London felt on holiday today. All the roads were jammed, the traffic hardly moved. Most of the underground didn’t work either. So everybody were walking, I’ve never seen the streets so busy with people. It felt much more lively than usual.

It’s beginning to sink in: this is a campaign, said the man on the radio. That is, not one time thing, but a sustained attack.

Well what did you expect?

If somebody had any illusions that you can have a globalized world and keep all the problems and violence localized in some distant foreign land, they are heading for some unpleasant surprises. You can’t have free flow of commodities, information, and people, and still keep yourself in some fortress well protected from the rest of the world. It just doesn’t go together.

And more to the point, since in Iraq hundreds of people die every week, as a result of the war and the occupation – and we all know the UK has played an instrumental role in both – you can’t expect London to be the la-di-da never-never-land where the worst thing that can happen is a few rocks thrown at a McDonnalds. Maybe a 150 years ago, you could have an empire and kick the shit out of the indigenous population in all corners of the world while you were safe and sound reading the Times and sipping your tea and talking about how dreadful things happen in Khartoum. But those times are over. Unfortunately the people who are going to suffer are the poor commuters on the bus to Hackney. For fuck sake why Hackney (it's the second bus to Hackney which gets targeted).

I have no idea why people put those bombs today, or two weeks ago. It’s probably many reasons which make people take such actions. Since they are not interested in communicating it’s hard to say. But everybody knows that it is about Iraq in some sense. I’m sure there are other issues. But Iraq is the best recruiting banner.