Saturday July 09, 2005

London attacks - conspiracies and dark humour

The conspiracy theorists are having a field day with the London bombings. And, in an entry about secure bank chatrooms during the crisis, a certain peculiar brand of dark humour has been spotted on /. :

[Bank_P42] What happen?
[Bank_J67] Somebody set up us the bomb
[Bank_T113] We get signal
[Bank_P42] What!
[Bank_T113] Main screen turn on.
*** Al_Qaeda has joined #secretbankchat
[Bank_P42] It's you!
[Al_Qaeda] How are you gentlemen !!
[Al_Qaeda] All your public transport are belong to us ...
Al_Qaeda] You are on the way to destruction.
[Al_Qaeda] What you say !!
[Al_Qaeda] You have no chance to survive make your time.
[Al_Qaeda] Ha Ha Ha Ha ....
[Bank_T113] Captain !!*
[Bank_P42] Take off every 'Financial Transaction'!!
[Bank_P42] You know what you doing.
[Bank_P42] Move 'Financial Transaction'.
[Bank_P42] For great justice.

*shrug* - there are all sorts out there. Al-Qaeda means "The Base" in Arabic, so one might say that there is some sort of subtle irony in that "All Your Base" reference. Already the news outlets are yammering that "Al Qaeda did it". I have some doubts, though I'm not exactly going to go in the opposite direction and say that the French did it (because they lost the Olympic bid), or Blair did it (because he was "safely out of harm's way" at the G8 meeting), or whatever.

We could probably expect to see policemen and soldiers turning up with guns patrolling the streets. Guns and ammo don't seem to be much help against bombs, unfortunately. Dennis Hopper in his role as the crazy bomber had something to say about that in the 1994 movie Speed - ah, here it is : "A bomb is meant to explode. That's it's meaning - it's purpose. Your life is empty because you're trying to stop the bomb from becoming." Hmm, I guess I'm not gonna comment on the "life is empty" part. But if having some soldiers waving guns around out in the streets makes the masses feel a little bit safer, well ...

Me, well, I recall happier times - while on our one and only trip to Europe (on honeymoon), when it looked like America might have been "winning the war on terror" in Afghanistan, taking the Tube, visiting the British Museum of Natural History (near South Kensington station), shopping at Harrods at the Knightsbridge station.

(2005-07-09 22:28:44 SGT) [Musings] Permalink

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