London Calling

Tube and Double-decker blasts won’t cow the Millennium City

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
7/7/05
http://zeppscommentaries.com/Sociology/london.htm

I have a picture of myself, taken when I was seven, standing in Trafalgar Square in the heart of London. I have a large pigeon perched on my arm, and he’s pecking at some grain I have in my hand. I don’t look particularly happy about this, because this is such a large and aggressive pigeon, and I’m such a small boy. But I look very, very British, tousled hair poking out from under the beanie cap (a favorite target of school bullies) and wearing my school uniform, which is a festive shade of boiled liver grey. Just to show us West Enders can be a wild and crazy bunch, there is yellow piping on the shoulders and lapels and around the school crest, but the black and white photograph doesn’t really do it justice.

Not visible in the picture is the reality of post-war London. Many of the city’s landmarks still have scaffolding around them as repairs from Werner von Braun’s efforts to touch the stars are made. Thousands upon thousands of new buildings have arisen from the rubble of the Blitz. The picture doesn’t show that rickets, caused by malnutrition, is still common, especially among the older kids born during the war and in the years immediately after. The tens of thousands killed and hundreds of thousands injured aren’t in sight, but are remembered. Just a scared-looking kid and a descendent of pigeons that even Hitler couldn’t kill.

So when I heard some fatuous twit intone that the bombings today were London’s darkest hour, I had to shake my head. London, in its 3,000 year history, has seen fire, plague, war, and pestilence. Frequently. One bout of smog killed 4,000 in one week in the fifties. By London standards, the bombings this morning weren’t even in the top 50. The IRA did worse in the 70s.

During the Blitz, the Germans used a bomb that emitted a whistling roar as it dropped. Either through happenstance or a genius inspiration of psychological warfare, the bombs acted like an owl in that you could hear one that was nearby, but couldn’t accurately determine its location or direction of travel. Obviously, this was unnerving.

Londoners called such bombs "Bob Hopes." It wasn’t a slur on the English-born American comedian, who the Brits loved; it was a joke. "Bob down and hope for the best".

Londoners, naturally enough, are pissed, but not cowed. As one said, doubtlessly speaking for many, "We go about our lives, and just soldier on."

The bombings may have caused a bigger flap in Washington, where the "threat level" was raised to Level Orange ("Citizens are instructed to weep, wail, gnash their teeth, and blame Bill Clinton") and Dick Cheney prudently moved to his summer villa, 500 feet below the Washington monument. The media were in a perfect flap and whirl, especially when, inevitably, someone linked it to the Dread Pirate Roberts, or if you prefer it in the original Arabic, al Qaida. It was breathlessly reported that a website called "The Secret Organization of Jihadist al-Qaida" had claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Not one of the brain-dead blow-dried media morons stopped to wonder why, if it was a secret organization, it had a website that made sensational boasts.

Shhh. Don’t tell anyone about our website. It’s. A. Secret.

The question, of course, is "Who did set off the bombs?"

Islamic extremists are a valid possibility, although here’s a tip for American corporate journalists: if another faction, claiming to have "slain the infidels to the greater glory of Shakti" shows up, exercise a little skepticism, ok? At least consider the possibility that the claim might be utter bullshit. Especially if it comes from noisy "secret organizations."

It could have been an Islamic group, since threats had been made before that London would suffer the same fate as Madrid, which has already suffered a coordinated series of bombs against their mass transportation, especially their trains. It’s worth noting that, in addition to the four explosions that took place, another five unexploded devices have apparently been found. So far. Contrary to what Faux News thinks, belief in Allah does not automatically make one a munitions expert.

With security at the G8 conference in Edinburgh as tight as it is, any group with a beef with G8 (that would be about 1,500 different groups) might have elected to mark the conference by going after soft targets in the Tube several hundred miles away. While corporate media prattles on about how G8 is meeting to feed Africa and solve third world debt and control carbon pollution, the fact is that this is window dressing for a predatory bunch intent on taking as much of the earth’s resources as possible. They have lots of enemies, including but not limited to much of the third world, labor-rights advocates, human-rights-watch groups, environmentalists, and nationalists of various types who hate and fear globalization. Remember that 200,000 people showed up in Edinburgh in the days preceding the conference just so they could hiss at G8. A sizable number tried to attack the conference site physically the other day.

Finding out who did this morning’s bombings might not be easy. If they determine that Human Rights Watch wasn’t responsible (a safe guess) that would be about like working on a murder case in New York City where the only clue is that the killer’s last name did not start with "X".

Hell, London won the contest to host the 2012 Olympics the day before, sparking mass jubilation. The bombings might have come from disappointed Parisians or New Yorkers, a day late to do them any good.

It’s even possible that the attacks were coordinated by cordon bleu chefs from Paris, who took Jacques Chirac’s comments on English food to heart, and nobly were attempting to rid the world of the scourge of English cuisine.

Hey, in a case where all we know is that the killer’s last name didn’t begin with "X," and it wasn’t Human Rights Watch, it’s as good a theory as any.

But I know Londoners. I’ve lived among them, and I have a deep respect for them. And while I am sorry about the attacks and am sympathetic to the families of those killed and injured, I know that Londoners won’t cower behind infinite surveillance cameras and metal detectors and troops armed with enough firepower to level a city block. They won’t cower, they won’t whine, and they won’t give in.

They’re Londoners. They’ve seen this before.