the London bombings

[miriam_e]

(I wrote this as a response to rpeate's posting, but thought I should put it here too.)

Grrrr. Those morons! Could those al Qaeda twits be any more stupid? They want the west out of the Middle East. Understandable. I do too. Most of the Western population agrees with them -- witness the big protests and the ongoing anger at politicians who ignored the popular feeling.

Now these stupid jerks have handed the war-makers a great excuse to go in there guns a-blazing, and have reduced vastly, any support for their cause among their most powerful ally: the Western general population.

What incredible imbeciles!

I have to keep reminding myself that these are not the people who are having their rights trampled in the Western involvement in the Middle East. They are a bunch of restless, privileged, angry young fuckwits who are engaged in the same obscene action as our governments. Unfortunately both sides seem to think it is acceptable to hit citizens. Both sides think they have right on their sides. Both sides think they have a holy imperative. Both sides have religions and laws that forbid murdering bystanders.

The smarter people on the ground in the Middle East must be thinking "Oh no! These fools have just demolished our chances of peace in the foreseeable future."

...and the so we move on to the next stage in murder of women and children and other innocents.

Comments

[hestia.livejournal.com]

I agree. Well said. We're up to our necks in it now.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

[sigh] Yes.
We are next no doubt. :(
Fuck John Howard, George Bush, and Tony Blair for dragging us into this crap.

[shiiizzzam.livejournal.com]

For the life of me I can't understand any rational thinking among any of those mentioned. A very sick world. How can anyone kill innocent children and humans this way ? I'll never understand such a mindset.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

The impulse to hurt someone back is incredibly powerful. (Picture two little children: "But Mum, he hit me first!") Unfortunately it usually means just more of the same. As a species, we need to find better ways to deal with things than simply hitting back... or this will just never end.

How can we be so delightfully creative and loving, yet so cruel and stupid at the same time? Humans are a sad puzzle. :(

[shiiizzzam.livejournal.com]

So true my sweet friend. When will their eyes be opened and that little light bulb go off and them get it ?!?!?! Some day...soon I hope. History tells me never. I hope I'm wrong.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

One encouraging thing is that people are becoming smarter with each generation. (The Flynn Effect.) With technology putting more of us in touch with each other it makes the world smaller too. It is pretty hard to view a country of millions of individuals as one evil thing when you have a lot of friends there.

History tells us that eyes are opening and your hope for humanity is not misplaced. Don't forget that less than a single lifetime ago:
- it was normal to own slaves
- blacks were widely thought to be subhuman
- women weren't considered capable of voting
- women had to have the consent in writing of their husband or father in order to buy or sell land
- children were a parents' property
- Jews in many parts of the world were not allowed to own land

A lot has changed for the better in an astonishingly short time.

The internet is the most powerful tool humanity has ever had and has exposed the moral vacuum in politics and big media, and put common folk in touch around the globe. It has made possible enormously complex projects free of charge and shown the incredible power of people working together in loose cooperation to do good simply for the sake of doing good. (For example Project Gutenberg, Linux, LiveJournal, and the tens of thousands of opensource projects on Sourceforge.)

I am certain that good is growing and evil is waning. I think we will find that the London bombings, 9-11, and the immoral wars burning on in the middle east, are the thrashings of a dying corpse.

But we don't have the luxury of time. We are fatally damaging the world as we grow so it is a good thing that we are getting wise at an accelerating pace. There is not a lot of time to spare. I think we'll make it, but it will be close. We need all good people to spread understanding instead of violence at every opportunity.

[patchworkkid.livejournal.com]

I wonder if it works like this:

- I need an army in order to fight the West, who's ideals I oppose.
- I bomb New York.
- The Americans will be outraged and overreact.
- For each country they invade, millions will die.
- The sons and brothers of the dead will have their lives destroyed, and will hate the US.
- As the years pass I will have my army.
- Like fanning a fire you blow then wait then blow. So just as they get comfy, bomb London.
- Watch them retaliate.
- My army grows larger.
- Eventually more than half the world hates the West.
- I win.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

I don't think it is paranoid to think that this has some applicability.

During the 60s and 70s I became interested in, and read about, the philosophy of terrorists. The stated aims of a lot of the terrorists back then was that they did their deeds in order to speed up the creeping power of government, rendering it visible. It always struck me how sophisticated this was (even if I thought killing people to alert people to governments restricting freedoms was rather stupid). If terrorists thought that back then (in simpler times), how has their thinking evolved over the decades?

I wish they'd evolved to the point of coming up with ways to achieve their aims without violence, but I think they have certainly become smarter morons... just like the politicians were pretty simple back then and have evolved to become more crafty, but just as dangerous.

Incidentally, did you hear that the Australian government spends more than a hundred million dollars a year on propaganda? Unlike most western nations we don't have laws to curb such misuse of money. Amazing isn't it.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/mediarpt/default.htm