I probably don’t have much to say about the bombings in London that you probably haven’t already seen elsewhere.

The media coverage has been naturally irresponsible (on CNN
international, which I can get here: linking the bombings to the G8
meetings or the Olympic announcement without any evidence whatsoever;
repeatedly trying to elicit feelings of anger and hate from the
survivors; treating this one ratings-grabbing incident as if it’s the
only thing that happened on Earth for the last 48 hours; etc.).  The
politicians have been entirely predictable in seizing on the tragedy to
advance whatever their position was before the event.  Comments from
fellow Americans I’ve encountered have been deeply disappointing,
occasionally even calling for nothing short of genocide against entire
peoples they know little about.

All of this is pretty much what you’d expect, I guess.  It’s all bullshit as usual.  And I don’t know what I’d add. 

But I do know somebody with a more direct experience, and what he has
to say gives me a bit of hope.  Maybe it’ll do the same for you.

It’s a measure of how small this planet really is, once you start
wandering a little, that at the moment I first heard of the tragedy, I
was actually wearing a shirt with the British Transport Police logo. 
It’s a recent gift from my Aussie friend Jono, who is currently working
for the BTP in London and just two weeks ago gave me the nickel tour of
the place.

Jono and I met up that afternoon, in fact, near his office, which is about a block from where the bus was blown up.

There’s a shady little park right there.  Jono tells me that this park
contains a peace memorial of the Hiroshima bombing and a statue of
Gandhi.

These monuments are now accompanied by nearby bits of shrapnel from a civilian bus.

Goddammit.  I am so sick of irony being this brutal.

After a bunch of tied-up international phone lines and bad cell
connections, I finally got to talk with Jono tonight.  It feels like
the kind of evening you’d buy your friend a whole series of beers and
sit around just venting.

The guy has a right to vent.  Jono and his office mates were not only
the government agency most directly concerned with the tragedy, but
also physically dead damn in between all the big kabooming.

So Jono knows vastly more than I do about all this.  What follow are
his words, from an email he sent to friends around the world to let
them know he’s OK, which he has kindly allowed me to excerpt at length:

Thirteen minutes to midnight here in the former Leningrad.

It’s an oddly familiar place, actually.  Lots of imperious public buildings, national galleries devoted to the arts, and large green squares devoted to dead warriors.  Took a while, but then it was obvious: it’s a lot like Washington, D.C. 

With one large exception.  Shortly before midnight as I write this, it’s still bright enough outside to read a book, assuming you have decent eyesight and at least a 12-point font.

They call the evening here during this time of year "White Nights," and with good reason.  It never actually gets fully dark.  The sun goes down, but just in a peek-a-boo way, hiding just below the horizon for a few hours before popping back up a bit after 3 am or so.

The big activity here in all the extra daylight seems to be dressing up in a boxy sport jacket (for men) or a too-tight outfit possibly intended for a pygmy chimpanzee but certainly not a full-grown human female (for women), smoking many cigarettes while looking bored, and then wandering down to the Neva at about 1:30 am to watch the drawbridges being raised one after another.

You get the feeling the acting-bored part isn’t exactly a pose.

Although everything I just said is completely unfair to a city which has managed for many generations and under some of the worst conditions imaginable to remain an important center for the fine arts: within a ten-minute walk of this here coffee house, you can find important landmarks in literature, music, theater, dance, and the wearing of large Italian sunglasses while scowling bitterly.

This last art may not be fully appreciated yet in the rest of the world, but the folks walking around Nevsky Prospekt are clearly committed to pioneering and popularizing the form.  You get the feeling that people from the suburbs may even be taking night classes.

You don’t really notice your body clock being affected by all the extra light.  Not at first.  Then one day you’re walking along at about three in the afternoon and you notice that all the stores have closed, nightclubs are spewing pulsating music, it’s almost sunrise the next day, and that you’ve got about as much time sense as your average UFO abductee.

Which is why I’m sitting in a coffee shop at six minutes after midnight, feeling perfectly alert despite having walked enough miles to personally re-enact Napoleon’s retreat to Paris.  And in a little while I’m planning to saunter down to the Neva, slap on a pair of designer shades, and give total strangers a withering look of disdain.  If someone even tries to talk with me, I’ll be entirely too important to even notice.

Which is another way this place feels like a lot like Washington.

Because that’s how long this one was up… my bad.  Busy with life.  Book deal.  Traveling.  Etc.

If the damn media still worked, which insider would have already Deep Throated the Bush White House?
National Security Advisor Richard Clarke
712   36.7%
Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill
156   8%
Ambassador Joe Wilson
114   5.9%
Mining engineer Jack Spedaro
110   5.7%
U.S. Army General Eric Shinseki
108   5.6%
USAF Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski
107   5.5%
Army Spc. Joseph Darby
106   5.5%
FBI Chief Division Counsel Coleen Rowley
106   5.5%
FBI translator Sibel Edmonds
106   5.5%
CIA Bin Laden expert Michael Scheuer
105   5.4%
Medicare actuary Richard Foster
105   5.4%
Secretary of the Army Thomas White
105   5.4%

If you’re curious who these people are, those names are all active links, incidentally.  Although now we learn that Karl Rove himself may be the guy who manages to undo this White House.  If only.

New poll at upper left.

Holy crap, I’m actually in St. Petersburg.  It’s all Russian and stuff.

Spent the morning walking the banks of the Neva and blowing my mind at the Church Of Our Savior On Spilled Blood, which is less a house of worship than a ten-story walk-in mosaic artwork designed as if Willie Wonka had just gotten an everlasting gobstopper from the Virgin Mary.

Up there with the Hagia Sophia for supercool ex-cathedrals.

Limited time as always on this trip, unfortunately.  Will have to do massive catchup later if possible.  But this is my impression so far of the new Russia:

I am certain my room is bugged.  But only to see if I’m using the minibar.