Lawrence Upton wrote:
>I remember a policeman being cross-examined in the Scarman inquiry into Red Lion Square retorting that only one had died
>
>What has happened is plenty to get excited about. It's just that, I suggest, the excitement is best contained gesturally so that the idiots responsible who did not kill themselves gain less satisfaction
>
>
I have to stick in my foot here as one of those witness types who was
near the Trade Center in 2001, and who got to see and remember the
reactions of some people where I worked, at the Merrill Lynch data center.
We were, recall, a half mile north of the North Tower. It was real
close. In the control room on the 2nd floor our Director sat with other
guys who worked monitoring activity. The viewscreens could be switched
from tracking market activity to looking at the real world outside, to
watching Oprah, whatever. So they looked at the real world, the 2nd
plane flying into the 2nd tower. My boss's boss, a Director, freaked
and began yelling "We've gotta get a Green Arrow Day, we've gotta get a
Green Arrow Day!" A Green Arrow day was one when systems ran at 98%
efficiency regardless of external circumstance.
His boss, a Managing Director, looked at him in disbelief. "Dave," he
asked calmly, "do you know how many people _work _in the World Trade
Center? Do you know how many people probably just _died _in the World
Trade Center?" The potential answer was 45,000 on both counts. That's
how many people worked in all the WTC buildings when they were at full
capacity. We all guessed too high. Only about 3,000 died that day.
_Only_. It really is sort of amazing...but it's 3,000 too many, and
properly enough we got rather overwrought, sufficiently to turn the
thing into a call to arms that went far beyond what was necessary.
The Atocha station followed, and now this atrocity in London. Were
there others in other cities?--I seem to remember something ghastly in
Turkey. Taken as part of a global pattern the London transport bombings
have become truly frightening, definitely something "to get hung
about." Most difficult is how one is supposed to react. This morning I
was ready to suggest a retaliatory move so obscene I could not speak it
aloud. Now it's just the rantings of one more heat-oppressed brain, of
which I find more and more nowadays.
ken
--
Kenneth Wolman
Proposal Development Department
Room SW334
Sarnoff Corporation
609-734-2538
|