Greetings occasional reader.
I am a fan of the press in the country (chokes on drink). They are intelligent and unbiased (turns purple).
Let's face it - they are utter arses. Their lead stories seem to be the vilification of these people who attempted the bombings last week. Pardon me? They are attempting the demonification of these people why exactly? Let me digress.
These people attempted to blow up a whole bunch of people in a copycat attack of the one on the 7th July. Do they need to be painted as anything other than callous idiots preying on the innocent? One of the bombers was a petty drug dealer, the other apparently claimed benefits. So? I don't care. They could have been model citizens prior to this, but the fact that they attempted this cowardly act makes them monsterous and demonic in my eyes anyway.
Report something factual please press people. Don't attempt to make these people seem worse than they are. You are wasting your time.
In another side note I am wondering how my US readers reacted to the shooting of the man in London by the police they suspected of being a suicide bomber. Liberal? No. It is tragic that the man turned out to be innocent, but wearing a heavy coat, carrying a rucksack and then not stopping when the police apparently shouted "Stop! Armed police! Get down on the ground now!" from the top of the Tube station, down the stairs and then onto the train (and any of you who have been on the London Underground know how far that is) PARTICULARLY after these bombing incidents just proves that Darwin was right.
Sally and I held a conversation about your average extremist attempting to blow themselves up in the name of Allah. There are a few issues I have here with the understanding of the aims of these people.
With your average terrorist they have specific aims and goals and, whilst I hope that the god of syphilis visits everyone of them, I can understand their goals. ETA wanted a seperate Basque homeland, the IRA wanted a united Ireland, the PLO wanted their land and right to govern themselves, the PPK in Turkey want a Kurdish homeland - all goals I can see and that are tangable.
Now we come to your average "Islamic" fundamentalist. I use "Islamic" in quotation marks because I do not believe these people act in the name of religion. For a start I was under the impression that all religion preached peace and love for your fellow man. You cannot do that whilst killing people. Secondly I was not under the impression that the entire of the Islamic world had declared a Fatwah on the western world.
Serial killers and psychopaths kill in the name of god, or jesus, or the little pixie that lives under the stairs, or because their TV is crap. There is no real motive or justification for their crimes. It seems that these fanatics are in this same, broad category.
Why are the attacking us? Do they want a seperate homeland? Oh, no. They have that already. Are we occupying where they live? Well, aside from Iraq I am not aware that we are. Are we forcing our religion on them? I don't think so - missionary work in the aggressive 17th century Spanish style has long gone.
So they do not like our lifestyle, our politics, our alleged decadence? Well, and here is the shocker fundamentalists, go somewhere else. Anywhere else. I don't care where. I am not interested in you any more, in your killing of people because you don't like our skin colour (makes you a racist) or our TV or our right to let women dress in something other than a head to toe bed sheet. I cannot be bothered to fathom out your tiny, idiotic, insignificant railings at a world that you feel is unjust and unfair. The world is unjust and unfair for most people. It is for me - I want to bring my daughter up in a world where some idiot with a rucksack is not sitting next to her and she is wondering if she is going to get blown up. I want to travel into London with her and show her the sights she lives so close too, that she has a right to see because she lives in a free and demcratic country.
So tell me your aims and your goals. What do you expect to achieve? Apart from the undying emnity of people who live in this world with you, you have achieved nothing except to make all people of your race and creed now suspect in the eyes of everyone.
Idiots.
One week today and, for a brief moment, the world looked up and saw something we hoped would never happen again but that was somehow inevitable. For all the practice we had put in, all the plans we had for dealing with it, all the bravery and stoicism we showed it was still saddening that we had to put all this into effect.
Now I see that it was people who were born in this country and who lived here, possibly masterminded by outside influences, that may have been responsible for these attacks. Why? Why are these people attacking their home? Why, if the West is so decadent, do they choose to live with here? If they are not happy with the lifestyle, the government system, with the colour of the sky then really they should live somewhere else.
Fundamentalism is wrong. Killing innocent people for political or idealogical reasons is wrong. You have choices. Live in a country where you agree more with their standpoint on issues such as politics and religion. Iran is a good choice perhaps, or Syria, or North Korea.
What's that? You would miss your freedoms? Your ability to choose? Your right to express yourself without fear or prejudice? Well tough shit. Make your choice. Live here and enjoy the freedoms and express your views peacefully in the way you are allowed to or leave and go somewhere else and foam at the mouth and rant and rave in a country that shares the same disregard for human life that you seem to hev put above anything and everything else.
Harvey, Contagion, thank you for your concern and emails. It was scary, shocking, worrying in case we had to take Star into London on a day like that.
We are OK. I wait for news of ex-collegues, friends who commute using those routes.
To others who have expressed more general concerns thank you too. We remember our friends always in times like this.
Bombs went off in London yesterday. People, going about their everyday business, trying to get to work or see the city, having finished taking their children to school died and were injured. Ex-collegues who work in that area were thankfully spared. People who work for my present company were streets away from it when it all happened.
Today, in the office, it is like it never happened. Life has returned to normal quickly. All of the people I work with here live closer to this than Sally and I do - some even have family in the area and life goes on for them. There was a sense not so much of shock but more of inevitability.
I have seen some things on people's blogs (and I am looking at YOU Frank J, whoever left that comment at Sarah K's, Beth in Kansas) that make my blood boil. What do you know of terrorism? Of how we here have had to live with it since the 1920's (stand up Michael Collins) and how we learned to live with it. You know nothing of this. Don't any of you dare quote 9/11 at me - we have lost far more over a longer period of time and we are a TINY nation - everything that happens has a deep impact on us because even driving we are no more than a few hours from anywhere else. In Manchester, Birmingham, London, all over Northen Ireland, in Germany, on Gibraltar we have been constant targets. You all live far, far away from New York (I even lived closer to New York than most of you when I was in the US and had friends working a few blocks away when that happened).
How dare you assume that we are going to start blaming Bush, or that the words of a few, idiotic Islamic minorities represents the entire of the UK populations view on things. We are so used to paying the price for our freedom it has ceased to affect us in the way it affected you. Remember who are your allies before you start to complain - we voluntarily joined the war on terror of our own free will. Think of the reaction of your president after 9/11 and that of our prime minster Tony Blair and how smoothly our emergency services dealt with everything. We were prepared for this. We always have been.
So those of you who supported "The Cause" and supplied money to kill my friends and relatives, my wife's friends and relatives, my family's friends and relatives take note; it is still terrorism in whatever form you want to see it. We have had decades to prepare for this - right now we do not need the finger pointing and the self-righteous indignation that a minority may blame your president or the war on terror. We need support, time to heal and get over the shock, and then to get on with what we do best - living our lives without fear