The
media myopia was striking. While the TV Networks were hyping it up, the
Guardian reported how Margaret Thatcher's death
greeted with street parties in working class neighborhoods in Brixton and
Glasgow.
A headline: "Crowds shout 'Maggie Maggie Maggie, dead dead dead' during impromptu events"
The
article featured a smiling pictures of people gathered around the sign: "The b*tch Is Dead." Other signs said,
"Rejoice, Rejoice!"
"Several hundred people gathered in south London on Monday evening
to celebrate Margaret
Thatcher 's death with cans of beer, pints of milk and an impromptu
street disco playing the soundtrack to her years in power.
Young and old descended on Brixton, a suburb that weathered two
outbreaks of rioting during the Thatcher years. Many expressed jubilation that
the leader they loved to hate was no more; others spoke of frustration that her
legacy lived on.
To cheers of "Maggie Maggie Maggie, dead dead dead,"
posters of Thatcher were held aloft as reggae basslines pounded.
Clive Barger, a 62-year-old adult education tutor, said he had
turned out to mark the passing of "one of the vilest abominations of
social and economic history".
He said: "It is a moment to remember. She embodied everything that was so elitist in terms of repressing people who had nothing. She presided over a class war."
Back on TV, there was a gusher of predictable puffery from one of her ruling class adoring mates, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
Kissinger
was also back in the news too but that news was not played as prominently on CNN
when I was watching. Earlier In the day
there was an announcement by Wikileaks
that it had "liberated" more than 1.7 million U.S. diplomatic records from 1973
to 1976, the period during which Henry Kissinger was secretary of State and
national-security adviser"
The
story read, "Unlike past WikiLeaks dumps, however, most of these were already
declassified. WikiLeaks main contribution was putting the trove into a
searchable database called the Public Library of U.S. Diplomacy (PlusD).
Assange, said the documents hint at the scope of U.S. intelligence activity
around the globe at the time."
Fortunately, Henry and Maggie will not now be able to take their secrets to the grave with them. Mrs. Thatcher had been out of new even as the movie Iron Lady painted a picture of a troubled woman who lived many ghosts and as much to be pitied as admired. Her son Mark was later arrested in Africa in conspiracy to overthrow a head of state.
I had an earlier experience with a Kissinger document.
Back in the days of the Harvard University Strike and occupation of 1969, students rifled through file cabinets in the Dean's office. They found evidence in documents of Harvard's assistance to the war in Vietnam and communiques from Kissinger advising that he would be off campus for trips to Vietnam.
We now know how Kissinger advised President Nixon to escalate the war, at a huge cost in civilian and military casualties., both American and Vietnamese.
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