Author Archives: Tim Hall

Words of wisdom from Ken MacLeod, in the aftermath of what appears to be home-grown suicide bombers.

I can’t say strongly enough that verbally or physically attacking the communities the suspects came from is exactly the wrong way to go. The police and politicians have held that line. It’s too much to hope that all sections of the press will. That line must hold. Otherwise we are looking into the abyss, and the abyss is looking right back.

There’s really nothing else I can add.

More names to add to the vile scum such as George Galloway and Nick Griffin who are exploiting the terrible tragedy for political ends. Some of the presenters and guests on Rupert Murdoch’s pro-Bush propaganda organ Fox News.

This is what their talking heads had to say.

KILMEADE: And he [British Prime Minister Tony Blair] made the statement, clearly shaken, but clearly determined. This is his second address in the last hour. First to the people of London, and now at the G8 summit, where their topic Number 1 –believe it or not– was global warming, the second was African aid. And that was the first time since 9-11 when they should know, and they do know now, that terrorism should be Number 1. But it’s important for them all to be together. I think that works to our advantage, in the Western world’s advantage, for people to experience something like this together, just 500 miles from where the attacks have happened.

VARNEY: It puts the Number 1 issue right back on the front burner right at the point where all these world leaders are meeting. It takes global warming off the front burner. It takes African aid off the front burner. It sticks terrorism and the fight on the war on terror, right up front all over again.

KILMEADE: Yeah.

So it’s a good thing that 50+ people died, so that western governments will pay less attention to Africa and global warning?

This is just vile. Unlike the BNP’s brand of stupidly visceral bigotry, this is cynical, calculating evil. Somehow it seems even worse. It’s a mindset that considers innocent British civilians as expendable pawns to further the agenda of corporate elites. It makes them no better than the vile slime that planted the bombs.

I don’t know who Varney and Kilmeade are; they might just be a couple of blowhard idiots. But I wonder how much their words reflect the real thinking of some of the neo-con right?

(Link from The Ministry of Information)

In our hearts, we all knew it was inevitable something like this would happen sooner or later.

John Kovalic, who may be American but travels to London regularly, says things better than I can.

To quote an old Londoner who lived through the blitz and got caught up in the Canary Wharf explosion: “I’ve been blown up by a better class of bastard than this!”

London is a tough old town, and will bounce back just fine. Which is not in any way, shape or form to diminish what happened today. Indeed, I wish I was there now, to be with friends and family. Or just as a defiant “in your face” to the killers who did this. I recognize all the areas from the clips American television replays (and replays, and replays), and I want to be with my city while it’s hurting.

If the Luftwaffe couldn’t bring the city to it’s knees, these pathetic penny-ante cowards certainly won’t.

40-odd deaths is less than a quarter of that of the Madrid Bombings, the equivalent of about four day’s worth of road accidents. If this is the worst they can do, we’ve got off lightly.

Al-Muhajabah has this to say:

Whoever is responsible for this atrocity will face the wrath of God for the crime they have committed. He who takes a single innocent life is as though he had killed all mankind (Quran 5:32). My prayers are with the victims and their families. May God ease their pain and help them cope. Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un.

I also have complete comtempt for anyone who tries to use this to make political capital, such as the grandstanding clown George Galloway. Even if you do have serious misgivings about the conduct of George Bush’s invasion of Iraq, now is not the time to crow “I told you so”, especially if you’re a well-known apoligist for Saddam Hussein.

Of course, this atrocity is being exploited by the racist troglodytes of the BNP and their fellow travellers to stir up communal tensions. I refuse to link to their vile website, but the content is exactly what I’d expected, with rants about ‘alien creeds’ and ‘the blood stained green crescent of death’. All this is of course a grotesque slander on the vast majority of Muslims who do not support terrorism. But I shouldn’t need to have to say that.

After being in the the country’s most marginal seat at the General Election, I’m now in the middle of this Parliament’s first byelection, in Cheadle. I’ve having to stock up on garlic and crucifixes in case I get canvassed by Michael Howard. (Would be be repelled by a Euro note brandished as a holy symbol, I wonder?)

The Tories seem to be running their campaign on the fact that their candidate, the former MP who lost the last two general elections, actually lives in the constituency rather than half-a-mile outside it. It’s easy to imagine there’s nothing else they positive can say about him. I call this the “Eddie Lopez Lives in Slough” tactic. Eddie Lopez was the Labour candidate in Slough in the 80s, unreformed Old Labour at it’s worst, who’s only selling point was that he didn’t live in Ascot. He never came close to winning. Local band Nine Steps to Ugly even took the piss by recording a song called “Eddie Lopez Lives in Slough”. That became his political epitaph.