Scotland Yard warned Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu just previous the London blasts that they’d received warnings and so he stayed at this hotel instead of heading down to the hotel where the economic conference was taking place, which is over the subway stop where one of the blasts occurred.
No news on how long before the blasts. Long enough to make a difference for a select few and not a number of others. Which is how it usually goes.
Image from G8 protests at indymedia.org.uk
Reading the reports at the BBC I was struck with those in the tube being told the train had hit something. Read more that people were at first told it was a power outage. Yeah, I suppose you could say it was a power outage. Of sorts.
Pam’s House Blend has numerous postings , news and commentary.
My first response. My first thought was, ah, more blood, blood that is never that of the policy makers. More blood. Daily there is blood and now it is Britain’s home blood added, poured on.
My second thought was now we shall hear about terrorism come home again (Britain being considered part of “home” territory by many USAers) and talk of horror and how we can’t be cowed by the terrorists and how we will hear about how terrorism excuses the controlling criminalizing of potentially all dissent and scuttling of protections with the Patriot Act, And how difficult it will be to ever have the initial reaction of most people to the word “terror” being the thought of how the global corporate and its protectors commit acts of terror daily against people at home, against people abroad, against the environment, that we stick with the old definition that terrorism is when someone blows up your street corner rather than terroristic policies that threaten the well-being of everyone for sake of money, and the global corporate not worrying about it because they have no vision for seven generations hence and believe that their profit margin is all that matters,which they believe will protect them, the people who matter, in their global corporate fortresses.
Those were my first and second thoughts.
I read how…
The leaders did however pause to condemn what they called “an attack on civilized peoples everywhere”.
Civilized here means we have legalized the way the global corporate and its state supporters terrorize, and we say it is what all the people want.
Not all of them do.
Condoleeza Rice left her condolences:
These terrorists attacked without warning on 11 September 2001. They have attacked in Madrid, in Jakarta, in Morocco.
This is a worldwide war against ideals. There is no separate peace to be made with terrorism.
They are after our way of life and we have to deal with them. There is no other way other than with strength.
I don’t want the way of life transportation blasting ideologues would extol over what we’ve got (I keep wondering who benefited most from the blasts), but our way of life is screwing the world and is nothing to defend. What is Condoleeza Rice’s definition of strength, I think we all know, and it isn’t taking a good look at the future and realizing we’re sucking it dry for the majority and some big and fast changes need to be made. No, that kind of thoughtful consideration is branded by Rovians as giving succor to the enemy.
Pope Benedict XVI took the opportunistic award with his deploring the attacks as “anti-human and anti-Christian”.
And Bush weighed in:
I spent some time recently with the prime minister, Tony Blair; had the opportunity to express our heartfelt condolences to the people of London, people who lost lives.
I appreciate Prime Minister Blair’s steadfast determination and restraint.
He’s on his way now to London here from the G-8 to speak directly to the people of London, to carry a message of solidarity with him.
This morning I’ve been in contact with our homeland security folks and I instructed them to be in touch with local and state officials about the facts of what took place here and in London and to be extra vigilant as our folks start heading to work.
The contrast between what we’ve seen on the TV screens here, what’s taken place in London, what’s taken place here is incredibly vivid to me.
On the one hand, we got people here who are working to alleviate poverty and to help rid the world of the pandemic of AIDS and that are working on ways to have a clean environment. And on the other hand, you’ve got people killing innocent people. And the contrast couldn’t be clearer between the intentions and the hearts of those of us who care deeply about human rights and human liberty, and those who kill, those who’ve got such evil in their heart that they will take the lives of innocent folks.
The war on terror goes on. I was most impressed by the resolve of all the leaders in the room. Their resolve is as strong as my resolve. And that is, we will not yield to these people, will not yield to the terrorists.
We will find them. We will bring them to justice. And at the same time we will spread an ideology of hope and compassion that will overwhelm their ideology of hate.
Thank you very much.
Bush doesn’t care about a clean environment.
Innocent people are dying daily at the hands of “civilized people”.
The only rights and liberties with which Bush is concerned have nothing to do with me or you, unless you’re living well off the global corporate.
The bomb blasts gave front stage center for news and world leaders to talk of the good they’re doing at G8, the concern for Africa and global warming etc etc. In contrast of terrorism.
Image from G8 protests at indymedia.org.uk
G8 protestors say otherwise about G8 agendas. News and opinion on them one isn’t going to see in the mainstream is at Indymedia.or.uk
Lydia Bulman from Aberystwyth, who cycled around Wales on her own for three months on “the blossom bike tour.” “I cycled around over sixty towns and villages across Wales collecting the opinions of the Welsh people, which I gathered together to make this Welsh agenda.”
The large black bound agenda was full of hand-written comments. The most common comments, apparently, were about climate change and environmental issues. “They feel that the talks currently happening at the moment within Gleneagles are just a farce, and not actually addressing the proper issues. They want there to be more investment into renewable sources of energy. And that is not nuclear power that they want, they want wind power, solar power, wave power – and they don’t want concentration just on the wind farms.”
Lydia read out a comment by Moff Foster from Aberystwyth.
“Dear leaders of the G8. We need sustainable development, not just development. We need to stop the planet from over-heating. Action must be taken to reduce and even stop emissions of greenhouse gases now. Adopt contraction and convergence as a mechanism for controlling greenhouse gas emmissions. This has been developed by the Global Commons Institute, and is accepted by many around the world as the only acceptable system for tackling climate change.”
Contraction and convergence was developed during the nineties as a possible formula for overcoming some of the international political barriers to action on climate change. It is based on “caution and equity,” meaning that it aims to avoid dangerous levels of climate change whilst recognising that industrialising countries will inevitably produce increased carbon emmissions. The burden for reducing global emmissins should therefore initially be heavier on those countries that have already industrialised, whose emmissions are and have historically been far greater, and who have the resources to adopt more expensive and cleaner forms of energy. “Convergence” would see the different countries move towards an equitable share of global emmisions per person. For more information, please see http://www.gci.org.uk/
Lydia felt that Wales could offer a unique contribtuion because of its history of exploitation and cultural repression – the Welsh language was suppressed by the English, and is only now enjoying a resurgence. But Welsh is the first language of twenty percent of the population, making it far more prevelant than Gaelic in Scotland. Though the comments were mostly written in English, we found one in Welsh. Lydia herself does not speak Welsh, but luckily we saw a woman wearing a Welsh flag nearby, and asked her to read it out.
Here are images from G8 protests.
Here are more images from G8 protests.
It’s important to see these images of people saying no. It’s important for others to begin to understand why. Important for their protests to not be flushed away and forgotten with London’s blood and vitally important that the media and Bush and Blair not succeed in equating protest and dissent with terrorism.
A protester in one photo has a placard of Bush as #1 Terrorist.
Where’s-the-WMD’s Bush.
The word “civilization” ought to be scrapped. Cut out of the dictionary.
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