bombings rock London
As everyone will probably know by the time they read this, at least 4 and up to 6 simultaneous bombings occurred in London, England today. Details are still emerging, so I'm not going to bother commenting on maybe and what-ifs, such as whether these were suicide attacks or whether the "Secret Organization - al-Qaeda in Europe"'s claim of responsibility is in any way valid. I'm not even going to bother posting links - if you want to know more, go to news.google.com; stories are everywhere and at this point are reiterating the same 3-4 official public statements.
What I do want to profess is a complete lack of understanding of the mentalities of two groups of people:
1 - The people who perpetuate these attacks. I fail to understand how any rational person, no matter what the circumstance, can believe they gain anything worthwhile by killing innocent people and possibly themselves. I don't see how a group that feels they've been wronged and oppressed can hope to end that state of affairs by enraging their oppressors, and in the process giving the international community more reason to believe that such groups are very, very worthy of being oppressed.
The only thing attacks like these do seem to accomplish is financial destabilization, which leads me to the second incomprehensible mentality of the day:
2 - The people who frantically shuffle their investments at the first hint of this sort of thing. I mean, what sick person's first thought on hearing that dozens of innocent people have been killed is "Oh, man, I'd better sell all my UK stocks!" I'm currently in a macroeconomics course, (bring on the petty "undergrad" flames, Mr. Anonymous) and these sorts of things are self-fulfilling prophecies. Horrible though they are, will these attacks in and of themselves seriously affect the British economy? No. It is the irrational dumping of investments that will cause British markets to fall in the wake of this tragedy, not the bombings themselves.
My heart goes out to London today. I give it a week before we start seeing drafts of the "UK Homeland Security Act." Hopefully they will have more sense than our neighbors to the south when it comes time to vote on them.
What I do want to profess is a complete lack of understanding of the mentalities of two groups of people:
1 - The people who perpetuate these attacks. I fail to understand how any rational person, no matter what the circumstance, can believe they gain anything worthwhile by killing innocent people and possibly themselves. I don't see how a group that feels they've been wronged and oppressed can hope to end that state of affairs by enraging their oppressors, and in the process giving the international community more reason to believe that such groups are very, very worthy of being oppressed.
The only thing attacks like these do seem to accomplish is financial destabilization, which leads me to the second incomprehensible mentality of the day:
2 - The people who frantically shuffle their investments at the first hint of this sort of thing. I mean, what sick person's first thought on hearing that dozens of innocent people have been killed is "Oh, man, I'd better sell all my UK stocks!" I'm currently in a macroeconomics course, (bring on the petty "undergrad" flames, Mr. Anonymous) and these sorts of things are self-fulfilling prophecies. Horrible though they are, will these attacks in and of themselves seriously affect the British economy? No. It is the irrational dumping of investments that will cause British markets to fall in the wake of this tragedy, not the bombings themselves.
My heart goes out to London today. I give it a week before we start seeing drafts of the "UK Homeland Security Act." Hopefully they will have more sense than our neighbors to the south when it comes time to vote on them.
