Flashbacks

The London bombings of 7th July were quite the nasty epilogue to the city's successful bid to host the 2012 Olympics. Four bombs, three placed on Tube trains and 1 on a double decker bus, went off within minutes of each other around 0900hrs local time killing 50 odd commuters and wounding over 700. Compared to the Madrid bombings of a year and a half ago the Brits got off pretty lightly. The Spaniards lost more than triple the number in dead and over 900 wounded on an above ground system. Considering the Tube has had several incidents of station fires where there was loss of life due to suffocation and/or smoke inhalation someone must be counting their blessings.

Scenes of streets being filled with emergency services vehicles and personnel dressed in all sorts of bright colours with their job designation spelt out at the back of their jumpsuits was a site to see. No scenes of mass panic, somewhat frazzled commuters being herded away from incident sites by simliarly frazzled police was about as panic stricken as you could get. Some credit the famous stiff upper lip of the Brits, others the wave of bombings by the IRA in the 80's, others still the relatively small impact the bombs made to explain the relative calm exhibited by the majority of Londonors in the immediate aftermath and days following the attack.

For me, the defining scene of this sorry episode was a shot of an ambulance just outside the doors of a hospital ER, a paramedics performing CPR on a stretcher case as they offloaded the poor sod off the vehicle and into the hospital. Someone's life was slipping away as I was sitting down to dinner half a world away. Made me really mad at whoever did it. Made me want to rail at the injustice of it all. But then I got around to reading this a couple of days after.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9422.htm
Quote:
"It is easy for Tony Blair to call yesterdays bombings "barbaric" - of course they were - but what were the civilian deaths of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003, the children torn apart by cluster bombs, the countless innocent Iraqis gunned down at American military checkpoints? When they die, it is "collateral damage"; when "we" die, it is "barbaric terrorism".

If we are fighting insurgency in Iraq, what makes us believe insurgency won't come to us? One thing is certain: if Tony Blair really believes that by "fighting terrorism" in Iraq we could more efficiently protect Britain - fight them there rather than let them come here, as Bush constantly says - this argument is no longer valid."

Food for thought. While I don't remember anyone calling Iraqi civilian deaths "collateral damage" I also don't remember hourly coverage of the latest car bomb casualties or if anyone did a story on the survivors of the last family car to get blown away cos they were approaching the American manned checkpoint a little too quickly. In this age of 24/7 coverage, how the media chooses to project a story can greatly influence the perceptions and opinions that people take away from the story. Witness the aftermath of 9/11 and the London bombings, endless coverage, live briefings from authorities. Juxtapose that image with a ten second shaky video shot of the remnants of the latest car bomb to hit Baghdad in the distance and accompanying sound bite, something not right, can't quite figure out what. I know! The danged cameraman! They need to get someone who isn't high on hashish or something when he's filming. Sheesh, shaky video images, you'd think the BBC/CNN could do better.

I also picked up something from the July 12 edition of The Daily Show, well, not the whole show, just the clip on onegoodmove.org. Never really noticed the newscasters on CNN being like that before, or maybe I did but could never really put my finger on it. BBC rocks in any case.

Still, CNN is only guilty of sensationalising or at most, spinning a story so people could point to London and say "See? We got 'em on the run, that's why they're bombing London." Fox News on the other hand.....where in the hell do they get these people?

Footnote, the botched attempts at Wave 2 on July 21st totally blindsided everyone, you'd think lightning never strikes twice, perhaps that's what Wave 2 was all about, a sucker punch from a direction you never expected. ie. the same place. Not that it's any comfort to the poor sod that got shot cos he was wearing a heavy jacket in the middle of summer and refused to stop when plainclothes police officers told him to. More on this when I've had time to organise my simple mind.