"Losers.", on Dispatch from the Razor's Edge

"As I write these words, and as you read them, people of faith are in their different ways planning your and my destruction, and the destruction of all the hardwon human attainments that I have touched upon. Religion poisons everything."

- Christopher Hitchens, God is not Great


Thusly spake our intrepid hero Noel Munson:
>
> Hey Michael,
> 
> What's the word on the street over there. The new
> Bomb-Class Mercedes with gas canister and nail
> shrapnel options is all over the news this morning
> here. Well, I hope you and your friends go down to
> Piccadilly today and flip off those terrorists
> for us.
> 
> All my best,
> 
> -Noel


Cheers for that, Noel.

I was actually out of town (weekend in the
Cotswolds), so sort of missed all the excitement.
Our B&B keeper actually broke the news to us. Then
we saw the news of the Glasgow thing on the platform
in, erm, Cheltenham. Since I've been back, which
isn't long, no one's mentioned it. I suppose that
might mean people are jaded, or bored, at this
point. My personal reaction is twofold: "What the
fuck is wrong with these people?" and "Losers". Once
again, they can't even pull off nihilistic
destruction - and it's supposed to be easy to tear
down what others have painstakingly built. (That
image of that shitbird on fire, trying to pour
petrol on his burning car, which was stuck in the
doorway, and then being gang-tackled and cuffed by
police, is priceless. Loser.)

Germanely enough, I also read Christopher Hitchens's
God is not Great, How Religion Poisons Everything
over the weekend. Definitely the best of the recent
crop of anti-God books. And a cracking good read.
I'm a major Hitch fan - he's the second coming of
Orwell, in my view. And this book should, if there
were any sanity or reason or justice in the world,
close the book on this barbarism for good. But of
course it won't.

Take good care. (Forgive me for pointing it out, but
you're still in a great deal more danger on the
highway than I am on the Tube, or in a London
nightclub.)

m

[ on the 7/7 bombings /
and more from a year on ]

7/7 books hitch religion terrorism the uk

Dispatch from the Razor's Edge is owned and operated by novelist, technologist, vegan, exercise junkie, classical liberal, rambler, and Londoner Michael Stephen Fuchs.

Fuchs is the author of the novels The Manuscript and Pandora's Sisters, both published worldwide by Macmillan in hardback, paperback and all e-book formats (and in translation); the D-Boys series of high-tech, high-concept, spec-ops military adventure novels – D-Boys, Counter-Assault, and Close Quarters Battle (coming in 2016); and is co-author, with Glynn James, of the bestselling Arisen series of special-operations military ZA novels. The second nicest thing anyone has ever said about his work was: "Fuchs seems to operate on the narrative principle of 'when in doubt put in a firefight'." (Kirkus Reviews, more here.)

Fuchs was born in New York; schooled in Virginia (UVa); and later emigrated to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he lived through the dot-com boom. Subsequently he decamped for an extended period of tramping before finally rocking up in London, where he now makes his home. He does a lot of travel blogging, most recently of some very long walks around the British Isles. He's been writing and developing for the web since 1994 and shows no particularly hopeful signs of stopping.

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