Three prominent Britains hit the US trail for Kerry, against Bush.

[madfloridian]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/story/0,13918,1326066,00.html

SNIP..."Probably no American president in all history has been so universally hated abroad as George W Bush: for his bullying unilateralism, his dismissal of international treaties, his reckless indifference to the aspirations of other nations and cultures, his contempt for institutions of world government, and above all for misusing the cause of anti-terrorism in order to unleash an illegal war - and now anarchy - upon a country that like too many others around the world was suffering under a hideous dictatorship, but had no hand in 9/11, no weapons of mass destruction, and no record of terrorism except as an ally of the US in a dirty war against Iran.

Is your president a great war leader because he allowed himself to be manipulated by a handful of deluded ideologues? Is Tony Blair a great war leader because he committed Britain's troops, foreign policy and domestic security to the same hare-brained adventure?

You are voting in November. We will vote next year. Yet the outcome in both countries will in large part depend on the same question: how long can the lies last now that the truth has finally been told? The Iraq war was planned long before 9/11. Osama provided the excuse. Iraq paid the price. American kids paid the price. British kids paid the price. Our politicians lied to us....."

[AP]

1. Who are the three prominent Brits?

[fujiyama]

3. I haven't heard of these people before

but here are their names:

Richard Dawkins
Antonia Fraser
John Le Carré

[troublemaker]

6. Richard Dawkins is the greatest man alive!

Really, he is.

[AP]

8. In this vein, Stuart Hall is the greatest man alive.

http://www.blackculturalstudies.org/s_hall/hall_index.html

[Hamlette]

10. tell me you are kidding. . .you've not heard of these people?

ack!

You might want to ... read sometime. (sorry, I guess I'm a geeky bookworm.)

Antonia Fraser writes popular history, mostly biographys, Dawkins writes popular (accessable) science, most famous probably for The Selfish Gene. And Le Carre...sheesh...he does spy thrillers.

[fujiyama]

11. I think

I may have heard of Dawkins. That name sounds somewhat familiar.

The Selfish Gene definetely sounds familiar.

I haven't read any of their books, but I'll take a look at them. All I know is that I agree with their politics. They sound like intelligent people.

[madfloridian]

4. LeCarre is a mystery writer, mostly.

:hi:

Very famous.

[Roland99]

7. We're all Britons.

And I am your king.




:D

[glitch]

2. Wonderful - thanks for posting. Richard Dawkins a personal favorite:

"As the bumper stickers put it, "Re-defeat Bush". But, this time, do it so overwhelmingly that neither his brother's friends in Florida nor his father's friends on the Supreme Court will be able to rig the count. Decent Americans - there are absolutely more intelligent, educated, civilised, cultivated, compassionate people in America than in any other country in the western world - please show your electoral muscle this time around. We in the rest of the world, who sadly cannot vote in the one election that really affects our future, are depending on you. Please don't let us down."

· Richard Dawkins is professor of the public understanding of science at Oxford University. More letters to Clark County will be appearing in G2 over the next fortnight.

[madfloridian]

5. Antonia Fraser connected to Princess Diaries

http://news.scotsman.com/features.cfm?id=1148882004

No: Princesses Charlotte, Augusta, Elizabeth, Sophia, Amelia and Mary (in the all-important order of seniority, which meant closeness to power, which meant bossiness) were altogether more dutiful. Without Fraser, who had become intrigued by their conspiratorial, secretive letters when researching her life of Queen Caroline, they might well have slid off unregarded into the footnotes of academic history.

Their biographer is, at least genetically, a natural-born biographer. At 17, she was already working in the British Museum, helping to research books such as her mother’s biography of Charles II and her grandmother’s books about Victorian women. Mother is, of course, Lady Antonia Fraser; grandmother was Elizabeth Longford: search the massed ranks of British biographers and you won’t find a purer professional pedigree.

Nor is she the last of the fabulously talented Fraser girls. One of her sisters, Rebecca, is the biographer of Charlotte Brontë; another one, Natasha, European editor of Harper’s Bazaar, last year produced a biography of Hollywood producer Sam Spiegel. This, then, is a family with formidable literary connections that link up across generations...."

[madfloridian]

9. Actually Le Carre is a spy novelist. I misspoke.

http://www.johnlecarre.com/chronological.html

[RafterMan]

12. Dangerous

These kinds of things so easily backfire. The Europeans apply that logic to every country but America.

At least they mean well...

[madfloridian]

13. I don't understand your statement.

This paragraph is quite clear and quite powerful and quite true!

SNIP..."You are voting in November. We will vote next year. Yet the outcome in both countries will in large part depend on the same question: how long can the lies last now that the truth has finally been told? The Iraq war was planned long before 9/11. Osama provided the excuse. Iraq paid the price. American kids paid the price. British kids paid the price. Our politicians lied to us....."

Well-said.