Red Cross

Interesting that there were 4 bombers, all four apparently met and disseminated from King's Cross, and 3 of the 4 bombs exploded in the East, West and South of London virtually simultaneously. The 4th exploded an hour later on a bus, after the bomber was unable to use the underground, which had been closed.

On CNN today they interviewed a London man, quite old, who was sitting next to the bomber, and got off the bus a few seconds and metres after it got rerouted. He said the man was young, very smartly dressed, and kept fiddling with something in a small backpack.

I guess the bomber was panicking because he'd essentially blown his part of the four point plan. He was struggling to blow himself up, apparently, couldn't catch a train. But after an hour of struggling to detonate himself sufficiently close to others, he got it right.

If you have such a pictorial view of killing, designing it with some creative message in mind, in this case in the shape of a cross, you've got to start wondering why they hate us so much. They've obviously thought about it a great deal. The answer isn't to hate them back, it's to figure out how to live together where everyone benefits. One of the consequences of free market capitalism is unequal distribution of wealth (benefits). It becomes necessary, as responsible economists and citizens, to take care of the poor, including those suffering a poverty of spirit. Society needs to be more of an inclusive one, and less exclusive. It's easy to look at acts of terror as aberrations. In reality, it's part of a circle of reality that we ourselves create.

Even so, whatever their current philosophy, which is a reaction to our contemporary thinking (albeit extreme)it's disturbing in its determination to be destructive. Perhaps it is also sensible not to treat the symptoms (catch terrorists) but to have a look at why and how this religion comes to see Christianity/the West as the enemy and a kind of nemesis. That's an unhealthy situation in our world, and I don't think intolerance (theirs or ours) is a long term solution to dealing with these terror attacks in our time.