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London - after July 7th
The home has become a part of a war front drawing its fault lines as terrorism defines itself, namely through arbitrary use of violence while calculating that the media will carry the message free of charge.
London - after July 7th
Soft under
the curvature reminds of a stone
carved by the sea
way down and under in London
it was just a sad day.
Now tears won't go away,
still, surely you will give yourself a shove
to last the day
while remembering on how you used to rollick
over hills at Hampstead
and how you climbed to the mountain top
to view the world
but after what has happened,
you feel to be at the crest of a wave
allowing thoughts to step away
or else to fade off
to make way for the surfers
of emotional waves coming and going
like moon struck pedestrians
on suspended street like connections
to memory lane
emptied of the people who used to live there.
by Hatto Fischer
Second letter about London – after the 7th of July bomb attack
The first comment a friend made after having read my first letter called ‘mental map’ (something I imagined how my arrival in London would look like and written just hours before the news came in that bomb blasts have brought the entire Londoner Tube system to a halt while blowing up one of those famous red double-deck buses) is that in future these buses shall no longer be regarded as safe camels going through the streets of London.
Indeed, London has become after these events a war zone. It affects the spirit and mind, but most of all the bombs have damaged essentially the public trust. People eye each other with suspicion. Many are at the edge of hysteria. Others realize that while doing their work and thereby thinking to affect the future by adding something to the overall development, they have missed many opportunities to make their presence be felt in a practical way. They miss at the same time a real political debate.
The general speechlessness after the events on July 7th indicates the shortcomings of a land having developed itself very much like the United States towards a kind of ‘political correctness’. Politically speaking, it means substantial arguments have been replaced by Public Relations like bulletin points, buzz words or slogans, all meant not to communicate with the other as to something thought of but to the masses who understand only simple messages. There is a danger insofar as terrorists wish as well to convey a simple message to the masses by using the media galvanized by such events for other purposes than mere enlightenment in a different, indeed perverse way. Baudillard drew already after 9/11 attention to these ‘energized images’ replacing dialog, reflections, deeper thoughts as if the picture of the Twin Towers burning just before they collapsed in New York after the 11th of September attack speaks for itself.
Consequently much must be done if certain foregone conclusions are to be avoided. It means making clear a position not to be conveyed in such a media game being used by either side, the establishment and those behind such attacks. For both of them do not wish a political debate but just the setting of facts as if truths themselves. Admittedly that confusion reigns especially when everything is still unknown and such attacks but further the conversion of criminal deeds into apparently if not political or heroic, then terrorist attacks with a ring of martyr to it.
But admittedly, and events since July 7th show it again, modern society is full of traps set by such PR logic linked to a media game playing out sensations against spectacles only to reinforce gut feelings and deep seated anxieties. It is the precondition for overt and not thought through reactions. As these overt reactions ride on the crescent of hate and fear, they cut off people from connecting to one another and from reflecting the full scale of events, including what is going on in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead the media wishes to steer the public mood towards a middle of the ground. It is done by questioning generalizations and in reinforcing one main point: be concrete, say, what would you do about it to stop these terrorists? As such the media does not allow the intellectual reflection but wishes just an expression of feeling. In that many think to be justified by what the media says is understandable, if someone feels that way, while the question ‘why they hate us so much’ goes unanswered.
Indeed, how one feels after such an event, was the main topic on BBC London after the event. Especially moderator Vanessa seems to have taken up this legal term about citizens having something to say only if they feel something and have an attitude towards something. The first point BBC London focused upon immediately after it became known that it was a terrorist attack was the post trauma depression. There were solicited opinions ranging from ordinary callers to psychological experts. One caller identified herself as an earlier victim of the Tsunami wave insofar as she described the trauma of searching for a beloved person first missing and then never found in the aftermaths. To describe loss of life is hard enough; to recover from this unknown because caught between hope and absolute devastation quite another ordeal. Most important was the call by someone who had escaped one of the fateful trains and emerged out of the tunnels covered entirely in sot. His symptom was that he did not wish to wash himself for hours afterwards since he could still not believe it that he had managed to get out.
The second point BBC London seemed to illuminate upon repeatedly and what Tony Blair, Ken Livingstone and the Queen praised in public was how people stood together in the realization of what has just happened to them, collectively and individually, and this without so much panic. In contrast to the behavior of people in Madrid after the bombing who wished then to make a massive demonstration against terrorism, people of London seemed to go on with their daily life as if nothing had happened. Still this acclaimed British defiance was said as if there are no longer any safety margins in life making a difference between them and us. All had become a part of the war zone.
July 7th underlined that London has come finally under threat of terrorist attacks. It means in future playing out ever more than before the unknown based on various scenarios which can be imagined by starting out from ‘what if….I had not delayed in getting up, but rushed to work, I would have then been on that train….’. The ‘what if one of the victims, what would have I done then…’ was something in need of being clarified. Repeatedly callers to the BBC program but also what people said in the street stressed the need that their ‘mental maps’ for survival in the city needed to be verified.
There was this one eye witness who phoned in and told Vanessa that he was one of the survivors. He was on one of the trains that had left King’s Cross that fateful and dreadful morning. In re-accounting on the air the choices he faced, survival became a vivid example of what it takes in such moments, namely to make the right decisions. It reminded about stories told by those who survived the collapse of the Twin Towers. There were the ones who survived by not staying in their offices as told by security personnel but who decided not to listen to those guys and instead made their way out as quickly as possible.
The man described the situation he was in after the explosion had rocked the wagon and brought the train to a halt. The wagon he was in – it was the last one – filled quickly with smoke. He feared suffocation. He heard some others saying to their fellow passengers to calm down. Nothing could be seen. Just groans heard while people started to realize in what situation they were in: still alive, breathing but not knowing what will happen next.
In those moments of silence he was contemplating what to do. His only thought went to his wife and seven week old daughter: would he see them again? He decided that he wanted to live. Together with two other men they started to move to the very back of the train. They entered the driver’s cabin, tried out the switches and telephone but nothing worked. They broke then a window and opened the door. The other passengers said that they should don’t it for otherwise they will be electrocuted but these three thought again what choices do they have: staying in the wagon would mean risking to be suffocated, climbing out would mean the risk of electrocution and even if that danger can be avoided they could be run over by a next train coming thundering through the tunnel. He then spotted one of those man holes that workers use to let trains pass by. If I make it to that point, he said to himself, I can go on. Together with the other two men he decided to leave. They climbed down. Luckily one of them had a small torch. It was not strong enough to show the way for everything was pitch black in the tunnel. But he could see the light of the torch a bit and therefore knew where the other man was in order to follow him.
Once they got back to the King’s Cross station where it all began, the man remembered how only a short time ago when the train had left that the platform was filled with commuters all rushing to work. He remembered even how crowded it was when he got on the train. As he tried to remember everything, he recalled a tiny incidence now perhaps more significant than when he took note as it happened. He recalled that there was some commotion as some young men pushed their way through the crowd in order to get onto the train – a deviation from the usual politeness everyone shows when using the tube system.
As they came out of the tunnel the only persons standing on the platform were the station master and a policeman. They told them what happened back there in the tunnel. The two were in disbelief. It took some time to sink in that it was not a mere collision of two trains and therefore a power surge, as originally believed by many, but that it was indeed a terrorist attack.
Ever since then London, England, Europe and the world have been reeling. Someone up in Edinburgh where the last LIVE 8 concert and G8 summit took place, said as the news came in, the mood and the attitude of people shifted. The events in London shoved that away, altered the agenda, made those meetings up in Edinburgh into a side event of little significance. Hardly anyone paid any more attention to what was said on climate change or debt relief for the poor countries of the Third World. Now other answers, immediate responses were needed, and not a superficial kind of mega show conceived as publicity stunt against hunger in the world. Reality had caught up with Bob Gelford and his associates even though the concerts had delivered some magical moments prompting the sales to go up for all those who had performed at the LIVE 8 concerts: proof enough that singing for charity can also be a good self promoting exercise. But after July 7th all that was gone: blown with the wind.
The reality of terrorist attacks has come home to London in more than just one drastic way. While callers to BBC London were showing their sorrows, and indeed that one eye witness cited above said, he had never talked as much as in those past 48 hours, it meant Londoners started to show their feelings. That is something unusual for them or for the British character.
Later it was noted how little panic travelers and passengers of both the tube and bus system showed. The British character of defiance was praised by everyone right up to the Queen and repeatedly linked to the kind of bravery the Brits had showed during Second World War when faced by Hitler’s bomb and rocket attacks. An entire mythology of defiance unfolded over the week following July 7th events as the end of Second World War 60 years ago was celebrated as well at the end of that dreadful week, namely July 10th. On that Sunday a bomber dropped over the city thousands of poppies, their red a symbol for the many soldiers that had lost their lives in the fight for freedom and against the tyranny of Hitler.
In the Imperial War Museum a special exhibition marks these memorial celebrations by showing how children survived the ‘Blitz-Krieg’ and what the Holocaust meant in a deeply unsettling reality with Jews not allowed into Palestine 1939 although under British control but instead had to face the death camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Everyone praised the speech given by Ken Livingstone when still in Singapore where London had won the Olympic bid but the joy over that news was quickly replaced by the dreary facts coming in after 9.00 on July 7th. Later, when back in London, the mayor of London would add the remarkable sentence addressed to the terrorists: “watch us bury our dead for you will never defeat us”. He meant dignity but also the resolve not to let these attacks divide the Londoners who love this city regardless of color, religion, culture, ideology etc. Repeatedly Ken Livingstone emphasized the fact that there were 300 languages being spoken in London and that this indicated the model of multi-Culturalism was the future of any city. To back up what he said, Ken Livingstone took on Monday, July 11th as he always does the tube to work, in order to underline ‘business as usual’.
Tony Blair struck a slightly different tone. He said the terrorists would try to change ‘our way of life but we will never let them change our way of life’. Defiance of change is, however, a rather strange position to take by someone who said just one week before in the European Parliament that things, leadership, budgets, people etc. would have to change, if Europe was going to meet the global challenge. Who has to change so that other things can remain as they are? It was unclear whether defiance or change was needed as response to the terrorist attacks but Blair wanted to preserve fore mostly the British way of life and in so doing just as the Queen emphasized the British character of defiance. He added like Ken Livingstone the appeal not to let the terrorists ‘divide us’. He meant also the relationship between British society and the Muslim communities in the UK.
In so doing Tony Blair seemed not to realize that he was questioning the model of multi culturalism by underlying solely British defiance. Yet the city of London of 2005 is not the same as the one of 1939 – 45. Since then London has changed dramatically in its composition of people. It would have been important to observe how the many different people stood together after July 7th, so that not one characteristic would dominate but something new, something based not on defiance but on awareness what terrorism means in such a world of vulnerability to be experienced daily when taking the underground.
By watching these vain efforts of Blair and others to preserve some unity and continuity in history, it has to be said that such exclusive emphasis upon what defines the British character leaves out all other nationalities and characters existing in London of today. Such rhetoric underlines the danger that the model of multi culturalism shall not be questioned solely by terrorists but as well from those within the establishment of power and who shall try to remain exclusive as much as loyal to the British way of life but this as members of a privileged class. That Blair looked frail and shattered even when making his statements, is no better way of describing what has struck home with these bomb attacks. He had grown afraid about the real truth of society’s fabric and showed awareness that in the light of such an event bringing back to the forefront Britain’s involvement in Iraq the demand for his resignation as Prime Minister could be made more substantial than ever before.
In the days after July 7th it was, however, not so much involvement in Iraq at the forefront of everyone’s mind, but something more immediate. Blair and others made immediately enormous efforts to differentiate between Muslims living in England and all over the world and Islamic Fundamentalists who think ‘extreme and arbitrary violence’ hitting innocent people as justified for whatever cause. There was a fear of a backlash against Muslim citizens who had already experienced deterioration in community relationships in the wake of 9/11. Blair praised here especially the Muslim representative for Labor in the House of Commons and his common sense as the Council of Muslims in England issued a statement condemning the attack.
Still what puzzled many the most was what message these attacks conveyed. In that respect something else struck home to Vanessa as she moderated the BBC London radio show receiving countless calls. This was when an anti terrorist expert called in and said that terrorists have no cause to tell for the ‘body count’ is the sole message. She kept returning over and again to that point the next day when other callers would attempt to connect the attack on London’s underground system to the war in Iraq in order to give some credibility to their assumptions as to what may have prompted the bombers to do what they did: aside from the three attacks on trains underground to blow up one of those red double-decker buses and in doing so taking with them to death around 50 people while injuring around 700. She would counter immediately by saying ‘but what we heard from the expert yesterday is that they have nothing else in mind but the body count’. It was as if here a debate about possible linkages between the bomb attacks in London and the war in Iraq was undercut alone by assuming there was being conveyed another or more simple no message at all. By accepting the thesis about the ‘body count’ being the sole message, it appeared as if the BBC was relieved of the need to discuss in this context the war in Iraq as it was not on the agenda of the G8 meeting. As if a part of public diplomacy (the new term for propaganda) Vanessa as moderator did not support the notion of the UK being at war and therefore in need to reckon with possible consequences despite every politician, including Ken Livingstone having said after 9/11 an attack against London was immanent.
If anything, the immediate response by the ruling establishment was not merely to reassure the public that Scotland Yard would do its best, and that it had a fantastic track record, but to say ‘let us not be divided by these attacks’. The reality is, however, that the possibility of fighting a war in Iraq while living in peace at home is but a dangerous illusion. Furthermore, under the pretense of Blair’s famous saying as quoted repeatedly by CNN ‘if you want peace, then you must be willing to risk war’, the war in Iraq has put the entire world under the strain of a ‘permanent war’. As Rumsfeld said it immediately after 9/11 ‘while this war against terrorism shall be won, we must prepare already for the next war so as to secure the future of our children’, the institutionalization of war has become the sole preoccupation of leading political forces. Security budgets go up, more police is being hired, anti terrorist laws sharpened all to extend state control over daily life and what citizens do. During the aftermaths of July 7th, it became known that London in particular after 9/11 has installed an almost perfect surveillance system so that a citizen may be caught 300 times on one of the surveillance cameras on just one day of moving about in the city. Some people describe it as the Orwellian state. It is easy to anticipate that such bomb attacks justify tilting even more so developments in that direction. Future budgets will favor many more measures linked to security and safety although it can never be guaranteed 100%, so the positioning of the politicians. What is hardly mentioned or left aside, is that all of this development goes at the expense of civil liberties and any citizen’s Right to privacy. It has immediate ramification upon freedom of speech and thereby what political alternatives to the current power system can still be articulated in future, if any at all.
For instance, the discussion about a new identity card system for the UK is but another indication about this trend even though a report by professors from London School of Economics questions that alone on the grounds of a cost-benefit analysis. They come up with an estimate that contradicts the government’s assumption of costing 5 Million pounds when in fact it will cost nearly 19 million, and even then still not be a system satisfactory to meet all demands of security.
Over and again, but certainly since evidence collected by Scotland Yard has allowed the tracing of the bombers to British born Muslims in Leeds, security concepts have taken another blow. How to protect against ‘home grown suicide bombers’ since it was thought until now suicidal bombing was solely a phenomenon of the Far East or something linked exclusively to the fight of insurgents in Iraq?
How also to moderate between cosmopolitan society and the Muslim community? Indeed politicians and others, including those involved in community work to overcome exclusion and racial discrimination, all are reeling by the fear that there shall be an increase of hostility directed against especially the Muslim community.
How to deal with all these new challenges while a city such as London struggles with countless other issues such as the environment linked to more comprehensive matters such as sustainable development or sub-systems dealing with energy renewal, waste management, housing, transport, employment, education etc. Indeed water has become a serious problem in Britain. They are facing an unheard of draught. Since October a year ago there has not been much of a rain fall to alter significantly the negative trend with water consumption on the increase while reserves are getting thin. It has prompted even a discussion about a possible plant gaining drinkable water from salt water as if in the desert. Ecological architects like Zana Dean consider this to be just another unrealistic proposal involving high tech solutions as a way to make more money than solve the problem. A better alternative would be a better management and as she has done by building houses which collect rain water for flushing the toilets and watering plants.
All these issues need resolving even while the still over all need for being reflective as to what went wrong or was missed out in the recent past needs to be now answered in face of the July 7th event. Combined with the failed EU Constitutional Treaty the position of the UK as represented by the Blair government seems to be not anymore as dynamic and efficient in economic and social terms as it still appeared even one day before the attack when bidding successfully for the Olympic Games now to be held in 2012 in London. Indeed, another kind of reflection not cut off from the rest of world and the reality of people seems to be needed in order to understand developments ever since Britain decided to enter with the USA the war in Iraq?
As one taxi driver said the day after, that is Friday morning, July 8th he does not want to be misunderstood as a Racist for his son is going to marry a woman from Nigeria, but he cannot understand when Muslims can demonstrate and shout slogans like ‘Death to Bush, death to Blair’ and still enjoy protection of the police while he would be arrested if he would demonstrate with a placket on which was written ‘Down with the Muslims’. He felt there was injustice, or a double standard in how the freedom of speech was being protected in this country. He also felt there were too many illegal immigrants coming into the country. There was a question in the air but where to take a stand as British citizen and still enjoy the safety and security of being at home, in your own country, for the feeling of belonging was questioned more and more by such developments. Moreover he did not like the fact that while all politicians were protected by armored cars and extra security, the ordinary person going to work everyday was left unprotected, hence vulnerable and subject to such attacks as it happened just yesterday, July 7th. Something, he felt, was going against the most basic sense of fairness – a very British way of judging things.
When listening to what people say, while following ‘breaking news’ on CNN or hearing commentators of the BBC such as Tim Sebastian, it is still too early to say what shall be the real divide in near future. If Islamic inspiration means not merely a religious fundamentalism leading to intolerance and dogmatic beliefs in the superiority of the own religion, but also can be interpreted as one way of responding to the kind of uniformity and conformity the brave new world produces, then something has to be done about such a political world that no longer knows any truths since authentic reports and independent knowledge have gone amiss in such a society for a long time by now. The non conformist personality is missing in this ever refined PR equation supporting governmental policy blindly and no matter what the consequences.
If spin doctors are needed so that facts suit policy options decided already without democratic consensus – Blair’s own defiance of the British public when deciding to go to war in Iraq – then the state of political affairs is more than just in doubt. There is no more reason then to believe that all underground financial connections determining political development can be countered by public transparency and freedom from corruption, coercion and ‘lies’. Tim Sebastian said after seven years of being a moderator of the BBC show ‘hard talk’ that he goes away disappointed by the hypocrisy of politicians. They belie where independence is given up and instead more than mere entanglement another kind of dependency upon money becomes the force by which everything else is run. That is not conscious governance or mere good business practice but giving up ‘peace of mind’ and with it freedom. Like in all war situations, the costs outrun easily any kind of profit whether such as public support for a certain policy or if not in real cash then at least as an opportunity to develop further as human beings.
As to terrorism, I keep reminding people what Robert Musil wrote in his famous book ‘The Man without Attributes’. He said: ‘a society which does not know any truth, will know only probabilities, at the end of which shall be terrorism’. It is true that politicians kept saying London shall be attacked – a kind of probability that goes with any risk assessment when going to war. What such predictions do not say, is that terrorism is a search for truth but which such society has lost. It lets any person in despair and in not knowing the limits of human reality being connected to not knowing the truth go on a tail spin. It is another way of describing the rapid conversion of many from secular citizens to fanatic followers of one or another kind of belief system with the proof not in its concept of truth but in doing something for the cause it supposed to stand for. All fundamentalists have that in common: a passionate disbelief in rational argumentation while remaining in open dialogue to their doubts and trust in other people. Instead perpetrators of all kinds of violence believe the truth they think has been lost can be found only in the fallacy of death. Constance de Volney showed in his inquiry into the ruins of former empires, that the truth any religion claims as standing above life can only be attained through the sacrifice of those willing to die for the cause of such a religion. The proof lies in the willingness to die rather than to live.
The mental confusion of ‘truth’ with ‘cause’ is something the Western World out of lack of intellectual response to the Islamic revolution since Chomeiny has failed to address. Even more so, anyone willing to commit suicide has made him- or herself into an instrument of such a cause; as an individual he or she no longer counts. It is the giving up of any affinity to life that explains the next, more savage step: the intended indifference to taking with them to death innocent lives of others. The Jihad of the suicide bomber is the outcry of life being absurd. Freud would say they are devoid of any libido: the linkage as human being to other human beings. Once severed then there is either panic or else suicide doubled by the criminal act of murder so as to salvage a life devoid of all meanings.
How they were robbed of any value in life needs to be discussed anew. Now that 7th of July has happened in London a similar question will have to discussed in Britain and in Europe as was the case in the United States after 9/11: how can they believe that if they have grown up in our midst? The Western World still believes to be a culturally superior territory offering everything to people when in fact reality is very far off what the American dream like model acclaims or what makes Tony Blair support such a British way of life as if in need of no change. Real life in a society succumbing to ‘political correctness’ means just that: being without alternative to the conformist way of negating the soul of the individual. The breeding ground for terrorism is society itself.
Once society has lost the political values that go with a non conformist way of life, there will be no one able to articulate a refutation of what is the most damaging linkage of all: politics with business for the sole purpose of making business increase profits ever more. About this rationale the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard said there are only two alternatives when growing up in such a world: becoming oneself a business man or else committing suicide. Young people are easy prey for those who understand how to exploit that deeper anguish about what has become of human life.
There is still one more refutation partly admitted now. Even though the concept of the ‘war against terrorism’ has been according to Bush’s policy a matter of taking the war to the territory of the terrorists rather than letting them attack at home, the suicide bombings in London have put an end to that illusion. The home has become a part of a war front drawing its fault lines as terrorism defines itself, namely through arbitrary use of violence while calculating that the media will carry the message free of charge. As such terrorism is a business based on letting the others pay for what cannot be obtained alone, namely a life safeguarded by trust, human dignity and feelings for human pain regardless of color, religion, race, gender or profession. The vulnerability of the human being needs no artificial protection sold as part of the over arching safety and security precautionary measures, but rather open air to breathe a sign of relief when realizing that laughter can protect as much as silence means an answer to the absurd. Truth is always close by as long as in the words of Camus man lives by not growing afraid of the shadows he casts. Free of any kind of deception he will fore mostly understand the stranger is not the other but he himself, hiding inside the numerous and countless identities we give to ourselves in order to fit into society and suit the purpose as we continue to live open ended. If that uncertain future is what speaks to all in the universal language, then things are based on the recognition that every human life counts, has value and is sacred.
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Last updated: 31. December 2005