Hitting the Fan

A morning of bomb blasts paralyses London, and with it much of the network and travel infrastructures of the South East.

Already the obvious middle-Eastern terrorist links are suspected - but not confirmed. The timing coincides with many things - the 2012 Olympic announcement, G8, and Bush's birthday (yesterday), but for me none of these make much sense. I'd be heartly surprised to learn that the chaos didn't arise out of our foreign policy and our perceived chumminess with said Bush. When local politics is so internationalised, other people's problems become our own.

But what to expect in the aftermath - or indeed right now, for that matter? America used terrorist attacks to authorise increasingly dictatorial laws. Spain used attacks to vote in a more left-wing policy. I suspect, in my sceptical state, that we can expect Blair and Clarke to follow the former on this, alas. I suspect the headlines will be full of mournful (naturally) cabinet ministers. This is fair. But what I also expect to see is resumed rhetoric on the nature of the beast we're "at war with", about the "British resolve" and about not "succumbing to murderers".

Well bollocks to that. Over the next few days, we need pressure on the MPs to remind them that all this shit comes out of their decisions, and their pulling strings on the world arena. And we need to question these decisions, constantly.

We need to remember that we already have full-on security processes, and yet stuff like this still happens because the causes are still being created on a day-to-day basis. When Blair presses for increased surveillance, ubiquitous tracking systems and the renewed urge for an ID system, don't ever forget that there are much, much larger problems that lead to such unrest, and that if we're to get to the bottom of them, we need much, much better action than simply watching over us all and pretending the problem will go away.

Fear is here, and the politicians will be very willing to capitalise on it.

Update: In his statement, Blair says:

"It is important however that those engaged in terrorism realise that our determination to defend our values and our way of life is greater than their determination to cause death and destruction to innocent people in a desire to impose extremism on the world."

Tell that to these people. (And yeah, I know that's US bombs. Big difference.)