As if getting saddled with the Olympics weren't enough.
How long has it been since the IRA was doing this kind of thing?
Good question, I'll email him.
Is the IRA question a genuine question or are you wondering if it might be them? As I understand it, an "Al Qaeda affiliated' group has taken responsibility, and this isn't really the IRA's style, is it?
The site I saw said they had no count yet from the bus that was blown up. I'm afraid it's going to be much more than 50. Fuck fuck fuck.
From what I remember, the IRA usually phones in warnings; they don't deliberately maximize casualties.
I didn't think it was them; the question was more about how accustomed/not accustomed Londoners are to this sort of thing in recent memory.
Or if they're freaking on the level that we did here in New York.
Which is not to minimize the awfulness of the attack today.
Current count is 33 in the NYT; FL's right, though, the IRA's MO tended to be off-hours and phoned-in warnings.
Still, something calling itself the Secret Cell of al-Qaida® in Europe strikes me as a bit of a cumbersome moniker... can you have copycat terrorists?
Fuck fuck fuckety fuck fuck.
Subways weren't noticably less crowded or more tense today was my impression. Sort of interesting.
Or if they're freaking on the level that we did here in New York.
Reportedly not.
Jesus. I see a story like this, and all I can think is "How can anyone possibly think that blowing up buses and killing people is a good idea?" I know terrorism happens -- I live in New York -- but on some level I just can't make myself believe in it.
It's true, LB: in some crucial way, we have no idea what the people who do these things are thinking.
BBC: 33 confirmed dead in the Underground; unknown number on the bus.
You know, I'd never been to or in the Twin Towers, but I've ridden the tube, and those double-decker buses, many times. It's very easy to imagine myself there.
Yes, the cult of death is one that I have a terribly hard time wrapping my brain around as well.
I am an evil person, because my first thought was to wish that GWB had been on one of those buses. I blame him, although it's not entirely rational of me to do that.
Abby, if that had happened, he would be canonized. I'd rather he be disgraced, and be forced to live a long life in ignominy. Like Nixon.
cult of death
I'm not a fan of this formulation. It presumes we do know the reasons and motivations (and when it's applied to Palestinians, it really pisses me off).
All right, perhaps cult is the wrong word, but much like the war elixir that is so intoxicating (we've seen it here firsthand), there is a definite romanticism attached to martyrdom that is extremely dangerous. I'm not saying that everyone who straps a bomb to their chest and detonates it is caught up in that sort of thinking, but it's undeniably present.
14: Copycat terrorism: from the BBC running commentary:
Gordon Correra: "The most worrying trend has been the way al-Qaeda has fragmented.
At first people thought that was a good thing, because that meant a sign of its defeat, but lots of groups have popped up in other countries which are inspired by them. "
What adds infuriation to outrage is that just days ago Karl Rove said that this is what Democrats want—terrorist attacks, terrorist victories.
a definite romanticism attached to martyrdom
Irrespective of religion, I'd add.
What to do? Catch the f'ers and carry on.
Don't get me wrong. This is bad, and it is criminal, but humanity has lived (and thrived) through far worse than this.
Now is the time to buck up.
Re 27, thoughts along those lines were here.
I repudiate the sentiments expressed in comment 23. I do not wish such a death on anyone, and I think that blame for this event falls on those directly responsible, i.e., the people who planned and carried out the bombings.
In case anyone wondered.
Re 27, part of the fear is that different al-Q fractions might galvanize under distinct but related missions. This question came up during the Madrid bombings: whether it was the al Qaeda that wanted the U.S. out of the M.E. or whether it was the al Qaeda that considers the Caliphate to include Andalusia.
FL-
I was thinking and should have posted the same. That said, Abby backed away from her own comment while making it -- I think she was reporting an emotional reaction rather than making a moral judgment.
Joe D : " how accustomed/not accustomed Londoners are to this sort of thing in recent memory."
Pretty accustomed if we're over 30. Maybe you saw Blair flying back to London, rather than flying a circular route around our underpopulated areas for a day or so, just to be safe..
Steve Gilliard makes a nice dispassionate point :
"So Porter Goss knows where Bin Laden is? He might well fucking decide to go get him now.
George Bush decided to place a significant number of this country's resources and effort into Iraq. Every Delta Force member, every CIA paramilitary and officer in Iraq, is one which is not hunting the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Central and South Asia."
Word.
38 was praising the resolve of the Londoners, just for clarification.
34-- FL you are right to repudiate it, because it would be immoral to act on that feeling.
Joe Drymala--Of course it would be counterproductive, and it would elevate Bush. There's no doubt about it.
LizardBreath is right that it was an emotional reaction.
The last (Real) IRA attack was, I believe, in August 2001, and seven people were hurt. So not the same scale at all. The IRA also blew up a bus in 1996 that killed three people.
I feel as though understanding Abby's emotional reaction might help us understand--maybe not how, but that--people can get to a place where they blow up innocents. I've not been above, deep down inside, wishing harm to my political/moral enemies myself. I mean real physical harm (I'm quite aboveboard and wholehearted about wishing them political harm and jail time when deserved).
I don't think that's what Matt was saying.
For me, that doesn't work. I certainly have a hot temper, and I'm not above wishing harm on people I'm angry with (or, indeed, above wanting to inflict that harm personally). The idle thought that I would really enjoy slapping the shit out of someone giving me difficulty drifts through my head at least weekly, probably more often. While I didn't specifically share Abby's reaction in this case, I think things at least that bad about political opponents regularly.
Getting from there to the thought process of someone who thinks it's a good idea to kill randomly selected other people, who aren't individually their enemies, to gain some end -- they seem different enough to me that I can't see the first being much help in understanding the second.
Look, I don't mean to be a dick about this, but I'm troubled that a comment thread about victims of a subway bombing should bend 'round to a discussion of Karl Rove and George Bush. (Would it be too cute to call it an atriocity?)
It just reminds me too much of the Poweline view of the left: look, their first reaction is a partisanship. Furthermore, the claim about responsibility is a serious thorn in my side, because saying that it's Bush's fault is saying that Islamicist extremists are basically machines.
But I am kind of proud of "atriocity," now that I think about it.
LB's right. Murder is so categorically distinct from anger that I don't think you can rationally arrive at the former from the latter. I hope not anyway. That's all I meant by 43, which looks more acidic than I meant it.
We all could be terrorists. It is part of our humanity.
Another part of our humanity is the ability to control the first part.
We may, at times, have some of the feelings that terrorists have, but what matters is what we do with those feelings.
The sad part is that it is not all that hard to make a torturer or a terrorist.
No, it isn't. More like: Terrorists may be human beings, driven by impulses shared to some extent by normal decent people (even though they aren't normal decent impulses). Torturers too.
Abby and I aren't acting on these impulses. That's enough to make us not terrorists.
This isn't to say that we should do anything to terrorists other than hunt them down and kill them or lock them up. But if our goal is also to keep people who aren't yet terrorists from becoming terrorists--as it had damn well better be--I think it's worth recognizing that humans have deep-seated impulses toward violence and martyrdom, and that terrorists aren't necessarily innately different from the rest of us.
I think that's an important point, Matt: they end up as very different, in ways that shouldn't be underestimated, and via processes that shouldn't be underestimated, but they are of the same kind.
Look at the things I offered Scheherazade in the strategy comments (and no, I don't have the plug-in to make linking easy and I'm not going to link).
Those things are how you make a terrorist.
Now this dude is a terrorist. I now cede any grounds for highminded chiding.
LB's right. Murder is so categorically distinct from anger that I don't think you can rationally arrive at the former from the latter.
Rationally, probably not. (Rationally, you arrive at murder from quite a different origin than anger, I suspect.)
Labs -- I don't think it's out of bounds to be upset with political leaders who have quite clearly aggravated the tensions in the Middle East (along with those non-Middle Eastern residents who feel a strong attachment to the region).
49 to 44. 48 is really what I was trying to say. And murder may be categorically different from anger, but it requires anger. If there are people cultivating their anger in the wrong way, then they can turn themselves into murderers. Quite possibly they also have to have something missing that decent people have, but--well, I don't have the feeling of total incomprehension some of you seem to.
This isn't an attempt to diminish the terrorists' moral responsibility. Trying to understand isn't trying to excuse. Part of being a non-evil person is making sure that you're not going to act on any evil feelings you might have.
This isn't a discussion of Rove and Bush, BTW.
OK, total agreement with 50. For policy analysis, I like this Daalder TPMCafe post.
I actually don't believe in "hunting down and killing" the terrorists. Locking them up, yes, and if it's in the middle of a war, then yes people will die, but, despite what I said above, I am categorically opposed to the death penalty.
I'm listening to BBC's PM on radio 4. David Davis is the shadow home secretary, and I've never liked him, because he always struck me as authoritarian, but he has refused to demagogue. Indeed, he even said that it might not be feasiblee to check everyone in the Tube every day.
Re 55, It does require something else beyond anger, but (as you suggest) I can't comprehend what that element is. Re 49, I guess I'm saying that we (you and Abby and non-terrorists and I) are not only not acting on those impulses, we don't have those impulses.
Which is not to say that terrorists or murderers innately different.
Yeah, basically, 50.
Andrew Sullivan: "Right now, a million kettles are boiling."
Joe, of course you're right. My point was meant to be one about timing and tone, but I'm having trouble expressing it clearly.
Quick observation:
Wikipedia--faster than the Department of Homeland Security. All those "threat elevation" announcements on CNN, BBC, and MSNBC and the homepage for that hasn't been updated since April.
But Wikipedia by its nature should be faster--isn't it completely decentralized? Read somewhere that security's been heightened in US subways but I suspect that a general Orange Alert would be pretty much useless. I'm hoping the next DHS will find some way to phase that system out.
It's also worth noting that Republicans are not observing any kind of respectful timetable when it comes to using the recent tragedy to justify their usual jackassery.
What an awful day. Jeebus.
I'm a bit surprised that people find the motivations or processes that terrorists go through to arrive at such an action so mysterious. For me, the mystery (for which I am intensely greatful) is that it doesn't happen much more often. That's not to excuse the terrorists, obviously.
From Slate, and god bless the English British:
But the reaction to today's attacks feels incredibly English. When I left the quiet area right around the bus bombing and returned to the busy streets of Holborn and Soho, London appeared just as it always is.
The natural state of the English is a kind of gloomy diligence, which is why they do so well in hard times. In 1940, Londoners went dutifully on with their business while the Luftwaffe bombed the hell out of them. Today, most of them are doing the same. I was in Washington for 9/11, and the whole city went into a panic. Offices emptied, stores shut, downtown D.C. became a ghost town. But in London today, everyone still has a cell phone clutched to their ear. The delivery vans are still racing about, seeking shortcuts around all the street closures. The Starbucks is packed.
And when I walked by the Queen's Larder Pub, not half a mile from the Tavistock Square wreckage, at 11 a.m., a half-dozen men were sitting together at a sidewalk table, hoisting their morning pints of ale. Civilization must go on, after all.
re 65: what a dick Pataki can be. I wonder if his son will stop seeking a deferment from his military commitment.
In case you were wondering, FL, I was linking to Eschaton just to bait you.
67 is fucking awesome.
Lot of good stuff up at Sullivan's right now. The Livingstone is exactly right.
SCMT,
I'm with you. My point is that all of us could have the impulses even if some of us have not yet had them.
I think the law recognizes differences between murder that happens in "hot blood" and "cold blood."
These acts of terror are clearly done in cold blood. They are planned and pre-meditated and I doubt the terrorist actually feel anger when they do them.
They have anger beforehand, but they murder for a greater purpose and out of a deeper need. Their trainers use their needs to mold them into terrorists.
This will seem horribly bleelding-heart-liberal and very simplistics but to stop terrorism we need to direct the potential terrorists into productive ways to get their needs met.
"God bless the British," I insist. "English" I understand to be a bit loaded--the opposite of what Livingstone said. (e.g., sometimes taken to mean not Scottish, not Welsh, not Irish, white, etc.)
What Pataki said wouldn't have been so bad if we hadn't been subjected to so much bullshit about what the "war on terror" is (IRAQ IRAQ IRAQ). Which is I guess what Atrios means about corrupting the discourse.
I was in London during one of the IRA bombings and I saw the British reaction then - carry on.
I was hoping for a similar thing after 9/11 but we Americans are kind of soft and spoiled and fearmongers had big reasons to stoke our fear.
Re 73, no real argument here; it just reminds me of the school of thought that says if Hitler had gotten into art school the Holocaust would have been avoided. Personally, I think there's just no real way of knowing what would happen if you did A instead of B without either a psychic or a time machine.
A well written response by John Kovalic
"Those I know and love in London all seem to be OK.
Good God, am I proud of London, and how it's coping and reacting, right now.
To quote an old Londoner who lived through the blitz and got caught up in the Canary Wharf explosion: 'I've been blown up by a better class of bastard than this!'
London is a tough old town, and will bounce back just fine. Which is not in any way, shape or form to diminish what happened today. Indeed, I wish I was there now, to be with friends and family. Or just as a defiant "in your face" to the killers who did this. I recognize all the areas from the clips American television replays (and replays, and replays), and I want to be with my city while it's hurting."
76
I bait with whatever my quarry wants.
Karyn,
The holocaust was a lot more than Hitler.
I don't offer certainty, especially when dealing with individuals, but we can still do a whole lot of good with groups of people.
For example I think the way the end of WWII was handled worked out much better than the way WWI was handled.
If I ruled the world here are the two things I'd do in the ME: First offer good public schooling for all. After five or ten years transition them away from autocracies.
75: It may not be a big deal at all, I remember seeing some discussion on CT on English vs. British but I have no idea how significant the language is. (Haven't been there since before I was 1.)
76:
I was in Washington for 9/11, and the whole city went into a panic. Offices emptied, stores shut, downtown D.C. became a ghost town. But in the Mineshaft today, everyone is still making cock jokes....
$0.02. Now that I've gotten past the fuck
Anger may not lead rationally to murder, but human beings aren't paradigmatic rational actors. I know personally that there are a handful of situations that would enrage me to the point of attempting physical violence. (We're talking a very narrow range of scenarios, usually involving theoretical confrontation with someone who harmed immediately family member kind of things).
I do not like this part of me. I hope that I am never in a situation where I would be tested, because I am reasonably certain the rational side would not win.
In any case, I don't think terrorism is analogous to any of my pretend situations, and so I'm inclined to reject the idea that anger is motivating the random murders. Anger at least is comprehensible to me. This....just kind of a what the fuck is blowing up a bus going to accomplish? what the hell did you do that for?
77: But . . . it wasn't possible to carry on, at least not in lower Manhattan. And anyway, they brought down two massive skyscrapers! There's nothing soft about having that seriously fuck up your day. Twin Towers, all gone, planes used as missiles, very fucked up.
And it's not going to be business as usual in London once everyone gets off work. Does everyone have to pay that $80 toll or whatever it is to get home?
Groups like Al Qaeda will always be around, but in the past few years they have moved from fringe status to mainstream acceptability in many parts of the world. Our actions have a lot to do with that shift (and our reactions as well, i.e. letting a fear of a few guys bring our entire country to its knees). We should be focusing our efforts on keeping them on the fringe, viewed as dangerous extremists, rather than helping them make their anti-Western argument with imperial foreign policy maneuvers abroad and xenophobic hate speech here at home.
Yeah, what Kriston said. There were PLANES! going into BUILDINGS! The buildings FELL DOWN! There were MORE PLANES! possibly taken over! Lower Manhattan! Gigantic dust cloud!
Highly visible, and totally fucked up in a way no one expected.
A better comparison would be how New York reacted in 1993 when the World Trade Center was bombed.
Cala,
what the hell did you do that for?
Purpose, meaning, fulfillment.
You sure aren't going to find these things rocking back all day reading the Koran with no job and no booze and no sex.
Cala -- true, but again, compared to the Londoners during the blitz (which was planes and buldings and explosions and the whole thing), we were a bunch of blubbering pussies.
People in Manhattan after 9/11 I can understand. People in Fleabag Illinois and Armpit Minnesota have no excuses.
People on goddamn farms in the middle of nowhere have NO EXCUSE for panic.
82: What I was thinking--along the lines of FL's 50, again--is that anger, if malevolent people train and focus it, can turn into the sort of attitude where blowing up buses is OK for The Cause. Add a helping of:
The psychiatrist James Gilligan has argued that acts of violence are always rooted in feelings of shame and humiliation that can be expiated only by the destruction of someone who was a witness, in some sense, to one's shame.
which is from an article on John Brown's terrorism. (Which I think may have been justified.) And that's my armchair theory about how people can get to that point.
imperial foreign policy maneuvers abroad
This is obviously redundant.
I think Tripp (and Joe) are adverting to a widely held belief (though maybe not using the right data points) that Americans are soft. I buy it. We've been unbelievably lucky as a country; of course we're soft. Hell, I'm glad we're soft, because it means we've been lucky.
It means we look like asses to the rest of the world (and ultimately ourselves) when we claim special hardships. Small price to pay.
Joe, totally true. I'm not sure wartime London and peacetime Manhattan is apt, either -- one hopes we don't have to find out if we're blubbering pussies in a blitz.
One thing we were blubbering pussies about certainly was the number of small-town libraries that closed due to the terrorists. My town stopped its bus service. Not sure why. I think the Onion had something about a town of 100 testing its terror alert.
Tripp, I dunno about the straight poverty-terrorism connection. It strikes me as a lot more complicated; there were profiles a couple years back on the Palestinian bombers who were often from relatively well-off homes (brother's a doctor, had university acceptances)... I'm sure desperation is fueling it in some cases, but I'm not sure just building schools and providing economic opportunities is going to reduce the number of terrorists.
On NPR right now, the Archbishop of Canterbury calling for solidarity between British Muslims and Christians.
92: Did he say poverty? I think it's feeling powerless.
I thought that was implied by the no job part.
Now on the other, I'd love to see the argument between getting laid and being a terrorist, mostly to watch the right wing cringe.
Question, which (re)reading that John Brown article provoked in me: what about the bombing of Dresden, or Hiroshima? Or the "shock and awe" campaign? Weren't these acts of violence toward civilians which were intended to terrorize the victims, with the intent of cowing them into submission? How morally different are these from today's acts?
I'm honestly asking.
intended/intent blah. It's hard to believe I was once actually paid to write things.
JD, Hiroshima is indefensible, but what, exactly, is the point of your question? Also, I think comparing NY in a surprise attack to a well-prepared wartime London is a crock.
Well, I guess I shouldn't say indefensible. Military History class, no one was comfortable with it, but the LtCol said that the best knowledge at the time was 10year wars, 2 million dead dogfaces, vs. quit and brutal bomb. This is a little shaky, but that's the rationalization. A plain utilitarian calculation.
Michael -- the point is that acts of terrorism might easily be rationalized away by the perpetrators. We've spent a good long while on this thread wondering how terrorists can justify killing innocent people, when, in fact, there is a great deal of historical precedent for doing that very thing.
My blitz/9-11 analogy was a bit of a joke. But, crock, if you like.
Not powerless so much as purposeless.
As for a guy getting laid - that is the most basic purpose. Suppress that and where does that energy go?
Hopefully good schools can teach the kids the good old "purpose through work" thing our schools teach. Contribute to society. Be productive. Get a good job, get married, have sex, focus on your kids. Oh, yeah, and buy stuff. Lots of stuff. That should get them to middle age, at least.
I guess I'm not in a very jokey mood. "Shock and Awe" I don't think can be said to be targeted at the civilian population, can it? Part of the justification was that we were bombign on behalf of the civilians. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were based upon utlitarian reasoning, aiming to reduce casualties in the long run (the correctness of that is a whole seperate argument).
Couple points:
1) I'm not sure anyone wholeheartedly supports the idea that Dresden and Hiroshima were not atrocities. The rationalization that I've heard is that after a prolonged conflict, there was the hope that such drastic actions would end things more quickly.
"We're only targetting civilians to get the job done faster with fewer casualties"
2) Which prompts the question Is the rationale that's being used here? And given that the historical reaction by pretty much everyone to incidents like this has not been to redress wrongs, or stop a war, or whatever, but to escalate things, if it is the rationale here, it's not a very smart one.
I'm not sure that paying tribute to the courage and steadfastness of Londoners needs to or should be done in a way that implies they are a better class of victim than we were on 9/11. In fact, my memories of this are that we did pretty damned well in the immediate aftermath. And in particular that goes for NYC.
The DC evacuation thing is a bit different from NYC, but I work in spitting distance of the Capitol and given, you know, that they were flying planes into buildings, and that the whole area was being turned into a high security zone, I don't feel all that bad about taking a big carpool of people back home.
But the question of how people not from large developed urban areas managed to feel all that terrorized is a good one.
And I wonder if Pataki was really reaching for the partisan snark when he made that statement. It might have just been one of those silly prosaic things that someone says when they are trying to provide appropriate verbiage on short notice.
Having said all that, my god. What a sad day. My heart goes out to all in London.
Benton:
I think what people are getting at is that it's unlikely someone's going to make their musical career over there with a Toby Keith song. I think at the time of an attack, most people would say any (non-harmful) response is allowed.
I haven't taken the time to go through the comments here yet, so Im not sure how you guys got from the post to Hiroshima and Dresden.
I have spent the day trying to track down friends and family in London. This not being helped by the mayhem on the cellular nets etc. Mostly it was a question of rationalising that if they were involved, then as one of the many trapped in the tube system and not as a direct victim.
I don't feel shock and awe, just deep quiet anger.
To anyone making any kind of claim on behalf of any species of "Gods warriors": Going up against an army I can respect. No God would use cowards as his/her/its instruments, ever. May you spend your lives in fear and your eternities in whatever concept of hell you posses.
Austro,
My sympathies. I hope by now you know the safety of those close to you.
Thanks, Tripp.
Family all fine, a few friends still not accounted for, but I m guessing they are safe.
The studies I've read point to a profound sense of alienation as a link for some suicide bombers- many of whom went abroad to study in alien cultures (Western ones) and were alone without support networks in a strange place.
Unfortunately I do not remember where I read it, so it's just an anecdote.
Austro,
My sympathies too, and apologies for not asking about your friends/family. To make clear: I wasn't trying to make any claim on behalf of the terrorists. To understand them, perhaps, but in a way that doesn't excuse them one tiny little bit.
Matt, honestly, no need to apologise for anything at all. It never occurred to me that you should have asked.
As to making any claim for the terrorists etc. I have honestly not read the thread in any kind of detail. So my comment was in no way intended as a response to anything anyone wrote here. I was letting steam off, nothing more. But fuck I am angry though.
One of the things I always loved about Britain was that no one was ever going to make their musical career over their with a Toby Keith song under any circumstance.
I know people in Brooklyn who believe they own 9/11 and that it happened to them. I know people from Manhattan who insist this isn't true if they weren't actually there.
I saw the smoke rise from the pentagon, and I lost aquaintances in NYC. Do I own a piece more or less than anyone else? I don't think I own it any more than anyone. And I believe I own it less than many.
I don't get angered by anyone who invokes it as something that changed them deeply. That was the point afterall. And in that way, the terrorists seem to have won at first. I do wish it changed more of us for the better. Because that seems to me to be the key to defeating the terrorists.
But I do know that there are people who use 9/11 as a form of voyeuristic nationalistic emotional drug use. And people of that sort need help more than they know.
Of course the ones who get me really really angry are those who use it as some sort of coin. Giuliani invoking it in campaign ads for other politicians makes my blood boil.
Checking again, I was I hope too pessimistic in 10. They're saying two dead on the bus. Two too many, of course.
If we were together I'd start singing "When you walk through a storm hold your head up high" quietly and it would be stupid and giggly but people would join in and we'd finish the song and look at each other sheepishly.
ABC is reporting that two unexploded bombs have been found.
Here's my perspective from across the pond, where I suffered no more than some inconveniences that are fairly standard for my commute and some additional work, given that my business is news. (By the way, I was touched by the brief flash of concern for me -- mentioned in 9 or thereabouts and forgotten by 13. I don't know who was missing me more at the Mineshaft, Ogged or Joe D.)
Anyway, my main feeling is this: Calm down. Such attacks will continue. Indeed, the feeling here has been when not if. And the Iraq thing has only made that worse.
What's encouraging, though, is that the death tolls on these attacks keep falling. If we could do charting on here (I'm sure w-lfs-n could manage it), you'd see massive plunges from Sept. 11 to the attacks in Saudi to March 11 in Madrid to today in London. Bali was up there, as I recall, but still not on the scale of Sept. 11.
I spent a fair amount of the day in London just watching people on the sidewalks (footpaths, they say here), eavesdropping on them in the elevators, things like that, and few people were traumatized. After all, the IRA used to blow shit up here every couple of months. Yes, their phoned-in warnings now seem to belong to a quaint period of history, as Alberto Gonzales might say, but they did kill people. So, once it was clear that this wasn't on the scale of Sept. 11 or March 11, most Londoners just went about their business.
To get to my home 45 miles from the City, I couldn't just stroll a hundred yards from the front door of my building and get on a smelly, overcrowded train whose toilet didn't work, as I do most evenings. Instead, I had to walk about a mile to London Bridge, a teeming station that is a key bottleneck in train traffic coming from the south. On my way from right around Fleet Street, I passed no end of full pubs, and the people in them weren't crying in their (largely disgusting) beer. The departure boards at London Bridge were their typical useless selves, so I got on the first train (surprise! smelly and overcrowded, and the toilet didn't work) I could find for Croydon, which is about 15 miles away and an important train hub. In the end, I got home about 25 minutes later than I normally would have, and my train home wasn't even all that crowded.
It was quite pleasant, in fact, if only because of the guy in the suit who, his friends had announced, had consumed 40 quid's worth of white wine -- that'sroughly $75 for you Yanks without passports. He kept making these whimsical comments at the top of his lungs, and before long everyone in the carriage was laughing.
Later, after retrieving my car from the station, I ran into a former neighbor at Tesco, and she unintentionally addressed a point made by a colleague, which was that the attack seemed designed to cripple London.
"Christ," the former neighbo(u)r said, "your average Tube strike causes more trouble than that."
Tonight, on one of Britain's worst news broadcasts, a very sage commentator named Simon Jenkins advised people not to get too worked up about this. Despite badgering from the anchor, who needed to make the bloody special last until 11, Jenkins kept saying that the point is to carry on and go about your business.
We could use an American Simon Jenkins, methinks.
Oh, and by the way, apropos of earlier comments, calling a Scot or a Welshman English is like calling a Red Sox fan (and they're all assholes, so who cares) a Yankees fan (ditto).
English people live in England, which is part of Britain, which is one of the British Isles, which include Ireland. Ireland, however, is not considered British, unless you'd fancy a kneecapping or a very stern lecture from a tiresome elderly woman who frequently writes frosty letters to the Irish Times.
Snees
Pleased you're well, Snees.
Some of those elderly Irish women in Dublin will insist, quite vigorously, that "I am British, you know." Depends which neighborhood you're in.
Yeah, I think there are six of them. And they're great ones for growing the roses, sure they are. I hear them on "Liveline" on RTE, to be followed up by the dozens of insanely nationalist types who think it's a great idea to force schoolchildren to spend 10% of their day learning a language nobody speaks anymore. The best thing about moving from Dublin to rural Sussex, where we live now, is that my son no longer wastes time on Irish Gaelic. Might as well be teaching him Aramaic.
Sorry. Sore subject. Thanks for being pleased I'm OK, slolenr. I was really touched when I got the email from ogged.
Sniff, sniff.
Have you had anyone tell you how oppressed the Welsh are? That's fun too.
Daniel Davies is a Welsh nationalist. And it is not wise to provoke him.
From what little I know about Welsh history, the Welsh were the original collaborators. The first Celts to give in. Still don't have anything approaching independence, ublike the Irish and the Scots.
I guess the Welsh are the poor man's Celts.
The Welsh don't really have much to worry about, because King Arthur's going to redeem them.
From what little I know about Welsh history, the Welsh were the original collaborators.
(Ducking, looking nervously around for angry members of Cymdeithas Cyfamod y Cymry Rhydd.)
I almost mistook your comment for a Making Light troll.
But you guys are missing the point. I'm OK! I'm alive! I survived! You really, really love me! We [heart] Snees!
Jesus, do I have to draw you a picture?
Snees lives! Hooray!
What has Snees done for us lately? Shhhh...
You really, really love me! We [heart] Snees!
We do. But we're very detached, hiply ironic people who in fact have more than one way of disliking earnestness. This does not add up to mush.
We do all like pictures, so yes, that would be nice.
(And I'm very glad to know that you're all right.)
I'm glad to hear (but not see, unless you draw that picture) that you're fine, and was also glad to see, as I read through the comments, that Joe D asked about you, and that ogged e-mailed.
The only response that moved me is LB's, but I have a noted fondness for women with freckles.
Oh, and Standpipe Bridgewater, or whatever he's called, is clearly a w-lfs-n stand-in.
The discussion of the famed British reserve makes me think of a tour guide who gave a walking tour of London I went on once. At one point he was talking about the restructuring of the city and said that London had gone through two redevelopment projects. The second took place during the Thatcher era. The first, he said, was the blitz.
You know that's not grammatically correct, don't you Ben?
w-lfs-n, I think you are at two with nature. Nobody ♣ dolphins, unless they're tremendously superb swimmers. They ♣ seals.
Cool, it's degenerating into an anti-w-lfs-n rumble. I wish I had orchestrated this.
I want to see w-lfs-n's "'inadvertantly' catch in my tuna net" symbol.
At the...
I know I gave w-lfs-n the spanking of his life one time (my claim to Unfogged fame), but I forget the details. Maybe Joe D can remind me.
Ogged, if you read the signs as hearts, spades, clubs, etc., no one's contribution using such symbols has been grammatically correct. However, if you like, I will make one that is:
Being a Jew, I can get deals on ♦ wholesale.
snees, you're probably thinking of this. But see.
Now that we're all over the initial joy of Snees being alive, old memories are burbling to the surface. Like Snees calling me impotent. Also, Snees calling us pathetic, and "a cancer" in the same comment.
Maybe w-lfs-n can help me call a spade a spade, with symbols no less.
You really should have held out for Lucy Mangan, ogged. Snees is no substitute.
Damn, Ben, you really are my bitch. Thanks for the reminder.
You expect me to approve the comment you just left in that old thread, Peter?
Now now, o-man, don't lets be punitive. You're bigger than that.
Besides, now you have to approve it, so we can see it.
Maybe w-lfs-n can help me call a spade a spade
ATM.
What? What have I done? I've lost the comment in all the excitement of my return to Unfogged. What did I send?
I didn't know that "spade" was a derogatory term for an African-American.
It's been approved.
(This is the warmest welcome back anyone's ever received.)
Ok, I have to go away for a few hours. Play nice, or something.
You guys spend too much time in academia.w-lfs-n leaves a garland of spade symbols, and I talk of calling a spade a spade outside the context of race, and I get questioned? Damn.
Standpipe Bridgewater
Lo, I am mocked.
Er, I used a club and a diamond. eb used the spade symbols. Snees, you drunken reporter of a fake Briton, get it straight.
No mockery, just a short attention span. Apologies.
is clearly a w-lfs-n stand-in
Lo, I am mocked.
I didn't know that "spade" was a derogatory term for an African-American.
No doubt you didn't know that "blackie" could be offensive, either.
w-lfs-n, i saw spades everywhere i looked.granted, i need an eye test, but i didn't think you'djump on me when the bullies were in mid-kick
Now I see that LB got me into this hot water. I must have been blinded by the freckles.
is clearly a w-lfs-n stand-in
Lo, I am mocked.
Lo, I am mocked.
I didn't know that "spade" was a derogatory term for an African-American.
Any clues on what's they etymology of that?
If you followed eb's "trough" link, Michael, you would be enlightened.
Lo, I am mocked.
Lo, you are not mocked so much. No one called you anyone's pale imitation.
There is, however, the yellow rose of texas.
Gee, I'm glad I went to such trouble to let everyone know what it was like here. I'll try less hard next time.
I'll try less hard next time.
I'm glad you've learned that important life lesson.
Sometimes it's hard to tell what's serious and what's not in these comments threads, but I genuinely appreciated your update, snees. FWIW.
SB is a true original. Like the one true church. Or like Redd Foxx. Or Charo.
I was told once, by someone who might actually know, that while "spade" is a racial epithet, the origin of "call a spade a spade" is race-free. Chances of offense are high enough to avoid using this phrase, but the etymology is clean. Or such is the claim.
Nice update, Snees. I agree with Simon Jenkins.
FL, that is also the conclusion of eb's "trough" link.
You think you're pretty smart, don't you, Fontana? What with your dago moustache and your greasy hair?
I was first attracted to FL by the very same dago mustache and greasy hair, I'll have you know. It was a sultry Sturday night, and the jucuzzi was bubbling away at the...
By the way, I think dago is not very nice language, Walter.
Reese pointed his gun at Professor Brown roulette bet How do you open these.
