PSA: Apology Made

Yesterday No. 10 Downing Street released a statement regarding the treatment of Alan Turning post-WWII.

It's quite amazing.

The UK campaign was made public only last month, the international one just a few weeks after that.

The power of community, historical perspective and guilt can sure work fast.

More on that subject later, for now this is a Public Service Announcement.

(no subject)

This is an obligatory post about the date.

I was 16 at the time, I had come home from school and was doing my homework (because we are seven hours a head of New York), when my sister called home (from England, maybe? That detail is sketchy in my head) and asked if we were watching the News.

I was like: "huh, why would I be watching the News?"

She said: "There's been an attack"

I ran up the stairs of our home to the television room, in my own parochial naivety I thought she was talking about a bombing somewhere in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, or even at the Mall 10 minutes away from our house - because those are the attacks that I know and grew up with.

In 2001 we were in the midst of the Al-Aqsa Intifada.

Upstairs Mummy was watching CNN, though I thought she was watching a movie, because the New York skyline was splashed across the screen and a plume of smoke was coming out of one of the towers.
I asked her: "What's going on?"
And just then the other plane hit.

I don't think I need to reiterate the whole scene, because we've all seen the footage over, and over, and over.
Like most images of violence you become numb to it and the voyeurism of watching death loses its edge.

At the time my vindictive 16 year old mind said "Now they know how it feels".
I didn't know as much US history then as I do now, so I had not known about the previous threat to the Towers in the 90's or about Timothy McVeigh.

Still, it's a pretty shitty thing to think at any age, I guess.

This day reverberates through the world, mainly due to the repercussions when it came to US foreign policy and of course the domestic discourse regarding liberty and freedom (it's only good for some, obviously).

At the time, I didn't care about discourse, or freedom, or much of anything other than my own teenage angst (I was 16 and in High School after all), so the political repercussion of that day really flew over my head.
Afghanistan was a country of women wearing something that resembled a bee-keeper's suit.
Osama Bin-Laden is just another Arab name belonging to a terrorist.
Same ole'-same ole'.

2003, which in addition to being the peak of the bombings here, was when Iraq happened and it was such a cynical use of the victims in the Towers that I found it hard to say anything supportive about the US.

I remain critical of US policy, Israeli policy, Capitalist Policy and Pseudo-Socialist Policy and I'm especially critical of what freedom and liberty mean, because those two words have been carted around and put on a pedestal for the past decade that for the most part they float around the conciousness without much meaning other than "that's what They want to take from Us".

Peace to the families, friends and people of those who lost loved one that day. Peace to New York City and its inhabitants.
Have a good weekend.