The BMB

It’s hard to know what to say in the aftermath of a terrorist attack, though all the sympathetic messages on Facebook for the victims and condemnation of the Boston Marathon Bombing (note: not 4/15, a sign of the Bushite militarisation of politics receding) are in the same situation, coming across as trite in their bewilderment. In the absence of any progress in the criminal investigation, a news-hungry world latches on to the victims, when they probably should be left in peace, especially the families of the killed who should have had time to grieve privately before it was announced. I’m quite happy for a media blackout if it helps catch the person or people who did this, but, as with hydraulics, those flood of reporters must be diverted somewhere and sadly it is those that have suffered in the first instance from the bombs.


It bears some similarity to the East Coast Massacres of 2001, when in New York, in addition to the aeroplane strikes on the World Trade Center, it was believed there had been a truck bomb in another part of the city. Of course, like the various unaccounted aeroplanes on that day (which conspiracy theorists will have you believe were shot down by the military and hushed up), chaos breeds confusion and further chaos, as Chinese Whispers take hold. It was initially believed that the JFK Memorial Library had also been bombed in Boston. This was later downgraded to an ‘unrelated’ fire. In the final assessment, I wonder to the severity of the incident, if it happened at all, but that is what public fear can do to rationality.

Three died and over a hundred more were injured, yet Iran’s biggest earthquake in a quarter of a century generates little comment, as goes the apocryphal headline ‘Earthquake in Chile, not many dead’. A figure of 40 dead was first released and although the governor of the province worst hit later said no-one died, the values guiding coverage of the story remain the same. No British people died in Boston, so it proves that despite fears of decline, the USA remains the centre of the world.