Terrier

What the fuck is going on?

Well, according to George Bush, the war on terror is continuing.

But today’s bombing in London made something clear in my mind. I am sure this has been pointed out by many others, but hey, we’ve all got to get there somehow.

What I realised is that the war on terror cannot be won. It cannot end, for how could you win? You could not seriously declare to the world that terrorism has come to a close and no one anymore will try to kill us all. Of course you couldn’t. And like Orwell’s vision of the 80’s (he wasn’t far off bless him, but he failed to mention shoulder pads) war will be ongoing. It will be never-ending, against someone (Iraq, Eurasia, Afghanistasia?), and vague. But it will always be happening.

War on terror. I can’t believe I never really actually thought about what that means. Terrorism, essentially, is people sitting in rooms chatting about ways to fuck shit up. And then doing it. How can you stop people chatting in rooms? You can try to stop them carrying out their actions, but how can you stop it happening if you don’t know it’s going to happen? No one’s going to tell you, and like today, there will be no warning. All the security in the world won’t stop a bloke carrying a fat grenade onto a bus, pressing the “ten minutes to destruction” button, and getting off at the next stop. Ok, all the security in the world might stop that, but then we would be living in a police state and we would have to declare ourselves a developing country. There would have to be more security personnel than actual people, and let’s be honest the chances of corruption would increase, and…oh…whatever, you get the point.

But we were all feeling so good about ourselves! Live8 was genuinely inspiring. The largest human endeavour in the history of the world ever was realised in order to prove to our “leaders” that we actually care about those people that we don’t see but that we know suffer. We just won the Olympic bid for Christ’s sake. And then some fuckers go kill (at time of writing) 38 people and the whole thing feels like a pop concert again.

38 people. Hmm. While they are human lives and people with families and friends who never ever deserved to drown, the numbers are tiny. Even the World Trade Centre events in...whenever it was...seemed overblown. 3000 people was it? Yeah, that’s loads, but a quick look around the world makes those figures seem like small beer. Live8 spent its time giving me (to be honest, often quite conflicting) reports of what, 30,000 children a day dying of preventable diseases? Zimbabwe has 275,000 homeless people because some cunt with power holds a grudge. It just doesn’t even compare.

Ok, I think I’m getting restless and angry, sitting here reading all these news reports and feeling a little help/hopeless.

I’m just sad for those who suffered today and I’m depressed that we live in a world where we are constantly told to be afraid because we are at war – if not literally with another country, then metaphorically with a shadowy concept of foreign enemies (as if a lot of people will know the difference).

Arrrgh.