Mayor "Red Ken" Livingston Scalds Bombers

[BurtWorm]

http://www.london.gov.uk/mayor/mayor_statement_070705.jsp

I want to say one thing specifically to the world today. This was not a terrorist attack against the mighty and the powerful. It was not aimed at Presidents or Prime Ministers. It was aimed at ordinary, working-class Londoners, black and white, Muslim and Christian, Hindu and Jew, young and old. It was an indiscriminate attempt to slaughter, irrespective of any considerations for age, for class, for religion, or whatever.

That isn't an ideology, it isn't even a perverted faith - it is just an indiscriminate attempt at mass murder and we know what the objective is. They seek to divide Londoners. They seek to turn Londoners against each other. I said yesterday to the International Olympic Committee, that the city of London is the greatest in the world, because everybody lives side by side in harmony. Londoners will not be divided by this cowardly attack. They will stand together in solidarity alongside those who have been injured and those who have been bereaved and that is why I'm proud to be the mayor of that city.

Finally, I wish to speak directly to those who came to London today to take life.

I know that you personally do not fear giving up your own life in order to take others - that is why you are so dangerous. But I know you fear that you may fail in your long-term objective to destroy our free society and I can show you why you will fail.

In the days that follow look at our airports, look at our sea ports and look at our railway stations and, even after your cowardly attack, you will see that people from the rest of Britain, people from around the world will arrive in London to become Londoners and to fulfil their dreams and achieve their potential.

They choose to come to London, as so many have come before because they come to be free, they come to live the life they choose, they come to be able to be themselves. They flee you because you tell them how they should live. They don't want that and nothing you do, however many of us you kill, will stop that flight to our city where freedom is strong and where people can live in harmony with one another. Whatever you do, however many you kill, you will fail.

[geek tragedy]

1. Red Ken got it exactly right. The people who bombed London

are EVERYONE'S enemies--they are especially the enemy of moderate Muslims.

[Taxloss]

2. We love Ken.

He will be in power for ever.

[getmeouttahere]

3. You go, Ken!

He seems to be quite popular all around

[BurtWorm]

4. Interestingly, he uses many of the tropes Bush and Blair use

For instance:

Calling them cowards: well, in this instance apparently the word is completely appropos.

Differentiating between "their" desire for control, and "our" desire for freedom: I'm never sure if this contrast is on the money, or just meant to buck up the spirits of the survivors. Is it really a desire to control Londoners that made these terrorists waste civilian life? Or is it a desire to simulate symmetry in the warfare between "Islam" and the "West?"

One innovation of Livingstone's that I really like is his pointing out the humble nature and diversity of the victims. If the killers are going to feel evil about what they've done, they're going to have to have their noses rubbed in the real horror of it, the fact that their victims were in all likelihood no threat to them but were actually their brothers and sisters after all.