The Bubble has been popped

In The Irish Times today John Waters describes how the world has become a smaller place and within this ever shrinking space our position is clear. If we are to assure our safety from extremism, we must surrender our freedom to the guardians of liberty. John Water's new age has arrived, it has been here for some time and is not set to leave any day soon.

"This is London. Let us awake to the new reality. Either we embrace our true protectors or say hello to the Taliban." It is this sort of docile slumber that has made us a target for the ideology Bin Laden has championed. Mr. Waters would lead us to believe that it is by continuing our course of imperial consumption that we are to defeat an enemy with no bodily form. Those who question the prescriptive rhetoric of those in power would be forgiven for pondering, how can you attack an idea by fuelling it?

While we sit back and allow our elected leaders to continue their questionable campaigns in far off lands for the purpose of freedom, democracy, stability, control and oil wealth, we are merely donating our lives to this battle of ideologies.

True enough, there were attacks attributed to Al'Qaeda before 9/11 and they had little to do with the war in Iraq as it is now. However that is not to affirm the proposed 'war against our way of life'. Unless that is if you consider our 'way of life' to include support for murderous regimes in Saudi Arabia, Burma, Iraq and many other far flung regions that once seemed other worldly. It has been reiterated over and over by the ideological head of this faceless terrorist group that their hatred will be embodied in death as long as western powers continue to exert suppression in Arab nations. Conceding to relinquish our grip on the Middle East would be a succession to the wants of an evil organisation, but at the same time it would also mean giving independence to peoples that have been stifled by western intervention for decades. To make independent, countries, where already minute support for extremists would dwindle so rapidly that our governments would once again have to turn to home grown fundamentalists in order to moderate our rights so as to better manage us for optimised profits. In order to take back our country, we must give back theirs.

In the aftermath of 9/11 President Bush used the fear and confusion of the American people to bring full scale war to Iraq. Linking the terrorism responsible for 9/11 not so subtly with the Baathist regime he made puppets of us. A poll conducted during the Iraq invasion, a year on from that hypnotism, evidenced that many Americans still believed Saddam was partly culpable for the tragic events of 9/11, forcing President Bush to make publicly clear that "We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the Sept 11". This sort of conceived deception will no doubt be used again if we are to continue to perform so well in our role as the docile masses. Whether Blair's sorrow is real or not, it is quite obvious that the man is not averse to using our grief to bring his plans to fruition.

While London returns to normality, albeit a normality that it seems could be disturbed again. It is to our own detriment not to realise that there is more than one way to combat terrorism of this kind, we have tried violent misdirected retribution, and to no ones surprise, it didn't work. Now it is time to address the issue of why there is support for this mad man.

As Tony Blair rubbishes the idea of an inquiry into the death of at least 49 people, referring to it as a "ludicrous diversion," he "is expected to focus on the direction the government must take to ensure future terrorism is defeated." Reminding me of a famous, but much ignored, quote by English historian and scholar Edward Gibbon, "I know no way of judging of the future but by the past."


1. http://news.ft.com/cms/s/
2. http://www.foxnews.com/story/
3. http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/