I was very surprised when I got near the end of yours, Ken, and found you were thinking of obscene retaliation. I'm glad youre not of that mind now. Retaliation solves nothing and causes a lot of new difficulty.
As an individual I propose not to react. Nothing I can do will achieve anything - Blair gets a luke warm / ambiguous reelection and within days is telling us what we were telling him - very complex and detailed things according to him. He has his own language by its balls and will force it to utter _resistance is useless_ with all his public relations' skill
yesterday he was telling us that all Londoners are proud of having the olympics
today he's telling us we all support him in whatever form of words he was substituting for the news
As a citizen, I am only offered ersatz possibilities for reaction - wheoever I vote for the fighters win
i shall teach myself to sit still and maybe say a few things like this; and no more; i may start walking from victoria to warren street, my main London journey, and one I thought safe because it was on a bus - which can be quite pleasant and just needs me to be more organised to ensure i have the time
for the rest i shall stay out of dreadful place; it's been a pain since the romans arrived
sure these bombings are part of a global pattern, but it's a small one
there's a bigger one
that 3000 which you rightly say was too many is around the number who die needlessly every day
and it is a consequence of being a democrat, i submit, that we must say they are just as important as USAmericans and Brits
i can't make a similar more specific analysis of iraq because the usuk forces aren't even counting how many are maimed and killed if theyre not from uk or usa
someone has bombed London. yes. they would wouldnt they? and that's what i felt about wtc. of course they have. and the best thing that i can do is nothing
and also try very hard not to think "do it to Julia"
amongst other things "they" are sick of "us" bombing them; and among those other things "they" are as mad as "we" are
L
-----Original Message-----
From: Ken Wolman <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thursday, July 07, 2005 8:23 PM
Subject: Re: London calling
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
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