London Terrorism

Here are some things that are bugging me about this London terrorism thing (in no particular order). Don't get me wrong...I think the whole ordeal is no good. I love Brits as much as the next person and wish no ill-timed, gruesome deaths upon any of them. There's just some stuff that has gotten me thinking.

* I heard a BBC reporter on the radio about 20 minutes ago talking about the scores of dead people turning up from the incident. The news on the radio had just confirmed 33 dead and a news report I just read on line confirmed 37 dead. That is not "scores." Why make it sound worse than it really is?

* I heard Tony Blair blaming middle eastern terrorist organizations in a public speech on the radio before the responsible party was confirmed.

* Tony Blair blamed middle eastern terrorist organizations for the attacks before ruling out the fact that some randomly bored high school students decided to pull a prank on the world. Because to make everyone think that you were a terrorist when you're nothing more than a spoiled, private school kid and have the prime minister of your country denounce to the world specific terrorist groups before he has a clue as to what he was talking about so he looks dumb to everyone later is kind of a good joke. It's definitely one I find amusing. I just think people like to yell "terrorist." Kind of like the boy who cried "wolf."

* Everyone thinks that these attacks have something to do with the Group Eight summit in Scotland. Just in case it has been a while since you've surveyed a map, London is not in Scotland. London isn't even all that close to Scotland.

* George Bush went on the record (as I heard him on NPR and found in this article) saying that this terrorist attack is a horrible thing. He said that it couldn't have come at a worse time. He said that it's awful that while leaders of different nations have joined together in Scotland for this peaceful summit, killers have taken innocent, civilian lives. Hmmm...Does he honestly think that? What about all the innocent, civilian lives lost - no, stolen - so far in Iraq? Doesn't he realize that what he accomplishes there daily through the American government and the American military is by definition terrorist activity?!? Or do they not count because they're brown? Or are the English lives worth more because he's buds with old Tony? Or is he only worried because he was in a neighboring country? My money's on brown.

* America - because we're constantly thinking ourselves the worldwide victim and because we have to be right in the middle of everything - is now at "orange alert." They raised the terror alert from yellow to orange today, but that only applies to mass transit systems. I can't wait to see how the bomb-sniffing dogs hold up the BUS. Maybe the powers-that-be are unaware that there's an entire ocean between us and London. And besides, if you keep an entire nation at heightened alert forever, doesn't that heightened alert become the norm? They will get so used to watching out for everything and seeing almost nothing that something little (that turns big) may slip right by them. (That's my budding philosophy.)