Many have people they love or know, in London. Many have travelled there for work, business, studies, holiday or visiting friends or family. In one of our trips there, my wife and I stayed in a hotel a few hundred feet from Russell Square station, where one of the bombs went off. I remember walking to and from that station every morning and evening, and ascending and descending the steps leading into and out from the platforms. While I also had the privilege of visiting the World Trade Centre in New York before they succumbed to terrorist acts, London felt closer to home. New York was hot and humid when I visited, very much a blur. All I remember were the Wall Street offices including the law office which a colleague and I attended for business, and the lunch thereafter. I recall vaguely the walk to Times Square with a few other colleagues that same evening but that was it. London is different. I recall Piccadilly Circus a lot better than I do Times Square. I recall the underground better than the subway. I can close my eyes and picture the streets of London better than I can the streets of New York. Maybe it was because I was in NY only once. Maybe it wasn’t pleasant when I was there, and the trip was too short to make any impression.

For what it has done in Iraq, Britain is not in my good books. Still, watching the pictures on the television last night was distressing. They were not at all dramatic in comparison with what we saw on 11/09/2001. Then, we first saw smoke coming out of one tower. Then we saw, live, a second plane crashing into the other tower. Then we saw first one tower than the other, crumbling. We saw people jumping out from the windows, from what must have been at least 20-30 story high levels. Last night all we saw were vehicles crowding around the entrances and exits of train stations, and the occasional casualty. Many of the casualties looked messed up but could still talk to the journalists. The picture of the blown off double-decker isn’t dramatically different from pictures of many exploded buses we have seen over the years, mainly in the middle-east. As undramatic as the pictures relatively were, they were distressing.

This morning I heard Ken Livingstone speak. He extolled the virtues of the city and what it represents. He said many people will continue to come to London and make it their home. This was because the city allowed them to pursue their dreams, let them be who they want to be and let them do what they want to do. He said many people went to London to escape where they came from, where they were told what to do and how to live their lives. I cannot recall listening to any other speech by Ken Livingstone but I thought that was a stirring one. Almost comparable to Rudy’s in NY when Sept 11 happened.

Of course there will be the usual rant, rightly so I think, of the lopsidedness of media coverage. Larger numbers are killed by acts of the Western world in various parts of the world. The media would argue those were contexts of war or peace-keeping situations, whereas this was  a city outside such war zones. I guess the jihad members don’t look at it that way. Everywhere is a battle ground. Wherever they choose to be, will be battlegrounds. Such as the London underground, or the Madrid metro, or (shudders) Connex Rail in Melbourne. The wife is not going in to work this morning – staying home to look after kiddo who is not well. I told her the boss may think she was worried about travelling in a Melbourne train. Anyway, like Aragorn said to Theoden in the Two Towers, “War is already upon us, (whether you like it or not)”. Theoden may have been king and not Aragorn but he couldn’t argue with that. Neither can the west argue with the jihad perpetrators. Even if they can eliminate Al-Qaeda, war will continue until there can be a reconciliation between the two sets of values and beliefs.