Really, it’s all just a matter of cleaning up now. Of post-mortems; of dustpans and brushes; of swabbing the blood off the wall. Of working out who did this, and how. And more importantly, what we should do about it. How we should react.

London had it easy. We knew this was coming; those of us with any sense did, anyway. The Tube was always an obvious target, which is why they don’t have bins. The emergency services had plenty of practice with the IRA, plenty of time to put their disaster protocols in place, train their staff. When the bombs went off, the plan went into operation—and to those of us watching on television, it looked like clockwork.

London had it easy. The bombers—whoever they were—were after our transport infrastructure. There were hundreds of injured, but it looks like the death toll will be under 50. Bali and Madrid had around 200 fatalities each, and those attacks were an order of magnitude less than September 11th.

So what do we do now?

We don’t give in. We don’t surrender; we don’t let them win. We don’t sacrifice our freedom or our democracy, because these things are what makes us different from them. Makes us better. We fight to keep our civil liberties, fight ID cards, fight show trials, fight judicial decisions being taken away from the judiciary and handed to the Home Secretary. If necessary, we fight our own fearful government, fight our fearmongering tabloids, fight our cowardly fellow citizens. We fight them with words, with symbols, with logic, with rhetoric. We stand up for the things we believe in. And we never surrender.