Sitting by the pool there....

....when someone i didn't know came out to tell us that there had been bombs going off in London. Without meaning to sound flippant about a serious incident that has already cost some people their lives it does go to show how no news travels faster than bad news. İ find it hard to connect with the logic of the woman who came out to tell us about it. I personaly wouldn't have been wanting to go out and tell a bunch of strangers about what had just happened. I would like to think she did it for altruistic reasons, knowing that there was a group of other british tourists outside we may have been from the affected area or have family/friends there and have a personal connection to this event and really want to be informed.

It has yet to become clear who is responsible for the attacks, Al Quaeda has been mentioned and will no doubt be the focus of speculation and investigation. Almost four years on from the destruction of the World Trade Centre it would for me show how much smoke and mirrors this so called war on terror is. We will all remain to a greater or lesser degree vulnerable to terrorist attacks until we deal with the root causes. Although there has been no mention of suicide bombers on this occasion, at least not yet, the very existence of such a thing shows how big a problem we face and no amount of hardline tough talking about defeating terrorists is going to fix the underlying cause.

İ also dispute the claims that the attacks are aimed at destroying our way of life. No doubt many fundamentalist mueslims(and one would assume fundamentalists of many other religions) find many aspects of life in the west incompatable with their religious believes but i think that is not really something in itself that is going to create an atmosphere where terrorism blooms.

İt is far more likely that foreign policy of the US and UK governments(possibly others i am speaking from my own limited pool of knowledge) has created a far more fertile fıeld. The unresolved situation in Palestine, the support of oppresive regimes around the world for political and economic expediency. These things are completely at odds with what we espouse as our values that 'these terrorists hate'. İ think one would find on more thorough research that people in the arab world(that al jahzeera book i just read influence here) would love that freedom. The problem is the divergence in our stated values and apparant morals and what is done in our name and what people over the world experience at the end of immoral foriegn policy.