Tragically, extremist Muslim terrorists are
murdering innocent people again, this time in London. Being a resident
of London, their bombings affected me on a more personal level than
their previous outrages such as in New York, Israel, Bali and Spain. This is
my personal story and philosophy of the events, spiced with some weird
unanswered questions and apparent hushing by the media of some
important news.
I refer to the 7/7/2005 bombings in London,
where I have been living most of the time since November 2004. I have a
base in Earls Court and am working in Covent Garden in Central London.
In the London rush hour of the morning of
Thursday 7th July the terrorists detonated bombs on three tube trains
(the *tube* is the name of the London underground) within fifty seconds
of each other. The bombs were on occupied trains near Edgeware Road and
Liverpool Street tube stations, and on a third train travelling on the
west bound Piccadily line between Kings Cross and Russel Square. Over
fifty people were killed, at least twenty one were slain on the
Piccadily train. (This figure is expected to rise as from the time of
writing).
Less than an hour later the
terrorists blew up a bus in Tavistock Square, near Russel Square, in
Central London. (It is thought the bus was diverted from its
destination, as intended by the terrorists, by the London Underground
bombings).
During the attacks hundreds were injured. Many
lives have been ruined: affected are innocent people of various
nationalities, races and religions and their families.
Given this latest atrocity of Islamic
terrorism, life must be uneasy for those moderate and honest Muslims
who may be as incensed about the behaviour of their extreme
counterparts as everyone else. I am not religious myself, but I reckon
it can't be easy to have the reputation of your religion degraded by
the violently minded worshippers.
My modus operandi (until the attacks) was to
catch the tube train each morning from Earls Court on the Piccadily
line into central London. On the morning of the attacks, at about 8.10
am there was a stationary empty train at the platform, with lights on
but doors closed. Commuters waited impatiently. The loud speaker
announced that the east bound service was closed. So I decided to
stretch my legs walk into work, which took about an hour or so. Near
the end of my journey I noticed that the Covent Garden tube station was
closed. At work my colleagues and I were in horrified awe as the news
of the terrorist attacks began to unfold. People rang one another to
see if they were safe.
The news ran ever-changing versions of events,
but it was clear that this was serious. We got a TV up and running with
a lousy picture courtesy of a coat hanger aerial, and had rolling news
playing in the background. Circa lunchtime the police made a statement
saying that they had no inkling of a problem until the first explosion.
So here is a little mystery. Why was the east bound service of the
Piccadily line into central London (which I attempted to use) closed
down 40 minutes before the central London explosion on that very same
line? I've experienced only one other occasion when the east bound
service on the Piccadily line was closed in eight months of commuting.
Was this 8.10 am closure a coincidence? If anyone has an explanation,
please leave a talkback comment below.
Another aberration was that the BBC website
hinted for hours that a “power surge” was to blame
for the explosions, even after it was revealed that a bus had been
bombed. The authorities were probably attempting to distract us from
assuming terrorist activity. This does not make me feel comfortable, is
England a land of disinformation, closer to China than we like to
think?
I could understand the propaganda if it served
a purpose against an enemy but in this case I could see no
justification in attempting to mislead the public. The authorities can
cry wolf only so often, and my trust in the news, which was never
exactly solid, has deteriorated. Next time a violent event occurs I
will not remotely believe any explanation from the authorities except
terrorism unless the evidence is unequivocal.
As we, the British citizenship, pay for the
BBC, we should expect a higher quality of news than this from a
supposedly independent institute. Pathetic.
British prime minister Tony Blair pitched up on
TV to give a speech condemning the terrorists for cowardly attacking
our freedoms. That these were pretty much the same freedoms that he
himself is busy, with anti-terror laws, removing from us anyway was a
point he did not address. Blair looked aptly uncomfortable and grave of
course. I can't help but wonder if some of his discomfiture was born of
a sense of personal guilt about whether the unpopular (and probably
illegal) war on Iraq that he supported so ardently was a motivation
behind these attacks. I should add here that there is no excuse
whatsoever for the slaughter and maiming of innocent citizens, so Blair
was absolutely right to condemn the vile terrorists.
The American quest for oil in Iraq may be the
ostensible cause of this bombing in the first place, so I'm not
entirely pleased with America for their commercial war against Iraq.
Blair's enthusiasm for the war was equally faulty. The vilified French
were right, the war is a disaster, as hindsight is proving. Admittedly
some have benefitted, such as some victims and enemies of Saddam,
terrorists and the oil companies. More global warming, anyone? The
invasion of Iraq will ironically have the dire effect of changing the
last remaining secular country in the Middle East into an Islamic
state, as happened with Iran when the Americans interferred there.
Saddam was a vile sadist, yet I suspect that even more suffering and
oppression will be caused by his overthrow. I do not wish to sound
anti-American, as I'm not. I am merely criticising some of the USA's
foreign policies. I am at least as dubious of policies of my own
country and of the EU.
But terrorists will use any excuse to commit
their depraved crimes, so if it was not for the folly of the Iraqi
invasion, the terrorists would doubtless have chosen some other excuse
for their hateful crimes.
The photographs of the bus at Tavistock Square,
ripped asunder by the blast, were gruesome. Astonishingly, a
photographer had actually captured the moment of the explosion. Another
photograph showed blood splattered high on the wall of an adjacent
building. On the previous evening, a mere twelve hours before that
atrocity, I was actually at Tavistock Square, at a ceroc dance lesson
(how care-free that seemed now). I expect the ceroc shall be cancelled
there next week out of respect for the victims.
I was at Tavistock Square again on Friday, this
time unexpectedly, by a weird coincidence. I decided to walk from work
in Covent Garden to Euston railway station. I had a sense of which
direction I should be headed, but no clear route in mind, and my
journey accidentally took me past Tavistock square! This was the first
time I had walked by that location from my place of work. (Regarding
ceroc, I got the tube from Covent Garden to Russel Square, and walked
to Tavistock Square from the opposite direction). A vast opaque white
sheet, spread across entrance to the square shielded the bomb site from
view. Coppers were everywhere, and roads were cordoned with ribbon all
over the place. This coincidence of stumbling across the crime scene
was unreal. You may think i was just being sick, but I assure you this
was no deliberate voyeurism. I will retrace my steps in a future
journey to Euston though, and that will be voyeuristic I suppose, even
though Tavistock Square is on a direct route to Euston from Covent
Garden.
On Friday my project manager was saying that
his friend, who works at Canary Wharf, reported that the police had
shot someone dead outside that monumental building. A would be suicide
bomber perhaps. This remarkable, multiply witnessed event has
apparently gone unreported by the media. The reticence of the media on
certain aspects of this crisis is disturbing and sinister. The extent
to which news is being managed by those that pull strings is alarming.
We think that censorship of the news is bad in Russia and China, but is
the news in Britain that much more enlightened? Do *they* believe we
cannot handle the truth, or do they prefer not to tell it anyway, given
that Machiavellian equation of knowledge and power? Or was this alleged
cover up an attempt not to inflame the terrorists further? The latter
doesn't fit with the general tone of the reporting, which was rightly
scathing towards the perpetrators of the crimes.
All this shiftiness by the news media in
divulging the truth (including power surges given as a reason for the
explosions) implies that there is more to this matter than meets the
eye. The apparent reluctance of the news media to be candid can only
fuel surreal ideas that an elaborate conspiracy may be going on. The
unconventional of mind speculate if recent terrorist attacks (9/11,
7/7, etc) were engineered somehow to permit governments a licence to
grant themselves more powers at the expense of their subjects. (And to
invade oil rich countries).
As a result of this attack, I have taken to
walking instead of using transport, where possible. I discovered that
walking for about an hour or so in the morning prevented me feeling
drowsy during the day; the walking diminished my appetite; and even
mollified my temptation to have a beer in the evening. I am upgrading
my habits accordingly.
In particular, religious terrorism is sinister
as the promise of heaven for a terrorist is a tempting recompense for
risking, or even sacrificing his life. The IRA is a prime example of a
Christian terrorist group. Their menace, thank the gods, has waned
since the 9/11 attacks made terror distasteful to those (chiefly
American citizens) that funded the IRA. These days most religious
terror groups are Islamic. Religion (or faith, as it is called these
days) can be a dangerous indulgence, it really should be discouraged by
society, starting in schools. Christianity is pushing for the absurd
teaching of “intelligent design” in place of the
proven science of evolution. The Islamic religion is similarly minded,
and is presenting schools with ethical, cost and logistical dilemmas of
catering for Muslim students' praying rituals. Why should the education
of non-Muslim students be disrupted? In these warped times, such
questions are not deemed politically correct.
The ugliest aspect of religious terror is that
the demands of terrorist groups are tantamount to the creation a
worldwide, totalitarian Taliban state. One cannot reason with religious
extremists. Even death is no impediment to their ambition, on the
contrary, they see it as glorious, they implore that when God/Allah
says your time is up, your time is up. If you try to reason with them
about the nature of religion, they may dismiss your points as lies, and
state that their god wishes you deceived, and that they know the will
of their god and that their god is the true god. There is no
rationality behind such thought. And the degradation of rationality
will surely reverse the Renaissance that Europe's intellectuals fought
so hard, and risked terrible persecution, to achieve our freedoms
against the powerful medieval church.
If this planet returns to ignorance, then
civilisation will decay rapidly, and we will lose our freedoms, wealth
and the sense of safety and security we take for granted. Arguably
though, the world is screwed anyway, due to over population,
environmental destruction and global warming, but that's another story.
There is another miserable side to terrorism.
These attacks will only provide more power to this government to
implement draconian “anti-terror” laws, that in
reality remove the freedoms of us all. These freedoms, once lost, are
unlikely to be granted to us again, not without a fierce struggle,
which is unlikely to happen given the state of political apathy of the
commercialised and tamed younger generations.
Anti-terror laws (the American *Patriot* act
and its ilk) – and ID cards (Blair is pushing hard for these
deeply unwelcome big brother devices in Britain) – are the
apparatus of the totalitarian state. We must oppose them, and not
permit the threat of terrorism to be used as a pretext for the further
surrender of our civil rights and freedoms to governments and
corporations.
If you think such thefts of our freedoms are
unimportant, try reading Kafka's The Trial. And Orwell's 1984 of
course.
In the evening rush hour of the 7/7 bombings
I'll never forget walking back to Earls Court down Piccadily alongside
Green Park. There was a great precession of commuters, many of us would
have normally have been jammed into the (now closed) Piccadily line
tube. We were walking home in the fresh air. It felt so wholesome to be
walking with them, kind of intimate and moving. Comfort amongst total
strangers. It was a nice atmosphere. Strange how peaceful charm could
emerge from the ugliness of the days events...
I noticed, when I boarded a red double decker
bus for the final two miles home, that the top deck was half empty, yet
the bottom deck was crowded. I wonder if this was partly because people
saw the picture of the wrecked Tavistock bus with it's roof lying in
the road. Public transport is far safer, statistically than travelling
by car, so let's hope people are not scared away from it by the
terrorists. But all transport pollutes, and if more people walk and
cycle, then so much the better. Please keep a careful eye out for the
safety of cyclists, motorists... I have since resolved to walk whenever
reasonably able, chiefly because I realised it makes me feel good and
gives me energy.
Finally, as a lover of freedom and as a central
London commuter with a fortunate fate so far, I wish to curse the
terrorists and to express my sympathy to everyone afflicted by those
that murder and maim innocents in the name of a god that commands them,
Thou Shalt Not Kill.
Update 24/07/2005: Two weeks later a similar attack was launched but failed as the bombs that the terrorists
attempted to detonate were defective.
I was on a tube train the other day near a pathetic wine-swigging drunk who was laughing and
pointing at foreign-looking passengers and declaring, He's a
terrorist! He's a terrorist! What made the scene all the more disturbing
was that many people on tube trains and buses are now thinking exactly
that: Is that guy a terrorist?
Terrorism, and its human, psychological
and financial costs, is one consequence
for welcoming immigrants/"asylum seekers" from Islamic countries into our country.
Several of the bombers are not first generation immigrants, but were born and educated in our own country as Englishmen, religion aside.
Some flew to Afghanistan and fought for the Taliban
against our troops. Now their colleagues are murdering our citizens.
Many mosques in Britain (funded in good will with tax payers' dosh) are now stigmatised by Islamic terrorist activity.
I imagine the aftermath of these wretched bombings
is exasperating for the majority worshippers in those mosques: those that are blameless. Most muslims, it seems reasonable to assume, are peaceful and do not wish their religion to be bedevilled by the "Islamofascists".
However, to my regret, and I know this is irrational, it gives me the creeps when I walk past a mosque.
Update: I was alluding mostly to the East London Mosque in Whitechapel, which a Muslim later (2007) expressed amazement in the press at the extreme hatred and intolerance preached within, with all this hate-preaching and nastiness paid for by the tax payer. If, say, Germans, or white English, not Muslims, expressed such hatred towards the Jews (and other non-Muslims - or especially Muslims for that matter) all hell would be let loose. What do we do? Turn blind eyes. Why are Muslims allowed to be institutionally racist (in the extreme) in our country if the rest of us are not? This is itself prejudice. I'm not politically correct and don't care if people are racist or not, however the hypocrisy stinks. Recently an Iranian leader visited a mosque in this country (England) and was amazed, saying that if such extreme preaching were to happen in an average muslim country then such preachers would be arrested!
Nice to know that British tax payer's money is well invested in inciting terrorism and hatred against us!
The production of a documentary concerning this injustice was recently sabotaged by the police. Next time there is an Islamic terrorist act, the Police (or their masters) will be partly to blame for this, in my opinion. Of course all this might a cynical conspiracy. Another recent and inexplicable police policy, forcing officers to be nice to criminals, is also putting the public in danger. Wouldn't it be super if the police were nice to the good guys and nasty to the bad guys?
An even more insidious consequence of the Islamic terror attacks are the new draconian laws being
passed in Parliament introduced ostensibly to oppose terrorism:
Britain is already an intrusive police state as it is. Now that it is illegal to criticise religion in Britain
this very website is unlawful and therefore threatened by our ever more powerful thought police. The ugliness
of this insanity is far more terrible for our freedom than suicide bombers! The irony is
that removing freedoms is what fundamentalist religion is all about, we are passing laws that pave the
creation of our own Taliban state, where freedom of speech is punished.
And what has multi-culturalism achieved? Muslim hatred of non-Muslims and much Islamiphobia to boot! London is now so crammed with muslims that it is known as Londonistan. Is
this really what England is about? (Cute aside: the USA, in these days of George Bush and his ilk, is better known as Dumbfuckistan).
Politically correct types seem to despise Christianity yet have sympathy for
non-western religions. Yet religion is to world stability what feminism is to family stability. All fundamentalist religions (or "faiths"), including Islam, are serious trouble. A long term solution may be to
globally and institutionally oppose all fascist religious movements in the hope of reducing
intolerance, ignorance and hatred. It is imperative that Fascist religion should be seen as a turpitude at least as
destructive as drug addiction or
drink driving, which have become less acceptable the more people's lives were ruined or vanquished.
So not as to end on such a depressing note, I, as an atheist, was debating online with a christian about the nature of faith.
He came up
with a wonderful remark inadvertantly showing the absurdity of faith taken to its logical conclusions:
"the terrorists though in error, gained knowledge thru their faith; the knowledge that hell exists after they died"
There is nothing to add.
I know a Christian, who is
convinced that her praying for her niece saved said niece
from the bombings in London. The mathematics of probability are beyond her, a few million people: a few dozen dead,
what is the probability of survival? Yeah!
A god really saved everyone - except those that perished. Yup makes logical sense doesn't it????
Such in the power of human desire to attribute to magic pheonemena that is easily explained by reason.
I do expect that my relative would indeed have indeed been gratified to her god if I had perished in her niece's place,
for I do castigate my relative for her simpleton views on religion. Just kidding.
Of course this terrorism could be more political in nature than religious (although extreme religion is a convenient
vector for propagating violence and hatred), given the controversial events
of recent history. With the press under strict control, who's to say, given the propagandist bullshit both the enemy
and the press like to bombard us with?
