London Bomb Attacks
Quote from Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London, Thu 7th July:
"In the days that follow look at our airports, look at our sea ports and look at our railway stations and, even after your cowardly attack, you will see that people from the rest of Britain, people from around the world will arrive in London to become Londoners and to fulfil their dreams and achieve their potential.
They choose to come to London, as so many have come before because they come to be free, they come to live the life they choose, they come to be able to be themselves. They flee you because you tell them how they should live. They don't want that and nothing you do, however many of us you kill, will stop that flight to our city where freedom is strong and where people can live in harmony with one another.
Whatever you do, however many you kill, you will fail."
News Sources + Articles: Londonist, Wikipedia, Guardian Newsblog, Metafilter, very moving Ian McEwan article.
"In the days that follow look at our airports, look at our sea ports and look at our railway stations and, even after your cowardly attack, you will see that people from the rest of Britain, people from around the world will arrive in London to become Londoners and to fulfil their dreams and achieve their potential.
They choose to come to London, as so many have come before because they come to be free, they come to live the life they choose, they come to be able to be themselves. They flee you because you tell them how they should live. They don't want that and nothing you do, however many of us you kill, will stop that flight to our city where freedom is strong and where people can live in harmony with one another.
Whatever you do, however many you kill, you will fail."
News Sources + Articles: Londonist, Wikipedia, Guardian Newsblog, Metafilter, very moving Ian McEwan article.
posted by Scattergun @ 9:43 am
3 Comments:
At 10:37 am,
Anonymous said…
I'd be interested to hear what's going through the minds of you guys over there, right about now.
At 11:46 am,
Anonymous said…
Right about now I'm thinking: Terrorists= Scum. Not people, not human beings, not even animals.
Still, vitriol asside, being philosophical about it: it was going to happen sooner or later, and terrible as it was it could have been a whole lot worse if they'd hit something like Canary Wharf for example.
At 12:20 pm,
Scattergun said…
Hey Anon. - thanks for commenting. I know what you mean .
The sentiments of "going to happen sooner or later" and "could have been a whole lot worse" are definitely uppermost in our minds (no comfort to the friends and families of the injured and killed but there it is). In fact, I get the sense a larger operation was planned (shut down the tube in rush-hour, force commuters onto buses, then hit them again) but it somehow didn't come off, thank Christ.
What's going through my mind is that there are no real arguments, no real reasons to discuss.
Some might say that a reason is the loss of innocent life in the Middle East. I think the suffering of innocent civilans is horrific. But I make no distinction between Baghdad / Kabul / Jerusalem / New York / Madrid / London - it's all abhorrent. Making more people suffer doesn't make things better; it makes it worse.
Another reason could be the continued presence of Western troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Well, any fool can see that an incident like this isn't going to make the possibility of hundreds of thousands of troops suddenly evacuating, any more likely.
A third reason is for recruitment. British Islam is largely composed of law-abiding citizens who actively contribute the social fabric of this nation and thus are something of a barren ground for terrorists and Islamists. No doubt their hope is to provoke a backlash against British Muslims in the hope of driving some of them into their arms.
Whether that aim is achieved depends on all of us. But deep down I doubt it'll happen.
End result: they failed.
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