from the [MANCHESTER, UK] GUARDIAN :

  John Pilger
  The world has been in ferment since September 11, but why weren't
  there similar outcries at earlier atrocities?
  John Pilger
  Guardian
  Thursday October 4, 2001
  This week saw the end of an exhibition I helped put on at the
  Barbican in London, devoted to photo-journalism that makes sense of
  terrible events. Brilliant, subversive pictures from Vietnam show the
  systematic rape of a country with weapons designed to spread terror.
  The exhibition ranged from Hiroshima to two final, haunting images of
  sisters, aged 10 and 12, their bodies engraved in the rubble of the
  Iraqi city of Basra, where American missiles destroyed their street
  two years ago: part of a current Anglo-American bombing campaign that
  is almost never reported.
  Since the outrages in America on September 11, the exhibition has
  been packed, mostly with young people. Many accused the media and
  politicians of misrepresenting public opinion and of obscuring the
  reasons behind the fanaticism of the attackers. For them, the most
  telling pictures are of "unworthy victims". Let me explain. The 6,000
  people who died in America on September 11 are worthy victims: that
  is, they are worthy of our honour and a relentless pursuit of
  justice, which is right. In contrast, the 6,000 people who die every
  month in Iraq, the victims of a medieval siege devised and imposed by
  Washington and Whitehall, are, like the little sisters bombed to
  death in their sleep in Basra, unworthy victims - unworthy of even
  acknowledgement in the "civilised" west.
  Ten years ago, when 200,000 Iraqis died during and immediately after
  the slaughter known as the Gulf war, the scale of this massacre was
  never allowed to enter public consciousness in the west. Many were
  buried alive at night by armoured American snowploughs and murdered
  while retreating. Colin Powell, then US military chief, who 22 years
  earlier was assigned to cover up the My Lai massacre in Vietnam and
  is currently being elevated to hero status in the western media,
  said: "It's really not numbers I'm terribly interested in."
  An American letter writer to the Guardian last week, in admonishing
  the writer Arundhati Roy for producing a "laundry list" of American
  terror around the world, revealed how the blinkered think. The lives
  of millions of people extinguished as a consequence of American
  policies, be they Iraqis or Palestinians, Timorese or Congolese,
  belong not in our living memory, but on a "list". Apply that
  dismissive abstraction to the Holocaust, and imagine the profanity.
  The job of disassociating the September 11 atrocities from the source
  of half a century of American crusades, economic wars and homicidal
  adventures, is understandably urgent. For Bush and Blair to "wage war
  against terrorism", assaulting countries, killing innocents and
  creating famine, international law must be set aside and a monomania
  must take over politics and the "free" media. Fortunately public
  opinion is not yet fully Murdochised and is already uneasy and
  suspicious; 60% oppose massive bombing, says an Observer poll. And
  the more Blair, our little Lord Palmerston, opens his mouth on the
  subject the more suspicions will grow and the crusaders' contortions
  of intellect and morality will show. When Blair tells David Frost
  that his war plans are aimed at "the people who gave [the terrorists]
  the weapons", can he mean we are about to attack America? For it was
  mostly America that destroyed a moderate regime in Afghanistan and
  created a fanatical one.
  On the day of the twin towers attack, an arms fair, selling weapons
  of terror to assorted tyrants and human rights abusers, opened in
  London's Docklands with the backing of the Blair government. Now Bush
  and Blair have created what the UN calls "the world's worst
  humanitarian crisis", with up to 7m people facing starvation. The
  initial American reaction was to demand that Pakistan stop supplying
  food to the starving who, of course, fail to qualify as worthy
  victims.
  The bombing intelligentsia (the New Humanitarians, as Edward Herman
  calls them) are doing their bit, blaming September 11 on "an evil
  hatred of modernity" and something called "apocalyptic nihilism".
  There are no reasons why; the Barbican pictures are fake. Aside from
  a few "errors", Anglo-American actions are redeemed, and those who
  produce the "laundry list" of a blood-soaked historical record are
  "anti American", which apparently is similar to the "anti-semitism"
  of those who dare to point out the atrocious activities of the
  Israeli state.
  Phyllis and Orlando Rodriguez lost their son Greg in the World Trade
  Centre. They said this: "We read enough of the news to sense that our
  government is heading in the direction of violent revenge, with the
  prospect of sons, daughters, parents, friends in distant lands dying,
  suffering, and nursing further grievances against us. It is not the
  way to go... not in our son's name."
  * www.johnpilger.com