"whatever you do, how many you kill, you will fail." he said

of all the voices i heard on the national tonight, ken livingstone, the mayor of london was the most inspiring. i am in awe tonight of that iron will britain has acquired over its centuries-old history. we joke about "stiff upper lip" and all that, but to hear that man talk right to the cowards that did this and say something like that... the guy didn't even blink. if something like this happened in the streets of toronto, i don't think anyone here could speak with that kind of resolve. instead, there would be crying, screaming and the anger that comes with it all. but on the streets of london today, the people appear shaken but unmoved. one man even claimed that the terrorists could do it again tomorrow... everything would be the same. he'd go have a pint and walk home.

events like this are tough for me because i always try to see things from all sides. on the one hand, britain has been a key player in so many deaths around the world. from economic bullying to all-out war, england is almost as bad as the United states in terms of stewardship of the world community. a small part of me is really not surprised by all of this and sees it as a sort of karmic return on investment.

but on the other hand these weren't politicians who were killed. they were working class folk that are making just enough money to feed their kids and put a roof over their heads. how is it that they somehow "deserve" this? while it's true that "every nation has the government it deserves", does that really extend to the flower lady who just orphaned her children?

it's days like these that i seriously entertain the notion of supporting the crazier solutions to terrorism... like bombing to dust the buildings and streets of every nation that would harbour them. screw this occupation shit, just kill everyone and everything until there's no one left to fight anymore. it's stupid, it's irrational, and it's the result of this kind of cowardice.

i know that we made them, our foreign policy supports them, and in some cases, we've even trained them to do this sort of thing. but how do we stop it all? why can't all the politicians, priests and clerics just march themselves off a cliff somewhere and let the rest of us just "be"? no one (well almost no one) in the west really wants this to continue. we just want to grow up to see our kids have children of their own, and i'm sure, absolutely sure that behind their own politics, the real people in the middle east want the same thing too.

so why was london burning today?