystem, saying "huh? "
The Guardian newspaper reported that 6.5 million gallons of oil have leaked into the floodwaters.
That combined with the 250,000 submerged cars....
A 73 year old woman remains in jail today on a $50,000 bond for stealing sausages worth $60.
Her and her 80 year old husband, stranded in a hotel, were doing what they were told, stocking up on food.
The maximum bond for petty theft has hereto been $500.
The person I am touring with this time, Kristin Hoffmann, was shown around the gay area of San Francisco today, an area pretty damned big and pretty damned wonderful.
But, she said, she saw a man, naked but for a leather thong, french kissing a dog.
I know, not an image I wanted in my head either, but I felt I had to share it with you.
Well, that was the fluffy last item that wraps it up for this week, and today I'm drinking a glass of good old fashioned Irish whiskey to you.
You know, it really is a mixed up muddled up shook up world, but hey, war is over, if you really want it.
Keep it up.
LFA 8/8/05
Hello and welcome to Letter from America coming to you today from Greenpoint, Brooklyn, New York City.
(Sound of a battle on a TV in the background)
Nowhereman: What? 1800 US soldiers dead, you say? Mmm... what's for dinner, Mexican or Japanese?
What? Yeah I'll have another beer, thanks.
What's that? Famine? Famine? Other countries?
This week I'm drinking a cup of tea to you. That'll make everything alright, right?
It is a mixed up muddled up shook up world but war is over if you want it.
It really is that simple.
LFA 6/10/05
Hello and welcome to Letter From America, coming to you on this day from a hotel room in Detroit, Michigan.
After an inexplicable tussle, she hung up on me.
Feels like my world has imploded.
I want to run away, but I am away.
The pain is excruciating.
I've just taken my medication - a big slug, double dose.
After the initial warmth of it's caress, I feel much much worse.
My head is full of voices....
"Call back. It'll be fine."
"Right! That's it!!"
****!!!!
I feel like I'm going crazy.....
Ah though but - no-one is going to drag me off to a psychiatric hospital wing and label me a lunatic, are they...?
Just the other day I saw a native American Indian man in the street, incoherently drunk, staggering, enraged.
People passed him by on the other side of the street.
I gave him some money, for something to eat, and for a while his eyes opened.
He looked at me.
Then the police came and took him away.
How many passers-by went home to their lives, not equating who they are to what they'd spied.
We lie to ourselves and to each other to get by.
Some people are more honest than others, and sometimes we call them crazy.
Insanity is a sane reaction to a mixed up muddled up shook up world.
War is over, if you want it.
If you want it as much as you want to listen to The Archers, watch EastEnders, watch Fox News...
...listen to Car Talk
It'll happen.
Keep watching the lies.
LFA 4/30/05
Hello and welcome to Letter from America, coming to you on this special day from our apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, NYC.
The Bush administration continues to bulldoze its way through the constitution, leaving it in shreds in its wake, and moving the country closer and closer towards its goal, a totalitarian state, populated by half wits.
This week they are trying to slip unnoticed, inside yet another anti-terrorist bill, this some no small thing called the Real ID Act.
This act will raise the bar so high for anyone seeking political asylum that no-one will be able to get over it.
It will make it hard if not downright impossible for immigrants to obtain say, a drivers licence, and as nobody walks here in the Big Country they will be forced to drive illegally, be arrested for doing so, and deported.
It will also allow provision for physical borders.
That's right, man-made barriers straddling the breadth of the country.
The Great Wall of Bullshit.
So, no more United States. Just Greater Texas, an ugly slab of congealed mud populated entirely by born again fundamentalist Christians.
God help us.
Actually, many people over here are wondering when the Real President Act is going to be introduced in an effort to curb the rise of fake ones taking office.
South of the border Condoleeza Rice, well known bare faced liar, is touring Latin America in an effort to spread US style democracy.
As a number of countries have moved significantly to the left of late you know what that means?
Expect a number of drug sale funded not so covert US backed military coups any day now.
When Mr Potato Head, or Dan 'Danforth' Quayle as he is otherwise known, toured Latin America on behalf of Bush senior way back before the war, he said in an interview...
"I wish I had more Latin to converse with the natives better".
Then, meaning implementation, he said
'The US works for the elimination of human rights".
It's all true.
But the big news this week?
Tom Cruise is dating Katie Holmes.
Yes, it's true.
They have been photographed actually holding hands.
Who is Katie Holmes you may ask?
Quite.
Well that's it for this week.
I'm drinking a glass of cava to you in celebration of Life and Living's 100th broadcast on Resonance Radio today!
Keep it up.
(Yes, this was a special LFA for Life and Living's 100th show, which went out to the world on May 3rd 2005,
just days before the UK farce, or General Election as it is otherwise known.... but we mustn't be seen to be biased by radio stations kow-towing, oh no we mustn't)
LFA 3/9/05
Hello and welcome to Letter From America, coming to you today from a hotel room in San Francisco.
A report, out today, from the Air Resources Board here in San francisco says that passive smoking causes breast cancer.
The Air Resources Board's early efforts to regulate automobile exhaust emissions has since become the model for the whole country, so their finding should not be taken lightly, you'd hope.
Breast cancer kills 40.000 women each year in the USA and the risk increases with age, but this is the first time that any body has stated categorically that breathing in secondhand cigarette smoke causes breast cancer in younger women.
Walking along a street clogged with cars belching out noxious fumes I can smell someone smoking a cigarette 30 yards ahead.
The non-smokers amongst you will know this to be true.
So far three states have a smoking ban - California, Massachusetts, and New York.. This news will have to change that.
The USA is the second largest cigarette manufacturer in the word producing 580 billion cigarettes a year.
580 billion.
Great Britain doesn't even appear on the list, yet the resistance to banning smoking in public places over there is overwhelming it seems.
Even Ireland has banned it.
Well, the tobacco manufacturers are a powerful lobby; there are big bucks to be made.
Tax the poor to feed the rich.
By the time you read this the USA may have invaded, sorry, liberated The Lebanon from the clutches of evil.
President Bush rattled Karl Rove's sabre yesterday in yet another inflammatory speech.
He waffled the usual rhetoric, that The War on Terror has made America safer....
Nonsense of course, but in there was that sinister and increasingly unveiled attack on Iran.
Like Iraq, Iran constantly denies that it has a nuclear weapons programme.
This matters not a jot.
We want ALL the oil...well that and the little matter of hurt pride at the re imposed Shah being ousted finally in 1978 when we here in the West thought we had it in the bag.
The big news though still seems to be..... Brad Pitt and Jennifer Anniston's relationship.
When they separated in January this year an executive at Us Weekly magazine called it 'our tsunami'.
True.
That's it for this week.
Drinking a cup of green tea to you as it's 7 o'clock in the morning and I'm wide awake with the time travel, or jet-lag as it's otherwise known.
It's a mixed up muddled up shook up world.
War is over, if you want it.
Keep it up.
LFA 2/3/05
Hello and welcome to Letter From America, coming to you this week from our apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, NYC.
So much is falling apart, so much of the fabric of our so-called society is disintegrating before our very eyes.
Everything we touch falls to pieces, and all that falls apart we bury in landfill sites out there somewhere,
or ship to China to be buried in some foreigners back yard, and will be there long long long after we are dead, buried, and forgotten.
I've said this before and no doubt will again, everybody wants to live together, why can't we live together?
From the simplest interpersonal relationships, to borough, county, state, nation to nation.
Nation speaks war unto nation, constantly constantly constantly battling.
War IS over, if you want it.
Everybody wants to live together, why can't we live together?
That's it for this week.
Drinking a bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau to you.
Little old wine drinker me.
LFA 1/28/05
Hello and welcome to Letter from America, coming to you this week from our apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, NYC.
Despite muted opposition from Democratic senators, Condoleeza Rice, well known bare-faced liar, is GWB's Secretary of State.
This is her reward for standing shoulder to shoulder with God's little bigots.
Getting caught on the lie matters no more.
Go back to sleep America, your government is in control.
Actually one Republican dodo said that Rice shouldn't be criticized as it diminishes her credibility around the world.
Huh? What credibility? Chevron alone. Bah!
The GOP don't care anyway. The plans were laid years ago by Reagan/Bush Snr. Build up the military, take over the world.
Clinton was just a hiccup. With a $427 billion deficit grand larceny is now fiscal policy.
Watching BBC World just the other day I was surprised by some actual news.
Seems the UK government is about to give itself powers to detain any UK citizen, without charge, indefinitely.
Go back to sleep Britain, your government is in control.
When you hear Blair's storm troopers dragging your neighbors into the street in the middle of the night, sleep tight.
They won't knock on your door, right?
Saw Blair here on TV too, pretending to care about global warming.
I looked into his eyes.
There was nothing there.
That's it for this week.
Drinking Irish whiskey to you, purely medicinal of course, having a cold.
You know, if Bush and Blair want to go arm in arm into Rapture, fine. Let 'em.
We don't have to follow.
Have no fear.
Keep it up!
A compilation of the Letters from the radio shows broadcast between 2004 and 2005 have been lovingly compiled
by Mick Hobbs on the cassette format and are available from Life and Living.