view from the cheap seats

Having managed to blag a week's free holiday I'll be spending the next week or so on the south coast instead of sitting here writing this crap. If your looking for something to fill the void I highly recommend you visit my friends' blogs --> or the rest of the vast and wondrous miracle of modern technology that is the internet, ie. porn.

The problem with banning neo-nazis from speaking is exactly the same as the problems caused by slaughtering Muslims around the world. Both are unjust and against the principles we claim to live by but more importantly, they lend credible justification to extremist loons.

As I've said before on more than one occasion, the way to undermine and ultimately nullify such groups is to solve the social problems that lead people to support them. Without being able to bitch about the injustices suffered by the people they claim to represent, these people have nothing left to say.

It would surely be far more productive to, rather than shutting them out and making martyrs of them, engage them with respect in structured public debate and calmly take their arguments apart piece by piece. Mocking or attacking them serves only to galvanise their support, proving them wrong is the way to remove their popular support.

The idea, though clearly not the practice, of British white supremacy, for example, is hilarious. (As a brief aside I should probably mention that I don't actually believe in skin colour but I'll explain that in a future post.) The suggestion that there are any kind of pure British bloodlines is patently ridiculous. During its history, this beautiful island has been successfully invaded by and integrated with both the Vikings and the Romans to name but two.

As far as I'm concerned what makes Britain Great is the very fact that we are a mongrel nation, the product of a long simmering cultural melting pot. I'm reminded of an interview I once read with an Israeli settler who claimed that he had a right to live where he did because the Jewish people had owned that land centuries before. I wish I could have asked him if he thought that Italy should claim to own most of Europe due to the Roman Empire.

The fact is that the arguments used to justify hatred and violence never, ever, hold water. People resort to these tactics because they can see no other way to resolve the problems in their life. In this way the neo-nazi groups currently making their presence felt in Leeds have far more in common with the terrorists they hate for being dark skinned than with the rest of our society.

Unfortunately for us the way in which we as a society have tried to deal with these problems has only made things worse. We have surrendered our national pride for fear of appearing to be like them and given them a sense of importance by treating them differently to everyone else.

I don't look to leaders or anyone else for my moral values, I know exactly where I stand and am fully prepared to defend my position. People are people, even nazis, and as with any point to be made, someone else has always said it better, in this case Voltaire: While I may not agree with what you say, I will defend to the death your right to say it.

In the aftermath of the attacks on London two weeks ago, and of those today, we've seen a side to Leeds that none of us much like but sadly it is just one of the blackspots of various shades that hide in underbelly of the city. As you probably saw, while we've produced three suicide bombers theirs is not the only hate based movement in our midst.

The recent spate of neo-nazi graffiti and gatherings in Leeds is an uncomfortable reminder that while there is currently a great focus on 'evil ideologies' from abroad, we actually do just fine in producing our very own maliciously violent groups. I remember being shocked several years ago, somewhat naively perhaps, when I started uni and found Combat 18 graffiti in the science library.

Anyway, the other night I experienced something new and unpleasant. A good friend of mine lives up near the uni, (just round the corner from that Egyptian chemist's house as it happens,) and having spent the evening there I left to head home around midnight.

Walking by Hyde Park I overheard a group of drunk sounding guys, though I couldn't see exactly where they were, one of them whom was shouting furiously about 'fucking Jews'. For the first time since I've lived in this area I walked home looking over my shoulder.

Now what have I got to worry about? You may well ask, after all I am both white and local, but from past experience, that's just not enough for some. I have a scar from my youth, when some guys decided to play, 'burn the hippy' and burned my arm with a cigarette. Around that time one of my best, and similarly long haired friends, also drummer in my band, had to go to hospital on three separate occasions having being jumped on his way home.

One of the things I have always loved about living in Leeds, especially this area, is feeling that I can live like the hippy I am proud to be without fear of reprisals. With this in mind, when I heard the other day that the founder of the BNP had been found dead at his home, my immediate reaction was to wish and hope that he died of natural causes. If someone's killed him, I thought, there will be reprisals and Leeds will be one of the battlegrounds.

The recent rise in popularity across Europe of right wing groups is a worry for many yet no constructive solution to the problem has been suggested. Surprisingly to some perhaps, during my time at the University of Leeds I spoke at two AGMs of the Student's Union against the introduction and continuation of a so-called 'no platform' policy that served to ban members of certain groups from the Union. These episodes, I feel, were a microcosm of the wider issue.

The 'no-platform policy' stated that members of various groups, from neo-nazis to various religious extremists, could not speak publicly, meet or organise on campus. This was apparently in response to various incidents of violence and intimidation against students from minority groups. It was passed and then renewed overwhelmingly at each of the AGMs I attended, and on the face of it this may appear to be a good thing.

Personally however, I felt that the policy itself was not only fascist in nature but could not possibly serve any of the causes it claimed to. My specific concerns about the policy were as follows:

1) The list of banned groups was entirely arbitrary and drafted by persons unknown. No system was even considered for the addition or removal of groups from the list by the student body.

2) While the policy was presented as an initiative that had sprung spontaneously from the multicultural student body, it was in fact the brainchild of a tiny minority of extreme leftists. The main opponents of the policy were of course the neo-nazis who claimed they were being gagged. The whole thing was really just one battle in the ongoing war between these two tiny elitist groups, the student body being nothing but pawns to both.

3) The policy claimed to be taking a stand against racist violence against minorities when in fact it was a stand against racist violence against minority students. The 'no-platform policy' sent a very clear message of 'not in our back yard' and served only to reinforce the image of students not giving a fuck about the communities that accommodate them during their studies.

4) One of the main justifications for the policy was to 'protect' the student body from the views of the banned groups. I found the idea that I could be 'turned' by listening to someone's views downright offensive and the notion that the people behind the policy were somehow qualified to decide what I should and shouldn't be exposed to quite unbelievably arrogant.

5) The policy quite obviously had no power to stop violence and intimidation whatsoever. So you ban people from campus, what's to stop them waiting outside to jump you? The extreme leftists on campus simply wanted to hurt their sworn enemies by removing their campus facilities, it was point scoring pure and simple no matter how they dressed it up to us and even themselves.

6) Finally, the basic idea that someone should not be allowed to speak their mind simply because other people don't like what they have to say is anathema to me.

Of course it's all very well to bitch without offering a better alternative, so this was mine, soundly scorned rejected by the proponents of the policy though it was:

We've had laws regarding public speaking in this country for a very long time, inciting violence, intimidation, or the breaking of any law, is illegal. Leeds University Union, at that time anyway, was one of only three profit making student's unions in the entire country.

(Example 1: The union is required by law to supply carbon monoxide detectors to students for free. If you went up to the office on the top floor you could get them I discovered, but the shops on the ground floor sold them for several quid each.
Example 2: When I started my astrophysics course I discovered that highstreet bookshops where actually cheaper than the union bookshop for most of my textbooks!)

With this in mind I suggested that the union allow everyone to speak but that any such speaking be monitored by someone from the law dept. If they felt that the speaker had crossed the line then the union should prosecute the individual.

Not only would this have sent out the desired message that the student body refused to tolerate such behaviour, but the action would serve the wider community, not just the uni. The union would also then be justified in banning the individual as they would have actually done something wrong.

Really can't be arsed today, stressed out and knackered, so I thought I'd do a poem instead because it's quick and easy, the microwave meal of literature if you like.

Waiter

Are you waiting for the bomb to drop?
Or for the magic fix that'll make it stop?
Holding your breath until an end,
When we can relax, all dead or friends.

Are you waiting for the end of sin?
Or for the earth to split so we all fall in?
Paying your dues until the big climax,
When either way, we'll all be on our backs.

Are you waiting for that special day?
When all is well and goes your way?
Just getting by until you get there,
When it'll all be fine, it will, you swear.

Are you waiting for the world to change?
For the timely death of all your pains?
Hanging on until that day,
When you can let go, and be ok.

Are you waiting? If so why?
Life is life until you die.
Blood & shit, hope & pain,
If you can't find the sun, enjoy the rain.

Of course our development in the society we are today has seen some great achievements along the way. Of all these, technology is surely our most golden of children, we love it, we worship it, it is quite literally our way and our light.

Now the rapid rise of technology in some parts of the world has certainly served to insulate us even further from that common ground mentioned above. By removing the work and therefore the contact with the land and providing alternative ways to make a living, technology has allowed us to remove ourselves from nature like never before.

This rise of technology has indeed been rapid, in fact now that the evolution timescale of products and services is less than a human lifetime, we can actually see technology developing before our very eyes. The fact that technology can progress so rapidly brings us a great deal of convenience and luxury but also raises a problem of its own.

An interesting article in The Guardian some time ago considered how apparently common it was for people to escape serious injury when impaled on something. Basically, the human body has evolved a kind of slippery arrangement of organs meaning they are more likely to slide aside than be pierced. There have been sharp things, from animal's horns to other people's spears, around for a long time and we have apparently responded to that threat.

Now consider the damage that a car crash or a gunshot usually does to human body. These threats have simply not been around long enough for human evolution to respond. Another example of this is the explosion of media born from the advancement of technology. Television, for example, delivers a far greater volume information, far more quickly, than anything we've ever encountered.

Perhaps one of the reasons we have never considered the potential power and influence of ideas and information is because it's never been any kind of problem in the past, there's never been anything like this much available. We are all part of an everyday experiment, who knows how we'll react in the long run.

It has to be said that while, in moving away from 'primitive' lifestyles towards 'developed' ones we have lost a great deal of ability and understanding, we have also gained a great deal in terms of physical quality of life, although 'we' have tended to keep such improvements to ourselves.

We have bought the most wonderful tools at the expense of knowing what to do with them, but it does not have to be too late. The old ways are still there, their lessons waiting to be learned. I'm not suggesting for a moment that we throw away everything we've built, rather that if we can get back what we have lost, then the combination of that old knowledge with our new tools would be truly wonderful.

The idea of a simple two way split seems relentlessly attractive to the human mind and it's tempting to try and define this whole thing in terms of Old and New, or perhaps East and West, or even to suggest some inherent cultural and political pair of opposites.

Unfortunately for us, things are just never that simple. Comparisons can be made but really only over specifics and only by baring in mind the limits of such an exercise. There are no definitive rules as to how ideas are group together. The advantage of this of course is that there's nothing to stop us picking and choosing ideas to form any kind of system we like.

The second advantage the older systems have over our own concerns the way in which they view the relationship between people and the planet. I spent a little time in Australia a few years ago and while I was there a guy was launching a controversial book he had written.

As I understood it the premise of this book was that at some early point in their history, the Aboriginal people of what we now call Australia had ravaged the land and hunted several species to extinction. From this experience, he argued, they had developed to the more familiar idea of a people at one with their environment.

Of course this pissed a lot of people off but, without knowing a great deal about the subject, it seemed to make sense to me. Over several millennia these people learned from their mistakes to arrive at a balanced and sustainable system of living. This notion also gives me some hope that maybe we can all do something similar somewhere in the future.

Anyway, however it came to be, these systems consider people to be a part of nature just like all the plants, animals, rocks and water. From this mindset it is easy to see how you would come to a system whereby, through understanding and respecting your surroundings, your lifestyle works with nature and is thereby sustainable.

In contrast, our structured faiths place mankind above the rest of 'creation', we are special, we are superior, we are the masters of all we survey. I'm currently still reading 'Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee', a Native American history of the American West, and the concept of 'manifest destiny' has been mentioned several times.

Besides sounding startlingly like white supremacy, preaching that the dominance of the 'Anglo-Saxon race' is god's will, it also states in no uncertain terms that the vast land before them, and in particular the mineral wealth beneath it, is there for no reason other than to be consumed by humanity.

The move from part of nature to nature's master has cost us a great deal but surely the highest cost of all was the loss of common ground. Looking at ancient cultures, belief systems and ways of life that came before the structured, monotheistic religions, the global similarities are amazing.

When our respective corners of the world were at the very heart of our lives and communities, we all had something in common and it was in all our interests to work with nature to progress as we wanted to. The loss of this shared cornerstone has allowed societies to define themselves through less common practices and thereby develop greater differences and conflicts.

I don't generally watch the ITV news, I find BBCN24 and C4 more tolerable, but the last time I did I was surprised by what I heard. The lead story was about water suppliers putting up their prices and the anchor's intro was: 'Water, one of the four basic elements of the universe...' Was this the lunchtime news, the early evening news, or the news from the middle ages!? Unimpressed I changed the channel and didn't think too much more about it.

More recently I was watching a piece on BBCN24 about a potential cure for some cancers and its discovery in a humble garden weed. Watching the report, it occurred to me what a mammoth task it must be to track down such natural wonder drugs. After all, there are quite literally countless species of plant, and any of them could be hiding amazing properties, where do you start?

Just as the piece was wrapped up however, it was mentioned that, traditionally, this garden weed had been used for centuries, if not millennia, as treatment for various ailments, including skin cancer! These scientists hadn't stumbled across a miracle cure, they'd just finally taken notice of what their predecessors had probably scoffed at.

This realisation cast a different light over the earlier ITV intro for me. I still thought it was a stupid way to introduce the news, but my apparent readiness to mock 'unscientific' ideas did concern me, not least because it's something I often consciously try to avoid.

Many ancient belief systems are fascinating but have been misrepresented for such a long time that they carry a stigma of 'nonsense'. Beliefs such as those of the Native Americans or Aborigines, for example, are seen by many as primitive and naive, as the fantasies of savages.

In fact, these belief systems seem to feature two advantages over our own mainstream religions. The first of which is a much more sophisticated, though misunderstood, concept of faith. Practicalities of everyday life play an integral part in these belief systems. While the characters, stories and traditions of these systems may seem almost cartoonlike to us, they actually serve as significant metaphors for life.

The element of higher sophistication comes from the believer being able to recognise the abstract object of his faith as being both a simple metaphor for reality AND a sacred form at the same time. Our own belief systems refuse to soil the purity of their abstract constructs by seeing them as mental tools but loses out because of this.

Throughout my time at high school I was friends with a lad who happened to be a Jehovah's Witness. Now most of our classmates didn't really know what being a Jehovah's Witness was all about, but the fact that he didn't celebrate Christmas or birthdays or attend RE lessons, underlined by being seen out of school with shirt, tie and bible, meant that he got plenty of shit for his parent's choice of faith.

Besides references to, 'bowing down to the Queen of Sheba,' which I never understood, the main insult he got, day after day, was 'Jovo'. He didn't seem to mind too much, I think he just put up with it because he didn't have a lot of choice really. Anyway, there were always other people to pick on, we'd just get on with things and they'd generally lose interest.

One especially hot day my friends and I were out on the wide open playing fields during lunchtime. As the time to return to class began to draw close we started to make our way back towards the school buildings. Now, having spent the best part of an hour sprinting about in the baking heat I was more than a little bit thirsty.

In fact I was probably the thirstiest I have ever been and, having foolishly drunk all my own drink earlier, I was desperate for something cold and wet. For some reason I found myself walking back across the bright green expanse with just my JW friend, and his lunch.

The pop bottle he had was tiny to begin with and, by this point, it was less than half full, I remember staring at it as I asked him to share it. Now to be fair, he'd been running around just like me and endless, clear water was waiting in the toilet taps just a couple of minutes away. Despite these obvious facts, however, his refusal to share enraged me.

Suddenly overcome by the desperate protests of my dry mouth and flagging form I lashed out at my friend and called him a 'fucking Jovo'. He looked more hurt than angry as he said, 'you're just like the rest of them,' and walked away.

From that moment when the words fell from my lips to this, I regret, am shamed and disturbed by what I did. Of course I apologised, we made up and were friends for the rest of high school but none of that could shift the disturbing memory from my mind.

What really upset me, and still does, about that lunchtime years ago, was the knowledge that I lost control. A basic physical need of mine was not being met and so, over just a few minutes, something unthinkable became not only justified but necessary. In that instant the consequences of my actions were not weighed as worth it, they simply didn't exist.

Now while my thirst at the time does not excuse what I said, it does explain how I could suddenly act in way utterly contrary to normal. For all that we pride ourselves on being, 'civilised' and 'developed' it is dangerously naive to think that our basic physical instincts lack the presence to dominate our actions. When people's needs are not met, when they are actively denied safety, sustenance and/or respect, those instincts kick in and are almost impossible to deny.

Now what I said to my friend was wrong, and what four guys did in London last week was also wrong. Whatever the provocation the choice to do the wrong thing was made and so those who made that choice stand responsible for the consequences.

Trying to understand why these things happened is not sympathy, or attempted justification, it's not even some woolly, lefty ideal about everyone being good underneath. No single event, from my schoolboy outburst to a terrorist attack, is isolated from the rest of the world. These things are symptoms of problems and identifying and addressing those problems is the only way to avoid, or at least lessen the number of, hurtful events.

Of course there are those who would disagree, those that would have us believe that there are very simple answers to our problems. The far right, who are currently making their presence felt in Leeds through graffiti and gatherings, would say, in one form or another, that those guys killed 50+ people because they weren't white.

George Bush will tell you it's simply because they are 'evil', while Tony Blair dismisses them as 'radical' or 'extreme'. Unfortunately for us these easy answers serve only those who give them, they do us no good all. If we really want to tackle the major problems we face today we must look, with honesty both brutal and savage, at not only the state of the world but also our role in it.

Explanations are not excuses, they are opportunities to learn. Understanding is not a weakness or a waste of time, it's not even just a good idea, it is in fact the only thing that can save us from ourselves.

fear

A strength of great horror writers is to take something mundane and everyday, something that surrounds the reader unnoticed, and turn it into a thing of nightmares. Now remember New York, 11/09/01, and try to remember the next time you saw a plane in the sky. Did it feel different? It did to me.

What we tend to mean by terrorism is, 'amateur terrorism' (as opposed to state terrorism) and generally its perpetrators are looking to get maximum effect from anything they do. The effect such an attack is never restricted to the event itself, but is designed to trick us into keeping ourselves scared.

Having lived under the flight path to Leeds/Bradford airport for the past few years I now see planes pretty much as I did before 11/09/01 again. After the events of last week however, my girlfriend now thinks twice about catching her bus to and from work.

The thing about suicide bombers of course is that it is not objects whose appearance is changed to us, but people. Suddenly a guy in the street is a potential bomb and every stranger a possible indiscriminate mass murderer.

Of course being scared really grinds people down but another side to this is people being scared of you. The feeling that someone is afraid of you simply because of the way you look tends to come with a taste of isolation and rejection that easily ripens into frustration.

In short, being scared of one another can lead to nothing good or useful, it does not have to inevitable however. The first time I went abseiling I was terrified, as I leaned back off the cliff top every muscle in my body was telling me to pull back, but I didn't, I trusted in the rope and had a great day. It is entirely natural to be scared but we do not have to let fear dominate our decisions.

Now suicide bombing is nothing new, and the reasons behind it seem even older, yet the debut of such an attack in Britain has been used to justify the suggestion that we are in a new totally situation. Now, the unknown enemy is surely the most terrifying because our own imaginations are the only limit to their powers. This is what makes this supposed 'new type' of terrorism even scarier.

We are told that we're at war and yet we don't know who these people are or even what they want. The idea of terrorism has always been to cause terror, obviously, in order to achieve specific goals, usually to claim to a particular area of land. What is this even about? Islam? Capitalism? Oil? Nobody really seems to know.

This ignorance leads to even more fear and bars any kind of understanding as to the motives of the terrorist organisers. It does seem though, from the varied and conflicting information we've seen over the last few years, that while this is billed as a great clash of cultures, a covert world war, it may well in reality be a fight between two, very small and very rich groups of people.

Is this really that hard to believe? Isn't that what most conflict in the history of the world has come down to? This rich guy wants what that rich guy has and we're all caught in the middle. Well whether this is true or not there is only one viable path for the rest of us.

We must remember our numbers, and theirs, and educate ourselves. We are the majority and the only power governments, companies and terrorists have is what they know that we don't. If we all ask questions of them and ourselves, talk to one another and refuse to let fear control us, we might at least begin to see what's really going on and just who is benefiting from the high price we are paying.

PS. At noon today I took part in the two minutes silence for the victims of last Thursday along with so many other people across the world. For just two minutes we all stood together, focussing on the same things and actually experiencing that, as Ken Livingston so rightly said, the things that unite humanity are so much greater than those that divide us. For 120 seconds we were all just people, with no colours or badges, united and unafraid.

Just two short minutes, but it's a start.

So, the discovery of personal effects, and the absence of timers, seems to confirm that three guys from Leeds were some of the first suicide bombers to strike Britain. The fact that these attacks took the form of suicide bombings has led various facets of the media to now describe Thursday as an even greater watershed, as a dividing line between Britain before and Britain after.

Now I don't know about where you are, but here in Leeds the sun rose as usual today and, under its glorious summer rays, this new Britain looks pretty similar to the old one. You could be forgiven for thinking that the only real long term difference made by these attacks will be the new legislation the government will no doubt seek to rush through in order to be seen to be doing something.

Of course it's not our country but our perceptions that have changed and the simple fact that we often simply cannot believe something to be possible until after it happens. Suicide bombing has been a terrible but abstract phenomenon to us, until now. We have always been told that, as a tactic, it is somehow removed from other methods of violence but only now are we developing an actual understanding of the two main elements that make it so:

practicalities

Although suicide attacks currently tend to be associated with the middle east, Israel/Palestine in particular, the tactic has of course been around for a long time. Two instances that leap immediately leap to mind are historical instances of use against the US: The Japanese kamikaze pilots of WWII for one and the Vietnamese Nationalists in Vietnam for another.

These were combat situations where the, supposedly, most advanced military mankind has ever seen were on full alert and in control. It is uncomfortable but important to recognise that not even the mighty US war machine could defend itself from these attacks and still suffers heavy losses from them in Iraq today.

If that mighty monolith of armoured violence cannot find a way to defend itself against suicide bombs on an open battle field, what chance does a civilian population have on their own streets? Quite obviously a country's government must do all it can to secure the safety of its people, but the horrendous situation in Israel/Palestine shows that no amount of vigilance or even oppression can stop these bombers and there is a simple reason for this:

They cannot be stopped.

When the bomber straps on those explosives it is already too late. Sure sometimes things go wrong, they bottle it or get caught, but that doesn't matter as it only takes one to succeed. There is no practical way to defeat a suicide bomber, just as no amount of justice or retribution can bring their victims back from the dead. The only way to stop the bombers, and thereby spare innocent victims, is to understand how people become bombers in the first place.

It is worth noting that suicide bombing is generally employed by groups facing overwhelming military might. It is the only feasible method by which someone vastly outnumbered and out gunned can strike back at their enemies. On the face of it this may seem ludicrous but it shouldn't. The idea of the plucky underdog, sacrificing everything to do the right thing, is not an alien concept to us at all. When it comes to parenthood for example we practically expect martyrdom.

Now familiar arguments of social deprivation and being misunderstood have been suggested as to why people become bombs but it is surely a little more complex than this. The two British attempted 'shoe bombers', for example, were from quite different backgrounds: One was a petty thief, the other a respectable middle class boy.

What could link these two? What feeling did they share that caused them to see blowing themselves up as being the best thing they could do with their lives? Quite clearly the shoulders of 'social deprivation' are not broad enough to bare all the blame.

Connecting Iraq to Thursday's attacks has been somewhat poo-pooed in the media. The attacks against New York happened before Iraq, it is pointed out, as did many other atrocities. This is true and it would indeed be naive to think of Iraq and London as simple cause and effect.

Having said this however, it would also be naive to think that Iraq has no baring. Instead of looking for a single provocation and explanation, we should perhaps consider Iraq as a particularly topical example of our current culture and policies.

The fact that the Iraqi, (Muslim) dead are not counted was criticised by commentators some time ago but the issue slipped by as more exciting stories became available. The thing is that, for many people, that issue did not slip by. The fact that we do not bother to count the Iraqis we kill, and that we consider their lives as necessary 'collateral damage', sends a strong message to Muslims and people in ethnic minorities everywhere:

Your lives are not as important as ours, we are better than you.

This must surely play a part in building frustration in young people across the globe, frustration that an older minority can hijack to achieve their own goals. When people join groups, from so-called religious groups like Al-Qaeda to so-called political groups like the BNP, it is not because they have woken up one day and decided, 'right, I hate people now, I'm off to be an utter shit.'

They share the same concerns as you and I, the safety and happiness of themselves, their families and friends, the quality of their futures and self respect. When things like this are missing, people turn to those who claim to be able to offer help.

Some of us turn to religions or hobbies to find meaning, or sign petitions and march to change things. For some the easy answers of, 'it's their fault, get rid of them and solve all your problems'. Whatever we do it's because we just want to be happy, we wants things to be right.

Suicide bombers cannot be stopped, the only way to prevent them appearing is to try and ensure that society provides people with whatever it is they are missing before they look for it elsewhere. We must address the entirely justified outrages around the world in order just a tiny but lethal dose of it spilling over into violent hatred.

A homemade poster in a window near my house reads, 'London, Hyde Park is with You, Stop the Violence'. The first time I saw it I smiled and nodded my agreement but today that poster has taken on a whole new dimension. I've been able to hear a helicopter for most of the day but it wasn't until just a few hours ago that I realised that the pictures I was watching on my TV were coming from that very helicopter.

To be honest it wasn't until I actually walked down to the end of my street and looked round the corner that I actually believed what I was seeing. After Thursday's terrible events I reflected that London suddenly felt like my backyard, but today the so called 'war on terrorism' is on my doorstep.

Houses just round the corner are standing empty having being evacuated, there was a controlled explosion a few hours ago and, until a little while ago, there were armed police on these very streets. Now this area of Leeds, which I love, has seen some occasional nasty shit thanks to gangsters with guns, but this just seems petty compared to what's going on today.

Trying to adjust to this new view of my home, as a possible homebase for mass murderers, I am reminded of a strange afternoon from a few weeks ago. I could hear a helicopter that day too and that's why I'd gone to the window. I saw the police helicopter, then I saw the little boy.

A tiny Asian lad was wandering up my street, on his own. Scanning the street I saw my girlfriend returning from work. She approached the lad and spoke to him, confirming that he was indeed lost. He didn't speak much but told us he lived near the Mosque.

Rounding the corner at the bottom of the my street, the minaret of the Mosque is plainly and attractively visible. Rounding the corner that afternoon what was also plainly visible, though perhaps less attractive, were the numerous police and police vehicles. For a moment I was reminded of Jamie Bulger and Holly & Jessica, thinking that this young lads disappearance could have sparked a mass scare and search.

Having approached the officers, however, we found that they were not looking for the boy. Looking around I suddenly became aware that something else was going on here. All the police were wearing body armour, though I didn't see and firearms. They had closed roads and were redirecting traffic. When asked all they would say was that they were investigating 'an incident'.

As it turned out, the boy lived near 'the other' Mosque, which is just at the other end of the street and round the corner, and is in fact the Mosque that has been closed down today, just a few steps away from the house searched. Nobody I spoke to knew what the police were doing that day and we just forgot all about it.

It wasn't until I was watching this story unfold before, and quite literally around, me that I thought about it again. Were the police looking for terrorists in Hyde Park weeks before London was attacked? Of course it's possible, even likely, that the two events are entirely unconnected but it's a perfect example of how events can change the way we see things.

We can retain perspective though. I'll admit I was rattled as I realised just how close this global story was to me. I'll also admit that the thought of someone from Yorkshire being responsible for last Thursday turned my stomach too. This said, however, I also know, as does everyone else when they think about it, that these people are the tiniest of minorities.

I love living where I do and I refuse to start being scared of my neighbours.

I think most would agree that the terrorist attack on London yesterday was an attack on the British people. Over the hours that have followed much has been said of these people, of their character and traditions but this mornings pleas that British Muslims not be targeted for any form of revenge seems to have forgotten just who the British people are.

Now I'm a Yorkshireman, an Englishman, a Brit, a European, a Westerner and, ultimately, a human being. But how have I acquired these labels? What is it that makes me British and thereby the target of yesterdays senseless act?

Well, I was born here, as were my parents and my grandparents etc etc. I was raised here, nurtured on the language and culture of this country and finally became a participating, tax paying, voting citizen. This is what makes me British. Now consider someone born in a far away country, raised amid a completely different language and culture who then comes over here and gets citizenship.

It's pretty obvious to me that these people, and their descendants, are EVERY BIT as British as me. The idea that 'we', (the British,) have been attacked but that 'those people', (British Muslims,) should not be blamed is nonsensical. 'Those people' are us! WE have all been attacked and I have no doubt that as more details emerge of exactly who lost their lives yesterday, the British Muslim community will suffer losses just like all other British communities.

Speaking briefly of British values, I have to say that the calm and determined way in which our emergency services, and the people of London themselves, reacted to what happened yesterday expresses far more about those values then any mere words ever could. Of course tolerance of other people's beliefs is another vitally important value that Britain traditionally shares with Islam.

One other issue raised by yesterday morning was the general agreement that attacks like these simply cannot be avoided by security at home. We cannot check every person who gets on a bus or train and, according to the Home Secretary, even the modern miracle that would be ID cards couldn't have prevented yesterday.

It seems pretty clear then that only by addressing the causes of terrorism can we avoid having to demonstrate our national character in such a way in the future. Now I absolutely agree with the school of thought that says giving in terror only leads to more terror and in fact, 'business as usual', is the only thing Thatcher ever said that I agreed with. As always though, the reality of the situation is far more complex.

Although we may like to believe in a tiny organised minority who arrange these things in isolation from the rest of society we are kidding ourselves. No rebel or terrorist group in the history of the world has survived, let alone thrived, without popular support.. They NEED ordinary people and, quite clearly, they have them.

Forget the terrorists themselves, they're just losers who can't be bothered to follow a more difficult yet effective path of protest. Instead consider why on earth would ordinary people, not necessarily extremists, help bring about such terrible events?

Outrage.

What happened in New York on 11/09/01 was utterly despicable and I could never suggest that the US got what it deserved that day because no-one deserves that, ever. Whether they got what they asked for on the other hand, is another question altogether.

Now Tony Blair is absolutely right when he says we cannot allow these people to change our way of life, (by forcing the introduction ID cards for example?) but that doesn't mean we shouldn't question what it is we do that would cause ordinary people to help these things to happen.

The way the west treats the rest of the world really pisses off a whole lot of people but we just refuse to acknowledge this in its entirety. Sure most of them aren't angry enough to kill, but there're plenty angry enough to turn a blind eye, to lend someone a bed for the night or else help in some indirect way.

Just looking at the current state of the IRA it is absolutely clear that the best, if not the only way, to defeat an underground movement, is to remove its popular support. The sickening murder of Robert McCarthy outraged so much of the community the IRA claim to represent that it did far more damage than years of British military effort.

I said in an earlier post that if we hadn't humiliated Germany after WWI Hitler would have been dismissed for the gimp he was. Instead a desperate population followed the only person prepared to stand up to us. Don't get me wrong, if we could change the world tomorrow and put right the wrongs we rich peeps lay on the rest of humanity there'd still be plenty of lunatics wanting to blow us up, but the difference would be that they'd find themselves on their own.

This is of course the one advantage we will always have over terrorist groups, governments and corporations alike: Despite what some people might like you to believe, there is far more to unite you with your neighbours than divide you and it's when the shit hits the fan, like yesterday, that that becomes clear.

We the people, are never alone. In our hearts we all reject terror, both amateur and professional, theirs and our own. At the end of the day we all just want to live in peace and there has to come a time when that REALLY becomes the only priority.

Heavy shit on a dark day. I've just watched the whole thing unfold on BBCN24 over the past few hours, my heart gradually sinking as a suspected electrical fault on the tube developed into a terrorist attack that has left the walls of the British Medical Association's HQ splattered with blood.

I'd said in an earlier post that my support for London's Olympic bid was begrudged as I would have preferred a Northern city, like Manchester to have it, even though they're the wrong side of the Pennines. As the reports this morning went from inconvenience to injuries and finally to confirmed fatalities, London suddenly felt like my back garden, all divides forgotten.

The UK's current spell in the global spotlight, what with hosting the G8, the EU presidency, Live8 and London's successful Olympic bid, is obviously something that whoever did this wants to cash in on. For reasons of their own they appear to have aimed for disruption rather than casualties and perhaps the relatively limited extent of the damage, (so far,) is something to be thankful for.

Various groups, including a European Al-Qaeda cell, have claimed responsibility for what have already become known as, 'the London bombings' but nothing is confirmed yet. There is suspicion that the bus bomb may have been a suicide bomber and that if so Irish terrorism is unlikely. The other suggested possible culprit is someone from the anti-capitalist movement. If that's true this really is a dark day as nothing could be more helpful to the forces of global capital.

I'm sure there'll be reams of detail and analysis across the web already, let alone over the coming weeks, so there's no point reproducing it here. Instead I'd rather try to recognise this as what it is, whoever is responsible, it's an act of hatred. I have on my wall an amazing Guardian piece featuring a former IRA man responsible for the Brighton bombing and the daughter of one of his victims.

I've highlighted the most inspirational bit as a reminder to me that we really can overcome the very worst of conflicts. The former bomber expresses what he has learnt from the experience of reconciling his crimes with his victims family:

The big lesson is that if you see people as human beings, how can you possibly hurt them? Then you think of all the barriers to that simple relationship occurring - political, social, economic. When people are marginalised or excluded they are left only with their anger. So do everything to remove the blocks and let people be human with each other.

This is a valuable lesson but it's worth remembering that not everyone who feels justified anger goes out and kills people. The few who do, do so because their anger becomes hatred and we in the UK have seen the immediate consequences of hatred on our streets today. With this in mind I think it's vitally important to all our futures that we do not respond in kind to this atrocity.

It is hard to be rational and understanding at times like this but these are the only ways in which we can remove those blocks mentioned above and thereby consign tragedies like this to history. But right now, stuff the terrorists, I refuse to spend my day thinking about them, especially when there are so many innocent people suffering and grieving. These are the people deserving of our thoughts and attention today.

It was difficult the other night, when watching the great T McD interview Bush, not to fall into the trap of intellectual snobbery described in an earlier post. As the interview progressed, and I found myself swinging back and forth between amusement and anger, the issue of Bush's apparent IQ resolved itself.

The role of technically correct English has always been, for me, that of a common reference point. This means that there's absolutely nothing wrong with slang or weird grammar when appropriate and relevant. Of course if want people to be able to understand you it's important to be able to translate that into the common textbook tongue.

A thorough understanding of 'correct' English is important, thorough use of it is not. This said, if you're going to select one person from a population of a quarter of a million people, to speak for the entire country to the rest of the world, wouldn't the ability to articulate be a significant factor?

During the last US election the Bush-bashing of the left did much to galvanise support for the stumpy one.
Of course what it came down to was the fact that the intellectual image of the left alienates many ordinary working people. These people recognise that Bush is no genius but that just makes him, in their eyes, more of an ordinary guy like themselves. It almost seemed that, to many, the re-election of Bush demonstrated the dream, that absolutely anyone can be president.

So when Bush said things like, '...as is other countries...' I didn't let it wind it wind me up because I refuse to become a snobby little pedant and ponce. Besides, his other mistakes were far more telling and entertaining.

When T McD asked him about 'climate change' he responded defensively about 'greenhouse gases' even though his administration has put a large amount of effort into watering down the claims that the two are linked. Bush also spoke about, 'harnessing' greenhouse gases, I have no idea what he meant by this and I doubt he did either.

Anyway, what I realised was that the US left have shot themselves in the foot, yet again, by focussing on Bush's obvious mental limits because doing so has left them unable to attack the real danger of Bush's presidency. Three things were shown to be very clear in the interview:

his answers were preprepared mini-speeches,
he had not written said minispeeches,
he didn't understand a lot of what he was saying,

While Tony Blair and most senior politicians are certainly guilty of the first two, they're generally not of the third. Forget the fact that Bush is a moron, what's really scary is that the man elected president by the people of the US is not the guy in charge.

He does nothing except what he is told to do and this was demonstrated beautifully by his appearance on Arabic television to issue an apology some months back. I thought I was looking at a still picture of the guy until I realised that he was just sat so very still. It was pretty clear that, with such an opportunity to offend, he had been strictly briefed, 'for god's sake don't say or do ANYTHING other than what we agreed'.

Many ordinary, working people of the US see Bush as a genuine guy and feel they have something in common with him and no amount of name calling or clever, clever jokes is going to change that. Leaving Bush himself out of it and instead drawing attention to just how out of it he really is, is surely a much more constructive and effective way to go. In the end it depends what's more important, scoring points or winning the game.

Did you hear about the violence in Edinburgh? Of course you did, because there's nothing the media like more than a good, old fashioned street fight. Did you hear as much about the many, many more people who marched peacefully through the city the day before? No, you didn't, and that's exactly what makes violence such a useful tool for some.

Violence is, quite obviously, counter productive in these situations and although it does draw far more media coverage, in the long run it only lessens essential popular support. To their shame, however, the media in this country have utterly failed to give the public an accurate picture of the 'movement' currently mobilising around the world.

Reading Paul Kingsnorth's 'One No, Many Yeses' and Rebecca Solnit's 'Hope in the Dark', one thing is made obvious. The said movement is not a single entity, but rather is something new and unusual, a movement without leaders. This difference can be seen from the sheer number of organisations coming together under a single banner to the way in which protestors organise themselves in places like Edinburgh.

The reason this is relevant is that the way the protests are reported suggests that a single great lump of people were stirred up by a few bad apples. Now there are small groups who see violence as valid and individuals can be swept up in the moment, but generally, people are there to be peaceful and try to get away from violence when it occurs.

Of course when violence does occur, the police have no choice but to contain it and prevent escalation, especially when in the global spotlight playing host to the, 'eight most important men in the world', (doesn't that just turn your stomach?) Of course it's not practical for the police to try and distinguish between the violent minority and the rest in the heat of the moment.

Those trying to flee or distance themselves from the violence find themselves in confrontations with police trying to restrict their movements. Now my view of the police is similar to that of the armed forces. I disagree with a lot of what they do and especially with why they do it, but I have to respect their abilities and admit that I couldn't do what they do.

I was violently assaulted by police at a relegalise cannabis march in Manchester a few years ago, but what stayed with me was the expression on the face of the young, uniformed lad who threw me to the ground: He was terrified. That's how violence escalates, people, even the police, get scared. Two things happened on the march mentioned above from which I learned important lessons:

Firstly, the approach the police take can make or break a situation. In Manchester the Greater Manchester Police led our march with a cordon that stretched across the street. Unfortunately it hadn't occurred to them that the street was much wider along later parts of the route. When we reached these parts their cordon became scattered as they had to spread out.

The GMP also needed to control the speed of the march in order to ensure our safe passage through the city. This was fair enough but the way in which they tried to do this, was to have the cordon slow down in front of us. Of course people further back didn't know what was happening and so those of us right at the front were pushed further and further forward.

The upshot was that I was pushed through a cordon that I couldn't see as it had all but collapsed and subsequently put on my arse by some young and scared looking coppers. I've attended several marches in London and they've all gone far more smoothly. The Met draw plenty of criticism, and I'm not disputing any of it, but their experience of such situations does show. Simple planning can avoid a whole lot of trouble.

The second incident on that march involved a young lad with a spliff. Generally on such marches there'll be plenty of people openly toking. It's a great feeling to be able to light up just feet away from a copper, not a spiteful feeling of victory, but a relaxed one of freedom. The police don't tackle this because they can't, there're just too many people.

I have no idea why, but somewhere along that march through Manchester, two coppers pulled this young lad out of the crowd and started searching him and examining the joint he was smoking. They had led him to a shop doorway and had their backs to the street as they spoke to him. It wasn't until one of them followed the lad's gaze over his shoulder that things changed.

These two PCs turned around to find that entire march of 10,000 people had stopped, and everyone close enough was staring straight at them. They let the lad go without another word. Now you might be tempted to think that the lesson here was if there're enough of you, you can take on the world, but it's not.

Along the march, if you were to look down various little side streets, you would find fleets of vans, bursting with foot soldiers of the state both armoured and armed. Now those two PCs pushed their luck and thought better of it, but if things had kicked off, we would have been battered. I'm proud to say that cannabis marches have a great history of being thoroughly non-violent and enjoyable affairs, usually with nominal arrests, even if this does mean receive zero press coverage.

The lesson here was that you're never going to beat the police with violence. I mean come on, you're ordinary bobby carries a stick, tear gas and has vans full of similarly armed mates at the end of a radio. In an expected confrontation they'll have shields, helmets and body armour, you will get you arse kicked.

This isn't a reason to pack up and go home, it's motivation to stop being so damn lazy and use your head. For example, if your goal is to disrupt a city and force the authorities to spend their time dealing with you, by which tactic are thousands of people more likely to achieve this?

1. Throw some stuff, smash some stuff. You're either going to get nicked, penned in down an alley way, or have to leg it altogether. Whatever happens, it'll be over relatively quickly and lots of people will think you and your cause are dangerous.

2. Every single one of you lie down on the road, spaced out, and refuse to move. The police will have to drag you away one at a time, with at least two officers per protester. If there're thousands of you it will go on for hours, nobody has to get hurt and the aerial view of a street covered in bodies makes for great TV. Sure you'll still piss some people off, but you can't be dismissed as violently irresponsible reactionaries.

People, certainly the British people, respond much more favourably to wit and creativity and I'll tell you something else, so do the police. The fact that your plan is obvious and non violent tends to put them at their ease and make them less likely to start beating you, which is nice.

At the end of the day if your goal is to change society these are the most effective ways to do it. We often forget how lucky we are in this country. I mean police fired on peace protestors in New York with rubber bullets! A young lad was shot in the head by police and died at a march in Italy! In many 'less developed' nations, forget protesting all together!

I have a postcard on my wall that reads, 'when injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty'. The key word there is duty. Our society here in the UK affords us the opportunity to protest peacefully but our culture of satire, not to mention the very reasons for us being out there in the first place, bestow upon us a duty to do it in the most peaceful, the most fun and thereby the most effective manner possible.

So, were you part of the 80% of the human race who apparently shared in the Live8 experience on Saturday? I was and I have to say, it did feel like something special. The music wasn't really my scene but that was ok because the music wasn't really the point.

There was an atmosphere of significance that came from the knowledge that these were images we would see again and again in the future and that we would able to nudge one another and say, 'I remember that'. Making poverty history, it's not a wonderful dream, it's a practical necessity, but are we nearly there? No, no we're not.

As sweet as things were, there was bitter background flavour to the day for me. It wasn't that Sir Bob suddenly started echoing Bush & Blair, talking about attaching conditions to the debt, aid & trade package. It wasn't even the hideously uncomfortable scene of Madonna dragging a young and bemused African girl around the stage.

No, the grey cloud hanging over an otherwise sunny day for me was knowing that Live8 will not achieve what it has set out to do. Now don't get me wrong, I support the idea, the campaign itself and think that everyone should do likewise. It's just not going to be enough.

There are few people for whom I have more respect than Nelson Mandela, I skived off lectures at uni to go an see him speak when he visited Leeds a few years ago, the man's amazing. When he launched the MPH campaign in Trafalgar Square his speech cut to the bone of the issue. There is no reason for poverty to exist, and in just the same way as the seemingly invincible institutions of slavery and apartheid were consigned to history, so poverty can and must be.

There has been much focus on the new focus of the mass music protest. This wasn't about money, this was about those eight men. It's not about pouring on cash, it's about changing the system, that's the only way to really change the world. All this is entirely true and it is right here where I find my hope taking a beating.

The aid money is useful, the debt cancellations are obvious, it's the change to trade systems that brings us into deeper water. The fact is that what needs to change is the way in which we in the 'developed' world, (as if we are the end product of human development!) dictate to 'developing' nations, (as if they're just behind us on the same road to the same place!) their economic systems.

Pressure, or 'advice', organisations like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank drive the countries belonging to the world's poorest people to adopt policies that do not serve their interests. Similar thinking lies behind the criminal subsidy regime we employ to prop up our failing agricultural industries.

This is what needs to change and in order for that to happen we don't need to influence the G8, we need to influence the G1, or Mr. Bush. Do you really believe that any kind of popular protest, regardless of scale, is going to change this guy's mind? Besides the fact that I just don't think he cares, it strikes me that Bush and his organ grinders would consider it morally wrong and against all that they hold dear, to allow their policy decisions to be affected by ordinary people outside the political system they control.

When we saw the fuel protests ion the UK a few years ago, there seemed to be an endless stream of pompous MPs eager to denounce the leader of the protest as being 'unelected' and therefore having no right to step onto 'their turf'. The fact that these self righteous little diatribes ignored the crisis that had befallen many ordinary voters was only one type of ignorance the MPs displayed.

It seemed pretty obvious to me that the guy leading the protest didn't need to be elected because he wasn't representing anyone. The many, many people making up the quite astounding convoy behind him were representing themselves. The same arguments were trotted out again, though in quieter voices, in response to the million+ that marched through London against the war we declared on the people of Iraq.

Those in power constantly insist that the system, their system, is the only legitimate way to change society. Anything else, they argue, leads to anarchy, only democratic representation is valid. Of course Live8 poses these people with a problem. There's not a politician in the world represents five billion people. Allowing them to speak for us is not working and so we are increasingly speaking for ourselves and once we reach these kinds of numbers they have no arguments that can ever be heard let alone stand up.

Unfortunately we also have a problem. The march opposing the war against the Iraqi people did not achieve its objective and Live8, for all its atmosphere of history, will not convince the elite of the world to relinquish their grip, why should it? They are, after all, effectively untouchable.

We find ourselves in a situation where democracy is espoused as an almost divine system of governance and yet 80% of human beings, united in a single, simple view, cannot control the actions of those in power. This is not democracy.

Hell, I hope I'm wrong. I hope that those grey little men in their grey little suits emerge from that golf club to announce that centuries of malevolent greed are to be reversed, but will any of you take that bet? If we really want to Make Poverty History there's only one to do it. In the words of As Zack de la Rocha, currently bouncing about my office, 'WE'VE GOT TO TAKE THE POWER BACK!'

An interesting piece in the Guardian the other recounted the recent decision of the Church of England to review the companies in which they invest. An example they gave was that they may reconsider their current investment in the Caterpillar company as it their bulldozers being used by Israel to demolish the refugee camps Palestinians have made their homes.

Channel 4 News this evening featured an interview with a Zimbabwean man whose five year old son's head had been smashed out in the road by a passing truck amid the chaos of their home being demolished by, I think, a Caterpillar bulldozer. Are Caterpillar the official world sponsors of state terrorism or what? You can be damn sure that the next piece earth moving machinery I buy won't be one of theirs!

Zimbabwe is always there when there's nothing else to talk about on the news, just like the Sudan and a million other places, they don't go anywhere when we're not watching them. A consequence of this, for me anyway, is that because the news coverage seems to make no difference to the situation, the graphic footage of horrific violence and cruelty feels like snuff TV, and that's just not my scene.

Of course it's a fair point to say that it's not up to the news media to solve the world's problems. Zimbabwe's problem, according to our own Mr. Blair, are the responsibility of neighbouring African nations, certainly nothing to do with us. Oh we condemn Mugabe's actions, in the sternest terms no less, but is that really any consolation to people who've lost their homes and loved ones?

Funny how Iraq wasn't the responsibility of its neighbours isn't it? But then we didn't go in there because Saddam Hussein was killing his own people did we? Historically we don't really mind nutters slaughtering their own people, often because we put them there in the first place.

The question is, what are we going to do about what's happening over there? In the show debate before we declared war on the people of Iraq most recently, the point was made again and again that a country has no authority to invade another unless it is directly threatened. I agreed with this and yet, seeing the pictures and hearing the stories, I ignore the instinct that screams at me. If we don't do anything about this we are complicit, we must help those people.

Of course Mugabe is an actual mentaller, I don't mean that in a flippant way, he is actually mentally unsound, you only had to watch the recent ceremonies of the Zimbabwean parliament, where he bows to his own image, to see that. Because of this, any foreign agency, media, aid or other, are spies sent by Bush to Brainwash his people. So what do we do?

In an earlier post, (No More War) I outlined why military action is never necessary and can always be avoided. A bit too late now though isn't it? This situation could probably have been avoided in the past but it wasn't and now it is here. So what do we do?

I know usually i would pose a question in order to answer it by way of demonstrating whatever random thoughts I happen to be occupied with at the time, but this time I'm actually asking. We can't do nothing so what do we do? I'd love to here some ideas because right now, I'm all out.