the loser in the end

Yesterday, Paris lost its bid to host the Olympic Games 2012. Today, in a display of empathy with the loser, I came to lab sporting my "Leipzig 2012" T-shirt and a sad look on my face. My fine sense of humor didn't go entirely unnoticed but all lightheartedness vanished when we learned that, as the song goes, the winner takes it all. London will not only host the Olympic Games but an unpredictable bunch of psychopathic killers as well.

It is a truly frightening prospect that the attacks on London buses and subway stations might be a reaction to the city's winning the Olympic games. That the terrorists attacked the after the announcement means that they do not oppose the idea of London holding the Games. In fact, one could suspect that they rather like the idea. If I lived in London, I'd be very scared indeed and looking for opportunities elsewhere.

I don't live in London, though, but in Grenoble, and the reaction here reminds me very much of what I had to suffer through for more then three years in Salt Lake. A self-conciously provincial city is schizophrenically fearing an attack and priding itself in being the next potential target. In Salt Lake that was plain ridiculous. A city that can't even be identified on a map by half the US population is not more a target for terrorists than Ondorkhaan, Mongolia, or Grootfontein, Namibia.

I thought I had escaped that manically energized paranoia when I moved to France, but I was wrong. I should have known. France likes nothing more than competing with the US and proving that it's much better in any respect than the evil empire across the ocean. This oftentimes fruitless competetion is sometimes baffling and mostly ridiculous. Today, a audibly frazzled voice annouced via the PA system that the security level has been kicked up a notch at the center where I work. Colorful schemes as in the US aren't employed to make people more likely to buy into the general paranoia, nor was the brainless consumption of duct tape advocated. But the fact alone that someone in Grenoble thinks the terrorists might march into town any minute now has me scratching my head.

After London will be as after 9/11, as after Madrid, as after Istanbul have been. People will be scared for a short while. Governments will try their damndest to freak people out even more for immediate political gain or for lack of rational thought. A short while later, everything will go back to normal, everyone will go about their business as usual. We will remember that every year, every month, every week - and almost every day, more people die in car accidents, of the effects of smoking, of cancer, of malaria, and of AIDS than because of terrorist attacks. We know that the terrorists are the real losers. And no-one is going to wear a T-shirt to empathize with them.