I've been calling for the past three weeks for calm and commonsense over the London bombings. The fact is, whatever might have happened; however many scary photos of nail bombs might have been leaked by the American security services to the American media (you have to ask why did that happen - it wouldn't be the US government wants to fuel the hysteria by any chance?); 52 people have died, less than a week's death toll on British roads. (The average was 67 last year).
If someone reported a week of road tolls in the same detail what might happen? Possibly some good things - a ban on city 4WDs (SUVs), more restrictions on new drivers, lower speed limits on residential roads ... etc etc. Oddly enough I've never heard a comprehensive set of calls like that.
But now the government, having already nibbled away at civil liberties throughout its terms, is planning to take huge more chunks out of them, as set out in The Guardian by one of the lawyers who has worked with Guantanamo Day detainees. (Who has good reason to know the damage done by the destruction of whatever limited rule of law the US possesses for non-citizens.)
It really is time to hose down the official hysteria - for a good slap around the chops, as traditionally delivered to hysterical women in bad movies - for Tony Blair et al.
... But there is hope ... I'm listening now to The Now Show on Radio 4, which is running some wonderful jokes on the subject. I enjoyed the description of stranded commuters walking home as though they were a herd of wildebeest, with mini-cab drivers cutting out the stragglers ...
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Nathaniel Winn
Natalie--
Certainly dramatic events get more attention than mundane, perhaps out of proportion to their importance. But there is a fundamental difference, in that those traffic deaths were not caused by a few drivers going Grand Theft Auto!
Even the attention lavished on AIDS vs. malaria (which stills kills more kids than AIDS does) makes something like sense when you consider that we know how to cure malaria, but are still working on a cure for AIDS.
Is there some hype?
Perhaps.
Is there a reason people aren't happy that there are murderers plottoing to kill innocent commuters, even if the murderers aren't always very effective?
Absolutely.
2 - Marc
Lets see Natalie, last time I checked those that are careless enough, or drunk enough, to injure or kill innocents in road accidents had no desire to prohibit your daughter from attending school.
They harbor no intent to circumsize the same daughter at an age barely out of diapers. Fact of the matter is these raod ragers won't select your daughters husband either.
They won't have religious police locking up your husband or father for not having a chin adorned with the mandatory full face beard.
All of this and much more is what the jihadist cut throats will mandate if allowed to rule.
To compare those involved in road accidents and the deaths they cause with evil, cold blooded killers is beyoud absurd.
You really do need to take off that tin-foil hat.
3 - Mark Edward Manning
You found it amusing that commuters couldn't get home and had a tough night thanks to the jihadists? My wife was one of those struggling to make it home (I was in Boston at the time, and very worried).
I'm incredibly sick and tired of those who plead for "common sense" and calm in the wake of a terrorist attack. Don't you people get it? This is the kind of talk from someone who's not lost a close friend or a family member yet from these attacks.
Common sense dictates that we do exactly what's being done: heightened security - to the max, if possible, shoot-to-kill policies and not arraigning police when they get it wrong, and raiding houses where suspects are camping down. I have no problem whatsoever with the actions being taken so far.
4 - Mark Edward Manning
One wonders just how many lives must be lost and how many parts of how many cities must be destroyed before folks like Natalie admit there's a problem and stop screaming, "Media hype! Media hype! Stop the hype!"
5 - Temple Stark
>>This is the kind of talk from someone who's not lost a close friend or a family member yet from these attacks
That would be the majority. Arguably the more dispassionate. Dispassion - on this scale - almost always leads toward the right conclusion.
My mother was in London at the time, for a little while I didn't know. She was fine. but my first second and last thought wasn't, let's bomb Mecca.
6 - Jones Violet
This seems like an awfully cold post. I'm sure you'd be singing a different song if you had someone who were involved, or even close to where the attacks happened.
7 - Bobby
If you don't like the show, change the channel
8 - Dave Nalle
>>52 people have died, less than a week's death toll on British roads. (The average was 67 last year).<<
This reminds me of the (largely ignored) point I've made before, that the death rate among US Soldiers in Iraq is actually lower than the rate of death from all causes of people in the US who are in the same age range and remain at home for the same period.
Dave
9 - Natalie Bennett
How many? Well let's consider a figure of 3,000 - how many killed on British roads each year. Now we could save the relatives and friends of those people all the agony of loss if we say reduced the speed limit nationwide to 10 miles an hour and enforced it with prison terms. (And yes I did lose a loved one that way, so I admit to being rather more than averagely concerned about the issue.)
That would be a good thing, wouldn't you say?
No?
Well even though I'm broadly anti-car, I don't think so either.
The point I am trying to make is not to diminish the suffering of the victims and their families, but to point out that all of the measures proposed and undertaken have a cost (just as reducing the speed limit would have a cost.)
Flood the streets of London with armed police - more innocent people will get shot, everyone will become more fearful, the police will start to become more and more assertive. (As The Economist points out this week.)
Abolish rights that have belonged to British citizens for decades - you have a less free, less civilised society.
Target the Muslim community with obtrusive surveillance, verbal attacks etc - you'll get more terrorists.
Don't act in the heat of the moment; don't react to the "flurry of opportunistic demands" from police, civil servants etc to increase their power and budgets; don't destroy what you are supposed to be trying to protect.
10 - Natalie Bennett
And as for not being close, well one of the attacks was 250m from where I live, another less than a kilometre. So no, I'm not sitting back in some rural part of Hertfordshire saying this.
11 - valery dawe
Compared to the death and destruction inflicted on innocent people in Iraq by the UK and the US, the London bombings are next to nothing.
12 - Dave Nalle
We can always count on Valery for a meaningless, knee jerk comment which totally discounts the loss of life in both Iraq and London. After all, when you believe in terrorism as a solution to problems then the whole world is a war zone.
Dave
13 - Mark Edward Manning
"Compared to the death and destruction inflicted on innocent people in Iraq by the UK and the US, the London bombings are next to nothing."
Though the proof exists, I still cannot believe people can be this stupid and disrespectful to boot.
14 - Natalie Davis
First, must note that Mr. Dawe's comment made my stomach drop to my toes. Every death is a diminishment, each and every one counts.
But one does not have to support terrorism to know that the entire world *is* a war zone. Bombs can go off anywhere, anytime. No one is safe from them.
15 - Dave Nalle
I guess I stated that poorly, Natalie. My point is that while the whole world may be a war zone, it is the terrorists who have made it that way by their choice of tactics, and it is they who are ultimately responsible both for th deaths in Iraq and the deaths in London, and all of those deaths should be looked at as part of a total body count chalked up to terrorism.
Dave
16 - RJ
Fifty-two have died, less than a week's road death toll.
Roughly 1,800 American military personel have died in Iraq over the last 2+ years, less than a month's road death toll in the US.
Time to end the London bomb hysteria
It's time to end the "the war in Iraq is a disaster!" hysteria...
17 - Natalie Bennett
... well, that's only if you don't count the some 25,000 Iraqi dead.
18 - RJ
Many of whom were killed by terrorists...and it's STILL less than a single year of car accidents in the US...
19 - Natalie Bennett
... except that they'd still be alive were it not for the war.
20 - Dave Nalle
>>.. well, that's only if you don't count the some 25,000 Iraqi dead.<<
More than 2/3 of that 25,000 were killed by terrorists.
>>... except that they'd still be alive were it not for the war.<<
You've got no basis for that conclusion. Saddam killed well over 2000 people a month on average during the last 10 years of his regime (if you count starvation from food aid he embezzled). Given the time we've been in Iraq that would exceed the civilian casualties.
Dave
21 - 1Potato
What is your point about the body count? Even the site itself has a crawl saying todays 27 dead were done by suicide bombers. Do you think those are US or UK soldiers?
We are there to STOP the body count. A stable, peaceful Iraq is beneficial to America. Even Haliburton doesn't want pipelines blown up.
With Sadam in there, the "body count" was very high as well (plus the pre-death torture, always a nice addition) AND the whole nation was oppressed by a dictator. Doesn't freedom count for anything? People have always died for freedom. WWII had a "body count" too, but at that time people were more respectful than to use such a clinical and dehumanizing term. What is wrong with the word "casualties" anyway?
Joe
22 - Dave Nalle
>>Doesn't freedom count for anything?<<
Freedom is not a desirable thing from the perspective of those who oppose the War on Terror.
Dave
23 - Natalie Bennett
The term body count was, I believe, invented, or at least popularised, by the US military. Its use on the website to which I referred in my last comment is, as I would read it, satirical and ironic. If you were being more savage in your irony you might say "collatoral damage", in the infamous terminology of the Gulf War.
24 - Natalie Bennett
As for the claim that the US is trying to stop the casualties. Well maybe that was the original intention (if you are being charitable), but now I doubt many dispassionate observers would disagree that the US's aims are:
1. To keep down their own and allied casualties.
2. To set up something that looks like a functioning regime so they can get out.
In that order.
25 - Natalie Bennett
As for freedom, well I am fighting here and elsewhere for the freedom from fear of being shot by a policeman, the freedom not to be locked up for months without judicial process, the freedom to say and think whatever I want. Those are pretty basic parts of freedom in my book.