Thursday, July 14, 2005
Things To Remember When Accusing Suicide Bombers
First, note to Lara, one of my regular readers. Irn Bru is a soft drink, not a beer! It is Scotland's "other" National drink, great for hangovers and is made from girders (of the type they used when building the Forth Bridge) :-)
Check out: Irn-Bru USA
Back to today.
An e-mail from Devon Ellington brightened up my morning; the 13 Travelling Journals project is GO! As she confirmed in the e-mail, Fronds of Thought is now winging its way over from New York to Leith. I can't wait to see it and enter and entry (?). Most exciting!
A countrywide minute's silence was observed at 12-noon for the victims of last week's terrorist bombs in London. Shame they hadn't told anyone in here because I thought it was a fire alarm and was halfway out the door before someone stopped me.
Boris Johnson makes some good comments on his blog about the origins of the British Muslim bombers; I urge you to have a read at: http://www.boris-johnson.com
Some quarters are concerned with the blame being apportioned to the individuals fingered for the bombings without any facts being made known. Fears of another "British Injustice" is rippling around the cities of the UK, but I would point out the following pieces of information to enable a more thorough realisation:
* British law and Justice are not the same thing. The police often know quite quickly who committed a crime but don't have enough evidence for a prosecution. They tell the victims, give them all the evidence (mostly inadmissible in court) but rarely get a conviction.
* Under UK Law, you cannot publicize inadmissible evidence because it would be contempt of court and libelous etc. But you cannot libel a dead man; therefore because they were suicide bombs, the truth can be printed.
* When police evidence ceased to be taken as the soul point of evidence, the court became less easy to convince. Which is why the likelihood of any mistakes being made is pretty low.
* Nobody rushed out to blame anyone; in fact the press were very slow in apportioning any blame to anyone or making any assumptions.
* The tone of the Government and the media has been one of caution.
* There is an extremely high chance that the Security Services initiated a media shut-down on the matter until the net was cast wider.
* There has been no dissent or denial from the families, friends and communities related to the accused. There is no alternative view of what the bombers were doing instead.
* The bomber's profiles fit a pattern of suicide bombers from elsewhere in the world.
London is planning another concert to remember the bomb victims. Lead by our man Suggs of Madness, he will be joined with Billy Bragg, Jarvis Cocker and St Etienne who are among the acts scheduled to performing at the free London United Festival in the city. The gig will take place at Burgess Park on Saturday July 16 with the aim of showing the city's defiance.
"We love London because London lets you be yourself," Suggs told NME. "On Saturday at 'London United' we will show that London stands firm in all its diversity after the terrible events of last week." Rumour also has it that Madness may make an appearance as The Dangermen.
After some dinner I wrote out a few questions and got the PC ready for the first KIC author chat at 8pm. Unfortunately it didn't work out as planned because not only did around 30 (at least) people find they were unable to get access to the chat room, one of them was the guest of honour, Devon Ellington herself!
I felt so sorry for her after having gone to such lengths to make sure it was all planned in advance, to find out that in fact, it hadn't been. I felt awful for her. Of the people that were there I met some new writers and readers so it was still a worthwhile hour spent online. I also met the lady who is due to get the Fronds of Thought Journal after me!
I wrote the second half of the G8 story; Harry's point of view and reaction, and all that remains is the interaction between the two characters in order to complete the skeleton of the story. It's very rough because most it is concerned with getting the attitudes and emotions down. I'll build in the story round about the skeleton and hopefully it will make for a stimulating read.
Footnote: 15 years ago today my life changed forever.
5 Comments:
How could I have made such a mistake? Well, you learn something new every day.
(In my case, it's several things...)
;-)
1. Get married then?
2. Start writing?
3. Redecorate?
4. Get a dog?
5. Bungee jump?
Hmmmmm...
I'll try not to fash over it, though tis verra intriguing indeed.