"Is the sacrifice worth it"? The only person who can answer that is the person who makes the sacrifice, surely?

There is, was, and possibly always will be a very fine English war-poet called Wilfred Owen, who died, like a generation young Europeans, in WWI. There was a less fine, but sometimes equally powerful young poet alive at this time, named Rupert Brooke. Owen was a common man, the son of a miner; Brooke was haute-bourgeoisie, hanging on the fringes of nobility. Their two great poems, "Anthem For Doomed Youth" and "If I should die,/ Think only this of me", are opposing poetic poles of the perception of warfare. They even seem to mark some distinction, internal to the Great War in the British psyche, between "chivalry" and modern warfare. The bombing of Dresden, Coventry and Cologne, of Portsmouth and London, in WWII, these were acts which put an end forever to British (and German, for that matter) "Romanticism".

After that war, and those poets, we - British writers, not American writers - perhaps because the cream of our young people had been skimmed off in four bitter years - seemed to produce brittle, beautiful works by people like Nancy Mitford and Noel Coward, without daring to go deeper. Perhaps we didn't want to look too deeply below the surface, because there wasn't a great deal left. And the shadow is still upon us, even now; in a cupboard in my bedroom, I have an exquisite porcelaine cup-and saucer in a crumpled box. Inside is a faded note in copperplate handwriting, saying "To my darling Nelly", and dated 1914. Nelly was my grandmother, born in 1909, and the gift was from her father, my great-grandfather, who, 5 months later, died on the Ypres-Salient. According to the army records, he stepped on a mine and - well, there's no grave for Frances Cleall, although his name is on the Menheim Gate. His body was lost forever in the Flanders mud, not even a dog-tag recovered to send home to his wife. My grandmother, who brought me up and who died in 2002 at the age of 92, gave me this fragile memory of her father to pass on to my own daughter, another Ellen/Helene/Nelly/Lennie, to take into another century with her. She too will one day unfold the faded yellowing paper, and read the words meant for another little girl; I hope she'll treasure it as I do, and remember that Nana, her great-grandmother, never saw her father again. I try my best to teach her that war is wrong, is a waste, is never justified, or justifiable. That you can love your country without killing or dying in her name.

There's a great deal wrong with our country today; Britain faces a more insidious threat than we did when the Nazis bombed our cities 60 years ago. Some of it, I believe, we've fostered ourselves, in arrogance and ignorance; racism is rampant here, and British foreign and domestic policy leaves much to be desired in the application of justice. A casual glance at the statistics will tell you how much more likely a person of, say, Caribbean descent is to be given a custodial sentence than a white Briton for the same crime. I can certainly testify personally to the bias of the "stop and search" policy of the British police; having lived in London, I'd say I'm about three times as likely to be stopped if I'm walking with a black friend than with a white friend. I've been called a "traitor to my race" on the Tube with my ex-husband, who's Morrocan.

So, If I should die, think only this of me - there is some corner of a foreign field, that was never England. According to my father, I can trace my family back to the Domesday Book (the Bates of Shrewsbury - an old Saxon family, apparently); I myself am my own self, and with all the heritage, the porcelaine and legends, I'm only what I make of myself. I'll put this fragile, lovely piece of history in my daughter's hands, and I'll tell her where it comes from and what it means, and I'll let her know that I'll be proud of her for what she, Helene-Charifa, accomplishes. I can give her a sense of where she comes from, but where she goes to is up to her. If she's a poet, I'll be happy and proud, but if she's a physicist or an astronaut or a ballerina or a whore, I'll believe that I succeeded in encouraging the who and the what of her.

Death comes soon enough for all of us. We don't need to seek it out, as these poor deluded fools did two weeks ago, and we don't need to force it on others, as their masters clearly wished to do. Interesting that the people who planned all this were - out of the country! This should be telling us something, Moslems, Christians, Jews, Pagans and Atheists alike; anyone who claims to be doing God's work, but is too important to risk his (or her) own life, is probably a stinking manipulative coward, don't you think?

I'd like to extend my respect and sympathy to Ms. Maryam McCleod, whose son Jermaine died bombing the King's Cross Tube; I too would be hard put to grieve for a son who'd committed such an act, yet I understand she must and does; she's a mother. I honour her courage and honesty, and as a woman and a mother I offer her my respect and my support.

Guantanamo Bay - Shame of the West

I've never really believed in information gathered by torture, for the simple reason that I personally am a total coward. You wouldn't have to shackle me up or force me to piss on myself, it'd be enough to show me a pair of pliers and mention the word "nipples" to get whatever you wanted out of me. Yes, I believe in a lot of things, passionately, but I doubt there's a single one that'd stand up to a bucket of water and some strategically-placed electrodes. Until recently, here in the UK, evidence/confessions/information obtained by torture were considered inadmissable in a court of law. Sadly that's changed recently, and I think we have Guantanamo Bay to thank for that. Once Mr. Bush decided to bin the Geneva Convention, it gave latitude to any regime, ranging from the allegedly democratic (UK) to the downright despotic (Nigeria), to do the same. I've read a lot about this being "The American Century": like most Brits, I'll have a private mutter about ex-colonials taking on airs and graces, but I'm realistic enough to agree that America will set the tone for the decades to come. So far (and we're only 5 years into this century) it's a pretty abysmal tone, where the powerful allow themselves unlimited latitude when dealing with the weak, and where scientific evidence of (for instance) climate change can be denied by the richest (and guiltiest) nation on Earth for politcal expediency.

When we deny human rights, we cease to be human, or humane. When our governments sanction treatment of foreign nationals which we all know we'd go to war to prevent our own citizens from undergoing, we're hypocrites. I don't know a single person in Guantanamo Bay, but they're all my brothers and sisters. The testimony of recently-released British prisoners as to the conditions there, and the guilty-until-proven-dead attitude of their captors, only strengthens my belief in this. The desecration of the Koran, for instance, should be intolerable to any thinking person (and I'm not including Mr. Bush in this category). I don't have a sacred book myself, I'm not a religious person, but I do have an ikon of the Virgin and Child which I love for it's beauty. Yes, I'd be disgusted and revolted if someone threw it to the floor and trod on it just to hurt me; yes, I'd think of them as barbarous and inhumane. God, or Allah, only know what it must feel like to see the Bible or the Koran treated in this way.

If America has the hubris to take on the political and spiritual leadership of the world, then it needs to clean up its act. Any country with the sheer gall to make such a powerful statement must first make itself irreproachable. The US needs to clean out its own Augean Stables; there have been two highly dubious elections (ahem - Florida), and now we're all subjected (by association) to the lingering shame and vileness of the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay. There is no excuse for torture, no excuse for revenge on individuals for what others have done. Either try these people or free them; this is the accepted code of human rights in all civilised nations, and the US risks dropping out of this category. We have to contend with the US as a superpower, but opposition will continue to grow as democracy in America is cauterised and castrated. This could have been the American Century, we could all have made strides towards freedom and democracy, but not with the US as it is as a leader.

Coming up next: why Bush won't sign up to Kyoto, and why the US declines to help Africa - one voice in the blogoshpere.