I just watched the film Ghandi with dad. It’s a truly excellent film. I just want to say how much I’m in awe of this softly-spoken man, and how much I admire his methods of non-violent protest. I wanted to see it partly because I like Richard Attenborough’s work, and partly because I wanted to try to use the British Raj as a frame of comparison for what the Americans are doing in Iraq. In this era of the war on terror, where I feel neither the terrorists nor the Americans are in the right, we could do with a “great soul” like his around.

Often, I refer to the current state of affairs as a war of vengeance for 9/11, and I am reminded of Ghandi’s words: “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind”