Seven-seven, a day we won’t forget

I’ll let you in on a secret:
It’s often my most common choice to rant about certain things, having some issues with the state of things in England and in Sweden, criticising certain people and phenomena, and so on and so on.
But truth is, when things like these happen, I actually find respect for the ones — the very leaders — that we normally criticise (sometimes just-because-we-should, just for the love of rant and critique).

It would be easy to say that London wouldn’t have seen these attacks if it wasn’t for the English imperialist, colonialist past (remember, the whole situation in Iraq is ultimately a product of the colonial policies that served to bleed democracy to death in that part of the world). It would be easy to say that countries like the USA, England, Denmark and Italy are on the list of terror targets just because of their role in Iraq and Afghanistan (as this fundamentalist Islamist statement praising the attack duly confirms), rather than due to some kind of utterly “blind”, random, unoriented hatred. It would be easy to say that the status quo as we like to have it in the West requires quite dramatic imbalances of power, that some certain individuals react to, on days like these, in the most desperate, atrocious, contra-productive ways imaginable.

But what is done is done. Britain can’t undo the power inequalities that remain from its imperialist, colonialist past. The capitalist system that keeps some people in shackles and lets some fly high, high in the sky, cannot change overnight. And — I have been trying to avoid saying this for a long while now, but — the current government cannot back on their previous (many would say hard-lined) policies in Iraq and elsewhere. They cannot, because that would be giving in to this terror. Pulling back troops abroad just because bombs start appearing at home is not an option, no matter how much we all might disagree with the choice to put the troops there in the first place.

I live here in London and I cannot be objective about the way of life I and many, many others are able to lead in this Great City. I still here the police sirens outside while writing this, ten minutes’ walk from Aldgate East. There was a different look on people’s faces today, because we all knew.
In the face of death, we realise how we love life. We might be capitalists, criminals, yuppies, college drop outs, conservatives, radicals, arty bohos, square intellectuals, straight, gay, old, young... but, man, how we love life here! And some morbid extremists will not change that.

Because of these insights, I — after all is said and done — admire and respect Tony Blair when he maintains that the “determination to defend our values and our way of life is greater than their determination”. Something tells me he knew this was coming and that it is because of the deliberate foreign policies of the last years. And I see his determination, that he truly is driven by a steadfast belief that we will make things better, but in an orderly way, set out by careful — hard — decisions, and mired by sacrifices.
But much, much more than this, I admire and respect Ken Livingstone, mayor of London, in his declaration that this is a Great City, just because it is a place where brothers and sisters of all nations are living together, side by side, in peace and prosperity. And extremists are not going to change that. We will remain an open city, he continued (and by doing so, rightfully giving a well-deserved snub to xenophobic voices like The Daily Mail), which stands unmoved by events like these and still welcomes people of all colours and cultures to live side by side. The airports will be open, the harbours and the railway stations too, and like Jesus allegedly said — if you hit us once we will turn the other cheek.
Because we are stronger than you.