>Hmm, indeed. Good spelling, correct grammar ... anything else?
I'm with you, Carl. Wonder if they can spell 'nuance'. And 'the American nation state's heart' is a confused unedifying abstract attempt at a metaphor at best - and a deliberate mystification of how the nation state in general, and the hegemonic one in particular, function in the world of people and body parts (in which American people, and the parts of erstwhile people rotting under the WTC rubble, exist no more or less than anyone else).
I sorta wish that British BBC wallah had asked that ambassador why people hate the US state rather than 'Americans' - but I wish more that the Beeb hadn't proffered a technically correct but symbolically point-avoiding apology. The USA isn't the people who live between Hawaii and Rhode Island (or work in Manhattan skyscrapers) as I can assure you (post Tampa outrage) Australia ain't me and mine.
Like its siamese twin (parent?), capitalism, the nation state ain't a people-friendly construct, and can generate and tolerate, even benefit from, all kinds of death and suffering. 'America' (arrogating unto itself its host continent's moniker just to make a point) is merely the salient construct in a paradigm so basically fucked up you can't make humanly rational syntagms within it. Not least because both institutions have found a use for a residual construct we might have hoped they'd at least be decent enough to supplant: religion.
So institutionalised insanity killed hijackers and victims alike. It's probably quietly killing a few Afghan peasants while we wait for its next affirming CNN spectacle.
You should come to Australia, comrades. Nothing fundamentally less shitty about it ('cept the telly, the radio, the sport, the beer, the wine and the health system you need after a lifetime wallowing in that lot), but at least it seems to be unfairly benefiting from its marginal relevance in the Order Of Things (the expression of which status I think suits Statesman-Johnny-Howard's attributes a treat, eh?).
Cheers, Rob.