Bomb Attacks Research Articles

Politics and Identity in an EFL Class: Did You Say a Suicide Bomb Attack?

<p><em>This article explores the possibility of critical analysis of terrorist suicide bomb attacks in an EFL critical literacy course. It reports on a part of a broader study that explored how 24 EFL high school Lebanese students were engaged in critical literacy activities during the whole 2013-2014 academic year. Most participants belonged to Lebanese communities that support Hezbollah, a Lebanese political party that plays an important role in the regional politics of the Middle East. The school was also located in an area dwelled mainly by supporters of this party. The participants wrote critical analysis essays about a double suicide bomb attack that took place close to their school, were involved in a focus group and were interviewed, all of which constituted the data. The study revealed that critical literacy events around hot political topics of significance to the students stimulate the students’ desires to learn the target language and give rise to complex discourses that reflect their multiple identities. In addition, critical analysis involved students in reconsidering their ideas and their ways of reacting to critical militarized political events.</em><em></em></p>

Residual Loading Capacity of Ultra-High Performance Concrete Columns After

Columns are essential load carrying structural components and may experience accidental loads such as terrorist bombing attacks during their service life. Damages to columns may trigger structural collapse and it is therefore very important to protect critical load-carrying columns. In recent studies, a novel ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) material was developed and static loading test results revealed its outstanding mechanical strengths and ductility. The present study investigates the blast load-carrying capacities of columns made of UHPC. Concrete columns built with UHPC were blast tested in the field first; then brought back to laboratory and subjected to static load tests to determine their residual load-carrying capacities after experiencing varying levels of blast damage. The results from the field blast tests and laboratory static load tests for residual load-carrying capacities are presented and discussed in this paper. Numerical models for simulating responses and residual strengths of the UHPC columns after blast loadings are also developed in commercial hydro-code LS-DYNA and presented in the paper. Comparisons between the test data and numerical results are made and the accuracy of the numerical model is validated.

Craniocerebral injuries in war against terrorism—a contemporary series from Pakistan

ObjectiveTerrorism-related bomb attacks on civilian population have increased dramatically over the last decade. Craniocerebral injuries secondary to improvised explosive devices have not been widely reported in the context of unarmored civilians. This series intends to report the spectrum of these injuries secondary to suicidal and implanted bombs as encountered at the Aga Khan University Hospital, Pakistan (AKUH). Further, a few pertinent management guidelines have also been discussed MethodsThe hospital database and clinical coding during a 5-year period were examined for head injuries secondary to terrorism-associated blasts. In addition to patient demographics, data analysis for our series included initial Glasgow Coma Scale, presenting neurological complaints, associated non-neurological injuries, management (conservative or operative) to associated complications, and discharge neurological status ResultsA total of 16 patients were included in this series. Among them 9 were victims of suicidal blasts while 7 were exposed to implanted devices. The patients presented with diverse patterns of injury secondary to a variety of shrapnel. A follow-up record was available for 12 of the 16 patients (mean follow-up: 7.8months), with most patients having no active complaints. ConclusionThe results of this series show that civilian victims of suicidal and improvised bombings present with a wide range of neurological symptoms and injury patterns, which often differ from the neurological injuries incurred by military personnel in similar situations, and thereby often require individualized care.

Paying with their bodies: American war and the problem of the disabled veteran

Christian Bagge, an Iraq War veteran, lost both his legs in a roadside bomb attack on his Humvee in 2006. Months after the accident, outfitted with sleek new prosthetic legs, he jogged alongside President Bush for a photo op at the White House. The photograph served many functions, one of them being to revive faith in an American martial ideal - that war could be fought without permanent casualties and that innovative technology could easily repair war's damage. When Bagge was awarded his Purple Heart, however, military officials asked him to wear pants to the ceremony, saying that photos of the event should be soft on the eyes. Defiant, Bagge wore shorts. America has grappled with the questions posed by injured veterans since its founding, and with particular force since the early twentieth century: What are the nation's obligations to those who fight in its name? And when does war's legacy of disability outweigh the nation's interests at home and abroad? In Paying with Their Bodies, John M. Kinder traces the complicated, interwined histories of war and disability in modern America. Focusing in particular on the decades surrounding World War I, he argues that disabled veterans have long been at the center of two competing visions of American war: one that highlights the relative safety of US military intervention overseas; the other indelibly associating American war with injury, mutilation, and suffering. Kinder brings disabled veterans to the center of the American war story and shows that when we do so, the history of American war over the last century begins to look very different. War can no longer be seen as a discrete experience, easily left behind; rather, its human legacies are felt for decades. The first book to examine the history of American warfare through the lens of its troubled legacy of injury and disability, Paying with Their Bodies will force us to think a new about war and its painful costs.

Fu-Go: The Curious History of Japan's Balloon Bomb Attack on America

Near the end of World War II, in an attempt to attack the United States mainland, Japan launched its fu-go campaign, deploying thousands of high-altitude hydrogen balloons armed with incendiary and high-explosive bombs designed to follow the westerly winds of the upper atmosphere and drift to the west coast of North America. After reaching the mainland, these fu-go, the Japanese hoped, would terrorize American citizens and ignite devastating forest fires across the western states, ultimately causing the United States to divert wartime resources to deal with the domestic crisis. While the fu-go offensive proved to be a complete tactical failure, six Americans lost their lives when a discovered balloon exploded. Ross Coen provides a fascinating look into the obscure history of the fu-go campaign, from the Japanese schoolgirls who manufactured the balloons by hand to the generals in the U.S. War Department who developed defense procedures. The book delves into panic, propaganda, and media censorship in wartime. Fu-go is a compelling story of a little-known episode in our national history that unfolded virtually unseen.

Transecting security and space in Kurdistan, Iraq

Departing from most coverage of Iraq, which tends to be focused on insecurity, this paper is about securities; drawing on research in the provinces of Iraq administered by the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). In the last decade, the KRG’s territory has experienced very few significant bomb attacks. These were directed against KRG personnel, rather than targeting civilians per se, as so frequently happens elsewhere in Iraq. In contrast, the KRG has enjoyed relative security, enabling fast development. To the southwest however, there is a complex territorial contest between the Peshmerga (armed forces of the KRG), the forces of the central government of Iraq and Islamic State ( al-Dawlah al-Islāmīyah – frequently called ISIS or ISIL in English) whose insurgent territory spans the Iraq–Syria border. To the northeast, the Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan (PKK), who have contested the Turkish state since the mid-1980s, now control swathes of territory. Transecting these spaces, the paper develops a grounded study of how Kurdish security forces operate. While insecurity continues in the disputed territories and the Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan governs the zone along the Turkish border, the security forces of the KRG utilize very direct forms of surveillance and control. Negotiating these, our paper traverses spaces of security, sovereignty and (disputed) territory.

Health effects of nuclear weapons testing

Nuclear weapons were virtually unknown to the world before Aug 6, 1945, when the first atomic bomb was used against Japan in Hiroshima and the second 3 days later in Nagasaki. The 70th anniversary of this event is marked in the Lancet Series From Hiroshima and Nagasaki to Fukushima. 2, 3 The legacy of the atomic bomb extended far beyond Japan with atomic weapons testing programmes conducted worldwide for the next three and a half decades. Just 3 weeks before the atomic bomb attacks on Japan, the first nuclear explosion in history had taken place in secrecy in the desert of New Mexico, USA, when scientists working for the Manhattan Project tested the experimental nuclear bomb codenamed Trinity. That test ushered in an era of atmospheric nuclear testing by the USA, the USSR, the UK, China, and France that continued at sites around the world until 1980 (figure). During those years, more than 500 atomic weapons were tested in the atmosphere with a total explosive force equal to about 20 000 Hiroshima bombs. A detailed picture of the late effects of exposure to ionising radiation, namely increased risk of cancer, would not become well understood until years after the start of atmospheric nuclear weapons testing.

The Exploration of Rare Earths Based Luminescence for Detection and Sensing in Radiation Security and Enhanced Oil Recovery

Dirty bomb or radiation attack is a big threat to the world and the developing of high sensitive technologies for radiation detection is an emerging need. Also, the development of high-performance scintillating materials is essential for precision calorimetry in high energy physics, medical imaging and industries. The most frequently considered characteristics of scintillators are efficiency of energy conversion, stopping power, luminescence decay time, spatial resolution, and physical and chemical stability. Currently applied inorganic crystalline scintillators are not only limited by their high cost and scalability issues, but also limited by other intrinsic drawbacks. For example, high purity germanium must be operated at liquid nitrogen temperature, while sodium iodide crystal is highly hygroscopic. On the other hand, plastic scintillators based on polymeric materials are cheap and easy to manufacture, but have low light yield and low density. In this talk, I will present the strategy for how to design luminescence nanomaterials based on energy transfer for radiation detection. Oil exploration and production are always the hot area as natural oil is still the major energy for our society. Luminescence materials may play an important role in oil exploration and extraction either as water tracers or as new materials for wettability enhancement. In addition, food quality and safety are related to our daily life. In this talk, I also present some new ideas and methods for the potential applications of luminescence materials for oil recovery and food safety.

A ‘German Invasion’? Irish Rural Radicalism, European Integration, and Irish Modernisation, 1958–73

ABSTRACTLand hunger was a pervasive feature of Irish rural society which had not disappeared with the attainment of national independence. Rural agitation for land redistribution was conducted by many small indigenous farmers and it acquired an extraordinary anti-German tone after 1960. This was partially fuelled by a wave of international media speculation about Ireland as a base for Nazis eluding justice, but it was also driven by the notable success of Irish agencies in attracting German investment to Ireland. Consequently, the land question spilled into Irish efforts to attract Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and Ireland's application to join the European Economic Community (EEC). Governments were slow to respond to the demands of the rural radicals: heavy-handedness against foreign landholdings might endanger Ireland's international reputation at the very time that the country was seeking to shake off an anti-progress and insular image. Militant republican involvement in land agitation stirred additional concern. When the Irish Land Commission compulsorily purchased the properties of a handful of West Germans in 1969, the Bundestag of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) debated the matter. This ostensibly served as the rationale for vandalism, arson, and bomb attacks against foreign-owned farms and properties at a critical point: Northern Ireland was careering out of control and Dublin's priority was to join the EEC. The government defended the right to private property and it could not halt the EEC's liberalisation of agricultural land purchases after 1970: membership of the EEC was the overriding strategic objective. In sum, land ownership had formed part of the bedrock of Irish nationalism since at least the nineteenth century and Irish adaptation to the liberal international economy generated predictable resistance. The linkage between land ownership and national citizenship was not unique to the Irish, as the Danes, the Dutch, and several countries bordering West Germany experienced comparable difficulties in the 1960s and the 1970s.

The extension of Rome׳s Capitoline Museums and the design of a new Hall on the site of the ancient ‘Giardino Romano’

The new Hall of Marcus Aurelius in the Capitoline Museums, located within the ancient site of Giardino Romano, displays the original statue of the Roman emperor of the 2nd century AD. The idea of extending the Capitoline Museums by including this site came about in the framework of its general redevelopment.11The chronology of the design work stretches from 1993 to 2002; the works have been achieved between 2004 and 2005. The design leader was Carlo Aymonino and his collaborators architects Maria Luisa Tugnoli, Geneviève Hanssen, Raffaella Castrignanò. The structural design is by engineer Antonio Michetti, with Giuseppe Silvetti and architect Marco Astolfi. The new Hall is the result of a long and complicated process (1988–2005) considering the exceptional importance of the site and the many changes brought to the museum programme during the said period (Figures 1 and 2).In fact, the new Hall was originally supposed to display the marbles of the Temple of Apollo Sosianus, the foundation wall of the Temple of Capitoline Jupiter, embedded within the structures of the Palazzo Caffarelli, opposite the Giardino Romano. However, in 1997, the plan for the Capitoline Museum changed radically as the statue of Marcus Aurelius, which had been restored following the blast of a bomb attack in 1979, was determined to be the focus of the Hall. The project finally consisted of a steel and glass structure on an elliptic plan andshaped around the foundations of the Temple, with the statue at its center.

Zwischen Österreich und Großdeutschland: Eine politische Geschichte der Salzburger Festspiele 1933–44 by Robert Kriechbaumer (review)

Reviewed by: Zwischen Österreich und Großdeutschland: Eine politische Geschichte der Salzburger Festspiele 1933–44 by Robert Kriechbaumer Michael Burri Robert Kriechbaumer, Zwischen Österreich und Großdeutschland: Eine politische Geschichte der Salzburger Festspiele 1933–44. Vienna: Böhlau, 2013. 445 pp. Rising from the ruins of World War I, the Salzburg Festival achieved an importance during the First Republic that has shaped its privileged place in Austrian politics and culture to this day. In his noteworthy addition to the history of the Salzburg Festival, Zwischen Österreich und Großdeutschland, Robert Kriechbaumer presents a First Republic whose top political leaders between 1933 and 1937 were committed to preserving and defending an autonomous Austria against the opposition of National Socialists inside Austria and, more problematically, from outside in the new German Reich. For those political leaders, the Salzburg Festival was the flagship Austrian institution, the ideological superstructure of the Dollfuss-Schuschnigg Ständestaat, and an unambiguous sign of Austrian resistance. When asked in early 1934 whether, in view of the random bomb violence being carried out by Nazi agitators in Salzburg the Festival should be held, Dollfuss responded, “Not to hold the Salzburg Festival would be equivalent to lowering the Austrian flag. Let’s keep this flag [End Page 139] flying!” For Austrian political leadership, Hitler intended his first victim to be the Salzburg Festival. Of course, international politics and alliances mattered to this leadership, but in such affairs, the Festival could also serve Austria. Framed by these premises, Zwischen Österreich und Großdeutschland draws upon archival records, reports of contemporary witnesses, and press accounts, among other sources, to present an extraordinarily detailed account of the functioning of the Salzburg Festival within the political constraints placed upon it. For the period from 1933 to 1937, the primary political constraint was the 1000 Mark Sperre, or the requirement instituted in May 1933 by Nazi Germany that all German residents of Germany traveling to Austria pay 1000 marks at the border, while from 1938 to 1945, the Festival’s primary political constraint became its subordination to Nazi German war leadership. With this political focus, Kriechbaumer might also be seen as offering a rejoinder to recent polemics that see a convergence of fascist Austrian and National Socialist German aesthetic ideologies at the Festival. The American scholar Michael Steinberg, whose perspective is now incorporated into the history section on the official Salzburg Festival website, expressed this argument pointedly in his book on the “meaning” of the Festival, writing that “the drive to cultural totality and the resistance to fragmentation and ambiguity […] emerges as the common denominator between Salzburg and the Nuremberg Rally of September 1934.” Zwischen Österreich und Großdeutschland captures what makes the early history of the event so compelling, namely, that the Salzburg Festival stood for more than who paid, how much, and for what, but that it was also very much about money. In the aftermath of the 1000 Mark Sperre and its impact on German Festival visitors—in 1932, there were 15,700 such visitors; in 1933, only 900—money was on everyone’s minds. Already in 1933 pro-Austria campaigns, especially in the English press, helped compensate for this shortfall, though as the Dutch correspondent of the De Maasbode commented, guests from Czechoslovakia, France, Holland, Italy, and Switzerland, could also be encountered in greater numbers at the Festival than in years past. With the assassination of Dollfuss and continuing bomb attacks in Salzburg, 1934 brought new problems for Austria and Festival organizers, with the result that the Festival Committee doubled down on their efforts to recruit to non-German audiences. Using internal Festival documents, Kriechbaumer examines these efforts, which included proposals to target national audiences by having, for example, Arturo Toscanini conduct Zoltán Kodály’s “Hungarian [End Page 140] Psalm” with the support of the Budapest City Choir, an idea approved by the Austrian Department of Commerce (Handelsministerium), but ultimately rejected by the Maestro himself. Here, again, Kriechbaumer provides a necessary counterweight to the work of Michael Steinberg, who, in arguing that the ideology of the Salzburg Festival was tooled as a rejection of pluralism, told his readers that “there was never any consideration of including Czech, Hungarian, or...

Book Review: Media Framing of the Muslim World: Conflicts, Crises and Contexts, by Halim Rane, Jacqui Ewart, and John Martinkus

Media Framing of the Muslim World: Conflicts, Crises and Contexts. Halim Rane, Jacqui Ewart, and John Martinkus. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 216 pp. $28 pbk.The recent Islamist assassination of Charlie Hebdo staffmembers in Paris to avenge the honor of the Prophet Muhammad, whom the weekly satirizes frequently in cartoons, incited reprisals against mosques and other Islamic sites across France and stoked Islamophobia in social media, including a Facebook post from Australia that said, free world needs to wake up to the fact that we are at war with the Muslim religion. They are using our hospitality and free immigration to conduct this war under our noses. These predictable responses exhibit not only anger and frustration over relentless Islamist violence, but, according to Australian researchers Halim Rane (Griffith University), Jacqui Ewart (Griffith University), and John Martinkus (University of Tasmania), they also reflect Western news media reports that portray the Muslim world as a violent, fanatical, and misogynist enemy of Western freedom and civilization.The reports of Islamist atrocities from 9/11 on are, of course, true. Islamists have beheaded journalists, gunned down children in school, and massacred entire villages. But according to Rane, Ewart, and Martinkus, what gets lost in these stories is the fact thatan overwhelming majority of Muslims reject suicide bombing and other attacks against civilians; they regard such actions as unjustifiable even in the defense of Islam. The majority of Muslims also regard other acts of violence, such as honor killings, as never justified in Islam.The authors cite Gallup and Pew polls that show that most Muslims also uphold the religious freedom of non-Muslims, believe that Islamic law applies only to Muslims, and favor democracy over authoritarian rule. The episodic reporting of Islamist terrorism, however factual, creates the misimpression that extremists are the norm in Islam.One effect of this misimpression has been the obstruction of Muslims seeking asylum in the West from the danger and persecution in their home countries. The authors report that such hindrance takes place in Australia, which has discouraged Muslim asylum seekers by preventing boats carrying asylum seekers from landing on Australian shores, managing asylum requests in detention centers in Nauru and Papua New Guinea to restrict access to Australian legal processes, and detaining asylum seekers in substandard, remote facilities. As a result, Australia receives less than 3% of the world's applications for asylum. According to the authors, news reports seldom challenge politicians who pander to public anxiety by characterizing Muslim asylum seekers as illegals, boat people, and queue jumpers whose presence undermines traditional culture, drains the economy, and threatens national security. …

Thailand's troubled politics

A bomb attack in the Thai capital, Bangkok, on 17 August 2015 – while not conclusively linked straightaway to any particular faction or terrorist group – has again focused international attention on the country's turbulent domestic politics

Numerical and Experimental Analysis of the Effect of Rigid Barriers on Blast Wave Propagation

AbstractMany terrorist attacks have been carried out in recent years, such as in Oslo, Norway (2011), and more recently in Boston, Massachusetts, and in Volgograd, Russia (both 2013). Terrorist attacks target primarily public facilities, such as railway stations, government buildings, embassies, and the transport infrastructure. Research on the effect of blast loading on structures and interiors has gained considerable attention. Although there are many types of terrorist attacks, this paper focuses specifically on bomb attacks. Two different types of bomb attacks can be distinguished. In Oslo and Boston, the explosion occurred in an open space. In Volgograd, the explosion occurred inside a confined space. This paper primarily focuses on the type of bombing observed in Volgograd by presenting reduced-scale experiments on the effect of rigid barriers on blast wave propagation in the confined space of a railway station. The experimental data set was used for calibrating numerical finite-element models for u...

English

This study sought to establish the adherence to professional and ethical principles of reporting insecurity matters by journalists in Kenya. Kenya has continuously grappled with national security issues since the 1998 US embassy bomb attack. Terrorist attacks have become a frequent and major cause of insecurity. This has been aggravated by the frequent sectarian, religious and ethnic violence in various parts of the country. Notably, some of the insecurity situations in Kenya are a result of conflict situations. From the findings of this study, it was evident that the media seldom used expert opinion in their news programmes on matters of insecurity. It was also clear that the largest percentage of insecurity as reported by the media resulted from terrorism activities followed by security operations by the state security machinery. From the findings of this study, some of the articles had sensational and unjustified news aspects in the story. However, the headlines of stories relating to insecurity were largely descriptive and informative and did not seek to incite or provoke any community to violence or vengeance. While the media did not perform poorly in terms of conflict sensitive reporting, some of the words that were used by some newspaper articles and TV clips were in violation of stipulated tenets of conflict sensitive reporting. The study recommends the separation of facts and opinion when reporting insecurity should be clearly upheld. Journalists should choose their words very carefully when reporting on conflict instigated insecurity matters in their stories. The media have a responsibility for contextualized, meaningful reporting where news programs have adequate background information on historical, cultural and even political perspectives of conflicts causing insecurity. This allows audiences to make informed decisions Key words:  Ethics, reporting, security, terrorism.

‘We Are after Ideals’: A Critical Analysis of Ideology in the Tweets by Boko Haram

This study critically examines the influence and power of ideology in the activities of Boko Haram – an Islamic radical group that claims responsibility for several bombing attacks in northern Nigeria. Data comprise tweets and retweets presumably produced by members of this group in their effort to promote their ideological stance and mobilize followers. Discursive content of the tweets show that the Islamic radicals adopt some existing African socio-cultural norms to champion Islamic religious ideologies that are intolerant to opposing views. The Boko Haram tweets generally reflect the positive construction of the ‘we’ in-group and negative representation of the ‘others’ who are referred to as ‘infidels’, and are worthy of death. This study also shows that twitter/tweeting has been used in recent times to popularize religious and political ideologies.

A Probabilistic Analysis to Quantify the Effect of March 11, 2004, Attacks in Madrid on the March 14 Elections in Spain: A Dynamic Modelling Approach

The bomb attacks in Madrid three days before the general elections of March 14, 2004, and their possible influence on the victory of PSOE (Spanish Workers Socialist Party), defeating PP (Popular Party), have been a matter of study from several points of view (i.e., sociological, political, or statistical). In this paper, we present a dynamic model based on a system of differential equations such that it, using data from Spanish CIS (National Center of Sociological Research), describes the evolution of voting intention of the Spanish people over time. Using this model, we conclude that the probability is very low that the PSOE would have won had the attack not happened. Moreover, after the attack, the PSOE increased an average of 5.6% in voting on March 14 and an average of 11.2% of the Spanish people changed their vote between March 11 and March 14. These figures are in accordance with other studies.

ENGELLİ BİREYLERDE BİR SOSYAL BASKI ARACI OLARAK DAMGA: GİZLİ AJAN

The social psychology of disabled individuals is directly related with his/her position, role and behaviours in the society. The concept of disability, which can be defined as a functional deficiency, deeply affects one‟s individual, psychological, social and cultural life in a negative way. According to sociologist Erwing Goffman, disabled individual isstigmatized by the society. In his „Theory of Stigma‟ Goffman classifies the attitudes developed for the disabled individuals as invidual or medical, psychological, sociological and cultural models. Joseph Conrad‟s novel called The Secret Agent, which tells about nineteenth century England, emphasizes thet riviality of disabled individuals in the society. It is seen that mentally disabled Stevie is sacrificed for Verloc‟s bomb attack plans, easily. Infact, Stevie‟s individual tragedy is due to his passive position and innocence originated from his status and social identity as a disabled. Stevie, who is an intro vertand mentally disabled, is the victim of thes ociety. In this concept, the fact that disabled individuals in the nineteenth century are excluded from the society by stigmatizing in terms of economic, social, psychological and cultural levels is clear

Assessment of dynamic mechanical behaviour of reinforced concrete beams using a blast simulator

Critical infrastructures may become the target of terrorist bombing attacks or may have to withstand explosive loads due to accidents. The impulsive load connected to explosions is delivered to the structure in a few milliseconds forcing it to respond or fail in a peculiar mode. With reference to the above scientific framework this work presents an innovative apparatus designed and developed at the European Laboratory for Structural Assessment to reproduce a blast pressure history without using explosives. This apparatus is practically a hybrid nitrogen-spring-driven actuator that accelerates masses of up to 100 kg to a maximum velocity of about 25 m/s that impact against the tested structure. The pressure-load history applied to the structure is modulated and reshaped using appropriate layers of elastic soft materials (such as polymeric foams) placed between the specimen and the impacting masses. Specific instrumentation has extensively been utilised to investigate the blast simulator performance and to precisely measure the pressure loads applied to the specimen. A series of tests on real scale reinforced concrete beams/columns (250 × 250 × 2200 mm) has been performed to efficiently assess the performance and potentiality of the new blast simulator. Results are under evaluation. In addition to the experimental work, a series of numerical simulations by means of the explicit FEM code EUROPLEXUS have been carried out to support and improve the equipment design.

A Critical Analysis of Britain’s Living, Dead and Zombie Multiculturalism: From 7/7 to the London 2012 Olympic Games

A day after the London 2012 Bid Committee succeeded in bringing the Olympic Games to Britain using the slogan “the world in one city”, a series of coordinated suicide bomb attacks occurred across London (7/7). In one day, Britain’s somewhat beleaguered multiculturalism went from prompting national celebrations to being decried as “dead” by politicians and commentators alike. Against a backdrop of the Committee’s success in July 2005 through to the end of the Games themselves in August 2012, this article analyses the social and political discourses and debates that ensued in relation to Britain’s multiculturalism. Exploring the metamorphosis of these discourses—using the analogous language of being alive, dead and zombie—this article reflects on the impact and legacy of the London Games on future understandings of multiculturalism. In doing so, this article argues that the everyday lived variety of multiculturalism will always be distinct and different from the political discourses appropriated—or rejected—by political actors.