"THE Bombers Are Among Us!" the hoardings across London screamed. It's the kind of headline that generates heat but not light. And it's typical of the obstacles Londoners have to negotiate as they struggle to make sense of recent events. The rapid sequence of fearful happenings has bewildered many, as has the ceaseless concatenation of speculation and misinformation. We've been inundated by the non-sequitors of guilt by stereotype.
First, we were told that a man had been shot dead by police at Stockwell tube station because he was linked to the bombers. Then it emerged that he had no such link. We were told that he was suspect because he was wearing a bulky jacket and had leapt over the ticket barrier, which also turned out to be untrue.
Jean-Charles De Menezes, a young electrician from Brazil, was entirely innocent, but dead all the same. The Home Office hastened to inform the public that he had overstayed his visa and may have had a false stamp in his passport. What point were they trying to make? That De Menezes was a foreigner out to take advantage of us? That he belonged to a class of people whose human rights need not be respected?
After the deaths of more than 50 Londoners on July 7, those in the anti-war movement who insisted on placing this atrocity in the context of Britain's role in Iraq were accused of making excuses for the bombers. But who's making excuses now? Not only the right-wing press, long adept at marketing lynch-mob mentality, but even The Guardian, a by-word for British liberalism...
http://www.counterpunch.org/marqusee08092005.html
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