Analysis/readtion to official responses to the Explosions in London. (Also general analysis thread)

But it's probably the most obvious explanation: you don't tell a bunch of commuters there's a bomb while they're still in an enclosed space.

someone sent me an email laughing at people buying water, but i got water when i got my lunch, mostly because i just watched 'batman begins'. i'm dumb.

surely they know that, and would recruit 'english' looking people for their cause?

NRQ, it sounds like there was only one suicide bomb, the bus. the rest of it was more traditional, or whatever.

"It's reasonably clear that there have been a series of terrorist attacks in London. There are obviously casualties, both people that have died and people seriously injured. My thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families.

It's my intention to leave the G8 within the next couple hours and go down to London and get a report from those who have been dealing with this.

Each of the countries around that table have some experience of the effects of terrorism and share our complete resolution to defeat this terrorism. It's particularly barbaric that this has happened on the day when people are meeting to try to help the problems of poverty in Africa and the long-term problems of changes in the environment.

It's reasonably clear that it is designed and aimed to coincide with the opening of the G8. There will be time to talk later about this. It's important, however, that those engaged in terrorism realize that our determination to defend our values and our way of life is greater than their determination to cause death and destruction to innocent people in a desire to impose extremism on the world. Whatever they do, it is our determination that they will never succeed in destroying what we hold dear in this country and in other civilized nations throughout the world."

I'm not sure this is "reasonably clear," but I certainly wouldn't rule it out, and I wouldn't begrudge Blair if he's incorrect, as his reaction could be based on impulses that any non-world leader might share.

Otherwise, I think he's struck exactly the right note.

This is obv complete speculation as I don't know how much of London's resources have been diverted to Gleneagles, if any.

i think i watch too much tv and film. but these are the random thoughts that go through my brain, so i thought this might be the thread for them.

xpost-- colonel poo is looking at the flip side from me...

It is actually possible to do this; overloaded transformers and the like explode fairly spectacularly iirc. Arranging it would be an almost impossible problem.

Perhaps I play too many games, but I couldn't stop thinking of Half-Life 2 when I read that.

He said: "On the one hand, you have people here working to alleviate poverty and rid the world of AIDS. The contrast couldn’t be clearer between the hearts of those who care about human liberty [and those who would] take the lives of innocent folks. The war of terror goes on. We will not yield to terror. We will spread an ideology of hope and compassion that will overwhelm their ideology of hate."

oh man, you're right...

Tony Blair is on a plane back to London right?

Where's Marwen!

"This was not a terrorist attack against the mighty and the powerful; it is not aimed at presidents or prime ministers; it was aimed at ordinary working class Londoners, black and white, Muslim and Christians, Hindu and Jew, young and old, indiscriminate attempt at slaughter irrespective of any considerations, of age, of class, of religion, whatever, that isn't an ideology, it isn't even a perverted faith, it's just indiscriminate attempt at mass murder, and we know what the objective is, they seek to divide London. They seek to turn Londoners against each other and Londoners will not be divided by this cowardly attack," said Mr Livingston.

He then had a message for the terrorists who had organised the explosions.

"I wish to speak through you directly, to those who came to London to claim lives, nothing you do, how many of us you kill will stop that flight to our cities where freedom is strong and where people can live in harmony with one another, whatever you do, how many you kill, you will fail."

Seeing Dubya behind Blair disgusted me.

-- Sick Mouthy (sickmouth...), July 7th, 2005.

Eek, sorry! Maybe someone could amend the thread title to include (24 spoilers within)

I still haven't spoiled the main plot arc though, such is the crazy nature of that season of 24.

perhaps someone carrying explosives from/to a tube-station attack?

This does answer some questions, though the timeline above (which might always be wrong) raises the problem of why the cunt was still carrying around explosives 30 minutes after the last tube explosion.

Maybe s/he got caught in the delays? (seriously)

good luck getting home everyone. I'm off too.

So, why so few, comparatively? I'd have presumed it's a lack of explosive material, as they weren't trying to disrupt in a latter-day IRA style. Small amounts of explosives would suggest small-scale groups, relatively under resourced. I'd hope this means that this was their best shot, rather than the start of regular instances of this.

Bush:
The contrast between what we've seen on the TV screens here, what's taking place in London and what's taking place here [at G8 summit] is incredibly vivid to me.

On the one hand you've got people here who are working to alleviate poverty and to help rid the world of the pandemic of Aids. They're working on ways to have a clean environment and on the other hand you have people killing innocent people.

The contrast couldn't be clearer between the intentions and the hearts of those of us who care deeply about human rights and human liberty and those who kill.

Galloway:

The Respect MP, George Galloway, who represents an east London constituency, linked the attacks to Britain's presence in Iraq. He said Londoners had "paid the price" for their government's actions, and called on Mr Blair to follow the example of the Spanish government, which withdrew troops from Iraq after the Madrid train bombings.

"We argued, as did the security services in this country, that the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq would increase the threat of terrorist attack in Britain," he said. "Tragically Londoners have now paid the price of the government ignoring such warnings."

Really guys, leave it until at least tomorrow.

my sentiments exactly. honestly I'm inclined to think its the latter, there's nothing in his past that really suggests he has any grasp of the subtleties of semantics AT ALL. Rove, Cheney et al strike me as more the "evil mastermind" types...

which is exactly what "the terrorists" want. Dubyaco's "acting like wankers" adds fuel to their fire, grows their ranks, etc. The more the Western powers act like blinkered imperialists, the more poor muslims will flock to their cause, the more terrorist attacks will take place, more DubyaCo insanity, etc. It's a self-perpetuating cycle that neither side actually wants to resolve. Escalation is the name of the game.

Fox News' Brian Kilmeade: London terror attack near G8 summit "works to ... Western world's advantage, for people to experience something like this together"

The following exchange between Fox News host Brian Kilmeade and Fox News business contributor and substitute host Stuart Varney occurred during breaking news coverage of the attacks on London subways and buses on the July 7 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends:

KILMEADE: And he [British Prime Minister Tony Blair] made the statement, clearly shaken, but clearly determined. This is his second address in the last hour. First to the people of London, and now at the G8 summit, where their topic Number 1 --believe it or not-- was global warming, the second was African aid. And that was the first time since 9-11 when they should know, and they do know now, that terrorism should be Number 1. But it's important for them all to be together. I think that works to our advantage, in the Western world's advantage, for people to experience something like this together, just 500 miles from where the attacks have happened.

VARNEY: It puts the Number 1 issue right back on the front burner right at the point where all these world leaders are meeting. It takes global warming off the front burner. It takes African aid off the front burner. It sticks terrorism and the fight on the war on terror, right up front all over again.

KILMEADE: Yeah.

yeah and we don't give a fuck about them, they're always getting blown up anyway. (AAGH must... resist.... urge ... to wallow in black humored nihilism...)

They're still being rewritten, those reports. Here's three consecutive versions from Yahoo News:

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050707/ap_on_re_mi_ea/israel_britain_explosions_1

Netanyahu Changed Plans Due to Warning
By AMY TEIBEL, Associated Press Writer Thu Jul 7, 7:14 AM ET

JERUSALEM - British police told the Israeli Embassy in London minutes before Thursday's explosions that they had received warnings of possible terror attacks in the city, a senior Israeli official said.

Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had planned to attend an economic conference in a hotel over the subway stop where one of the blasts occurred, and the warning prompted him to stay in his hotel room instead, government officials said.

Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said he wasn't aware of any Israeli casualties.

Just before the blasts, Scotland Yard called the security officer at the Israeli Embassy to say they had received warnings of possible attacks, the official said. He did not say whether British police made any link to the economic conference.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the nature of his position.

The Israeli Embassy was in a state of emergency after the explosions in London, with no one allowed to enter or leave, said the Israeli ambassador to London, Zvi Hefet.

All phone lines to the embassy were down, said Danny Biran, an Israeli Foreign Ministry official.

The ministry set up a situation room to deal with hundreds of phone calls from concerned relatives. Thousands of Israelis are living in London or visiting the city at this time, Biran said.

Amir Gilad, a Netanyahu aide, told Israel Radio that Netanyahu's entourage was receiving updates all morning from British security officials, and "we have also asked to change our plans."

Netanyahu had been scheduled to stay in London until Sunday, but that could change, Gilad said.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050707/ap_on_re_mi_ea/israel_britain_explosions_2

Israeli Official Denies Pre-Attack Warning
By AMY TEIBEL, Associated Press Writer Thu Jul 7, 7:41 AM ET

JERUSALEM - Israel was not warned about possible terror attacks in London before a series of blasts ripped through the city, Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said Thursday.

A Foreign Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, had said earlier that British police warned the Israeli Embassy in London of possible terror attacks minutes before the first explosion.

"There was no early information about terrorist attacks," Shalom told Israel Army Radio later. "After the first explosion an order was given that no one move until things become clear. "

Israel was holding an economic conference in a hotel over the London subway stop where one of the blasts occurred. Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was supposed to attend the conference, but "after the first explosion our finance minister received a request not to go anywhere," Shalom said.

He said he wasn't aware of any Israeli casualties.

The Israeli Embassy was in a state of emergency after the explosions in London, with no one allowed to enter or leave, said the Israeli ambassador to London, Zvi Hefet.

All phone lines to the embassy were down, said Danny Biran, an Israeli Foreign Ministry official.

The ministry set up a situation room to deal with hundreds of phone calls from concerned relatives. Thousands of Israelis are living in London or visiting the city at this time, Biran said.

Amir Gilad, a Netanyahu aide, told Israel Radio that Netanyahu's entourage was receiving updates all morning from British security officials, and "we have also asked to change our plans."

Netanyahu had been scheduled to stay in London until Sunday, but that could change, Gilad said.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050707/ap_on_re_mi_ea/israel_britain_explosions_3

Netanyahu Changed Plans Due to Warning
By AMY TEIBEL, Associated Press Writer Thu Jul 7, 8:18 AM ET

JERUSALEM - Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was on his way to a hotel near the scene of one of the London blasts Thursday when he received a call to stay put, the foreign minister said.

"After the first explosion, our finance minister received a request not to go anywhere," Finance Minister Silvan Shalom told Israel Army Radio.

Netanyahu was to have been the scheduled keynote speaker at an Israeli corporate investment conference at the Great Eastern hotel near the Liverpool Street subway station.

Conference participants were evacuated from the hotel. Shalom said he wasn't aware of any Israeli casualties.

Netanyahu had been scheduled to stay in London until Sunday, but that could change, said Amir Gilad, a Netanyahu aide.

Shalom speculated the attackers might have taken advantage of the fact that police resources were diverted to a meeting of Western leaders.

The Israeli ambassador to London, Zvi Hefetz, said Thursday that British police had called to tell embassy personnel to stay inside their offices. "There is fear that this wave (of violence) has not yet ended," Hefetz said.

Not nearly as perplexing as the media wondering, over and over again, why no one has ever heard of the "Secret London Al Qaeda Brotherhood" (or whatever they're calling themselves) before.

Because it was a SECRET!

Great, now I have an image of these guys walking around London wearing bowling shirts or baseball caps with that emblazoned on them.

Not if you don't think like a conspiracy theorist. It doesn't take much, and I wouldn't be surprised if someone were to use them like this, to see this scenario behind the stories: (1) truth is leaked to press, (2) is vehemently denied by The Man, but that strong denial was too suspicious, so now there's version (3). Voila, damage control spin in action.

that FoxNews thing about terrorism being more important than global warming and african aid is pretty infuriating, unsurprisingly.

And good riddance! *whew* Let's get back to that important shit.

Uh....exactly.

I've been wondering about the success of the bombs, from a propaganda point of view. Part of the power of 9/11 was as an Image Bomb, seared into the mediamind of America. Bombing the underground is by definition obscure, which is why the only iconic image we have is the bus with the roof ripped off, which already seems like a symbol of plucky Brit engineering (the seats are still in place). Without wanting to be facetious, if I were a terrorist planning a strike on London, I would go for Big Ben, or the London Eye - images that would flash around the world in a second. As it is, the tube strikes are only going to hit those of us poor schlubs who have to travel on the underground everyday.

like fuck they don't. They act as if for the last 50 years the constant threat of total nuclear annihilation never existed. Nor do they acknowledge the paltry casualty numbers of these terrorist attacks when compared to the unbelievable slaughter of the wars of the 20th century. They completely overstate the threat - and they do so out of a combination of willful stupidity and cynical political calculation. 3,000 people dying from exploding planes /= Hiroshima, or the firebombing of Dresden, or the Battle of London. Hell, it doesn't even come CLOSE to the fears I had as a child (thanks "The Day After" and "Testament") of total nuclear extermination, and that threat was much more constant and more easily quantified.

i see what you mean re ken, but i've been known to take the tube to work, and because i'm not working class i don't count for ken. it was better than blair, sure.

Zang. I concede. Backpedal: I guess I meant that the "threat" is that terrorism will continue to be a problem and will likely escalate as the years go on unless (a: RIGHTWING) we fucking kill everyone (b: LEFT) we find other solutions. The "other" problems we're ignoring right now are inextricably related to terrorism, imho. It's not just a culture war. So, addressing supposedly non-terrifying issues is just an oblique way to address terrorism.

x-post

Absolutely. I guess I would HOPE that a re-evaluation of the war on terrorism (ie - bring "terror" back to the fore) would come from any of this, while I know that it will just bolster the right's position and, thus, make bigger deadlier attacks more likely.

(xpost AF: you're kidding, right?)

i did notice at lunchtime that the eye wasn't going round...

The Egyptian Islamic Jihad (cf Ayman Al Zwahiri, assassination of Sadat, original WTC bombing attempt) is over 30 years old.

1. A cutting, often ironic remark intended to wound.
2. A form of wit that is marked by the use of sarcastic language and is intended to make its victim the butt of contempt or ridicule.
3. The use of sarcasm. See Synonyms at wit1.

I'm being terribly inarticulate today:

making "terror" an issue again is good because it MAY result in a re-evaluation of the War on Terror and a realization that we've been wrong-headed in our approach.

and in that respect I don't really hold Galloway's rhetorical opportunism against him. Dubya did the same thing right away, and that bullshit has to be countered immediately and decisively. The Right has no respect for the dead and won't hesitate to exploit an event to advance its agenda. Their ideology thrives in the middle of a national panic mode because it exudes "strength" and "resolve" even though it actually has neither.

Denouncing Bush for opportunism and political deadsploitation would be career suicide for anyone in Washington. And anyone outside of Washington is just going to get shouted down as a namby-pamby actor/lefty/foreigner/academic/terrorist anyway.

See? Who said we weren't gracious.

Cunts.

I agree with The Nipper. I think you are working class for the purposes of Ken's statement earlier, because you are someone who takes the Tube to go to work and you are not a G8 leader. I think he was sort of saying that if a group really wanted to go after the people "responsible" for the war in Iraq, well, they were all right there in Scotland, a group could have had a go. Instead they chose to blow up some people who had nothing to do with it and were just going about their daily business.

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It was small of me.

"In comparing the situation in Europe and the United States, Singer blamed "the status of the Muslim community within Europe.

"There is a lot of research that shows that it is far more disenfranchised than in the US. It is certainly not integrated within the political system, the economic system, and so you have a sense of anger within the community that there isn't the Muslim minority community in the US, and that makes it likely that terrorist groups are able to in a sense find, if not support, a breeding ground, an environment in which they can operate a lot easier than they can in the US," he said."

No one can blame you, as we're all still in shock on this side of the pond too [US, that is....]

Having experienced the terror of 9/11 firsthand, I was praying that you'd never have to go through it.....

[So much for easy re-entry. Wish I was back for happier reasons....]

Does this sound right to anyone that actually knows?

OK. I think Shakey said what I was trying to say more articulately...is he closer to the mark?

naturally they would be, Ed. The most dangerous thing any of us can do now is to make any generalisations.....

well, we don't have a "church of america." not yet anyways.

i've met plenty of poor, working-class, and middle class muslims here in america -- probably more than the super-wealthy. most non-muslim arabs and persians i've met are generally in the middle class camp, i think. but there's a sizable portion of them, too.

xpost - you got us there martin, there are no muslim congressmen/senators.

xpost - christianity is much less centrally located by our establishment, much less dominating, than in America, so I doubt that makes muslims feel disenfranchised.

i dunno about that.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2005/07/07/blair/print.html

Blair daren't bring up his christianity, Bush wears his on his sleeve

x-post

Isn't Blair quite openly demonstrative of his church-going activity (Cherie is a practising Catholic, and I thought he was quite open in his support for her beliefs, I may be wrong in this though as I've never paid it that much attention)

x-post

(xpost - sure, and there are a ton who are. but the former ton isn't large or concentrated enough to create an alienated American muslim community. i'm using bushspeak because it effectively identifies the social phenomenon. he wouldn't use it if it didn't have some real resonance.)

x-post

xpost - shakey, um, life, liberty, pursuit of happiness back in the day were all predicated on being a white male landowner.

You were talking about UK life 300 years ago?

xpost - oh i see, the queen isn't the queen any more? and catholics are all lovey-dovey with protestants now? hrmm...

xxpost - exactly my point, gabbneb.

that NY muslims are all cab drivers?

then we had another (more regional) revolution when a westerly bunch of those people changed their minds

then we stopped being we and became us and you

"William, one of the most significant players on the continent, constantly strove to spread Protestantism and decrease the Catholic influence of France and Spain."

anyway, not sure why it's so controversial to suggest that religion plays a part in the uk's cultures and whatnot. esp. since the fact that america exists is directly related to it.

martin i am not trying to be sneery! sheesh.

yes yes I know, but they had a huge distrust of any kind of royal family/landed gentry class that just sat on its ass doing nothing and passing on their wealth and power from one generation to the next. Personal characteristics and failings and hypocrisies aside, their concept of a model society was very Protestant - ie, a meritocracy based on hard work (also, when I say "founder" I'm not referring just to the people that wrote the Constitution, but also to the earlier, often more radical settlers, like my main homie Roger Williams)

mark: exactly. those revolutions were because of a reason, or perhaps a conflict between religion(s) and whatnot. i still don't see how it's shocking that, given the history, the uk couldn't be described as a non-christian country, much in the same way that the us (sort of) is (at least we've got the first amendment, i guess). to a muslim, it would seem sort of obvious. isn't this generally what some of the so-called "hard line" muslim imams in the west preach? that the west is still "evil" and "christian" and whatnot despite the fact they live in it?

It was never fucking started.

hstencil, we may be less 'officially' Christian but ironically, we have a much higher percentage of people who believe in Christ as their savior so i think your argument is part flag-waving propaganda, and part disingenuousness.

the so-called "hard line" muslim imams in the west preach? that the west is still "evil" and "christian" and whatnot despite the fact they live in it Like many fundamentalists they can look to their Book for instruction. The Koran isn't very keen on Muslims living under non-Muslim rule.

hstencil, we may be less 'officially' Christian but ironically, we have a much higher percentage of people who believe in Christ as their savior so i think your argument is part flag-waving propaganda, and part disingenuousness.

i think that's perhaps attributing something to what i'm saying that isn't there.

Religion plays almost no role in British life. Northern Ireland is very different from the rest of the UK for precisely that reason.

(xxxxpost thanks Tracer, that's more succint)

xxpost

British kingship predates Christianity.

Sectarian identity may be rooted in religious conflict regardless of the individual's actual religiosity.

am i wrong in thinking that for most of the 20th century, terrorism (hijackings, etc) were connected with specific demands, i.e. used as leverage in order to get something spelled out and concrete?

hstencil, i imagine mark knows that.

otm. i may not be a christian in my own view, but to somebody else i may be. that's all i'm trying to say.

Not in any meaningful sense.

There were pagan kings of various small parts of England, but they were exceptional, and ruled over mixed Christian and pagan people - they took over from Christian rulers. In any case, there is virtually no link between kings then and kings now apart from the word "king" itself.

their demands are clear - West Out of Middle East Now - and have been since day 1. It's just that airing these demands is counter to the prevailing political order's interest, so instead its "they hate our SUVs - I mean, FREEDOM". If you sift through the group claiming this attack's statements they clearly say "this is because of the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq". Bin Laden likewise makes his goals very clear - for the West to leave the Muslim community alone so that it can build a unified, luddite, Islamo-fascist state.

he said the oil price spiked at the beginning of that war, then levelloed off again when it became obvious that - despite a ferociously terrible war - oilflow was not being affected

he said that if the iran-iraq region again falls into general war, there are forces seriously present who are completely unbothered by the idea of the destruction of the oil fields (and would see the oil price spike as a perfect weapon against the west)

dailkos' analysis reflects my own view pretty clearly, as stated on this and the other thread...

x-post

that demand is certainly stage one. but it doesn't end there. and the latter point, though i disagree with its usual rhetorical form, is essentially correct.

the problem is that rather than acknowledge that those other issues are all tied to terrorism (and I completely agree that many of them are - a decimated Africa = Muslim radical breeding/training ground numero uno), the right wing is more inclined to compartmentalize the War on Terror(tm) and upgrade their shrill fear-mongering to an even more deafening level, in the end only exacerbating the problem rather than addressing its root causes.

remember, if you're really conservative, you don't believe in social causes. everything that happens to you is of your own hand and choice. Same line of reasoning that says poor people are poor b/c they are lazy, not because of shite economic/labor policies in their area. so therefore, it's an inherent quality; them terrists hate us 'coz they evil and hate freedom and do evil. It could never have ANYthing to do with a particular government enacting certain policies, dumbing several dozen thousand troops somewhere, or setting up/tearing down certain governments, etc. Note that these policies are occasionally justified, of course, but i doubt they care.

so this is why the Fox News fuckheads are going on about how THANK DUBYA that terrism is back to the fore, since how could such a piddling thing like crippling, region-wide debt ever have anything with terrists?

Because you say so, Forest? European kingship is relatively ubiquitous from the Germans to the Celts, the Latins to the Greeks, etc... Also notice that I said British and not English. The Angles/Saxons/Jutes have only been in Britain in large numbers since the middle of the 5th century, and the Britons who had been conquered/assimilated by the Romans had a tradition of kingship that goes back well before the advent of history.

xpost kingfish i believe the CCTV cameras are used almost daily to apprehend suspects of robberies, etc

xposts

x-post

besides, what's the point in identifying suicide bombers really?

to find potential accomplices and allies and to prevent further attacks.

They don't give a fuck about the oil (as M. White notes). Bin Laden Co. hate the oil industry and would be happy to see it completely destroyed. They (correctly) view it as a curse that has crippled the region politically, ethically, and economically, and would be more than happy to instigate a situation in which the collapse of the oil economy coincided with the collapse of various corrupt Arab governments (Saudis in particular).

I think an ID on the bus bomber looks like being crucial re: whether it's a brit muslim campaign or a N. African thing, koogs...

If it goes back before the advent of history, how do you *know*? ;-)

Seriously: we don't have *much* idea of the social structures of pre-Roman Britain, other than what the Roman historians themselves wrote. We know there were rich, powerful men and women, but that's about all of it. "King" is probably the best word we have to describe them, but "tribal leader" is probably a better description. The position of such a leader is in all likelihood completely unrelated to our modern concept of kingship. Post-Roman British leaders modelled themselves on the Roman ideal more than on anything that had gone before.

x-post

still, it's not all bad news:
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/050707/wall_street.html?.v=40

(grrrr)

haha - I didn't mean to imply that their demands were sensible or easily achievable! Just that, y'know, their demands HAVE been articulated (and summarily ignored/buried/glossed over/willfully misrpresented)

How comforting to know that, despite carnage and loss, greed is still alive and kickin'.....

Bin Laden's videotaped/audiotaped messages, website postings, etc. The "Secret European Order of Al Qaeda" (or whatever their adolescent spy game name is) specifically cited Iraq and Afghanistan as the reasons for this attack in their message claiming credit.

how much of this has to do with the United States's relationship with Isreal?

May be 35% compared to 65% having to do with our unslakable thirst for black gold.

Word.

I want to say one thing specifically to the world today. This was not a terrorist attack against the mighty and the powerful. It was not aimed at Presidents or Prime Ministers. It was aimed at ordinary, working-class Londoners, black and white, Muslim and Christian, Hindu and Jew, young and old. It was an indiscriminate attempt to slaughter, irrespective of any considerations for age, for class, for religion, or whatever.

That isn’t an ideology, it isn’t even a perverted faith - it is just an indiscriminate attempt at mass murder and we know what the objective is. They seek to divide Londoners. They seek to turn Londoners against each other. I said yesterday to the International Olympic Committee, that the city of London is the greatest in the world, because everybody lives side by side in harmony. Londoners will not be divided by this cowardly attack. They will stand together in solidarity alongside those who have been injured and those who have been bereaved and that is why I’m proud to be the mayor of that city.

Finally, I wish to speak directly to those who came to London today to take life.

I know that you personally do not fear giving up your own life in order to take others - that is why you are so dangerous. But I know you fear that you may fail in your long-term objective to destroy our free society and I can show you why you will fail.

In the days that follow look at our airports, look at our sea ports and look at our railway stations and, even after your cowardly attack, you will see that people from the rest of Britain, people from around the world will arrive in London to become Londoners and to fulfil their dreams and achieve their potential.

They choose to come to London, as so many have come before because they come to be free, they come to live the life they choose, they come to be able to be themselves. They flee you because you tell them how they should live. They don’t want that and nothing you do, however many of us you kill, will stop that flight to our city where freedom is strong and where people can live in harmony with one another. Whatever you do, however many you kill, you will fail.”

us and no one else? There's no point in maintaining a strategic alliance in the Middle East to try to preserve political and economic stability because it would be too selfish of the United States

There's no point in maintaining a strategic alliance in the Middle East to try to preserve political and economic stability because it would be too selfish of the United States

I'll just out myself once and all for having supported Gulf War I and, in some respects, for the very self-serving reasons you've mentioned. Fuck a psycho like Saddam, who, when he couldn't get his way in OPEC, decided to bully Saudi. I had little sympathy for the 'No Blood for Oil' since the first people to be told that should have been the Iraqi Ba'athists, their pseudo-histroical argument about Kuwait being no more than a cover for a blatant oil and land grab and I'm no fan of the insecurity that economic turbulence leads to either. It's just that then, we had the U.N., and if there's anything the last 500 years has taught us, it's the importance of developping international agreements and institutions.

I dunno about that. Tariq Ali would claim otherwise, for one. I've read a number of accounts maintaining that Jews were treated much better in the Islamic world at its height than they were by the rest of the world (read: during the Inquisition). Of course, a couple hundred years of history, and particularly Israel, have changed all that.

(I quite like Ken's speech as well)

Like he's start punching you and then as you became more dazed he'd swing an elbow in to your ear on the follow through. Or something.

Yup.

I dunno about that. Tariq Ali would claim otherwise, for one. I've read a number of accounts maintaining that Jews were treated much better in the Islamic world at its height than they were by the rest of the world (read: during the Inquisition). Of course, a couple hundred years of history, and particularly Israel, have changed all that.

The following are extracts from sura in the Koran:

2.92. Did not Moses came to you with clear proofs, and yet you worshiped the calf after he left, and you were polytheists and wrong-doers.

2.96. Verily, you will find the Jews the greediest of mankind for life and even greedier than those who ascribe partners [other gods] to Allah.

2.100. Is it not [the case] that every time they make a covenant, some party among them throw it aside? Nay! the truth is most of them believe not.

2.124. And when his Lord tried Abraham with certain words, he fulfilled them. He [Allah] said: "Surely I will make you an Imam of men" . Abraham said: :And [what] of my offspring?" My covenant does not include the unjust, said He [Allah].

3.75. Among the people of the Scripture [Jews and Christians] is he who, if entrusted with a Cantar [a great amount of wealth, etc.], will readily pay it back; and among them there is he who, if entrusted with a single silver coin, will not repay it unless you constantly stand demanding, because they say: "There is no blame on us to betray and take the properties of the illiterates [Arabs]." But they tell a lie against Allah while they know it.

3.78. Among them are those who distort the Book with their tongues, so that you may think it is from the Book, but it is not from the Book. They say: "This is from Allah," but it is not from Allah. They speak a lie against Allah while they know it. Do not make friends of those outside your religion, since they will not fail to do their best to corrupt you. They desire to harm you severely. Hatred has already appeared from their mouths, but what their breasts conceal is far worse...

3.119. Lo! You are the ones who love them but they love you not, and you believe in all the Scriptures while they disbelieve in your Book [Koran]. And when they meet you, they say, "We believe". But when they are alone, they bite the tips of their fingers at you in rage. Say [to them]: "Perish in your rage."

3.120. If a good befalls you, it grieves them, but if some evil overtakes you, they rejoice at it. But if you remain patient and become Al-Muttaqûûn (the pious), not the least harm will their cunning do to you.

4.161. And their taking usury though indeed they were forbidden it and their devouring the property of people falsely, and We have prepared for the unbelievers from among them a painful chastisement.

4.156. And because of their [the Jew's] disbelief and uttering against Mary a grave false charge [that she has committed illegal sexual intercourse].

4.157. And because of their saying [in boast], "We killed Messiah Jesus, son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah," - but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but the resemblance of Jesus was put over another man... For surely; they killed him, not Jesus son of Mary.

4.159. And there is none of the people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians), but must believe in him, son of Mary as only a Messenger of Allah and a human being... And on the Day of Resurrection, he [Jesus] will be a witness against them.

4.161. And their taking of Ribââ [usury] though they were forbidden from taking it and their devouring of men's substance wrongfully [bribery, etc.]. And We have prepared for the disbelievers among them a painful torment

4.50. Look, how they invent a lie against Allah...

4.52. They are those whom Allah has cursed, and he whom Allah curses, you will not find for him any helper.

5.51. O you who believe! Do not take the Jews and Christians for friends; they are but friends of one another; and whoever among you takes them for a friend, then surely he is one of them.

5.58. And when you call to prayer they make it a mockery and a joke, because they are a people who will not understand.

5.60. ...Those Jews who incurred the Curse of Allah and His Wrath, some of whom He has transformed into monkeys and swine...

5.62. You see many of them [Jews] hurrying for sin and transgression, and doing illegal things [bribes and usury]. Evil indeed is that which they have been doing.

5.63. Why do not the rabbis and the doctors of law prohibit them from their speaking of what is sinful and their consuming what is unlawfully acquired? Certainly evil is that which they work...

5.66. ...As for most of them, evil is what they do.

7.40. ...The doors of heaven shall not be opened for them, nor shall they enter the garden until the camel pass through the eye of the needle.

7.41. They shall have a bed of hell-fire... thus do We reward the unjust.

8.55. Surely the vilest of animals in Allah's sight are those who disbelieve.

8.56. Those with whom you make an agreement, then they break their agreement every time...

62.5. The likeness of those who were charged with the Torah, then they did not observe it, is as the likeness of the ass bearing books, evil is the likeness of the people who reject the communications of Allah.

beats the fuck outta me. ask your local Imam. welcome to the wacky world of Islamic theology!

more about the Koran and Jews: http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/jewish_civilisation/kinberg_jews_koran.pdf

"Before getting into the specific statements that the Koran makes about the Jews, attention should be drawn to the ambivalent way in which the Koran treats the Jews. A few koranic verses consider the “Children of Israel” the chosen nation. The others refer to the Jews as deceivers, treacherous, distorters of the truth, and – above all – infidels. The term “infidel,” however, is not aimed towards the Jews in particular, but rather means those who did not embrace Islam, i.e. Christians, Pagans and others. The interest of the Koran in Jews, and especially its reaction against them, its criticism and defamation, can be explained in the light of Muhammad’s interaction
with the Jews of Medina."

at this juncture, I'd like to state for the recordthat I think monotheism was perhaps the worst idea that ever occurred to humanity.

-- ailsa (ailsa_watson7...), July 7th, 2005.

i didn't get that impression at all.

I really can't sleep tonight. I tried earlier but I keep thinking about this whole thing. I also hope Liz is ok.

I agree on the monotheism part.

I think perhaps it's a close second to animal husbandry.

Here here.

Animal husbandry? What are you, vegan?!

London pride has been handed down to us,
London pride is a flower that's free.
London pride means our own dear town to us,
And our pride it forever will be.
Grey city
Stubbornly implanted,
Taken so for granted
For a thousand years.
Stay, city,
Smokily enchanted,
Cradle of our memories and hopes and fears.
Every Blitz
Your resistance
Toughening,
From the Ritz
To the Anchor and Crown,
Nothing ever could override
The pride of London Town."

- Noel Coward, "London Pride."

You are a scarlet lady
Your streets run red with blood
Oh my darling they have used you
And covered you with mud
It was deep down in your womb my love
I drank my quart of sin
While chinamen played cards and draughts
And knocked back mickey finns

Your piss is like a river
Its scent is beer and gin
Your hell is in the summer
And you blossom in the spring
September is your purgatory
Christmas is your heaven
And when the stinking streets of summer
Are washed away by rain
At the dark end of a lonely street
That’s where you lose your pain
’tis then your eyes light up my love
And sparkle once again

Argh! why can't i remember ANYTHING

Absolutely not!

http://anthropik.com/2005/03/the-worst-mistake-in-the-history-of-the-human-race/

EARTH has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, 5
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour valley, rock, or hill; 10
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

I'm wandering round and round nowhere to go
I'm lonely in London London is lovely so
I cross the streets without fear
Everybody keeps the way clear
I know, I know no one here to say hello
I know they keep the way clear
I am lonely in London with out fear
I'm wandering round and round here nowhere to go
While my eyes
Go looking for flying saucers in the sky
While my eyes
Go looking for flying saucers in the sky
Oh Sunday, Monday autumn pass by me
And people hurry on so peacefully
A group approaches the policeman
He seems so pleased to please them
It's good at least to live and I agree
He seems so pleased at least
And it's so good to live in peace
And Sunday, Monday, years and I agree
While my eyes
Go looking for flying saucers in the sky
While my eyes
Go looking for flying saucers in the sky

William Wordsworth

(xpost...haha i just typed this out. Great guess Ailsa!)

Works for me.

also, for all the reasons that've been given for the past 4 years about how you can't have a war with an abstract concept, etc.

also, the crucial difference between declaring this all a military action(Dubya) as opposed to a criminal investigation(Clinton in the WTC bombing of 93). Sending cops to another country is usually greeted positively; sending troops, not so much.

I am, nonetheless, continually flabbergasted that anyone could adopt such an inherently un-scientific worldview - one in which laws of causality do not exist. Such a worldview is inherently irrational, it doesn't come close to describing reality in any meaningful way.

dude, two words: "War on Drugs". We've lived with several examples of this for a long time. remember that whole "reality-based" thing from last year?

Oh yeah, and this little thing:

...This motley crew of wealthy, white, middle-aged males -- along with several conservative policy wonks from academia and bureaucratia -- signed off on a statement of principles that aimed to provoke a resurgence of the Reagan era.

Specifically, PNAC wanted to a return to the glory days when a charismatic, but not especially bright, president put a home-spun gloss on ideas he didn't really understand but which had been carefully crafted by his faceless subordinates. PNAC was remarkably successful in this effort. In addition to the re-institution of the glorious conservative figurehead, PNAC wanted to achieve the following policy goals:

* "To make the case and rally support for American global leadership."
* "To shape a new century favorable to American principles and interests."
* "A foreign policy that boldly and purposefully promotes American principles abroad."
* "Maintaining peace and security in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East."
* "To increase defense spending significantly."
* "To strengthen our ties to democratic allies and to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values."
* "To promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad."
* "To accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles."

From here

The following exchange between Fox News host Brian Kilmeade and Fox News business contributor and substitute host Stuart Varney occurred during breaking news coverage of the attacks on London subways and buses on the July 7 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends:

KILMEADE: And he [British Prime Minister Tony Blair] made the statement, clearly shaken, but clearly determined. This is his second address in the last hour. First to the people of London, and now at the G8 summit, where their topic Number 1 --believe it or not-- was global warming, the second was African aid. And that was the first time since 9-11 when they should know, and they do know now, that terrorism should be Number 1. But it's important for them all to be together. I think that works to our advantage, in the Western world's advantage, for people to experience something like this together, just 500 miles from where the attacks have happened.

VARNEY: It puts the Number 1 issue right back on the front burner right at the point where all these world leaders are meeting. It takes global warming off the front burner. It takes African aid off the front burner. It sticks terrorism and the fight on the war on terror, right up front all over again.

KILMEADE: Yeah.

"...I mean, my first thought when I heard -- just on a personal basis, when I heard there had been this attack and I saw the futures this morning, which were really in the tank, I thought, "Hmmm, time to buy." Others may have thought that as well. But you never know about the markets. "

What are the chances of Britain reacting along the lines of Spain after the Madrid bombing. You'll note that Spain is not on that list of the "next targets" in the (suppose-any confirmation on this??) Al-qaeda message. Would such a reaction be seen as cowardly or something similarly American (Anglo-saxon)?

Speaking of which, Italy and Denmark, yeah those countries are the real engineers behind the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, way to pick who you threaten.

England beat Australia by 9 wickets.

-- hstencil (hstenc!...), July 7th, 2005.

Zogby was my little league baseball coach. I shit you not.

I didn't even really comprehend it at the time, but it's fucking awesome that a guy in his position still takes the time to coach his son's little league team.

The daily mail blames the bombs on politcal correctness that has stood in the way of eroding ancient rights in the name of security.

Got home and watched the news for about 3 hours straight (only break was for Time Team, hoping it would be escapism but it just got me thinking about Boudica and the first terrorist attack on London).

They repeated soundbites from the major reactions - Blair seemed like a dazed fool trying to act Shakespearian in the face of events he couldnt' even understand, let alone control. Bush made me so angry I started shouting at the television - sound and fury signifying nothing etc.

Livingstone irked me with the "working class" comment, but I guess I understood its meaning in relation to Blair and Bush and their arrogance - I wish he'd said "working people" rather than bring class into it. But he looked downright Churchillian - tired, angry, glowering, barely emotionally controlled, but spitting with defiance.

The weirdest thing was an interview with Juliani talking about the immediate aftermath of 911. Did he just *happen* to be in London?

well, it should be mentioned that the secular bits of the U.S. are usually in very high concentrations. I suspect it's the same in the UK? I forget why this was even an issue here... I'm not convinced the terrorist attacks are purely religiously motivated anyway. (forgive me, I'm tired.. it's 1am here on the west coast)

There was a big argument up thread about the UK being a religious socieety because we have a queen and an established church, which is bollocks.

A second characteristic of the 'new wars' is that war itself is a form of political mobilisation. In what I have called wars between states, the aim of war was, to quote Clausewitz, 'to compel an opponent to fulfil our will'. In general this was achieved through the military capture of territory and victory in battle. People were mobilised to participate in the war effort - to join the army or to produce weapons and uniforms. In the new wars, mobilising people is the aim of the war effort; the point of the violence is not so much directed against the enemy; rather the aim is to expand the networks of extremism. Generally the strategy is to control territory through political means and military means are used to kill, expel or silence those who might challenge control. This is why the warring parties use techniques of terror, ethnic cleansing or genocide as deliberate war strategies. In the new wars, battles are rare and violence is directed against civilians. Violations of humanitarian and human rights law are not a side effect of war but the central methodology of new wars. Over 90% of the casualties in the new wars are civilian and the number of refugees and displaced persons per conflict has risen steadily.

The strategy is to gain political power through sowing fear and hatred, to create a climate of terror, to eliminate moderate voices and to defeat tolerance. The political ideologies of exclusive nationalism or religious communalism are generated through violence. It is generally assumed that extreme ideologies, based on exclusive identities - Serb nationalism, for example, or fundamentalist Islam - are the cause of war. Rather, the spread and strengthening of these ideologies are the consequence of war. 'The war had to be so bloody', Bosnians will tell you, 'because we did not hate each other; we had to be taught to hate each other.'

—Mary Kaldor - "Beyond Militarism, Arms Races and Arms Control"
http://www.ssrc.org/sept11/essays/kaldor_text_only.htm

All taken out of context

2.92. Did not Moses came to you with clear proofs, and yet you worshiped the calf after he left, and you were polytheists and wrong-doers.

This is also the acount given in the Torah.

2.124. And when his Lord tried Abraham with certain words, he fulfilled them. He [Allah] said: "Surely I will make you an Imam of men" . Abraham said: :And [what] of my offspring?" My covenant does not include the unjust, said He [Allah].

i.e. God's covenant isn't something that is inherited

62.5. The likeness of those who were charged with the Torah, then they did not observe it, is as the likeness of the ass bearing books, evil is the likeness of the people who reject the communications of Allah.

This specifically refers to those who did not observe the Torah, it says nothing about those who did

4.159. And there is none of the people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians), but must believe in him, son of Mary as only a Messenger of Allah and a human being... And on the Day of Resurrection, he [Jesus] will be a witness against them.

This doesn't refer to Jews at all but Christians it's making the (theological) point that Jesus was a human messanger of God, not his son.

Islams relations with Jews were complicated because Mohammed was a the military, as well as religious leader of his community. He came into conflict with Jewish tribes around Medina who first allied and then broke with him. Most of the pronouncements about 'the Jews' come from this context.

tracer, sorry, yeah, this is kind of what i meant -- it was often euro thinkers like zizek who came up with the whole 'symbolic castration/disaster movie/spectacle' angle. but in truth yeah lots and lots of people were affected in a much more direct, less po-mo way. two american cousins of mine were staying near russell sq when they visited last month, and for them bloomsbury was this kind of odd, not hyper-real but certainly bizarre place, same way gotham wd look pretty bizarre and unreal to me -- for them this is a violation of a kind of 'twee' undeserving place (i'm not putting this very well).

xpost

Red Ken put it better than me but someone really needs to let these cunts know that it wasn't them who faced death yesterday morning.

He added that in the wake of Thursday's attacks, the communique is the "definitive expression of our collective will to act in the face of death.

There's your answer.

It's a lot different in England. As numerous threads on ILX have already proved.

Words fail.

listening to talk radio this morning, i think most of us secularists westerners are in a weird position: we want xianity to have a limited role in our politics, but we ask muslims to denounce political acts such as terrorism, even when obv. the majority of muslims have nothing to do with these attacks. such a weird dissonance, to me (obv. when i say "us" i don't mean everybody, but culturally it was weird to hear a caller berate this dude who is the administrative head of a mosque on long island as if he had anything to do with it, or didn't already repudiate).

Instead, as the FOX imbeciles will have it, the terrorists are issue No. 1, which I'm sure is very gratifying for them. Meanwhile, back in the real world, more people are dying from AIDS is Africa than all the terrorist dead x 10 and the entire world might face a bleak and unpredictably harsh ecological future and the cretins are still happy that the terrorists have struck 'cause it gives their leader the ability to make 'terror' issue no 1. It would be risible were it not so wrong-headedly sad.

As far as we can tell, Sony Recording Artist Omarion has remained safe since yesterday’s tragic terror attack in London. Your publicist-requested prayers have been answered! (Your work isn’t done, however; keep beseeching God so that nothing but Cristal touches O’s lips on the first-class flight back to the safety of America, and that he’s not delayed too long at airport security. And while you’re at it, ask Him to make O’s Louis Vuitton luggage miraculously tumbles through the baggage claim first—signing autographs while waiting for your bags is such a drag.) But while Omarion “suffered no injury or inconvenience,” his publicist back in LA had to explain yesterday’s curious press release to Reuters:

He was in London for Saturday’s Live 8 show, his publicist Shana Gilmore told Reuters from Los Angeles. Asked why anyone should pray for him, Gilmore said, “He wasn’t hurt or anything, but just the fact that he was there and all that.”

By “and all that,” we’re sure she meant, “Omarion and Sony offer their prayers and sympathy to the families of everyone affected by the tragedy.” Sometimes you need to massage a flack’s message to find the true meaning within.

Sometimes I just love Ed!

Also, though the religious right does not represent the U.S. by any means (despite its wishes), it is virulently anti-Muslim but no longer virulently anti-Catholic or anti-Jewish; in fact is willing to make common cause with right-wing Catholics and right-wing Jews. But it perceives the U.S. as engaged in a war with radical Islam; I've gotten emails from fundamentalists depicting Muslims learning as part of their religious training that it is their religious duty to kill non-Muslims.

(I realize that this post is not fair to those on the religious right who are not anti-Muslim; and for what it's worth, and for all his flaws, George Bush seems not to be anti-Muslim, or racist [despite the actual impact of his policies]; that's one reason he casts the war as a war against terrorism, rather than a war against radical Islam.)

(And the religious right sees the basic culture war in the U.S. as Christians vs. Liberals.)

It's kind of surreal looking at them all after a while. The BLOODY HELL headline, from the Toronto Star, seems kind of a bad show, while LONDON HURA-HARA from Malaysia's Harian Metro is strangely appealing.

How many people in London die annually due to car or cycling accidents? How many end up badly injured?

I ask because if this number turns out to be more than the figures for Thursday, this will be a slap in the face to anyone I ever meet (which is thankfully yet to happen) who argues that mass public transit is "not safe"... moreover, that people who don't drive aren't any less targets. Again, I've heard no such talk in Seattle, but a friend of mine in L.A. who works at a company has been hearing co-workers make jokes like "well, there's the benefits of a subway for ya! HAW HAW HAW!"

xpost

Have a look at the stats here:

http://www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/dft_transstats/documents/downloadable/dft_transstats_038554.pdf

my sentiments exactly - everyone running around in hysterics about the TERROR THREAT OMG WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO plays not only into the hands of the terrorists (whose only real accomplishable goal is to cause panic) but also into the hands of people in power who are all too happy to exploit these events to their own ends. The super-cynical part of me thinks that if these attacks were actually on the scale of 20th century warfare or AIDS or what have you, certain amoral opportunists would not be so quick to ruthlessly exploit the "War on Terror"(tm). Or at least it wouldn't be so easy for them. As things are, these attacks are small enough to do little more than cause panic, dramatic enough to inspire media hysteria, and have such murky political roots that their easily integrated into the agendas of people with ulterior motives. Acting like these terror attacks are a massive Threat to the Whole of Western Civilization is just so much propagandistic exaggeration, and unfortunately plays right into the hands of the terrorist agenda AND the super-right-wing Christian police state agenda (since they need a sufficiently shadowy but SCARY threat to cover for their otherwise completely unjustifiable actions).

http://www.pacts.org.uk/policy/briefings/statistics_uk.htm

Aren't a lot of those suicides?

Actually, I meant the accidental ones, as pointed to by those new(ish) warning signs on the Tube.

I have not heard this or anything like it from anyone in LA. I can't even imagine anyone saying anything this stupid. For the record, please know that everyone I've talked to in LA has been very sympathetic and well wishing.

You mean suicides off of the back of a train, like in Double Indemnity? (Debunked by Edward G. Robinson, however.)

[Sorry about the silliness of this post. I'm still upset, and therefore slightly hysterical.]

don't worry, you're in the right place. we like silliness here. We also like the silly hats.

...or about par for the course for most nerds. Great on tech, bad on the whole socializin' thing.

so assuming London is 15% of the UK population.. that's around 255 for 2004 alone

Actual figure was 216

To make it more complicated, "Britain" (without the Great) is the official abbreviation for the UK (or "The United Kingdom of Great Britain And Northern Ireland" as I think we are in full) anyway.

A slight correction -- that headline was in the tabloid-y Toronto Sun (roughly the Canadian equivalent of the London Sun, I believe)(aside: the Toronto Sun's 9/11 headline was "BASTARDS!").

The more reputable Toronto Star's headline was "56 Minutes of Terror", or thereabouts.

http://whitehouse.org/news/2005/070705.asp

(My lead would've been "We call that gittin' yer hair mussed here.")

Maybe this kind of economy is one way of speaking and what Livingstone said is another way of speaking and maybe there is no one British way of speaking. Before I had a chance to read about it, I wondered what the response would be. If the official response is to display or to encourage stoicism, maybe it will help people and maybe it's their response anyway.

Queen Says Bombers Won't Change Britain
Fri Jul 8,12:24 PM ET

http://us.news3.yimg.com/us.i2.yimg.com/p/ap/20050708/capt.lon12907081613.britain_explosions_lon129.jpg?x=380&y=266&sig=TURHoY_HDD.T9fruwtWg.A--LONDON - Queen Elizabeth II said Friday that the terrorist bombings in London "will not change our way of life."

"Atrocities such as these simply reinforce our sense of community, our humanity, our trust in the rule of law. That is the clear message from us all," she told staff at the Royal London Hospital.

The east London hospital was among those treating victims of the three subway explosions and one explosion on a bus on Thursday.

The queen expressed her admiration for all the Londoners who "are calmly determined to resume their normal lives..."

I like to think she's delivering chocolates and cucumber sandwiches to those laid up.

Oops! I know very well that the Toronto Star is a fine paper so I don't know how I managed to make that mistake.

The Star here (a low-budget version of The Sun) used 'BASTARDS' today.

The strategy is to gain political power through sowing fear and hatred, to create a climate of terror, to eliminate moderate voices and to defeat tolerance. The political ideologies of exclusive nationalism or religious communalism are generated through violence. It is generally assumed that extreme ideologies, based on exclusive identities - Serb nationalism, for example, or fundamentalist Islam - are the cause of war. Rather, the spread and strengthening of these ideologies are the consequence of war. 'The war had to be so bloody', Bosnians will tell you, 'because we did not hate each other; we had to be taught to hate each other.'

You know, that supposed "claim" letter that went on the internet, the one that said "Rejoice, community of Muslims," the letter states. "The heroic mujahedeens today conducted an attack in London," it continues. All of Great Britain is now shaken and shocked, "in the north, the south, west and east." had me wondering. If it is true (and it might be a hoax), was the bus bomb actually meant to be on a train, because if you look at the 4 blast locations it almost looks like someone did plan each one to be at compass points. Only one guy failed to get to KingsX to get on his train, due to the bus diversion.

(Apart from those that died in hospital, which I imagine is a small number)

(Getting morbidly involved in the mechanics of this is my way of coping)

Not particularly. If the bomb was planned to go off on a train with the others then it would have gone off BEFORE any evacuation took place. Of course anything is possible but it seems to me far more plausible that it was planned to detonate on the bus. From the terrorists' point of view, three bombs on trains and one on a bus has been far more effective than four on trains (horrific pictures of the destroyed bus, plus creating fear of bus travel as well as tube travel).

After leaving Euston its original route would have taken it through Kings Cross, yes.

This is a fun game, isn't it?

The number 30 is supposed to be via King's Cross but had been diverted I think. So the bomber could have got off at Euston where he had planned to detonate the bomb perhaps.
xpost

So far the police are saying that only the bus attack is suspected of being a suicide attack. That implies that the bombs on the trains were planted and left to detonate (ie no bombers present on the trains at the time of detonation). Therefore if a train bomb failed to detonate there would be no bomber there to retrieve it and take it onto a bus.

Also, I was thinking of what Trayce said about the compass points and noticed on a map in the paper today that the unbombed South point on the Circle Line would be near Parliament, which would be a significant target to make a statement.

They don't know for certain but they are suggesting that the fact that the three train bombs detonated more or less simultaneously points to them being activated by timers.

http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2005-07-09T174923Z_01_FOR816343_RTRUKOC_0_SECURITY-BRITAIN.xml

Why is that any more likely than three guys with synchronized watches?

The same thought occurred to me. I suppose careful forensic analysis of fragments might reveal some trace of a clock mechanism or something like that that would then indicate that the bomb was automatically activated. But they haven't reported any such find so it all seems pretty much guesswork at the moment.

And he calls his party "Respect".

Ironic? nauseating?

Are you sure they didn't say Queen's Park? Finsbury Park is a Victoria/Picc interchange.

I would also like 5 minutes in a room with Mr galloway.

I was in town. I was in the carriage that blew to pieces on the Circle
Line between Liverpool Street & Aldgate. I can't really describe how I
feel right now, Christina. People keep telling me how lucky I am but I
don't see it. Luck would have been taking the carriage behind or just
missing the train, but I witnessed a woman choking to death on her own
blood beside me in the dark while there was nothing I could do for her
and I managed to walk away with tendon damage on my little finger and
perforated ear drums.

I was on my way to Victoria for a second interview for a job that I
really wanted. I'd reached Liverpool Street via overground, made my
way to the Circle Line and got on the train. I was standing in the
central part of the carriage with my arm on the rail on top of the
glass divide, thinking about the sort of questions I was going to get
at interview and then it happened - I heard the most incredible bang
to my left, the like of which I've never heard before. It catapulted
me across to the other side where a guy was standing. He cushioned my
impact otherwise I'd have gone straight through the glass opposite. I
remember a white light and then darkness and quiet. As one of the
victims said on tv: the fact that he was asking himself was he alive
meant that he must have been and that's what I did. I scrambled around
in the dark; no emergency lights came on but the tunnel lights were on
and it might everything look even more eerie as it highlighted the
smoke rising and sitting like a mist.

The smell was atrocious and then I looked to my left to see a woman
screaming in the seat that had been to the left of where I was
standing - I couldn't hear her properly (my ear drums were pretty
gone) and I was more or less lip reading her saying " baby" pointing
downwards to where I'd been standing. So I scrambled in the dark to
look for what I thought was a baby but she must have been saying
"lady" as I came across two lifeless arms belonging to a woman who had
been flipped back over the other seat through the glass divide from
the impact of the blast. She was bent double, like a gymnast just
before they do a backflip and was choking on her own blood which was
everywhere, barely breathing. I tried to lift her arms up but it was
no good. I saw another guy who looked like he'd lost a leg, screaming.
Although my hearing was crap I still heard people shouting "help, I'm
dying here" but I couldn't see where they were. I was scrambling
around looking for my bag (of all things) as well and guys were trying
to get past me as the doors I'd been standing by had been blown ajar
or apart and they wanted air or to get off.

In all this I didn't even notice that my hand was bleeding profusely
and then some rail staff came down the track and told us to jump off.
It was probably about 5-10 minutes but it seemed like an eternity
before they arrived. I jumped off and looked back at the woman dying
in the train. I headed left straight away towards the light of Aldgate
and before I reached the platform. Me and the guy I'd crashed into
looked back at the train to see what the hell had happened. I could
see that it was mainly the carriage I'd been in that was a wreck and
we just looked at each other and shook our heads.

I walked up to the entrance and was met by the Fire Services. They gave me water and then snatched it off me as I was drinking it all too quickly and told me to take sips. I then looked at myself for the first time and saw I was covered in blood. I was wearing a rain mac on top of my suit which had most of it, so I immediately checked myself and found that none of the blood was mine as my torso was unscathed. My clothes wre ripped to shreds. The fire woman dressed my finger. A woman next to me was being attened to by two paramedics - she had a huge lump missing from her stomach and they were trying to stem the bleeding, but I'm not sure if she made it. The they told me and a few others to move to the other side of the road opposite the station as there were more critically injured coming up to the surface. I walked over to a bus stop with others. A couple of journalists approached me and I told them to fuck off. All I could think of was the woman in the carriage. We were waiting for a hospital bus to take us to the Royal London. Just before I got on I did speak to a journalist as I'd calmed down a bit and told him of events. He said he was from the News of The World, but whether he quotes me I don't know. I really don't care.

We got to the hospital which had an army of doctors and nurses
waiting. I can't praise them highly enough. I had a tetanus and a few
other injections and was told that my tendons were ruptured and I'd
need to see plastics, but not that day as they were dealing with more
life-threatening scenarios. (They later cleaned my face as it was a
mess of blood, glass and other matter.)

They told me to go into the canteen area to have tea and biscuits.
Priests and other hospital counsellors kept approaching me, wanting to
comfort me but I just wanted to be alone and told them to talk to
someone else. The police took some minor details. I was desperate for
a fixed line phone to ring S**** (his wife) as she'd just gone to Turkey with the kids, and they finally got me one. I couldn't get through and I knew she'd be worried sick as she knew the route I was taking to the interview. I left a message for my Mum too. I rang the recruitment consultant retained by the company interviewing me and said I was going to be delayed somewhat since some fuckers had tried to blow the shit out of me (I'd learned by that time that there'd been a series of explosions) and asked her to try and get through to Turkey on my behalf.

I left the hospital about 2pm and was given a lift. I stopped off at
another one near whre I livre as my finger and hand (via cuts) was
bleeding badly again and it needed redressing. I went in and was met
by CID and forensics who took all my clothes, photographed me and gave
me a lift home.

The local CID came around yesterday and the guy brought a copy of The
Sun which had a picture of the carriage in question and told me that I
was a very very lucky man. I told him I wasn't as I'd seen things that
will stay with me for the rest of my life.

I have the CID from central London coming around tonight to take a
full statement as to the events of Thursday. I'm supposed to feel
coveted as I was one of those closest to the blast who also managed to
walk away from it (12-14 feet).

I'm going to UCH on Tuesday to have an operation on my finger and to
see a counsellor specially tasked to deal with people who have been
through this. Part of me feels very lucky to be alive and my friends
and family are all overjoyed, but it doesn't feel like that at the
moment when I'm lying in bed at night replaying the events in my head.

It was a terrible day and my heart goes out to all those who lost
their lives as well as their familes, especially to the woman who--in
all probability--died in that carriage.

"What doesn't kill you makes you stronger", so they say. Here's hoping.

Take care

M

How on earth does anyone come to terms with having experienced something like this? My heart is breaking for everyone whose lives have been touched by this.

The Iraq War was a terrible mistake, based on a false premise about weapons of mass destruction which we now know didn't exist. Tony Blair has paid, on our behalf, a threefold price for it. He lost seats, he lost soldiers, and now he's losing citizens. He's been telling us all along that an event of this type was "almost certain". It was a calculated risk he took when he threw the country in with Bush's aggression, and here it is. Five minutes in a room with Tony Blair is what you should really be thirsting for, if you still have any bloodlust whatsoever.

The problem is, to claim it as a neutral tragedy, a random event, a force of nature or something bizarre and insane, is equally irresponsible. It has a political dimension and must be discussed politically at some point. Tact and timing should play a part, of course. But the political conclusions should not be postponed indefinitely, nor should tact forbid us to make the obvious connections with policy.

Galloway deserves utter contempt for is opportunism, the stalinist who would pander to religionist to stay in parliament and then not give his constituents the representation they voted for. How can anyone accept at face value his sincerity on any subject.

(slight derail, sorry about this) When I was a teenager I was reading one of those Benneton magazines that used to come out now and then and it was their WAR issue, and there were extremely graphic photos of the results of the genocide in, I think, the Sudan or somewhere similar. People with limbs hacked off by machetes and things. It was the first time I'd seen the graphic, ugly results of what war does to innocent people and it stunned me. And sometimes I wonder if the remove many westeners have for war is because we dont see it - it is sanitised and politicised and made polite by the media.

None of us have lived thru a Blitz or a plague or a devastating, millions killed natural disaster, we are blessed for this. But it leaves us wanting when it comes to understanding WHY people are driven to fight back, to continue the cycle.

I dont know what to think anymore.

The Yahia Said piece makes the very pertinent point is that there even asking what the psychopathic murders want gives them a political voice that they don't deserve and don't have. This is not a clash of civilisation, or religions or secularism vs religions but it is about psychopathic nihilists vs everyone else. Yes there are genuine grievances that muslims have with the west and yes they need to be addressed. And yes we should all stand up against being used as pawns in someone else's game but our so called leaders have to stop claiming us as pawns, this goes for Bush Galloway, Bishops, imams whoever.

We go on. We go on living harder, faster, BETTER. We go about fixing the injustices of the world not because of terrorism; not because of gods or priests or demagogues; not out of guilt or shame or fear. We will do it because it is the right thing to do, the only thing to do.

'Hang your head in shame, Mr Blair. Better still, resign - and whoever takes over immediately withdraw all our forces from Iraq and Afghanistan,' wrote the Rev Mike Ketley, who is a vicar, for God's sake, but has no qualms about leaving Afghanistan to the Taliban and al-Qaeda or Iraq to the Baath party and al-Qaeda.

So vicars should really support pre-emptive war against people of other religions? Of course, how silly of me.

Cohen's joke "who wants to sit on a train next to an Independent journalist" (a reference to Fisk, who had the misfortune to be commended on his neutrality by Bin Laden) was also in very bad taste. If George Galloway were cracking crap and inappropriate jokes like that at this moment I'd understand all the hate.

"Many in London and round the world are looking for meaning behind the atrocities of 7 July. Why did they do this? What is their goal? What did we do to provoke them? Is there anything we could do to dissuade them from doing it again? There is no political answer to these questions... To try to divine a political goal, let alone a rational agenda, behind such attacks would only dignify these criminals and feed into their illusions."

The fact is that it's precisely when we don't understand something that we need to ask why most urgently. Our rationality is not just there to help us understand the kind of thoughts we would have. And even if we only understood our own cultural logic, we would alas have to recognize indiscriminate bombing as something we do too, for reasons rational and irrational.

A quote popped into my head yesterday, I can't remember where it's from, about how when you deny people a voice they turn to violence. What do you do when you're denyed a voice and your want is to stop a wave of violence? It's this that brought about the only "fear" in me - the effect it can / will have on the national psyche as its got nowhere to go.

The fears that are being imposed on me - fear of random violence, fear of not stamping out this menace abroad with an iron fist, fear of our nations infrastructure being unable to cope, fear of the different, fear of whatever else - they couldn't be further from the back of my mind. I'm immensely reassured and somehow proud of the courage, professionalism, humanism and power of the people involved in this event and its aftermath. I just wish it'd produce something other than speeches and ceremonies. This isn't history yet.

X-Proust

Of course i don't believe that the war in Iraq has done us any favours in terms of our safety, and this is where it is another point on which Cohen and I disagree. But where i think that we can agree is on the fact that Propping up one bunch of vicious murdering reactionaries just because a worse bunch of vicious murdering reactionaries is waiting round the corner is futile. Why ask why murderers murder, ask what condition produce the murderers.

How does USUK (and NATO in Afghanistan) withdraw from its imperial adventures whilst leaving behind a system and situation where the aspirations of the people of those countries can flourish. Some pretty basic aspirations, for jobs, homes schools for they kids and to be able to live without fear in the way of their choosing. You can see this in the rdinary Iraqis who turn out to get jobs in the Police and get blown up in the queues to join. Do they really all want to be policemen, probably not but it's the only pay-packet going. IF we disengage now then we leave these people in the hands of the murderers and if we don't pull out then the murderers continue anyway. It was one of the arguments against the war in the first place. If we withdraw do we leave the people in the hands of a new generation of Idi Amins, Sadam Husseins and Papa Docs? If we stay then are we a new generation of Clives and Curzons, of Leopold IIs and Theodore Roosevelts?

there are no glib and easy solutions.

perhaps because the US is fighting it by proxy, sort of. American-made weapons are used by the IDF. And of course, American aid in general to Israel far outweighs aid to the Palestinian Authority (which is kind of a confusing and inefficient use of money - as a foreign policy it doesn't show any kind of clear goal).

The "fix" for Japan in the wake of the second world war was wholesale cultural redefinition on a grand imperial scale. Assuming that's politically and morally unacceptable now ... what's to be done?

In some ways, especially now (but even before the invasion) I can see where they come from. To sit back and say "they're just evil" is just foolish.

Barring that, best option is muddling through and trying to make enough noise to at least keep the idiots at the controls from running off too many cliffs. So far, this is not working very well.

But what alternative is being offered to move towards a solution to the problem that culminated in the 9/11 attacks and onward? I haven't heard a credible one, not even of the slow-fix "invest in education" style.

But the "soft" side of it is where we've really fucked up. The day after Sept. 11, Bush should have done about 12 things, including boosting American economic and humanitarian aid across the board, recruiting 100,000 Peace Corps volunteers or some such thing, forming a superduper All-Star diplomatic team (headed by Bill Clinton) and dispatching them to Israel with the directive not to come home until things were on track, calling an Arab League summit to talk seriously about the problems in the region, and doing all of the above not just as American initiatives but as international ones.

None of that would make the bombings stop next week or next year, but it would start us toward some things that would eventually marginalize and isolate the extremists within their own societies, which is the first thing that has to happen toward shutting them down. We've started to get slightly less tone deaf in the last few years, more because we've run out of other options than anything else, but we're still fucking up all over the places, spawning unintended consequences everywhere we go and lacking any clear sense of what exactly we're trying to accomplish.

And investing in education would be a very good start. In Damascus and Des Moines.

But instead, we invaded Iraq.

I suppose better work could be done on the "hard" side, but even getting the CIA and FBI to co-operate properly (and constitutionally) is going to take some time. I don't see, however, where we can take the "soft" side. So much havoc has been wreaked by our size 12s that any moves in that direction are going to be massively distrusted. Aid can't be airlifted in because everything it touches will be tainted. Education can't be offered because it will be seen as propaganda, tainted.

We have become Croesus, except everything we touch turns to hate.

So, according the logic of Momus and others, by bringing justice to the Middle East (which often seems to mean doing something about that terrible country Israel), by leaving Iraq (leaving it to whom? not our problem, thanks), and by just generally behaving nice and rationally with high-impact t-shirt campaigns, the Taliban's grievances would have melted away, and the stoning and mutilation of women, entombment of homosexuals, the obliteration of science and culture would cease. What next? The islamists of the world would end their calls for the restoration of the caliphate, would realise that European countries don't want Sharia law, that ordering a novelist dead is perhaps not the way a free society operates etc etc.

Has our fighting of these murderers in Iraq and Afghanistan increased the chances of indiscriminate slaughter here? Well, I can't prove otherwise. But I know for a fact that our tolerance, nay, our open-armed welcome of difference hasn't helped. Hands up who wants less gays, musicians, scientists, atheists, muslems, buddhists?

This is my problem with Monbiot, Galloway, Tariq, etc. An inability to recognise that there is such a thing as plain irrational death-crazed fascism.

They ain't gonna debate you.

And this isn't about "debating the Taliban" or whatever. Fuck the Taliban. Hunt them down, disarm them, kill them if they won't surrender, fine -- do it. But it's about dealing with the problem that exists, and finding ways to decrease it in the future, rather than pursuing a bizarro self-inflating world-dominating agenda.

(largest political lobby in the US puts their hands up)

Does the lack of an acceptable solution suggest that all solutions are unacceptable? An open society is open to attack ... so you either close the society, or stop the attackers.

If the attackers are fanatical and driven to the point where their only goal is the destruction of your society, you have to a) neutralise the current crop of attackers and b) alter the conditions that created them so there aren't any more.

Like gypsy says, we fumbled our chance to do both when we had it. Now we can hardly hope to achieve a), and even if we did we'd necessarily be so heavy handed in doing it we'd only be getting further from b).

We can't do b) because altering the situation there would inflame group a, not to mention the fact that it's practically impossible while a) is unsolved.

So if a) and b) have become diametrically opposed such that going toward fixing one only takes us further from the other ... are we fucked?

It's time for a new plan, and I can't think of one. Even a new, humble US administration is facing an uphill struggle here.

But what alternative is being offered to move towards a solution to the problem that culminated in the 9/11 attacks and onward? I haven't heard a credible one, not even of the slow-fix "invest in education" style.

Osama's #1 stated reason for 9/11 was the U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia. Guess what the U.S. did almost immediately after 9/11--pulled troops out of Saudi Arabia. Of course, this can't be publicized because the Americans (and the British now as well) cannot bear to think of "giving in" to terrorist demands.

There are reasons for terrorism, and the reasons are obvious and--especially in this case--easily addressed.

I don't think it's too late to do any of the things I talked about above, in terms of doing better with both the hard and soft sides of things. Doing better at those things is the only way any of this is going to get better. We've fucked up a lot of things, but that doesn't mean we don't still have plenty of options, if we had a leadership capable of recognizing them. But this is an extremely uncreative and unreflective administration, and that's not going to change. So in the near term, we're kind of screwed. Still, they do sometimes respond (however half-assedly) when people make enough noise about something, so making noise is not totally futile.

Also, I don't think your Brit-in-the-street has any problem at all coming up with reasons for the bombing. Children are not being told it happened because 'they hate our freedom' or 'they hate our way of life'. They're being told it's because of the war in Iraq. But the majority of the country was opposed to that war, and showed it in the biggest public demonstrations since god-knows-when. The public were ignored then, and they'd be ignored now.

Easily addressed
You think pulling out of Iraq is easy? Just walking away? I think that'd be a criminal act. Too criminal even for this current shower of crooks to be able to stomach, which is why we're still there.

In any case, I get nervous when people want to analyze the reasons for something like this. It's all well and good except that I can easily see a situation where very well-meaning, wonderful intellectual folks from comaratively secular societies try and understand something which may be at its core a religious issue. Even if the higher ups in Al-Qaida have non-religious aims, you can bet it is religion they use to draw the drones in to do their dirty work, and people need to recognize that. It's not just politics we're dealing with here, and even if 7/7 didn't, 9/11 happened before the war in Iraq, not after. So even if everyone pulls out of Iraq, we still haven't dealt with the underlying issue(s).

It's not just politics, but it's mostly politics. Al Qaida is a political movement. Trying to understand any of this in terms of religion is a mistake. I see way too much citation of the Quran, and not nearly enough discussion of the actual recent history of the Middle East. What's going on now makes plenty of sense in the context of the last 100 years or so, and you can understand it a lot better by knowing that history than by parsing of religious texts.

In any case, I get nervous when people want to analyze the reasons for something like this.

I get nervous when they don't want to.

I was not aware of that context, though I suspected it might have been the case. Thanks for the correction, stet.

Children are not being told it happened because 'they hate our freedom' or 'they hate our way of life'.

This is precisely what I was worried about, and I hope you're right. My only two sources for information like this, however, are the news media (BBC) and this message board. Overall it seemed like all of that anti-war sentiment had been completely shed in favor of agreement with Blair's 'We will not give in' reaction. People on here seem to be mad at Galloway for stating the obvious, and not so much at Blair for denying his own responsibility.

For one thing, having started fighting in Iraq - even if it was against the consent of a vast number of the British people - the UK has to try and ensure that it doesn't leave Iraq in a worse state than it was before USUK came; just to pull out, suddenly, would as far as I can tell wreck whatever tentative stability there is in Iraq. USUK forces provide at the very least a buffer for anger which might otehrwise be directed to the destruction of teh new Iraqi government. And then there's the fact that if the UK pulls out of Iraq now it would be setting an incredibly dangerous precendent: wherever possible, terrorism cannot be allowed to have its intended effect.

Personally, I'm irritated at Galloway because this wasn't the time for him to be saying that, and it's a completely unconstructive thing to be saying - whoopee, Galloway was right, so what? We shouldn't have gone to war, but we did, and now we've done that and are dealing with the consequences, recriminations are fucking useless.

I think you miss out a crucial step there the "plain irrational death-crazed fascism" has been nutured by the West and in particular Bristish ans US treatment of the Muslim world since at least the First WOrld War and of courrse includes our current involvement in Iraq. However I still rufe to engage with the terrorists or those who would support them or apologise for them. There is no excuse for violence on this or any scale and remember, as many people are dying i bombing in Iraq every other day as died on Thursday in London, ordinary iraqis killed with the same fanatical, fascist nihilism. Let us not dignify these murderers with engagement, but let us deal with the serious and long-standing problems of the muslim world and of the world in general. Saying oh 'it's because of Iraq' and if we leave we wil be safe (and I whole heartedly support not having troops in Iraq) is spectacularly naïve.

As far as I'm aware, practically everyone knows - and readily says - that this happened because of our taking part in the war in Iraq; there seems to be a sense that something was expected, that since we joined the war we had become a target.

You're that confident that we wouldn't be a target if we had no troops in Iraq? What about if we hadn't helped with the removal of the Taliban? What about if we'd just handed over Salman Rushdie to those who wanted him dead? And talking of Salman, what was the political reason for the fatwah, if a fanatical reason seems too ludicrous.? There are a few too many ventriloquists here who seem to want to deny the existence of islamofascism.

Richard K, I'm keen to understand why you think it's more comforting to see the islamists as fascists? I take no comfort from it. At least with the IRA, one could take the view that there was an underlying greivance that would have to be addressed in time. The fact that these people have demands that we can't meet and wouldn't want to meet is a source of great consternation.

Saying otherwise is uncomfortably like saying "Sure, Hitler is an appalling villain; lets stop provoking him with this crazy talk of defending Czechoslovakia. Or Belgium. Or our own country"

In some ways, especially now (but even before the invasion) I can see where they come from. To sit back and say "they're just evil" is just foolish.

I see. So you've positively IDd these filthy sows as either Afghanis or Iraqis? Those are the countries that have been invaded, after all.

Oh dear, the Chamberlain line again. I mean, is there really anybody who's said, "Oh no, let's give that mean Mr. bin Laden what he wants, maybe he'll leave us alone"? It seems to me that most of the criticism of the Bush-Blair approach has revolved around their inability to clearly define the enemy (to even adequately understand there was a threat before Sept. 11, as in the famous "Bin Laden determined to attack inside the U.S." memo), and to address both the short- and long-term problems. I know lots of liberals, but nary an appeaser among them. The problem American liberals have right now is we have an anti-liberal right-wing government catering to corporate greed and religious extremism at home, while doing a piss-poor job of dealing with an even more anti-liberal, religious extremist threat abroad. We're fucked in both directions. To bin Laden, we're all just pieces of meat; to the American right wing, we're domestic enemy number one (as in Sean Hannity's lovely book title, "Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism and Liberalism").

So forgive me for not being totally convinced that my freedoms and interests are being well looked after. I live in New York, along with my wife and son. When another attack happens here, which it probably will, I'd like to be able to believe that my government at least did the best it could to protect us. As of right now, I feel needlessly exposed to danger by an incompetent, venal, ill-informed, hypocritical, testosterone-addled and altogether ineffective group of national and international leaders. And I resent it.

er uh, 9/11/01 was well before March, 2003, yes.

Again

There are a lot of legitimate grievances that Moslems have with the West.We will probably not be completely safe even if we address them all, but if we start addressing them then fewer young men are going to be swept up into extremism.

Repeating myself from somewhere not far upthread:

An appropriate response would be complicated and multi-pronged. The "hard" side of it would be some of what we've been doing (but not smartly enough, by all accounts) in terms of international military and intelligence work to penetrate, isolate and ultimately decimate terrorist networks. Real international cooperation on this is essential, but we still can't even get the CIA and FBI to talk to each other (or build one goddam universal intelligence database), much less all the European intelligence agencies. It's impossible to know everything that's going on and I hope we're doing things right that we'll never hear about, but what we do know about our intelligence capabilities isn't heartening.

But the "soft" side of it is where we've really fucked up. The day after Sept. 11, Bush should have done about 12 things, including boosting American economic and humanitarian aid across the board, recruiting 100,000 Peace Corps volunteers or some such thing, forming a superduper All-Star diplomatic team (headed by Bill Clinton) and dispatching them to Israel with the directive not to come home until things were on track, calling an Arab League summit to talk seriously about the problems in the region, and doing all of the above not just as American initiatives but as international ones.

You very breezily conflate Moslem and Islamist grievances, but more tellingly, your list is incomplete.

How about the existence of the following mortal irritants?

- a free press
- music and representational art
- Female scientists. Female doctors
- tolerane of moslems who don't share the Islamic point of the view (i.e. the narcissism of small differences)
- Jewish people
- homesexuals
- christians
- Atheists.
- democracy
- the fact that moslems in European countries are not subject to sharia law
- East Timor's emanciption from Indonesian rule

etc
etc

So liberalism is under attack, no shit. Figured that out, thanks.

Err... huh? Actually my *personal* opinion is that no one country's behind this - but a fairly cohesive set of cells all over the world is (look at JI, once again).

Beyond that, how anyone thinks I was implying violence is RIGHT in any context is misreading me, and this is why I never bother with threads lke this - continue shouting at each other lads.

The lesson of every single 'terrorist' group is that they are opportunists. They will mainly be interested in stuff which is extreme and unlikely to persuade anyone anytime soon to get with them - that's why they use violence. The survive because they are able to wrap this up in a set of more legitimate aims and ideas that enable funds, recruits, support, safe houses and such like. The strategy seems to be that in order to flush themn out into the open, you destroy their cover, literally, in Agent Orange fashion.

And as David Clark said on Saturday, it's time Blair started to tell the chimp that actually, US military and diplomatic behaviour is causing people to die needlesslu and will continue to do so. And that countries like Britain, as a country that has knew how to deal with insurgency in SE Asia in the 50s, forgot a lot then re-learnt it in Northern Ireland, is better placed to handle counter-=terrorism through better diplomatic and military tactics.

Would someone explain to me why they keep saying "vermin" in here? WHAT THE FUCK POLICE ARE AFRAID OF RATS? Please get these bodies out. They seem to throw this in here for no other reason that to make the whole situation more lurid.

"Tony Blair is not responsible for the more than 50 dead and 700 injured on Thursday. In all likelihood, "jihadists" are. But he is partly responsible for the 100,000 people who have been killed in Iraq. And even at this early stage there is a far clearer logic linking these two events than there ever was tying Saddam Hussein to either 9/11 or weapons of mass destruction."

Why deny this? We are the enemy of Jihadists, and by trying to do everything possible against the baathists and the Taliban, we rile them to fresh heights of apoplexy. I quote:

"I reflect on what was not done at Srebrenica, and on what ought to have been done in Rwanda, and on what was put off too long with the Taliban and the Baathists, and I think what an honor it is to have such enemies. Co-existence with them is not possible, which is good, because it is not desirable or tolerable, either."

there's something very wrong with the logic here.

the fact that those over here in charge of setting up the infrastructure are completely incompetent and corrupt is not helping.

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2005/07/12/stevebell120705a.jpg

Duh. For the 1,000th time, the question is not "Who Is the Enemy?" The question is, "What Do We Do About It?" I'm so, so, so tired of being told how wicked and evil fundamentalist terrorists are. I know they're wicked and evil! Nobody's saying they're not! They blow up civilians! They terrorize villages! They behead hostages! I get it, they're bad! You had me at "fundamentalist terrorists".

Now could we please deal with the problem, instead of parsing liberal texts for signs of appeasement and apologism? Even the stupidest, most America-hating, most terrorist-sympathizing college campus Stalinist is probably not going to blow up any planes. Let's worry a little more about the people who will.

uh, but don't you think there's more than a hint of a suggestion on this thread that the best thing we could do is pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan?

I'm interested to hear if anyone here really does think that.

going into iraq was wrong, messy, and doomed to failure, as most people said at the time, partially, because of the impossibility of coming out again very easily.

when the spanish voted to pull out of iraq following the madrid bomb, i thought they had it right. not sure what i think now, but certainly a lot has changed since then: iraq has got a lot worse since march '04 (the really bad times started around then, i think). i don't think you can argue that we should pull out 'because' of thursday, it would be a very bad precedent. again, we shouldn't have gone in there, but that doesn't mean we should come out now.

I'm sure I am being naive here but it does seem as if withdrawal (from the entire Middle East) is the primary demand, so if it were to happen then one could assume this would mean no further attacks in the West, unless they're really intent on 'evening the scores' (but further attacks would just repeat the cycle).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/story/0,16132,1526616,00.html

Though not as much as this:

Meanwhile, the far-right British National party has been condemned for a byelection leaflet which exploits images from Thursday's atrocities.

The leaflet produced for Thursday's council byelection in Barking, east London, in which the party hopes to gain a seat, shows an aerial photograph of the bus that was dev astated by an explosion in central London, killing at least 13 people. The headline is: Maybe now it's time to start listening to the BNP.

I can readily think of alternatives to "listening to".

I'm far less interested in working out what might appease terrorists than a two-pronged approach:

1. Catch the fuckers. All the attempts up to now have been:
objective: catch Osama
result: topple Taliban
just what we wanted, total success, hurrah for us...
Let's catch these cunts who are going around killing innocent people.

2. Think about why so many people in the Islamic world hate the west. Abandon lame 'they want to kill us because we are free' bullshit that no one believes. Work out if perhaps there is something we are doing to them that makes them murderously angry. Perhaps there is at the least reason to examine our actions, work out if maybe we are doing something wrong. It's obvious that we are doing something wrong, and although it's not going to be remotely easy, work out how to do better. We can start with not starting any new wars or police actions or invading any more countries, with not blindly supporting anything because it's on the Israel side and opposing it for being on the modlem side, and with working out how we are going to hand Iraq back to Iraq, Afghanistan back to Afghanistan. These are difficult things to do, but they need doing.

I don't think the leap is too great that the perpetrators here are working under the same motivation as that for which Al-Qaeda affiliated cells are generally known for having i.e. 'West out of the Middle East/stop killing our children'.

Spain pulled troops out after the Madrid bombing. Will they be attacked again anyway? Only time will tell.

Just to re-iterate somewhat I don't think anyone is saying that getting out of the Middle East and Israel ASAP is the best thing to do for 'the common good'. It's too late for that, and it was too late for a solution that benefits all right from the start anyway.

it's obvious THEY THINK that we are doing something wrong, which is a different thing. it all comes down to a difference of opinion, a different ideology.

the one thing that's heartening in all this is the sheer mix of people on that horrible list of the missing. maybe someone will see that and see that people do get along or, at least, can live and work side by side without resorting to violence.

exactly. not ASAP: that would be a disaster. but, as martin suggests, a lot of it is about perception. right now many people perceive the US/UK axis as crusaders because we don't look like we're planning on leaving - say - iraq at all (and if we do, it's for purely selfish reasons such as getting our troops home).

we have to start working towards medium and long-term goals: one of which would be withdrawal from iraq, and another would be some kind of plan for a "proper" palestine. even then, that's not a panacea; it's not as if everyone's suddenly going to start trusting us. but it's a start.

in order to "put things right", to reach some form of "peace", we have to start undoing the damage we've done. this will take time. there are no quick fixes. but for fuck's sake, we should at least start thinking about it, as martin says, rather than just becoming even more grim and determined and bellicose.

Well I don't really believe in the Garden Of Eden personally so I would say from the age of empire ;)

it's about perception.

We can withdraw from Iraq when it will no longer be a shaming immorality to do so (i.e. like not finishing the job in the first gulf war and allowing Saddam to slaughter all his opponents)

look, i agree that we can't just walk away. but the problem is that at the moment it is perceived by many people - not just iraqis but people worldwide - that we are meddling crusaders who want to steal the oil and crush islam.

we're not: we're actually a bunch of fucking incompetents who, like you say, made a total arse of the first gulf war.

but we're doing nothing to address how our actions are being seen; and by gritting our teeth and shouting about democracy (which is perceived as us trying to impose a western way of living etc etc; i don't agree with that perception, but there it is) we are making things worse.

I think Iraq has something to do with the terrorists ability to recruit, but I don't think that Iraq/Afghanistan/Israel/oil and Western imperialism are really the root cause of the bombings. (They serve as a really good excuse though.) I don't think that there's anything we can do to appease the alQaeda-like terrorists. Because what they want is to start a huge jihad to end all jihads. The idea is separation, choose a side and fight to the end. So what they're doing is trying to provoke people into choosing a side. (Violence against London Muslims, anyone?) Any agressive action we take just fuels the fire.

Civil war sparked by foreign invasion

or

Status quo under Saddam. Or his sons.

?

i'm at work so i really can't engage with this as much as i'd like: sorry.

that's what a core of absolute fanatics want, yes. but, as has been said a million times, the young enthusiasts they get on side aren't doing it for those reasons. they're doing it because of what they can see happening in iraq, palestine etc.

Yeah, I didn't articulate my point very well, but the organization of the terrorism comes from what I mentioned. The willing participants come from what they see in Iraq, etc...

better for who?

From here though, right now, it looks worse for them now, and worse for us.

or

not having a repellent authoritarian regime imposed via the interference of a more powerful other state in the first place.

I never understood people who made this assumption. The socialists had always said that they would pull out the troops if they won the election. So after the Conservatives lost (and they didnt lose the election just because of Iraq but also because people felt they had been lied to when the government said it was ETA who was behind the terrorist attacks) the socialists of course pulled out the troops. The socialists descision had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks since it had been taken a long time before any attack.

Status quo under Saddam. Or his sons.

Without a shadow of a doubt, the latter. Saddam and his sons had been very lucky, had survived numerous assassination attempts etc. Chances are that there would have eventually been a palace coup, which would have brought in another strong man, who would be forced to ally himself to the West. In other words, you might have ended up with a situation a little like Mubarak's Egypt - very, very far from ideal, but vulnerable to a certain amount of democratising pressure from the West, and in any case a good deal better than foreign invasion, complete breakdown of physical and administrative infrastructures, total chaos and a very bloody civil war that is likely to continue for a generation.

Martin otm. The point isn't what the terrorists want, it's what can we do to make things better? On the one hand is continued -- and better -- focus on the terrorists themselves, catching and stopping them. On that count, Iraq has been a terrible distraction that has consumed resources that otherwise would have been available for a real "War on Terror," and it's served as a terrorist rallying cry/recruiting tent/training camp to boot.

On the other hand is developing real international initiatives to improve economic and political opportunity across the Middle East -- including twisting arms where necessary (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, etc.) but also offering plenty of assistance. It frustrates me that the major Western presence in a lot of these places is military. That's the wrong face to be showing. The Bush administration's rhetoric about spreading democracy is fine as far as it goes, but so far it doesn't add up to much more than gestures. And when the democracy part turns complicated, like in Lebanon or the West Bank and Gaza, we get all flustered about whether people are going to elect the "right" leaders. (e.g. We can't unilaterally rule out dealing with Hezbollah or Hamas, that's just not realistic.) All these countries are different and require different, intelligent approaches, but we're treating them rhetorically as if they're just an undifferentiated mass across which "freedom is marching."

Pulling out of Iraq is probably not realistic in the short term, even though I'm less convinced it would lead to utter collapse than some people. Things are pretty fucking bad there right now, and getting worse, and it's not totally clear that our presence is making them a lot better. But if we're going to stay there, we need a better sense of what the hell we're trying to accomplish. It still seems like we're making it up as we go along. Unfortunately, that's not going to change in at least the next 3 years, because the Bush administration is utterly incompetent and dishonest. So for now, I guess we just try to minimize the bleeding and hope things can hang together somehow on their own.

well, i would have to be insane to argue that it's been carried out in the best possible fashion. But then we don't live in the best possible world, do we?

That's a dodge, like Rumsfeld saying "freedom's messy." Even by the imperfect standards of this less than best of all possible worlds, the Iraqi adventure has been a hapless boondoggle from the beginning, run badly for murky reasons by intemperate ideologues who have yet to demonstrate an ability to either understand or effectively respond to facts on the ground. That they remain in charge is one of the biggest reasons to despair of anything useful coming from it.

So what? That's what happens in a democracy when leaders get too far afield from the will and interests of the people. Spain wasn't giving in to anyone, they were just electing themselves a government that promised to better represent their own views rather than allowing itself to be bullied and seduced by the United States. How that looks to terrorists or Tony Blair or Sean fucking Hannity is entirely beside the point.

the kicker is that, at least over here, the spreaders of that bullshit will never drop that line. it's hardwired into their worldview. And then there are others in power that know that line is bullshit, but know that it solidifies their power among the constituents who are hardwired along the same lines, so they won't be dropping it either.

so, with the two great tastes of irrational, unreflective ideology and cynical opportunism, you've got a tastey shit sandwich you'll attempt feed a country of a few hundred million people for at least two or three election cycles.

So we had relatively-more-competent-and-better-planning neo-cons connected to the State Dept versus the louder, mindless, corrupt, and completely incompetent neo-cons connected to the Defense Dept/Pentagon. Guess which side won out.

It didn't have to be this bad. We could have gone off on our little fucked-up multi-headed imperalist/oil-grabbing/refight Vietnam/PNAC/pro-western-democracy-outpost/experimentation adventure, and not had the same amount of shit happen. But the people in power were the people in power, so we were fucked for decades to come.

T/S : Stupid projects vs Stupid projects completely fucking everyone over

Right wing twats who respond to these kinds of discussions with 'so you wish Saddam were still in power do you?' should be ignored.

And so do some of the things cultural conservatives want, as liberals love to point out but should probably do more. I mean, who's more against gay marriage than Osama bin Laden?

Oh dear, the Chamberlain line again. I mean, is there really anybody who's said, "Oh no, let's give that mean Mr. bin Laden what he wants, maybe he'll leave us alone"? It seems to me that most of the criticism of the Bush-Blair approach has revolved around their inability to clearly define the enemy (to even adequately understand there was a threat before Sept. 11, as in the famous "Bin Laden determined to attack inside the U.S." memo), and to address both the short- and long-term problems. I know lots of liberals, but nary an appeaser among them. The problem American liberals have right now is we have an anti-liberal right-wing government catering to corporate greed and religious extremism at home, while doing a piss-poor job of dealing with an even more anti-liberal, religious extremist threat abroad. We're fucked in both directions. To bin Laden, we're all just pieces of meat; to the American right wing, we're domestic enemy number one (as in Sean Hannity's lovely book title, "Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism and Liberalism").

So forgive me for not being totally convinced that my freedoms and interests are being well looked after. I live in New York, along with my wife and son. When another attack happens here, which it probably will, I'd like to be able to believe that my government at least did the best it could to protect us. As of right now, I feel needlessly exposed to danger by an incompetent, venal, ill-informed, hypocritical, testosterone-addled and altogether ineffective group of national and international leaders. And I resent it.

-- gypsy mothra (meetm...), July 11th, 2005.

OTFM

Status quo under Saddam. Or his sons?

Maybe asking questions like this is, y'know, part of the problem.

Which is better? Civil war sparked by utter failure to achieve racially equal social justcie

or

Status quo under a chimp elected by a bunch of sub-theocratc loons?

Report: Unreleased Harry Potter Book More Secure Than U.S. Trains

The whole enemy within angle is all the better for creating a climate of fear "they LIVE, on our STREETS, hanging around our VILLAGE GREENS, maybe even IN OUR SCHOOLS". And having a climate of fear is all the better for selling newspapers / and or morally dubious identity card schemes.

Although Clarke did himself come out and say that ID cards would have not prevented this. But what saddened me was to see comments on the BBC website claiming, "We should all be prepared to give up some of our civil liberties now".

One must remember that uncontrolled panic always paves the way for fascism (see '74 Prevention of Terrorism Act, passed through Parliament quicksnap following Guildford/B'ham bombings).

Much like we did in Iraq? We all know where that ended up.

Surely this is exactly the barometer by which "the terrorists have won"?

Then four pages on, "Four pathetic youth from the ghetto of hard-line fanatics" which was of the view that "we" must move against the Moslem ghettos and forcibly reintegrate them into society.

something is seriously fucked, though, right? we can agree on that? i mean, these were presumably hard-line fanatics. and they did live among people who had no idea this was going to happen. that doesn't call for either id cards or fascism more generally, but it calls for the opening up of a much bigger debate about the local situation that produced at least four suicide bombers and their support network.

and, after forcibly ghettoising them for two generations, it might not be advisable now to howl about "forcibly reintegrating them into our society" which as we all know really means "forcibly expelling them from our society, preferably off the top of the WHITE cliffs of dover."

tissp, where have you seen "but not so much as they become our equals" stated?

Forcibly ghettoising them? How? Not sure about that.

"Faith schools"?

xpost

4 real? in leeds?

From my mother's experience Italian immigrants after the war got the same treatment in England, but not in Scotland, which was why she moved to the latter country.

Agreed, it's just entreched segregated education in a lot of places.

But of course it's also indicative of the back-of-the-class-hating-the-swot mindset - how dare he work hard and be intelligent, rather than sniff his armpits and eat ink like US, i.e. NORMAL (?) kids!

I agree that we need to look seriously at ourselves, and that the creation of homegrown fanatics does take some getting used to.

perhaps treating muslims with respect instead of continually shitting on them and belittling them such that they end up alienated and feel they need to resort to a magnified hungerford/dunblane I'LL MAKE YOU LISTEN TO ME scenario might be the way forward.

Again, it's hard to disagree. I just think to myself though, that maybe religion really isn't the angle to examine it from. If I were a kid with no prospects on a shithouse estate, the idea of doing something "constructive" (as it were) could seem infinitely seductive.

well, the social aspect here can't be easily divided from the religious, because, facing it, in the long and varied history of prospectless young people, suicide bombing has never before been taken as an option.

But it's impossible to get into a discussion of that without triggering the hornets nest of religion vs. atheism, private education, etc. etc.

So all I will say is that I don't agree that Faith Schools and homegrown fanaticism show causation.

(OK, that's facetious, but still.)

xpost

several x-posts

But what is happening is that Pakistani kids are working hard and then finding at the end of their studies or whatever that there are no propects. Un-employment and under-employment are very high in a lot of the nothern towns with big asian communities and even higher within those communities.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/story/0,16132,1527429,00.html