Waiting for the evidence

I went for a walk through London with a friend this afternoon. It was a beautiful day and we had a mind to take some pictures.

More by accident than design, we passed Tavistock Square, Kings Cross and Aldgate Station on our travels. It’s the first time I’ve been to these place since they were bombed..

Need I say how horrible it all was?

The sites are surrounded by plastic sheeting whilst the police continue with their forensic work. That’s not so bad. Next to each site, mounds of flowers are growing steadily as people leave tributes. That’s quite touching. The horrible part is the dozens of home-produced posters of victims still not confirmed dead by the authorities, pinned up on nearby lampposts and walls. From a distance they look like missing cat notices. Only there are dozens of them and up close you can see the peoples’ faces. Many of the faces are smiling. Family snapshots of never to be repeated, happy occasions. ‘Missing’, ‘Have you seen our daughter?’, ‘Please help’. These, more than anything else, have really rammed home the reality of what has happened. I could barely look at them. I certainly couldn’t bring myself to photograph them. But part of me tells me that I should. I’ll be round that way again in the weekend and maybe I will have sorted myself out by then.

We spent most of the afternoon wandering around the East End; Shoreditch, Brick Lane, Bethnal Green, Whitechapel. These are very Muslim areas. There was a much larger than usual visible police presence. Maybe I was feeling overly sensitive but every now and again I saw people looking suspiciously at the camera in my hand as if it were a weapon. Whatever, I took virtually no pictures of anything today.

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I’ve reached a peculiar point for this blog. It’s a personal blog not a political one. Part of me wants to move away from the single issue I’ve been stuck on lately. However, I want to finish recording my thoughts about why last week’s bombings are not like 9/11 and why I know the nature of London and Londoners’ response to the bombings are misrepresented in the media. I’ll probably get round to that next.

One of the absolutely key differences between ‘77’ and 911 is that none us knew what to expect in the aftermath of 911. Not the way the story would be managed, nor the way our governments would behave. There was a lot more trust floating around. This time round a lot more people are suspicious, plus we are more literate when it comes to how the game is played. God willing, this will help us to identify the lies in real time this time rather than retrospectively, months or years after the event.

And, following on from my previous post, the case being woven around the suspected suicide bombers is starting to smell already. But I’m waiting for the official release of a couple of pieces of the ‘evidence’ before I say any more about that. I’m especially looking forward to the CCTV footage of the four guys at the Kings Cross we’ve been told about. I am looking for three things in particular but I’ll save that for a later post. In the meantime, this story seems to have some potential.

Think what it must feel like to be a decent, law abiding Muslim living in the West right now. The staring. The bricks through the windows. The thinly disguised hate in the newspapers and our politicians’ words - how insincere does that ‘it’s only a minority’ crap sound. We’re fighting a war to save Western Civilisation don’t you know?

Fuck Bush. Fuck Blair. Fuck the newspapers. Don’t let them demonise your neighbour. Take any opportunity you can to let that neighbour know you’re not part of the mob.

(category: political stuff)