(no subject)

[camwyn]

*eyes the LONDON news this morning*

Oh, fucking hell.

NOT COOL, YOU HEAR ME? NOT COOL.

quintus? May I have permission to come over there and exercise my prerogative as an American to be an arrogant violent bastich at the people responsible until they whimper and bleed from new and innovative places?

Comments

[quintus.livejournal.com]

Be our guest...

I'll gladly hold the coats at the ass kicking party.

It looks like the work of our cave dwelling chums, so no surprises there - Guess the shoe finally fell.
At least London has some experience of coping with this sort of thing 'thanks' to the IRA.

[camwyn]

'k. *rubs at face* I'll be calling my old Red Cross chapter at some point today, I think. International Fund in general is probably the best way...

*glances over at television* 300 injuries, 2 fatalities, according to CNBC so far. Huh.

[quintus.livejournal.com]

I have the same sick feeling I had 3 and a bit years ago when I dashed off a rapid "Are you okay?" email and resparked our correspondence.

It's been years since I lived in London but it's still a place that has etched itself deep into me, it's where the last of my family lives and a lot of friends.

Some bastard has attacked my country...

The blogs of my Londoner friends are full of them roll-calling to see that they're all okay (they are) and defiance, lots of clenched teeth defiance.

My father was strafed by better men than did this.

[camwyn]

*nods*

I hope for your sake that Al-Qaeda is lying through their teeth, and that this turns out to be the equivalent of OKC rather than 9/11. Homegrown fuckers who can get stomped on fast rather than, you know, anybody else...

I'm sorry. I'm not very coherent right now. 's not rage, it's sleep dep.

[jjloa.livejournal.com]

hell, I'll exercise my perogative as a Canadian to do the same ... and we don't even HAVE that perogative, being Canadians really ... *returns to sighing and fretting*

[camwyn]

Tell you what. If you get to them first, you have my permission to tell everyone in your country that they're secretly providing a safehouse to Karla Homolka, then stand back and let the public do their work.

[jjloa.livejournal.com]

sounds like a plan to me. a very very very good plan.

and much better then sitting here at work, pretending to prepare for my presentation this afternoon, and staring at the news updates/waiting for reports from friends and the other half's family ...

[cheezdanish.livejournal.com]

Can I join you, Camwyn? I'm feeling awfully violent today.

Stupid fuckers.

[camwyn]

Once again I am forced to revert to the two questions that were biggest on my mind after about, oh, 10:15 AM on 11 Sept. 2001:

1. Why the hell did you do this to these people, Mr. Idiot Bomber Persons? What did the people on those subway trains ever do to you? ... yeah, yeah, their country supports people who're trying to kill you, whatever, you're just going to give me rhetoric, aren't you.

2. What the smeg did you think this was going to accomplish, other than making people want to see you die?

*mutters*

[jeditigger.livejournal.com]

That's the nature of terrorism I don't understand. It engenders sheer, spitting hatred for them. Oh, there's some fear, yes, but even the more peace-minded people start thinking of carpet bombing.

[camwyn]

As one of the volunteers who was at my Red Cross chapter on 11 Sept. put it while watching the smoke billow on the TV screen that first day: "I fought in Vietnam for years. I never in my life thought I'd see something that would make me angry enough to make me want to pick up a rifle again."

[cheezdanish.livejournal.com]

See, that's the thing. You can't assign a rational ideology to people willing to kill to make a political point. Those are great questions. Sadly, they're also the wrong ones. Because they wouldn't answer you with words. They'd answer you with bullets and bombs.

They're serial killers. I put 'em in the same mental category as Chuckie Manson and Jeffrey Dahmer and the Unibomber. (Hey, that rhymed.) And whenever we catch serial killers, we slap 'em in a cell until we can stick a needle in 'em. That's what we need to do with these people, too.

[camwyn]

Urf. Here I must revert back to my LJ entry of 19 April:

...men who thought that by unleashing ammonium nitrate hell upon a building full of people whose only crime was being part of a System, they could change this country for their idea of the better. I'm told they were under the impression that striking at the government in an openly violent manner would cause people all over the rest of the country to rise up alongside them and overthrow that System. Could be that's what they thought. Could be they thought other things. I dunno. All I know's what I read in the papers, and see on the Web, and hear on the radio and see on TV. I've never been inside those two heads. I've seen a lot of vileness in my life and I don't much want to add more if I don't have to. I do know this, though.

The men who did this thought they were accomplishing a very great thing. Or at least a very important thing, whether it was particularly big o great or not. They thought they would be part of making something critical happen. Maybe they thought they were heroes for it, in their own way. Heroes get remembered.

These guys don't deserve to be.

These men were brass-balled cowards. They weren't afraid to kill for what they thought was right, but did they kill people who had offered them violence? Nope. Did they pick a target that was capable of defending itself? Nope. Did they attack someone whose death would stop some kind of critically important policy, or whose absence would make it immensely difficult for the System to continue doing the stuff that they thought was so wrong? Uh-uh. The Murrah Building was stuffed with bureaucrats and families. Important bureaucrats, maybe, but not exactly the kinds of people who could set national policy forward or back by their actions. Lousy target. Lousy tactic. Lousy strategy. And the guys who blew it up thought they'd be starting off the most important war of their time by doing it...

Find the killers, un-speak their names, remember the deeds.

[mephron]

I wish I could find it - I posted on plastic.com a while back in a discussion about this sort of behavior a comment that people found incisive.

Basically, they think they're playing a negative-sum game. (Work with me for a moment.) They can reduce the number of players on the other side until such time as the other side simply forfeits. They assume that their terror activities will cause their opponents to simply collapse into surrender rather than fight back. Most of these belliefs are based on highly radical, verging on apostate, interpretations of their scripture, but to them, it's the holy gospel.

The Quran states that a man who kills a woman or a child cannot pass into Heaven, yet they continue to put bombs in places where women and children, not just men/soldiers, are killed. Moderate Quran scholars discuss 'jihad' as an inner struggle against the baser nature, a holy war against your darker urges; the radicals imply that the base nature and dark urges should be turned outwards for the true Jihad.

[jeditigger.livejournal.com]

Days like this make being a pacifist really, really hard because you see people who clearly deserve to have the ever-living crap kicked out of them.

[camwyn]

Well... maybe we can capture them and put them in the same prison cell as a guy named "Rollo the Mad Dog Rapist"? Would that do?

[jeditigger.livejournal.com]

You have a sense of Old Testament justice that I approve of.

[camwyn]

I'm a New Yorker by birth and upbringing. While we are more civilized and decent than our stereotypical representations would have you believe, there is nevertheless a certain core of truth to certain aspects of that stereotype, and in this particular case the core is an amazing ability to be vicious when faced with someone who really deserves it.

(And, er, when sleep deprived. I got awakened twice last night at weird hours by my cats, as both of them have figured out how to get into the loft now. This does not make it easy for me to be nice today. My sleep dep comes in two flavours: Compliant camwyn and Snarly camwyn. Guess which I wound up with today. Go on. Guess.)

[damned-colonial.livejournal.com]

my prerogative as an American ... until they whimper and bleed from new and innovative places

Do you have *any* idea how that sounds? ANY AT ALL?

For *fuck's* sake.

[camwyn]

I'm sorry. I'm in a very bad mood this morning and I figure that if my country has a horrible image as a bunch of arrogant, violent, reflexively nasty bastards, I might as well put it to good use against the people who hurt and scared my friends. I know it sounds vile but those who know me are almost certainly aware that my real response is more a matter of finding somebody who needs a bit of support, providing that, being as reasonably sane and friendly as I can while the zooey chaos is going on, and then wandering off to have a breakdown when it seems like other people can handle the rest of the mess.

The whole thing stems to a certain degree from a Penny Arcade cartoon in which one of the characters cleared out a line at the store by shouting, "I play violent video games! I could snap any second!". Scores of people ran for it, wailing, "Killer kids! Just like on the TV!", even though the guy who shouted showed no other sign of being dangerous. I once vaguely entertained the idea of shouting, "I'm an American! I play violent video games! I could snap any second!" in order to get to the head of the line at the Royal Ontario Museum, but I never did.

As for the new and innovative places, I was sort of thinking elbows and kneecaps.

*sigh*

I'll feel horribly guilty about having said this fairly soon, I'm quite sure. Esp. given my status as a supporter of Amnesty International, the Red Cross, and Doctors Without Borders. But dammit, even a decent humanitarian liberal gets horrible impulses sometimes.

[jeditigger.livejournal.com]

Esp. given my status as a supporter of Amnesty International, the Red Cross, and Doctors Without Borders. But dammit, even a decent humanitarian liberal gets horrible impulses sometimes.

That's my sentiment precisely, as I was trying to say to someone else earlier. If even the typically peace-minded folks have thoughts of violence, things are bad. :(

[damned-colonial.livejournal.com]

I ... I just can't believe you can say that, and wave an AI icon around that actually shows Abu Ghraib.

We're all shocked and worried for our friends and upset that anyone would choose to kill innocent civilians in such a way. We were shocked and worried and upset after 9/11 too. But in my universe, there is no possible way that that shock/worry/upsetness translates into making torture acceptable even as a joke. ESPECIALLY not after what happened in the wake of 9/11. No wonder... gah, I can't even *express* myself on this... if this is what liberal, humanitarian Americans are like, no wonder... GAH GAH GAH.

I would revoke your honorary Canadian status if I had any right to do so.

[jeditigger.livejournal.com]

Dude, chill. Seriously, lay off. People are upset and reacting differently: sorrow, rage, horror. Why? Because we're human beings and we all react differently in a situation that shocks us. It's the calculated reactions you have to worry about.

Vitriolic, self-righteous indignation isn't going to make anyone feel better. Just let people absorb and cope and feel what they feel and then deal later with those feelings.

[quintus.livejournal.com]

Angry? Human?

(Mind you, I'm from the South-East and mentioning the word 'Gibraltar' to me will usually generate a very, very cold smile.)

[mandragoran.livejournal.com]

I understand the feeling.

Moreso since, well, I have no TV and I usually don't turn the radio on in the mornings - so, I rather cheerfully went off to work this morning, ectera, only to arrive at work, pop onto LJ and see *2* entries abot hits - one of wich was giving details from news reports.

As usual, this sort of thing leaves me in shock - and I'm hoping (after having searched up an article on it on the net) that it has nothing to do with Al-Quida at all. Really at all.

Yea, makes me want to cause people to bleed as well, but mostly, it just makes me very very sad that it seems humanity never learns.