Knocking On Heaven's Door? (1/2) By Jim Higo

(1/2), (2/2).

If at first you don't succeed, then maybe being a suicide bomber's not the job for you. Just over a year on from the London bombings and I'm on Kings Cross tube station and, along with all the other white people, I'm carefully scouring the platform for Asians with rucksacks. I'm a socialist, a humanist, an internationalist, yet here I am thinking thoughts that come straight out of a Daily Mail editorial. All I need is a swastika tattoo and 95% of my brain removed and I could become Richard Littlejohn.

In particular, and in line with government guidelines, I'm looking for anyone acting in a strange and suspicious manner, which, as anyone who's been on a tube will tell you, is a bit like looking for a drunk down George Street on a Saturday night, there's thousands of them.

The government guidelines however are a little vague, and mean I'm not entirely sure what signs I ought to be looking for. I have in my mind someone who is sweating profusely, is fidgety and on edge but with cold staring assassin eyes that shoot straight to the ground when confronted (or is this a character from The Godfather). I find nobody to fit the bill and proceed to get on the tube to Baker Street. As we all cram into the carriage I can't help but think that Karrimor or Bergaus have missed a trick somewhere here. Surely they should have spent the last year targeting all their marketing efforts onto the London Asian communities:

'Buy the Berghaus 300 rucksack for £29.99, it's spacious with adjustable straps, comfortable and comes with a guarantee of a whole carriage to yourself when you travel on the tube. For only £5 more, the deluxe model comes with protruding wires and a slight smell of semtex'.

So yes, the London bombings and subsequent media frenzy has touched an irrational and frankly absurd nerve in even the most tolerant of people. What I'm thinking while on the platform at Kings Cross goes against all the social and political ideals that I believe in. But my thoughts are symptomatic of Blair's attempt to distract us from the causes and reasons that have created this crisis, by providing us all with a common enemy. Islam, Muslims, Asians, Al Qaida, he is happy for any of them to take the flak for situations caused primarily by his erroneous instructions. "Why don't the many decent Muslims bring the terrorists to account?" he demands.

A nice idea which I assume is based on the premise that those planning bombing missions do so out on the streets or in the parks, or maybe they go down the mosque with their maps and bomb making kits shouting about the joys of martyrdom. And all this just highlights Blair's underlying racism and his failure to grasp the need to promote ethnic integration. Why should the Muslims be expected to root out their terrorists? I don't remember there being a call for all Catholics to root out the IRA, or for the Basques to stop Eta, or for the Jewish community to prevent Billy Joel for wreaking further carnage.

But despite all my efforts this subliminal racism still keeps trying to drag me down. On the tube I see an Asian looking lad sat across the carriage reading a paper. I cleverly check that the writing is English, because obviously, were he to be a suicide bomber, he would be reading something Arabic, perhaps something from the Koran or maybe an Al Qaida recruitment leaflet.

Continued...Next page (2/2)

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