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7/7/05
8th July 2005
My coverage of yesterday's attack
in London is absent any pictures. This is for several reasons, which
will become clearer as you read on.
If 9/11 makes little sense then
the July 7th attacks on London's transport system make even less
sense. The public seem to be following the lead of the media,
waiting to see how they feel about it.
Of course Londoners are not
easily beaten. We had the Blitz during WWII and numerous IRA bombs
in London and around the country. The IRA caused us to suffer the
indignity of having our rubbish bins (English trash cans) removed
from central London and the Underground for fear of having bombs
hidden in them. For the price of our safety we have suffered
massively increased litter ever since.
To say that people just don't
know how they feel, though, is unfair. Ask around, any cab driver
for example, and you'll surely find out the opinion of others. The
media, however, are still waiting to give us more information before
they decide what our mood should be. Whilst stoical, Londoners are
now waiting anxiously to hear who has visited this destruction on
them and caused the deaths of more than fifty people.
Media
What we have had much of from the
media is official pronouncements, alternated with the very limited
video or picture coverage gathered yesterday as events were
unfolding.
There are perhaps two or three
images which have already stood out in today's newspapers, but I
won't be using them here. The images which I could have used will no
doubt become icons - the brand, if you will, for the 7th July
2005 attacks in London. That is if they don't call it 7/7. By my
decision not to use any pictures, I seek to draw attention to the
poor reporting of yesterday's events by the media.
For almost the first hour, there
was scant news coverage of the explosions, and they were described
as "power surges" on the Underground. Leaving this aside, for the
rest of the day, very little effort was made by the TV news
companies to interview people as they were leaving the area. Eye
witnesses who had not been seriously injured, or who had been nearby
would surely have wanted to tell their tale to eager news crews.
Instead we suffered a paucity of
coverage. The TV news people kept us distracted with repeated
official pronouncements and cutting back and forth to G8 in
Gleneagles, but we were largely uninformed for most of the day.
The eye-witnesses who were
present in New York and Washington DC on the morning of the 9-11
attacks have helped provide crucial information to determine what
happened that day. New video-tapes of previously lost interviews
with bystanders when uncovered provide more pieces of the
information jigsaw puzzle for independent 9-11 investigators.
In the same vein, I was looking
for similar coverage yesterday from London, but found it lacking.
Myself and others were trying to get into London yesterday to
perform this task since the mainstream media companies had failed to
do so. Sadly the transport system had so seized up that all efforts
without a motorbike were futile.
Anatomy of the Attacks
Yesterday's attacks, whilst
claiming more than 50 lives, could have been far worse. Any Londoner
could tell you that a carriage for the Underground would regularly
hold 100 or more people. There are typically six of these to a
train, meaning that on a busy period, there could be 600 or more
people on a full train. This shows that whilst devastating lives and
causing widespread destruction, the bomb attacks were to a great
extent cosmetic. If those responsible had wanted, they could have
killed many more people.
Those who were attacked were just
working class average people. They weren't executives being driven
to work in expensive German cars. These weren't people even sitting
in first class on a train from outside London. Whereas the 9/11
attacks hit resonant symbols, as with the Madrid bombings (which
also stink) these attacks were focused on ordinary people.
I somehow doubt that this will
encourage the ordinary person to support the proposed ID card and
database system.
Exploitation and Distraction
Bush made a speech outside
Gleneagles yesterday, where he painted himself and his fellow G8
leaders as working to alleviate African debt and suffering, pretty
much aligning himself with "Sir" [Ha - Do me a favour!] Bob Geldof,
whilst according to him, the terrorists are opposed to this.
Where do we start? First, how did
he manage to make sentences without the aid of a "Speak-and-Spell"?
As if G8 could alleviate poverty and debt. They're part of the
problem.
Second there's this Live8
bullshit. This has been one of the most successful distractions of
all time. This could have been their plan, since this is how it
worked:
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Get loads of big artists
together
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Tell them they're going to
"Make Poverty History"
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Get tens or even hundreds of
thousands of music fans to turn up in a park/field/arena to
listen to these big artists.
-
Tell the fans that they too
are making poverty history
-
Keep all sources of alternate
information away from the music fans. Do not invite any
alternative viewpoints into the venues, and keep the message
short and sweet - "Make Poverty History"
-
Don't let those 9-11 skeptics
anywhere near anything.
-
"Lobby" world leaders - code
for have lunch, get photo taken, sell out
-
Convince the public that by
supporting the Live8 thing that they too will help the world
-
In case this wasn't covered
by the previous points, marginalise any other views
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Rinse, repeat
Never mind Africa, how are we
going to sort out all the economies of the world whilst we insist on
using funny money? Maybe it's time we went back to bushels. You
can't be offered APRs or have your identity stolen then.
Warnings
There have been some stories about whether Scotland Yard warned the
Israelis or Benjamin Netanyahu, who was in London for a conference,
before the bombs actually went off. Then there is the counter-spin
that the Israelis warned the Brits a couple of days
beforehand. And then of course we have all the denials and
declarations of urban legend.
CCTV
Let's not forget that as
Londoners, we are more spied on by CCTV than anyone else. With all
those cameras, there has to be footage of whoever was responsible
for yesterday's attacks.
I think that some Londoners
(including myself) will be demanding answers come Monday morning.
Updates
This story is too important for
this website to be neglected as I have done in the past. I will make
endeavours to post more regular updates as they develop.
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