my stuff
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my 2p's worth
I watched the news last night to find out about the investigation that was conducted on the London bombings last year on 7th July. I don’t think anybody needs reminding about that, so I won’t link anything.
The programme did a bit of background history on the bombers – what they were like as people, how they were perceived by other people, what their good qualities were (for example, one was described as sensitive and artistic), their position in their families, that kind of thing. And then they did a kind of time line for the events leading up to the bombs going off. I can’t be sure which one it was, but they detailed the whereabouts and activities of at least one of them (I think it was the one on the bus) and explained that he’d separated from the group as planned and gone to the appropriate part of London where he was going to blow himself to smithereens.
When he got there, he still had a bit of time before his Big Appointment and so went to get something to eat. In McD0nalds.
IN MCD0NALDS!!
Here is a guy so disillusioned by the West that he is about to kill himself and as many other unsuspecting London residents as he can possibly imagine, on behalf of his people, his religion and his god (as far as he’s concerned) and he stops off in McD0nalds for a big mac, fries and a shake before he does it.
That doesn’t make any sense to me! I mean, you can’t really get a more iconic symbol of all that is loathsome, plastic, and greedy about the West that those golden arches can you? I half suspected the report to go on and tell me he was wearing a pair of LEvi’s and a G@p sweatshirt, was drinking a can of C0ke and chewing on a stick of Wr!gleys chewing gum. I just find that so fucking absurd.
I think it highlights perfectly the huge contrasts and convoluted hypocrisies (from both sides) in this entire situation. That someone can hate us and what we stand for so much, yet be so rooted in our society and culture and what we’ve created that popping in for a quick Western burger before giving himself up to Allah seems so perfectly natural and okay.
It’s sick and it’s sad and it’s perverse and it’s infuriating. But most of all, it is just so fucking worrying.
1:46 pm - 12 May 2006
