It appears that there were 3 explosions on the London Underground along with another bomb that exploded on a London Bus blowing its roof. There was no warning and although an unknown group linking themselves to Al Qaeda has claimed responsibility on a known Jihadist web site [offline - see screenshot instead | translation ], this has not yet been confirmed. The mainstream media are reporting that the death toll now stands at 52, with 700 or so injured. Reports that the Israeli embassy had been tipped off are circulating although a Scotland Yard spokesperson denied this. Transport within the capital is gradually returning to normal with bus routes reopening, although commuters and tourists will still rely on river boats, taxis, private transport and of course feet for many journeys.
Eyewitness coverage : Aldgate first reports & photos | video confirms at least two killed | London bombings: an incredible story of survival ]More indymedia commentry : [ Indymedia UK Statement | Poor use of Indymedia | London bombing to the eyes of the third world | Its' not enough to blame Al Qaeda | London: Explosion Updates | Anarchist response to attacks (includes West Midlands Anarchists) | Photos from Edinburgh vigil in response to London bombings
Official statements: [ Number 10 | London Metropolitan Police | Transport For London ]
Other media: [ The Guardian | Wikipedia | Al-Jazeera ]
Travel news: [ National Rail ]
Statements of solidarity: [ Muslim Council of Britain and Churches Together in Britain and Ireland | Various religious leaders | The E.U. | The U.N. | Personal messages from across the globe (BBC) | Personal messages from across the globe (Al-Jazeera) ]
Comments
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Condolences from the People of the United States
07.07.2005 23:25
Signed by a Citizen of the United States of America,
Judah Ben-Hur
Judah Ben-Hur
Solidarity
08.07.2005 01:12
In peace,
Naomi Shaked
Tel Aviv, Israel
Naomi Shaked
Keep your eyes opened
08.07.2005 01:31
Some (planned) "needed" military interventions to be announced soon ???
Keep your eyes opened, citizens, keep your eyes opened !
Feel sorry and sad about the deaths and injured victims of terrorism, *ALL* of them.
Killing innocents - ANY innocent - is not an act of bravery, but of cowardice.
Don't let your anger drive your wisdom. Don't become the terrorist you used to fight.
Terrorism - *ALL* kind of terrorism - is a treason to ANY (noble) cause defended !
Switch off TV for a moment, and think, search, ask questions...
a citizen of the world
"I think that works to our advantage..." Fox News
08.07.2005 02:13
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.
— N.C.
Concerned
Wikipedia
08.07.2005 02:33
LinkMichel
Homepage:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_London_transport_explosions
From an American about London Bombings
08.07.2005 02:59
Why do you inflict this violence on Iraq every day?
Why is Tony Blair in bed with George Bush?
When will you ever learn? Bush lied and people died.
Why is a British live worth more than an Iraqi one?
I hate terrorism, including state terrorism by the UK and my own country.
CH
we should be sorry
08.07.2005 03:12
nataly
e-mail:
i
we should be....
08.07.2005 03:22
nataly
Wake up London
08.07.2005 04:37
The proof is in the pudding.
Bite the bulllet
and swallow the turret.
like grievances,
tuckett
tuckett
Homepage:
http://www.subbionic.com
If it's "Al Qaeda" it's REALLY the CIA!
08.07.2005 05:12
Dancing Dave
Ireland Indymedia
08.07.2005 08:12
It does seem odd that it happens so suddenly. And in relatively poor parts of London. You'd have thought Al-Qaeda would have gone after some of the financial districts or the richer shopping streets.
It was stage managedby Kalashnikov- on 07.07.2005 [20:31 ]
Now I heard them say on BBC that it could be home grown people who did it. Implying that it was British muslims. This operation has all the hallmarks of a highly sophisticated intelligence organisation which knows great details of the security system in London. Most of Central London streets are laced with surveilance cameras under constant police watch not just automatic recording. The same is the case with the underground and Buses which have survaeilance cameras. Some were dummies but most have been replaced by real ones. It is impossible for anyone to plant bombs without being detected. This could not have been done by Bin Laden who is supposedly surrounded in a remote mountainous are on the Afghan border and neither with our latest phantom one legged terrorist Zarqawi who is supposedly on the run in Iraq. Only two organizations could have mounted such an attack Mossad or CIA and not without the tacit approval and help of MI/5 andMI/6. This time the Bushmonkeys have really shot themselves in the foot. If it is really Al Qaeda then it means whatever "war on terror" messrs Bush and Blair have been conducting since 11/September 2001 has been a miserable failure.
PS Interestingly I was unable to post these comments to the Indy main page or the UK site? Could folks help me share these "1984 thoughts" around? Thanks. jamie
Jamie
Very scary and very wierd
08.07.2005 09:03
The war on Terror is important because terror will have such an impact on our economy that it could trigger a serious depression. That would be bad for every country - including the countries in Africa. In terms of lives lost it is not really on the screen - 38 people is nothing compared with the number of dead in African countries due to poverty and famine. Yet terror could seriously affect our own ability to help these people - not to mention causing political problems at home. I would not put it at number 1 but it has to be up there - and the more terror attacks there are the more serious it has to be for us.
Rabbi
Re: Very scary and very wierd
08.07.2005 10:36
a still human entity
karma?
08.07.2005 10:57
Right now I dont care whos to blame. either way its related to the turmoil created by our own goverment who we voted in for a third term knowing the mess theyd make of it. All Im bothered about is wats going to happen next. Groups such as the BNP arnt going to miss an oppitunity like this to spread race hatred; and speaking from my own area the minorities are starting to get wazzed off with ignrant white people blaming them for everything thats going wrong. the country is going to hell and i dont know who to blame.
Duke
Sea Eye Yay
08.07.2005 11:21
There has been no actual proven evidence given in regards to the 2001 incident which is indicative of involvement by extremeist followers of any religion. There is a mounting body of indesputable evidence that SOME rather prominent establishment figures from around the world had either indirect involvement, took direct action in or had a vague foreknowlege of 'nineleven'. Unfortunately because there is a lot of information and disinformation surrounding this issue a lot of scared and angry people put 2 and 2 together and get CIA, or FBI, or MI5 or BMA or some other alphabet organisation. They would lecture you on not believing everything that you read but fail to practise what they preach.
Absolute truth is... No one knows what is really really going on. Not you, not me, not them, not Bush, not Blair. I fear however that a major part of the problem is that some unidentified people are making personal moral decisions on the basis of the end justifying the means... this in turn gives others an opportunity for the same arrogant reasoning and before you know it, we all fall down.
Support your local Mosque, they might cook you some scapegoat stew.
Alex (Lexicon Smith)
Amazing opinions
08.07.2005 11:25
Ted Jones
From Badger Kitten
08.07.2005 12:02
I am glad to have survived. I am proud of London and of the emergency services and police who reacted magnificently.
Thank you.
Badger Kitten
Hi Father Ted
08.07.2005 12:15
Please define which conspiracies are taking it too far, and why, for these poor deluded saps. Don't worry about their replies, I may well be able to agree with you on this.
Just one thing regarding 'not having proof', as I'm sure you know an unimportant Canadian actor used to say "you canna change the laws o physics" and he was quite correct. You certainly can't alter or bend them to support a lie.
Alex (Lexicon Smith)
Ted rocks!
08.07.2005 12:35
Tabitha
Ted rocks!
08.07.2005 12:35
Tabitha
VIGIL for LONDON VICTIMS and those of WAR and POVERTY!!!!!!!!!
08.07.2005 12:50
But do demonstrations do enough? A music programme against prejudice and racism, against war, poverty and terrorism is planned. The White Rose has been active for 12 years in all areas that are of interest to youngsters. Which of course includes music. (...)
and so on
www.weisse-rose.info
e-mail:
info@weisse-rose.org
Homepage:
http://www.weisse-rose.info/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=243
British Islamists Extremists Threatened Violence
08.07.2005 12:55
An Islamist British group called Al-Muhajiroun (Arabic: “the immigrants”) for some time publicly stated that the United Kingdom was immune from Islamist violence because of its acceptable behavior. In an April 2004 conversation, the 24-year-old head of Al-Muhajiroun’s Luton branch, Sayful Islam, announced that he supports Osama Bin Laden “100 percent” in the quest to achieve “the worldwide domination of Islam.”
Toward this end, Sayful Islam endorsed terrorism in Great Britain. “When a bomb attack happens here, I won’t be against it, even if it kills my own children. … But it is against Islam for me to engage personally in acts of terrorism in the UK because I live here. According to Islam, I have a covenant of security with the UK, as long as they allow us Muslims to live here in peace.” He further explained. “If we want to engage in terrorism, we would have to leave the country. It is against Islam to do otherwise.”
Covenant of security? What is that? In an August 2004 story in the New Statesman, “Why terrorists love Britain,” Jamie Campbell cited Mohamed Sifaoui, author of Inside Al Qaeda, that it has long been recognised by the British Islamists, by the British government and by UK intelligence agencies, that as long as Britain guarantees a degree of freedom to the likes of Hassan Butt [an overtly pro-terrorist Islamist], the terrorist strikes will continue to be planned within the borders of the UK but will not occur here.
Campbell draws from this the perversely ironic conclusion that “the presence of vocal and active Islamist terrorist sympathisers in the UK actually makes British people safer, while the full brunt of British-based terrorist plotting is suffered by people in other countries.”
Omar Bakri Mohammed, a Syrian immigrant to the UK who headed Al-Muhajiroun, then confirmed the covenant of security, telling about companions of the Prophet Muhammad given protection by the king of Ethiopia. That experience, he told Campbell, led to the Koranic notion of covenant of security: Muslims may not attack the inhabitants of a country where they live in safety. This “makes it unlikely that British-based Muslims will carry out operations in the UK itself.”
But in January 2005, Omar Bakri Mohammed determined that the covenant of security had ended for British Muslims because of post-9/11 anti-terrorist legislation that meant “the whole of Britain has become Dar ul-Harb [the Abode of War, the territory open for Muslim conquest].” Therefore, “the kuffar [unbelievers] has no sanctity for their own life or property.”
The country had gone from safe haven to enemy camp. To renew the covenant of security would require British authorities to undo that legislation and release those detained without trial. If they fail to do so, British Muslims must “join the global Islamic camp against the global crusade camp.”
Omar Bakri Mohammed went on overtly to threaten the British people: “The response from the Muslims will be horrendous if the British government continues in the way it treats Muslims,” explicitly raising the possibility of suicide bombings under the leadership of Al-Qaeda. Western governments must know that if they do not change course, Muslims will “give them a 9/11 day after day after day!”
When Sean O’Neil and Yaakov Lappin of the London Times asked Omar Bakri Mohammed about his statements on the covenant, Bakri said his definition of Britain as Dar ul-Harb was “theoretical” and he provided a non-bellicose re-interpretation:
It means that Muslims can no longer be considered to have sanctity and security here, therefore they should consider leaving this country and going back to their homelands. Otherwise they are under siege and obviously we do not want to see that we are living under siege.
In a less-guarded moment, however, Omar Bakri Mohammed acknowledged that for him, “the life of an unbeliever has no value.”
Yesterday’s explosions mark the end of the “covenant of security.” Let’s hope they also mark the end of an era of innocence, and that British authorities now begin to preempt terrorism rather than wait to become its victims.
Danial P.
The hawks can't wait.
08.07.2005 13:23
Ken Livingston couldn’t wait to turn the event to a pro-war propaganda, trying to make everyone feel that this was an attack to his/her way of life instead of their policies in Middle East.
Blair’s speech had the same motive but much more sickening. He talked about a barbaric attack to our values. Again it is not our values the war for oil, or whatever policies they decided as the best in Middle East and as far as I’m concerned Blair and Bush didn’t throw leaflets with arguments to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan from their stealth fighters.
Finally it is sad to see BBC.co.uk on their “democratic” “your comments” to cut whatever different perspective appear, mine didn’t appear at all asking about the convenience of such context for certain decisions that are to be made, and highlighting only the pro-war on terror, West vs East comments, such as the sickening “Evil only succeeds when good men do nothing”
It is so sad to see how the system reproduces itself and how such obvious propaganda takes place. This is a f*cked up world anyway. The cameras up in our arses is not that far away.
Evan
...
08.07.2005 13:37
This just goes to show how stupid and ineffective has been 'The War on Terrorism'. There was no Al-Qaeda in Iraq before the war. Now it is a training ground for thousands of militants, who can get first class experience in urban warfare, building bombs, organising cells. Iraq was no threat to us before...now it is. So thanks, Tony, for creating that problem.
To the conspiracy nutters, THE WEST IS NOT THE CONTROLLER OF EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS IN THE WORLD. It is a kind of cultural imperialism to believe that in some way, we are the complete masters of everything, and other people and nations cannot act independently. Yes, in the beginning, the CIA funded Bin Laden to fight the Russians...but the motivation to fight came from the Mujahadeen and their national pride. Support does not mean control. Do you think secretly Bin Laden, Zarqawi, Dick Cheney and Ariel Sharon secretly meet up in their Castle of Evil to discuss how next to plunge the world into chaos and misery?
Things are more subtle than that. Conspiracy theories go too far, by taking a light association as meaning full blown complicity.
The third world has every reason to hate the West without needing the CIA to provoke them. We exploit, bomb, invade their countries, and perpetually interfere in their politics. We prop up dictators, orchestrate coups against democratic leaders. All this is enough. What makes more sense, that some people, pissed off at what we are doing, organise into a group and fight back, however terrible the means, or that for some reason the CIA sends an operative to organise these cells, to attack themselves.
Why?!? What does it achieve?
Please, wake up from your conspiracy fantasy, and try and see that PEOPLE ACT INDEPENDENTLY, the world is a mix of conflicting ideologies that struggle for control. George Bush represents one...Bin Laden another. But they are not the only choices, despite what they may say to you. There are many many other better ideologies to choose and follow.
If you accept that somehow the CIA control everything that happens in the world...well, there is no hope then...they are obviously all-powerful!!! That's the impression they would like to give as well. But they are not. Their power is limited. They can hardly even keep a lid on what is happening next door in Latin America anymore. The world is in upheavel against US imperialism. The way to stop the terrorism like we saw in London is to stop the militiary occupation of the middle-east, and to reach a JUST solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, which means treating the Palestinians as equals instead of as dogs. That is all Bin Laden has used to recruit thousands of people, tired of the repression, to his cause.
Message from Illuminati Grand Wizard
For those of you who don't own a dictionary
08.07.2005 13:48
1.An agreement to perform together an illegal, wrongful, or subversive act.
2.A group of conspirators.
3.Law. An agreement between two or more persons to commit a crime or accomplish a legal purpose through illegal action.
4.A joining or acting together, as if by sinister design: a conspiracy of wind and tide that devastated coastal area.
Thats right folks! More than one bomb, multiple locations, different detonation times. This strongly implies that more than one person was involved in yesterdays event. Therefore by definition it was a conspiracy. No matter what you choose to believe.
Unless of course Sir Ian Blair (I love that surname) manages to prove that it was all the work of one lone crazed nut, acting fully independently, with his lucky Oswald rifle keyring in his pocket and a picture of Oklahoma Timmy tattooed on his arse.
Please, everyone, get an education BEFORE you make a nonsense comment. Try reading about history, or would that distract you from watching Big Brother.
Incidentally, I heard on the radio that all London buses are fitted with explosive charges in case a light brown person with a beard forgets to pay the pound fare.
'Godly' indeed! where do you people get all this stuff? Oh yes I forgot, the TV.
Alex (Lexicon Smith)
Hushed mumblings
08.07.2005 14:11
"These attacks are comming handy for further political instrumentalization, thanks to the usual helping hand of the corporate media.
Some (planned) "needed" military interventions to be announced soon ??? "
This seems to imply that this attack was set up by the UK or US government as a way of getting UK opinion to support an attack on another country (possibly Iran given the various comments coming out of the White House). Others, such as implicating the CIA or Mossad, with M15/M16 help (as planting a bomb would be "impossible" without their compliance), run along similar lines. Let's just wait until there's some evidence as to who did it, funded by who and for what purpose....
>Just one thing regarding 'not having proof', as I'm sure you know an unimportant Canadian >actor used to say "you canna change the laws o physics" and he was quite correct. You >certainly can't alter or bend them to support a lie.
True, but you can make up more complicated explainations that fit the predictions of the same law. It's good people are hypothesising about what might be the truth, but shouldn't people wait for some evidence before saying Blair/Bush/The Mormons/Osama Bin Laden did it? I think the point is, at the moment who cares who did it, people died and our thoughts should be with them.
Ted Jones
Go Grand Wizard
08.07.2005 14:26
We're all ears.
Yes he's right folks, all those cop shows you see like 24, thats just a small part of the CIA bluff. Please try to think of the CIA as more like BBC's The Office. Its closer to the truth and much more amusing.
Alex (Lexicon Smith)
Fighting Facism both Religous and Corporate
08.07.2005 14:34
I think it's important in times like this to remember what we are all fighting for. So i'd just like to post some words from Chaplin from the great dicator:
I'm sorry but I don't want to be an Emperor - that's not my business - I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible, Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another, human beings are like that.
We all want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone and the earth is rich and can provide for everyone.
The way of life can be free and beautiful.
But we have lost the way.
Greed has poisoned men's souls - has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.
We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in: machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little: More than machinery we need humanity; More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness.
Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.
The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me I say "Do not despair".
The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress: the hate of men will pass and dictators die and the power they took from the people, will return to the people and so long as men die [now] liberty will never perish...
Soldiers - don't give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you - who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you as cattle, as cannon fodder.
Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don't hate - only the unloved hate. Only the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers - don't fight for slavery, fight for liberty.
In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written " the kingdom of God is within man " - not one man, nor a group of men - but in all men - in you, the people.
You the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy let's use that power - let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age and security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie. They do not fulfil their promise, they never will. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfil that promise. Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness.
Soldiers - in the name of democracy, let us all unite!
Look up! Look up! The clouds are lifting - the sun is breaking through. We are coming out of the darkness into the light. We are coming into a new world. A kind new world where men will rise above their hate and brutality.
The soul of man has been given wings - and at last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow - into the light of hope - into the future, that glorious future that belongs to you, to me and to all of us. Look up. Look up."
A Human Being
...
08.07.2005 14:54
But that sort of conspiracy s really different to the sort that believes the CIA, Freemasons and Jews are behind everyting.
"People with unfair power and privilege generally try to hold onto that unfair power and privilege. Sometimes they make plans that are not publicly announced. Sometimes they engage in illegal plots. Real conspiracies have been exposed throughout history. History itself, however, is not controlled by a vast timeless conspiracy. The powerful people and groups in society are hardly a "secret team" or a tiny club of "secret elites." The tendency to explain all major world events as primarily the product of a secret conspiracy is called conspiracism. The antidote to conspiracism is Power Structure Research based on some form of institutional, systemic or structural analysis that examines race, ethnicity, gender, sexual identity, class and other factors that are used to create inequality and oppression. Political Research Associates does not criticize conspiracism because we want to shield those with unfair power and privilege; but because we believe that conspiracism impedes attempts to build a social movement for real social justice, economic fairness, equality, peace, and democracy."
Djinn
Go! Djinn, Go! A Human Being
08.07.2005 15:28
Ted you are quite right about inventing impossible conspiracy scenarios. However I was commenting on the physics evidence regarding steel towers N, S & 7 in which Gallileo still stands Justified and Ancient.
Who's for Ice-Cream?
Alex (Lexicon Smith)
Moron Proximacy defines Accomplishment
08.07.2005 16:41
Quo Vadis Racist!
Black Block Paki
Worth a Look
08.07.2005 16:41
Took this from www.staffor.com/
And a quick message to those info bashers who seem to dislike anything that does'nt come from the BBC - GO BACK TO SLEEP YOUR GOVERMENT IS IN CONTROL - and no i'm not believing everything i gather merley researching material and forwarding it on for others to do so.
Israel Warned United Kingdom About Possible Attacks
Summary
There has been massive confusion over a denial made by the Israelis that the Scotland Yard had warned the Israeli Embassy in London of possible terrorist attacks “minutes before” the first bomb went off July 7. Israel warned London of the attacks a “couple of days ago,” but British authorities failed to respond accordingly to deter the attacks, according to an unconfirmed rumor circulating in intelligence circles. While Israel is keeping quiet for the time-being, British Prime Minister Tony Blair soon will be facing the heat for his failure to take action.
Analysis
The Associated Press reported July 7 that an anonymous source in the Israeli Foreign Ministry said Scotland Yard had warned the Israeli Embassy in London of possible terrorist attacks in the U.K. capital. The information reportedly was passed to the embassy minutes before the first bomb struck at 0851 London time. The Israeli Embassy promptly ordered Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to remain in his hotel on the morning of July 7. Netanyahu was scheduled to participate in an Israeli Investment Forum Conference at the Grand Eastern Hotel, located next to the Liverpool Street Tube station -- the first target in the series of bombings that hit London on July 7.
Several hours later, Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom officially denied reports that Scotland Yard passed any information to Israel regarding the bombings, and British police denied they had any advanced warning of the attacks. The British authorities similarly denied that any information exchange had occurred.
Contrary to original claims that Israel was warned “minutes before” the first attack, unconfirmed rumors in intelligence circles indicate that the Israeli government actually warned London of the attacks “a couple of days” previous. Israel has apparently given other warnings about possible attacks that turned out to be aborted operations. The British government did not want to disrupt the G-8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, or call off visits by foreign dignitaries to London, hoping this would be another false alarm.
The British government sat on this information for days and failed to respond. Though the Israeli government is playing along publicly, it may not stay quiet for long. This is sure to apply pressure on Blair very soon for his failure to deter this major terrorist attack.
Tina
London bombs, the G8 and an end to dictatorship
08.07.2005 17:16
For all of us who have been fearfully contacting those we know who could have been affected, let us remember that such fear is a daily occurence for many in the world, and too often those fears are realised.
The London bombs were the act of a small group attempting to change global policies. They were timed to coincide with the G8, another small group attempting to impose its views on the world.
The images of the bomb attacks, reaching me here in Brazil, stand in marked contrast to the Make Poverty History and other demonstrations and the Live8 concerts, also attempting to influence the G8.
For further thoughts see my article "London bombs, the G8 and an end to dictatorship" at
Mike Brady
e-mail:
mikebrady@simpol.org.uk
Homepage:
http://www.simpol.org.uk/
Please......
08.07.2005 17:43
uberhund
casualties
08.07.2005 18:13
ciao
will
Still in Denial
08.07.2005 18:27
As we Israelis think of England, it is hard to help from wondering if perhaps, in the hearts of some of the British, the sentiment arose that on July 7, 2005 they became Israelis.
It will take a long time to sort out how the attacks were organized and perpetrated. But one thing is clear enough. Britain was attacked by jihad. In attacking London's financial center, as in the attacks on the World Trade Center, the object of the terrorists was not merely to kill people, but to harm a way of life, built on freedom and free trade — the way of life of Western civilization.
The reason that it is hard not to wonder if, at their moment of shock, the British people felt a kinship with the Israeli people is because for the past five years, since the Palestinians began their jihad against Israel, Britain has been playing a lead role in distinguishing between jihad directed against Israel and jihad directed against the rest of the world.
In Britain itself, which for the past two decades has hosted some of the ideological leaders of global jihad, the jihadists have made no attempt to hide that their goals are not limited to the Jewish state, or as the common parlance has it, "the occupation," but rather span the globe.
In the weeks ahead of the British elections in May, Muslim activists stormed mosque meetings and denounced democracy demanding that British Muslims boycott the elections. Even as radically anti-Israel politicians like George Galloway and Oona King tried to outdo one another with their anti-Israel diatribes to win a seat in Parliament, both were attacked by Muslims on campaign stops.
In 2004, anti-Semitic attacks against Jews in Britain increased 42 percent over 2003. Yet, lip service aside, the steady rise of violent anti-Semitism has been greeted with complicity by the government. The Labor Party's election campaign was marked with anti-Semitic imagery. In one campaign poster, Tory leader Michael Howard was depicted as a hooked-nose Fagin — the anti-Semitic archetype from Oliver Twist. Rather than apologize for the slur, Prime Minister Tony Blair's adviser Alistair Campbell laughed off the storm, saying that the publicity the poster had generated was worth millions of pounds of free advertising.
In an article published on his website, www.elaph.com, and quoted by MEMRI this past spring, Dr. Ahmad Abu Matar, a Palestinian living in Oslo, discussed the Islamic Liberation Party, active in Britain, which, "announces from London its political platform — to establish the Islamic caliphate over all corners of the earth — and declares that the party will suggest to the Queen of England that she convert to Islam, and thus will not have to pay the Islamic poll tax on non-Muslims." MEMRI reported that in the same article Matar cited the activities of Abu Hamza Al-Masri, the imam of Finsbury Park Mosque in London, who called for jihad and suicide bombings in Israel, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
Last summer, London Mayor Ken Livingstone received Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the main religious authority of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has spawned such movements as al-Qaida and Hamas, to his City Hall, referring to him as "an Islamic scholar of great respect." This "scholar" to whom Livingstone gushed, "You are truly, truly welcome," is a bit of a liberal in Islamist circles. He believes that both men and women should strive to become suicide bombers in the name of jihad.
Just months before, the senior imam of the Grand Mosque of Mecca, Abdul Rahman al-Sudayyis, visited London as well. Sudayyis was welcomed by a minister from Blair's government as an honored guest of Britain even though he has referred to Jews as "the scum of the human race, the rats of the world, the violators of pacts and agreements, the murderers of the prophets, and the offspring of apes and pigs."
Writing in May of the prospect of suicide bombings in Britain in the Saudi daily Al-Yawm, also published by MEMRI, Sawsan Al-Sha'er noted, "After we read about three English youths of Asian background breaking into one of the mosques in London to prevent the worshipers from voting in the [recent] elections, on the grounds that [Muslims] should not vote in these elections, expect the English 'Islamist' version of exploding suicide bombers soon."
Rather than accept that the jihadists who live in and visit Britain themselves make no distinction between their anti-British rhetoric and their anti-Semitic rhetoric, the British societal elite, on both the Left and the Right, have been intent on ignoring that in the minds of those who seek their destruction, there is no distinction between the war against the Jews and the war against the Christian West. The vilely anti-Semitic decision by the Anglican Church last week to divest from Israel and companies doing business with Israel is a case in point. The Anglican Church, which has wholeheartedly adopted the anti-Semitic "replacement" theology which asserts that Christianity replaced the Jewish covenant with God, is no doubt so blinded by its anti-Semitism that it is incapable of understanding that it shares the same enemies as the despised Jews.
Responding to the increasing anti-Semitism in his own country, Tony Blair has worked to undermine Israel's strategic partnership with the United States. Since the September 11 attacks, Blair has been studiously insisting that Arab and Palestinian terrorism against Israel and Jews and concomitant anti-Semitic ideology is wholly distinct from terrorism and jihadist ideology against non-Jews. Over the weekend, on his way to Singapore, Blair made a brief visit to Saudi Arabia to meet with Crown Prince Abdullah and reportedly discussed with him the need for the establishment of a Palestinian state. During his campaign for reelection, Blair paid a visit to the Board of Jewish Deputies and told them, in the midst of the violent anti-Semitism that wracked the campaign, that achieving "peace" between Israel and the Palestinians through the establishment of a Palestinian state was the most urgent foreign policy issue on his agenda. Even as the battles were still raging in the immediate aftermath of the American-British invasion of Iraq, in April 2003, Blair pushed US President George W. Bush to pressure Israel to accept the so-called road map for peace despite Israel's objections. Blair has offered to train the terror-tainted Palestinian militias and Alistair Crooke, the British EU security coordinator with the Palestinians, has been carrying on a dialogue with Hamas and Hizbullah for years.
The thing of it is, through all of this, the overwhelming majority of Israelis have had great respect for Blair as a leader because of his willingness to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Americans in Iraq despite the toll it has taken both on his standing in his own political camp in Britain and on Britain's relations with France and Germany. His insistence on remaining true to the Anglo-American alliance even as levels of anti-American sentiment have risen precipitously throughout Europe and in Britain itself in recent years has been honorable and courageous. Israelis see a reason for hope in Blair's stubborn defense of that partnership. Just as he stands by America, we believe that he will also stand by Israel when at last he accepts the truth that the Palestinian war against Israel is part and parcel of the same jihad that turned Salman Rushdie into a hunted man in Britain and has now turned Britain's underground system and its buses into scenes from a Tel Aviv cafe.
This past May in a sermon televised on PA television, PA employee Sheik Ibrahim Mudeiris said, "We [Muslims] have ruled the world before, and by Allah, the day will come when we will rule the entire world again. The day will come when we will rule America. The day will come when we will rule Britain and the entire world — except for the Jews. The Jews will not enjoy a life of tranquility under our rule, because they are treacherous by nature, as they have been throughout history. The day will come when everything will be relieved of the Jews."
When Israelis hear this we understand two things.
We understand that our enemies truly do seek to annihilate us. And we also understand that the rest of the civilized world, which is being attacked by the same forces, must stand up to them just as we must stand up to them if any of us is to prevail.
It is not polite to criticize a nation when it is under attack. But doing so is not motivated by anger or bitterness, but rather by an understanding of the difficulty of mustering the will to fight. Reacting to the attack on his country and his people, Blair said, "It is important 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."
Just so. And again, as it is true that Israel stands with Britain in the aftermath of the murderous attacks on its citizens, it is also true that for the civilized nations of the world to win the war against jihad, it is necessary for all to understand that the forces who fight us are the same ones. An attack against any of us — including Israel — is an attack against all of us.
Caroline
Caroline is a song by The Status Quo
08.07.2005 20:22
Dear Caroline.
Please read the rest of my posts on this site if you are going to reply.
I have never entertained an anti-semitic thought in my life until what I just read (and I never wish to again). I sincerely hope that your countrymen are not as singlemindedly blind to all nature of reality as you truly, truly are. Your pathetic self-interested political speech presented as patronising sympathy is littered with the kind of mind numbing, self-righteous, egotistical, racist bullshit that I would usually expect to hear from an ageing politician who is so far right that he no longer requires shoes in pairs. I mean hopping mad, ranting at the stars and dreaming of simpler days when dictators were real dictators and secret policemen were real secret policemen, dust flying out of his ears and steam from his nostrils. Please feel free to kill yourself whenever the opportunity arises, preferably painfully and slowly. You are an affront to all religions but espescially your own. Go on admit it, at night when you are all alone you secretly eat pork to ease the pain and depression of being all alone in your own personal universe.
You are what Shakespeare would have referred to as a quaint or a Kent. Seriously.
My religious education teacher was Jewish, my best friend as a child was Jewish, all of the finest historical writings, movies, comedies, theories, philosophies etc. are usually found to have originated from your fantastic religion. The Scots are second only to the Jews in terms of genius and inventive ability. What happened when they made you? Did your mum spend her whole pregnancy on a rollercoaster? Seriously I want to know what your obvious malfunction has been caused by, so that I can ensure it NEVER happens again.
If I had any fissile material (and I don't all you overseers) I would donate it to Iran right now, just to make sure that YOU, personally are rendered into your constituent particles. You are a fucking evil bitch that must be stopped. Please any Israelies reading this hunt down Caroline and blow her tiny mind out through the back of her head. I'm going to go wash my eyes with turpentine to try an make them clean again after her literary rape fest.
Next time a bus goes bang in the Holy Land everyone be sure to watch Speed and laugh your tits off.
Alex ( lexicon smith)
In de media.
08.07.2005 21:06
Alex ( lexicon smith)
The Propaganda Matrix of the London Bombings
08.07.2005 21:27
Israels finance minister Netanyahu was tipped off about the coming explosions by Scotland Yard, so he stayed in his hotel instead of going to a meeting he was scheduled to address--right next to one of the explosions! Nevertheless, after the explosion happened officials went on for some time blaming it on a electrical transformer, not explosives. So they knew it was coming, tipped off their friends, didn't stop it, and then lied to the people about what happened through the media! That's treason already.
Keep on this. Don't let your lying officials get away with anything.
Dancing Dave
50 civilians killed per day - EVERY day in Iraq
08.07.2005 21:49
says its a response to the invasion/occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Well, just in Iraq alone, during a bit less than 1000 days (over 2 1/2 years), between
20,000 to 100,000 civilians have been killed in Iraq:
That makes about 20-100 civilians per day.
Think about it.
Sure, the London attack was disgusting and cannot be tolerated. But it only happened
ONCE - and the US/UK invasion/occupation of Iraq is just as disgusting and intolerable
doing the same thing EVERY DAY (on average).
against all killings of civilians
Homepage:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_invasion_of_Iraq_casualties
Caroline: Pied Piper for State Terror
08.07.2005 21:54
PS: Check Haaretz or the Jerusalem Post today for your talking points: "Prime Minister Ariel Sharon instructed his cabinet not to make any comments on yesterday's terror attacks in London and to refrain from making statements that would equate the terror in Britain with that in Israel." Well, duh! Britain looks the other way for Israel's state terror, while Israel cheers on Britain's war of terror. Don't upset that delicate balance now.
End Illegal Occupations
Homepage:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/597658.html
To the International Patriots
08.07.2005 22:37
You guys are fantastic -
Truly blessed souls -
it is a pleasure to be on the same side.
sincerely
a brother
-
tuckett
tuckett
Homepage:
http://www.subbionic.com
There once was a girl from Nan Tuckett
08.07.2005 23:43
A Lexicon (the artist formerly known as Alex)
Tip for Scotland Yard
09.07.2005 02:21
Occam's Razor
I'm Sorry, So Sorry
09.07.2005 10:34
Only Joking.
I did it. ME. That's right, I'm the lone nut. It was easy really, all I had to do was visit an Army Surplus store and by some refined modern explosives( they keep them on the shelf next to the compasses and BB guns).
Planting the charges couldn't have been easier, because I'm white, Scottish, I wear expensive suits and designer italian shoes. No one was looking out for me, they were carefully watching light brown people who don't speak proper, and wear wacky foreign clothes and who can't afford a razor to shave with ( you know I suspect they eat olives and feta cheese. Yuck)
As I stood outside Euston, eating a bacon sandwich, detonating the bombs with my cartier diamond wristwatch transmitter, I laughed. Laughed. A deep booming crazy gut roar.
All you conspiracy nuts think it was something to do with G8 or a police state or Islam or International Money Lenders. Some of you even believe that I was trying to say something by detonating the number 30 outside the Headquaters of the British Medical Association in Tavistock Square. (I do so wish the 23 bus route went past there)
Well you're all wrong. I was targeting the offices of The Shoe Studio group in Tavistock square. Those bastards deserve to be blown off the planet. You know they are the ones who brought back Burberry and sold it to the masses through Selfriges. It's true the buyers planned it all in 1999 brought it back autumn 2000 and expected the whole thing to be a passing fad. How were they to know that the brainless lower classes would pick up on it and use it as a status symbol. Shoe Studio are responsible for chav fashion. Thats why I decided to blow up a bus outside their offices.
Don't let the mainstream media tell you otherwise.
A Lexicon (the artist formerly known as alex)
London Underground Bombing 'Exercises' Took Place at Same Time as Real Attack
09.07.2005 20:44
Deja Vu
Homepage:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/july2005/090705bombingexercises.htm
You
09.07.2005 23:48
or
was blinded.
tuckett
I explain
10.07.2005 00:11
You were very violent in your words toward a woman in the above posting.
You can't influence people so easily.
Be the person you say to represent.
tuckett
The Grasshopper Lies Heavy
10.07.2005 11:16
Perhaps you are right. I don't claim to represent anyone but myself and if Caroline is indeed just a young Israeli woman who is completely taken in by her local programming then she would not deserve such a violent outburst. In my mind when I wrote she was simply a puppet of her own state control system and her writings were little more than regurgitated propoganda. I don't believe Caroline was a person however, I feel she was the personification of a political speech writer and I am deeply concerned by the amount of official spin presented as personal opinion within these messages.
I stick by my original assertion. For turning artifical sympathy into an extended fully anti-Arab, fearmongering, self important, 'told you so' speech she deserved the reaction she generated.
Somehow she seems to have missed the point that due to Britains past and vicious empire enforcement we have seen 300 years of terrible and bloody terrorism from all around the world. She seems to believe and assert that Israel is place where all terrorism started and that Israel knows the answer to all the worlds problems. This latest tiny stage-managed event might fool a few undereducated children in Britain into anti-arab sentiments, the behaviour of others might fool some reactionaries into anti-semitic beliefs and the overall sense of deception and fearmongering will undoubtedly send conspiracy theorists through the roof.
I do hope it all works out positively but this event was only just enough to get the British Media humming a little and I fear we are in for much, much worse somewhere in USA before the year is out. I personally was expecting what happened this week and had the News on perpetual record from Friday 1st onwards.
Sorry If I have offended your non violent sensibilities or you feel my sense of humour is far below good taste.
A Lexicon
To all those monday people.
10.07.2005 19:19
Seriously, I doubt very much that anyone has any claim to any land. Historical homeland or not. It is a spherical planet and we are all stuck with it. I guess you see enemies everywhere because of the incessent attacks on your religion throughout the ages which you seem to bang on about, picking at the scab so that it can never heal.
Just a little heads up, so that you can stop being so confused. Most of the people in western Europe are not Christian nor Jewish nor Muslim nor Jedi. We are just people. A lot of us have abandoned religion as a dead loss. Most of us appreciate that people should be allowed to believe in whatever makes them comfortable. God, Allah, Santa Claus, Buddah, Kurt Cobain, Thule.... you know, whatever's your poison. If the Muslims do want total world domination, they are welcome to it. A change is as good as a rest. Better to have an overlord you can see and who behaves openly. If the Hari Krisnas want total world domination then good, I'll shave my head in preperation. I personally can see no more cohesive evidence of either scenario than the racist accusations levelled against Judaism.
Why the Israelis posting on this site feel the need to propogate Anti-Islamic sentiment with the single minded determination that they do, I can only guess at. From what I can see you guys are only gonna reap what you sow. Enjoy armageddon you poisonous toad.
A Lexicon
This is not the time to go Wobbley!!!
11.07.2005 04:12
As a United States Citizen, I join you in the sadness that you all must feel at the loss of your fellow countrymen.
Additionally, I want to thank you for your courage and sacrifice in this war on terror. The British know terror and have dealt with it successfully for decades. Unfortunately, I feel it was my misguided, leftist, Irish relatives who inflicted the most serious offenses against your country.
You are now dealing with extremism, the likes of which, you have never seen. These radical Muslim extremist that reside within your own borders do not condemn the attacks but rather seek to justify the actions of their brothers. It is time to realize that the enemy within may be as strong or stronger than those that we jointly fight in Iraq and Afganistan. I have no doubt that we will prevail and it will not be pretty for those Muslim cowards who carried out these attacks.
In the meantime, our prayers and hearts are with those who are truly British.
Your Good Friends Since the War of 1812,
Jack
Jack Ryan
PR company excercise
11.07.2005 11:32
I believe these stories originated from people who have an interest in peddling this sort of fabulous conspiracy in order to peddle their books, DVDs, tea towels and whatever to people. Problem is, many people will now use their story as the primary source and not check the original sources.
There are many reasons why several governments around the world would want such a bombing to occur, right now I don't think there's sufficient evidence to point the finger, at least in my opinion (and I admit I feel I'm far from having the whole picture). I just think that if revealing government involvement is important, then it needs to be presented level-headedly, without *any* assumptions or muddling of the facts that could be picked apart, if the ultimate goal is to alert the public as to what is happening.
Ted Jones
Father Ted Jones
11.07.2005 12:07
You are quite an annoying entity aren't you. You feel free to criticise others for not checking further than the reposted story and yet fail to listen to the recording of the interview yourself. I have downloaded a copy of it. It took 2 minutes. Try it. You might learn something.
Finished.
Good.
That's right, you did hear correctly, Mr Powell states unequivocally that his control center was in charge of 1000 agents taking part in the pre planned drill which involved explosions in the locations where they then actually occured and at around the time they occured. This coincidence obviously seems reasonable to you?
Now I agree with you that Alex Jones and Prison Planet do have an ulterior motive in investigating these matters. I'm certain that they do make a tidy profit from DVDs and T-Shirts.
That does not alter the FACTS which they are reporting.
If you continue to post such biased opinions I will be less than happy with you.
Quick Sheep, Get in the pen, it's mightier than the sword.
...went to mow a meadow.
Ex Lex
The Hate
11.07.2005 13:21
“The home secretary and the foreign secretary,” he read, “have commissioned [this] paper for the prime minister on how to prevent British Muslims, especially young Muslims, from becoming attracted to extremist movements and terrorist activity.”
The 36-page paper was littered with misspellings, bad grammar and the egregious waffle that the civil service has learnt from new Labour — “We have a 10-point action plan on engaging with ethnic minorities” — but it dealt presciently with the home-grown terrorism that the police and MI5 believe lies behind last Thursday’s bomb outrages in London.
Focusing on young Muslims “who were either born in the UK or who have significant ties to it rather than those who have acquired British nationality more recently”, the paper spelt out the disillusionment that might turn a Muslim loner into a bomber.
The prime minister read: “Often disaffected lone individuals unable to fit into their community will be attracted to university clubs based on ethnicity or religion, or be drawn to mosques or preaching groups in prison through a sense of disillusionment with their current existence.”
The paper continued: “Policy should have two main aims: (a) to isolate extremists within the Muslim community, and . . . (b) to help young Muslims from becoming ensnared or bullied into participation in terrorist or extremist activity.”
This was Whitehall’s long-term counter-terrorist strategy codenamed Project Contest. As a strategy it can hardly be qualified as a success after last week’s outrages, but it certainly identified the problem.
Intelligence experts and Islamic leaders agree that Thursday July 7 marks the bloody emergence of home-grown Islamic terrorism in Britain rather than the arrival of Al-Qaeda’s bombers on these shores. The favourite hypothesis of investigators is that the bomb teams comprised a cell of some eight or nine young British Muslims, led by a foreign-born “talisman” figure who controlled and directed them.
“This is a very worrying situation,” said M J Gohel, head of the London-based Asia Pacific Foundation which monitors Islamic terrorism. “We’re looking at a new generation of terrorists — people who are not directly linked to Osama Bin Laden or Al-Qaeda so they can slip under the net of the security services. These are people born or brought up in western Europe, so they fit in but are infected by Bin Laden’s ideology.”
His view was echoed by a former radical who sometimes leads prayers at the Finsbury Park mosque in north London where Abu Hamza, the blind hook-armed cleric, used to preach.
“There is a growing phenomenon of angry young Muslims in Britain,” said this man, who wished to remain anonymous. “I get many young people who watch Al-Jazeera or Al-Arabiya [the satellite TV channels] coming to me after Friday prayers saying they have seen the atrocities at Abu Ghraib or the defacing of Korans at Guantanamo and what should they do.
“I tell them to study, take care of their own lives, that if they are angry with George Bush or Tony Blair there is no point killing innocent people in Oxford Street. But there may be many more going to crazy people who tell them to take matters into their own hands. There is an absolute majority among Muslims who share the anti-US sentiment of Al-Qaeda and it is easy to harness that.”
Who are these young British terrorists and why do they readily fall under the influence of “crazy people”? How are they recruited? How do they operate? What have the police and MI5 done to try to catch them? And are the non-violent majority of Muslim religious activists in Britain the real key to defeating them?
IN THE aftermath of September 11, 2001, British intelligence analysts warned ministers about a new breed of terrorist recruit.
Increasingly, hundreds of young Muslim men, most of them British born, were being drawn to the cause of fundamentalism. Radical websites and imams in mosques in London, Luton, Birmingham, Bradford and Manchester were preaching holy war to disaffected young Muslims who were looking for a purpose.
Unlike the September 11 hijackers, the new terrorists did not have a rigid leadership structure. The majority of them had no criminal record and did not appear on any intelligence data bases linking them to terrorism. They were, in effect, “clean skins” and they were much more difficult to detect.
To counteract this danger, Project Contest was born in Whitehall. Its purpose was set out by Sir Andrew Turnbull, the cabinet secretary, in a letter to permanent secretaries at key government departments in April last year. He wrote: “The aim is to prevent terrorism by tackling its causes . . . to diminish support for terrorists by influencing social and economic issues.”
Referring to the role played in this by radical preachers such as Abu Qatada (also known as Abu Omar), Turnbull explained: “Al-Qaeda and its offshoots provide a dramatic pole of attraction for the most disaffected.”
Of particular concern was that the Islamist terrorist recruiters were targeting the poor and the jobless. An official audit provided to the Project Contest working committee showed that Muslims were three times more likely to be unemployed than the population as a whole.
Surveillance of the Muslim community by MI5 and Special Branch found that extremist groups were also operating within universities to recruit middle-class students. A small group of postgraduates at Imperial College and others at Brunel University in west London were of particular concern.
The paper prepared for the prime minister spelt out the breadth of the problem: “By extremism, we mean advocating or supporting views such as support for terrorist attacks against British or western targets, including the 9/11 attacks, or for British Muslims fighting against British and allied forces abroad, arguing that it is not possible to be Muslim and British, calling on Muslims to reject engagement with British society and politics, and advocating the creation of an Islamic state in Britain.”
It stated that “a small number of young British Muslims are known to have committed or participated in terrorism abroad . . . a number of extremist groups operate in the UK and seek to recruit young Muslims . . . and an increasing number of British Muslims, often young, have needed UK consular services after being detained on suspicion of terrorist or extremist activity in other parts of the world (eg Yemen, Egypt and the US)”.
The paper cited an intelligence estimate that the number of British Muslims engaged in terrorist activity, whether at home or abroad, or supporting it, was “less than 1%” of the UK’s Muslim population of 1.6m. But that suggests that up to 16,000 may be involved — a numbing figure.
It went on to explain why these thousands of potential terrorists remain below the security radar: “Whilst many have grown up in Muslim households, a significant number come from liberal, non- religious Muslim backgrounds or only converted to Islam in adulthood. These converts include white British nationals and those of West Indian extraction.
“By and large most young extremists fall into one of two groups: well educated — undergraduates or with degrees and technical professional qualifications in engineering or IT — or under-achievers with few or no qualifications and often a criminal background.
“The former group is often targeted by extremist recruiters circulating among university-based religious or ethnic societies. Among the latter group some are drawn to mosques where they may be targeted by extremist preachers; others are radicalised or converted while in prison.
“However, a significant number of young radicalised British Muslims have been recruited through a single contact, often by chance, outside either of these environments. Such individuals are encouraged to maintain a low profile for operational purposes and do not develop the network of associates or political doctrines common to many other extremist Islamists.”
One former radical insisted last week that recruitment is no longer taking place in mosques or Islamic organisations — which are now largely under the control of “moderates” — but in pubs, discos and casinos.
The exporting of home-grown jihadis — and their fanaticism — was confirmed in Iraq last month by a senior insurgent commander, “Abu Ahmad”, who revealed that about 70 volunteers had arrived from Britain. Two had been killed fighting alongside him against American troops.
One of these, a 22-year-old known as Abu Hareth, had been born in Britain of Iraqi parents. He was killed in fighting in Falluja in April last year.
“When the battle intensified and due to his lack of military experience I asked him to take shelter in a basement. He refused my advice and told me off for asking him to hide and he said, ‘I will hold this against you when the day of reckoning comes for you tried to prevent me from attaining martyrdom’,” Abu Ahmad said.
Two brothers — Ammar, 22, and Yasser, 18 — arrived in Iraq from Britain after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003: “They could not wait to go out and fight and kept on asking when they will go into battle.”
After about a month, Ammar was killed fighting American troops: “His younger brother Yasser, who witnessed Ammar’s death, surprised us by shedding tears of joy and praising Allah for his brother’s martyrdom.”
The commander continued: “When we returned to our base we asked Yasser to return home, telling him it was enough that his family had lost one son; it would not be right if the second son was also killed and that there were others who would fight on his behalf here.
“But he refused and told us: ‘What would I tell my mother? She will not accept me in the house for when she bid us farewell she told us either to return victorious or to achieve martyrdom. I cannot return. I have to finish off what Ammar my brother started here, and anyway I do not want to leave my brother all alone in this land. I want to be buried with him’. And he began to cry.”
Abu Ahmad said that having been ordered home, Yasser wrote a letter revealing that when he had arrived in Britain his mother had celebrated on hearing about Ammar’s death — “ululating with happiness and calling her friends and relatives to tell them the good news. She distributed sweets and juices in celebration to all those that came to pay their respect”.
BRITISH politicians, civil servants and counter-terrorism specialists have been trying to tackle this fanaticism through a mixture of hearts-and-minds projects and increased policing.
Project Contest has led to new laws to curb the immigration of radical imams to Britain and to the controversial proposals, now before parliament, to outlaw incitement to religious hatred. Other initiatives included more government funding for moderate Islamic newspapers, television and radio stations. Measures to create “Muslim friendly” workplaces with more prayer rooms were proposed as well as special mortgages that would enable Muslims, barred by the religion from paying interest, to buy their own council houses.
At the same time, more resources have been allocated to detecting and preventing terrorist attacks. The sheer size of the pool of potential recruits has presented the police and MI5 with an enormous challenge, however.
After the September 11 attacks it quickly became apparent that the intelligence services were woefully understaffed. Eliza Manningham-Buller, who was made director-general of MI5 in October 2002, ran a successful Whitehall lobbying campaign to win funds for another 1,000 officers, a 50% increase in MI5’s staffing.
The Metropolitan police special branch SO12, which carries out covert security operations against terrorism, also underwent a rapid expansion, increasing its staffing to more than 800 officers.
In the aftermath of the attacks on America there was, in the words of one senior police officer last week, “a huge intelligence gap”. But in the past three years, he added, that gap had closed significantly as the understanding grew of how Al-Qaeda operated. By the beginning of this year there were some 2,500 Special Branch officers spread across England and Wales, with more than 700 in Scotland.
Since September 11 there have been more than 700 arrests of terrorist suspects. Critics of the stepped-up security point out that there have been only 17 convictions — and just three of these were linked to Al-Qaeda related activity.
That, critics said, suggested an over-reaction by the authorities. But insiders say that the figures reflected a deliberate policy. In the past, counter-terrorist operations against the IRA’s bombing campaigns would see suspects being followed for months before sufficient evidence was gathered to arrest them.
The IRA had a relatively small number of known operatives whose movements were relatively easy to track. But Al-Qaeda and its affiliates posed an unspecified, mostly unknown and little understood threat of a catastrophic attack in which thousands of people might be killed.
In those circumstances it was decided that no risks would be taken: policing was designed to disrupt and destabilise terrorist activity before it could result in the loss of lives. That meant arresting people as soon as they became known as terrorist suspects. The priority was not gathering evidence for any future court case but protecting the country from attack.
Recently, senior police and intelligence officials became confident that they had “broken the back” of the Al-Qaeda threat to Britain. With the apparent closing of the “intelligence gap”, a more relaxed mood of confidence began to percolate throughout the intelligence community. Earlier this year the security services began to talk about reverting to the old IRA policy of letting suspects run before launching raids to arrest them.
At the same time as this new arrest policy gained ascendancy in Whitehall security circles, analysts began to observe a change in the type of suspect being arrested from foreign-born to British. Trials at the Old Bailey next year will reveal that the majority of the defendants are British citizens.
The vast majority of suspects now on MI5’s watch list have no previous involvement with terrorism. And not being watched at all are the army of “clean skins” or “lily-whites” whose existence is suspected by the authorities but who are still unidentified. It is these invisible young men who may have formed the backbone of the terror cell that struck the heart of London on Thursday morning.
There are various reasons for believing that they were not Al-Qaeda operatives. Intelligence sources say that the organisation claiming responsibility after the attacks, the Secret Organisation of Al-Qaeda in Europe, has not previously shown up on their radar screens beyond one mention on a website when they were demanding the withdrawal of Bulgarian troops from Iraq.
According to one former associate of Bin Laden, the wording of their statement was unusual. “Their description of the Prophet and also referring to an Arabic nation was not part of the culture of Al-Qaeda,” he said. “I think the attack was carried out by admirers of Bin Laden, not associates. He has become this kind of iconic hero to a lot of disgruntled people. They have probably never met him or anyone close to him.”
Other sources pointed out that Al-Qaeda is now a loose umbrella organisation since the post-September ll crackdowns and many extremist groups are using the Al-Qaeda handle. “Everyone is flying in the air when they talk of Al-Qaeda,” agreed one former member now living in London. “We can’t say who is a leader, who is not, so there is an open window for anyone to claim they are.”
THE ROOT of the problem in the eyes of many foreign security operatives remains London’s reputation as a haven for extremists.
“It may not be the moment to say it,” said a defence ministry official in Paris, “but London is paying for its mistakes, for allowing all those radical organisations from Saudis to Pakistanis to set up shop in London, put out newsletters, make recruits and gather funds to finance their activities.”
Young men from Algeria and Morocco, including members of Islamist armed organisations, came to Britain in the early 1990s to escape persecution by the security forces in their home countries. They were granted asylum and some have since lived on welfare. Supporters of the Armed Islamic Group, known then as the GIA, used mosques such as Finsbury Park and Brixton, in south London, to raise funds to buy guns and bankroll a terror campaign that cost tens of thousands of lives in Algeria. They engaged in blackmail, drug dealing and credit card fraud to support their fundraising in London, Manchester and Birmingham.
In April 1994, after raids on GIA suspects in Paris, police found documents said to be “GIA communiqués” sanctioning the murder of Algerian police officers. Fax numbers were traced to London addresses in Southall, Mile End, Brixton, Finsbury Park and Richmond. A French investigating magistrate came to London to try to interview eight of those linked to the documents. But he was apparently blocked by the British authorities.
The French were so concerned about the role of the GIA and other groups in London that they authorised illegal spying operations against them in London — without telling the British.
Reda Hassaine, an Algerian journalist who came to Britain in the early 1990s, ended up working for MI5 and French intelligence, reporting on radicals inside the Muslim community. But Hassaine believes that despite huge efforts, the government and the security forces have been been far too complacent in dealing with the threat.
For more than a decade, Hassaine says, Britain has been a “soft touch” for Islamist radicals who used it as a fundraising and propaganda base to launch attacks in Algeria and elsewhere: “The groups here now are much more independent of each other. There are plenty of them and they’ve been here in London for a long time.”
One former Algerian jihadi may hold the answer to the terrorist threat. When he was 24, Abdullah Anas reached a turning point in his life. A member of the Muslim Brotherhood and an imam, he had been brought up on stories of the long war for Algeria’s independence from France. Now he decided it was his turn to take up the gun for a cause: in his case, jihad.
Anas travelled to Peshawar in Pakistan and then walked for 40 days to northern Afghanistan. He lost most of his toenails, but “I felt I was reborn when I first got there . . . Even though I was sick for 10 days, I was so happy to be walking along with my Kalashnikov and with my brothers”.
He fought there for eight years, becoming close to Bin Laden. But he was eventually disillusioned. “I am proud God chose me to be part of that holy war. I went there prepared to become a martyr. But it was very sad for me to see that once they had liberated their own land, they were unable to build their country. It was a big lesson for me,” he said last week.
“I realised that Muslims can win the battle, but can’t stabilise afterwards and win the peace. I saw it with my own eyes. I saw the same in Algeria, where my father and grandfather fought for freedom from the French, but once we had it, it fell to pieces. The Muslim fighters know how to die, but not how to live.”
Anas was among the wave of Algerians receiving asylum in Britain. He learnt English and now works as a company secretary and teaches Arabic and Koranic studies. The board of trustees running Finsbury Park mosque since the overthrow of its radical regime regularly invites him to preach to congregations of 1,000.
His message is both outspokenly Muslim and adamantly against violence. London is a safe haven for Muslims, he says: “In some ways London is the closest thing we can get to the society described by the Koran. God said, I created you as many nations, tribes and languages. That is what we have here. None of us should seek to impose our views or values on the other.”
He says this way of relating to life in London, as set down by the Prophet, is not simply a choice: “It is an obligation. We are part of this society and I tell my congregations that this is why I want them to know what the Prophet himself did.
“Anyone targeting this society is my enemy. They are targeting me and my family as much as anyone else, no matter who they are.”
He added: “Like many Muslims I am angered by what the Americans are doing in Iraq or the Israelis do in Palestine. But injustices must be dealt with by scholars and politicians, not by hotheads.
“These recruiters and terrorists, they are simply trying to use the anger of the young for their own agenda. Of course there is anger, but these criminals are trying to pervert it. I am not a hypocrite or an agent either of the United States or Bin Laden. This is my religion, what I believe in.”
Additional reporting: Matthew Campbell, Hala Jaber, Christina Lamb, Robert Winnett
TURNIG FROM BRITAIN'S YOUTH CULTURE TO ISLAM'S CERTAINTIES
The biggest division among Britain’s youth is no longer class, it’s religion. For one group there is MSN, the X-box, T4, Jay-Z, Diamond White, Pot Noodles, Maybelline Great Lash mascara and sex. For the other there are five daily prayers, hijab, arranged marriages, a lifelong relationship with Allah and the spectres of honour killings and terrorism.
“We try not to separate ourselves,” said Nirma Muslim, an 18-year-old Leicester schoolgirl. “But I have to admit that the majority of places me and my friends go are Islamic.”
Is it that Muslim children have become more religious than their parents? Professor Akbar Ahmed, the world’s leading authority on contemporary Islam, first noticed a shift towards militancy here in the 1980s. “The Muslim generation of the Sixties were more interested in making a name for themselves on the cricket field or in the literary field but now the equivalent generation want to make a name for themselves by going out and fighting a physical and violent jihad in the name of Islam.”
Why? “Unlike American Muslims, British Muslims tend towards a much closer relationship with their motherlands and live in more detached communities. Because of globalisation, technology, and the media, they also have a sense of being a ‘global Muslim’.”
Zubair Patel, a 19-year-old Muslim of Indian descent studying for his A-levels at Regent sixth-form college in Leicester, thinks a generation of young men and women now of university age were shaped by 9/11.
“If you dressed like a Muslim at that time, people would hassle you in the street. It forced us to look for an identity and ask, ‘Do I want to be in the mainstream or do I want to say I am Muslim?’” He started wearing the shalwar kameez (with a Burberry sweatshirt and a Prada beanie).
“I am not one of those Muslims who take part in the whole western thing, like drinking and drugs,” he said. “Those people get portrayed as the moderate Muslims — like that’s what you should be like if you’re living in Britain.”
“Some people get tempted to join in,” said his friend Rabi Miah, 17. “But you have to look within yourself and decide that instead of a club you go out for dinner with your friends.”
Zubair said: “I’ve been back to where my parents grew up in India and in their neighbourhood they had two mosques. Here we have four mosques on our street and an Islamic boarding school on the corner. They had two scholars, Leicester has 165. England has given us a greater chance to become more devout than our parents.”
“It's sad in a sense, though,” said Nirma. “Although we were born and brought up here, we are not experiencing Britain.”
“But what’s the alternative?” asked Zubair. “Going clubbing and getting high?” He confessed: “I’d like to find it within myself to go up to any non-Muslim on the street and say, ‘This is who I am. Who are you? Lets have a chat’.”
“It’s harder to do than it sounds, though,” said Rabi Miah.
As a child, Na’ima B Robert liked carol singing but never thought of herself as religious. “I was nominally feminist, and when I went on a trip to Egypt after a really wild summer before my second year of university I was bothered by the women in hijab. It was only when I asked one of them why she was covering up that it hit me. She said, ‘I want to be judged for what I say and what I do — not what I look like’.”
A year later Na’ima converted to Islam. A year after that she had guardians arrange a marriage. She felt liberated by her religion, and joined a growing number of Islamic feminists who feel hijab frees them from having to rely on beauty as their primary currency.
“Anyone who’s ever smelt the reek of vomit on the side of the road can understand a little bit of the sense in the Koran,” she said. “But more than that Islam answered the biggest question you have as a young person, ‘Why are we here?’” Her friends and family were less pleased with her transformation. “My father was very upset. He felt like he would lose his daughter to Islam. Socially, my university friends and me were left with little in common. My religion is not something you do for two hours on a Friday. It’s holistic and hard to sustain when you’re not around people who help you.”
David Leppard
1000 Agents
11.07.2005 14:02
Ted Jones
No, Father Ted, No.
11.07.2005 15:52
That is not what Peter Powell says in the recording. That is what the transcript of the recording reads.
In the recording he says "because at half past nine this morning, we were actually running an excercise for uh, oh, v, um, a company, with a thousand people in London, based on simaultaneous bombs going off precisely at the railway stations it happened this morning. So I still have the hairs on the back of my neck standing upright"
Almost but not quite, what is documented in the transcript. In the recording he is clearly hesitating as to how to describe his client, before settling on "a company". He is not saying that the company has over 1000 people in London, he is stating that 1000 people were involved in the excercise.
He goes on... "we had a room full of crisis managers for the first time they'd met and so within five minutes we made a pretty rapid decision that this is the real one and so we went through the correct drills of activating crisis management procedures"
If the excercise was entirely theoretical and did not involve anyone on the ground there would have been no need to differentiate between the drill and the real world as the in house excercise would have had no bearing on reality. Also what you are suggesting defies logic. Hiring a specialist crisis management group to perform a virtual event where all of the data is gathered as theory behind closed doors would be like having a fire drill in a school where the only people to know about it are the Head Teacher and senior staff and they gather all of the data from estimating how long it would take to get the kids out and to the assembly areas, on paper.
Now we all know that when a school has a fire drill, all of the teachers, staff and pupils are required to behave as if there were a real fire, the safety and evacuation data is collected from real events and in many cases the local fire service takes part to get data on how quickly they can respond.
Listen again, better yet give me your address and I'll loop the recording with a nice drum track, fill a CD and send it to you, just to be sure you understand what you are listening to.
Ex Lex
The Hybrid Culture that produce the Terrorist Me
11.07.2005 17:45
Indeed it has become customary, even cliché to be narrate in blastings history out of contradiction in things, that wear the law of the unity of opposites slew to unities of altered media suspicion. Is the most basic law in material dialectics, addicted to wear (it) as the basic law of nature and society to empeach Islamic vocabulation to minorities as oppressed ones...
It is the opposite of the meta-lingual world outlooked. It means a great revolution in the history of human knowledge by terrorist act's - according to the viewpoint by dialectical paternalism of such their shame. Contradiction exists in all processed by objective materials into subjective thought's upto deal with...the humor will be black and rich in irony to more irony for the Qu'ran vocation.
Smash the upcoming Racism !
Black Block Paki
Very Scary and Effectively Planned
12.07.2005 10:29
For anyone else that would like to understand the Project for a New American Century can come to terms with it in about an hour listening to these two fine investigators.
The information presented here is not conspiracy theory but a set of facts related to a criminal conspiracy.
David Ray Griffin on C-SPAN TV
Michael Ruppert: Cheney Command and Control
Cebolla
But None Ever Cried for My Children
12.07.2005 17:24
Livingstone: Terror attack against ordinary Londoners
SINGAPORE (AP) -- London Mayor Ken Livingstone said the blasts that ripped through his city were "mass murder" carried out by terrorists bent on "indiscriminate ... slaughter."
"I want to say one thing: This was not a terrorist attack against the mighty or the powerful, it is not aimed at presidents or prime ministers, it was aimed at ordinary working-class Londoners," Livingstone told reporters.
Transcript of Bush remarks on London bombings:
"The war on terror goes on. I was most impressed by the resolve of all the leaders in the room. Their resolve is as strong as my resolve. And that is, we will not yield to these people, will not yield to the terrorists.
"We will find them. We will bring them to justice. And at the same time we will spread an ideology of hope and compassion that will overwhelm their ideology of hate.
Russian President Vladimir Putin called for a united response, according to wire reports.
"Wherever such inhuman crimes occur -- in London, in New York or in Moscow -- we must unconditionally condemn them and unite all civilized countries in the struggle against international terrorism," Putin said through a spokesman, according to the reports.
* * * *
The horrid images flashed across the screens everywhere. Bloody, mangled people strewn on the road, blood and severed body parts were splattered across the seats in the blasted trains and bus. Dozens of bodies were tagged and shipped off to the mortuary. Hundreds of wounded packed nearby hospitals as England and the world reeled from the brutality of the act. London and the world were horrified, and rightly so, at another set of coordinated terrorist attacks by an Islamic group. Condolences were heavily saturated with strong, bitter and defiant condemnations and the attacks correctly tagged as "mass murder of innocents".
My heart went out for those innocent people whose lives were cut short or forever altered. I cried for the young who'll never again see the sun, pick a flower or say a prayer. My heart bled for that little girl whose mother will never again hold her in her arms and that little three-year-old boy waiting by the window for the father who will never again pick him up and toss him in the air. How does one describe the agony and pain of the parent slated to stare unbelievingly at a child's forever-empty bed? And where does a once-happy house regain the happy giggling of the frolicking child whose sweet singing voice is stilled forever? Where, indeed?
And I listened raptly to the expanding stream of political dignitaries who condemned such acts of murder and the spilling of innocent blood. I listened to President George Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair. I followed the sad yet determined consternation voiced by Jacques Chirac of France and Koffi Anan of the United Nations. Pope Benedict, Governor Pataki, Zapatero of Spain and Russia's Vladimir Putin. They spoke angrily and vowed to pursue, capture or eliminate the perpetrators. Eloquence and passionate determination, reaffirming the world's commitment to eradicate the scourge of terrorism against innocent civilians, was voiced by all without exception. By all!
It was then that I began to shiver. I shivered not from the cold wind in July, but rather from the sudden realization that I and they are not chess pieces in the same game. The shiver rose from within, from the deep recesses of my heart. Sudden realization? No. It was a shiver brought on not by realization, but of affirmation.
In the words spoken by these politicians I hear affirmation that my child's blood, a Jewish child's blood, is of a different color. I shivered as I heard London's mayor, Livingstone, lamented that this was "mass murder... by terrorists bent on indiscriminate... slaughter... aimed at ordinary working-class Londoners...." and an ugly thought entered my mind.
What of the slaughter of my children, 'ordinary, working-class' brothers and sisters in Haifa and Jerusalem, Ashdod and Ashkelon? What about my working-class Jewish fellow citizens whose simple wants and needs are the same as those in London? Where is the determination to eradicate the vermin who have turned Israeli streets into infernos as they blow up buses, restaurants and malls?
Do those murdering and maiming my children deserve a state of their own from which they can peacefully continue to bathe my country in blood? Why are the snakes in London to be pursued and eradicated, while those who have killed young Jewish mothers, Jewish infants and the unborn are to be rewarded and feted as heroes in every corner of every continent in the universe?
I shook spasmodically, the shiver rattled my teeth, as I heard President Bush, my president, vow to "find them... bring them to justice...." Bring whom to justice, I thought loudly? I'm sure he wasn't referring to those same Palestinian murderers who indiscriminately murder Israelis and whose incarceration is cut short by American demands that Israel set them free. I'm sure President Bush wasn't referring to the PLO hoodlums who have been so conveniently and magically re-incarnated in the form of newly-appointed Palestinian Authority 'policemen'. And I'm sure that the president's words of defiance weren't directed at Yasser Arafat's henchman, otherwise known as Abu Mazen.
But then the shiver receded, and in its place, I felt total disappointment and anger sweep over me. There, on the screen, stood Russia's Vladimir Putin. In a no-nonsense tone of voice, the Russian Bear spoke of the need for a "united response" to such acts of terror. Said Mr. Putin, through an interpreter: "Wherever such inhuman crimes occur -- in London, in New York or in Moscow -- we must unconditionally condemn them and unite all civilized countries in the struggle against international terrorism." London? New York? Moscow? I waited to hear Haifa. And Jerusalem. And Afula. And Netanya.
What Mr. Putin said was correct. What he urged was appropriate. The cities he named have suffered greatly at the hands of Muhammad's followers. These cities and others have seen the gory results of Islam's fanaticism. I waited for the Russian weasel to bring his lips to acknowledge those cities and many others in Israel as the epicenters of Islam's global assault on decency. I waited and expected his outrage at the despicable murder in London and New York and Moscow to continue a minute or two further so that I may know that, finally, perhaps, the world will be prompted to avenge my child's blood, too. I waited for Mr. Putin to "unconditionally condemn" the barbaric acts committed against my parents, my loved ones. I waited... and waited. And then he was gone.
I cried for the children in England and for the children in Russia. And I cried along with those in Spain. I cried for them all.
But none ever cried for my children.
Isaac Kohn
TOO COMMON TO BE A COINSIDENCE?
12.07.2005 20:11
Once again it seems that American big business has benefited from a so-called terrorist attack.
The London bombs; was it timed to coincide with the G8 or was it timed to disrupt and defuse the G8 agenda. It seems once again Bush and his paymasters had a lot to gain from a terrorist attack. World’s attention moved from the G8 summit to the London bombs with Tony Blair, the main supporter of policy change and president of the G8 rushing back to be with his people. The G8 was forgotten with nothing being achieved on Fair Trade or climate change. Who would be the winners and losers of a disrupted G8 agenda? It’s certainly not Africans or the environment, which loose out once again. American big businesses and Bush however have a lot to gain, with American farmers wanting to keep African farmers out of the worlds markets, oil giants that don’t want a cap on there profits by emission tariffs and a president wanting to please his masters.
PREDICTION FOR THE FUTURE!
Another gold mine for Bush and his cronies is Iran. It would be just perfect to have control of Iran; they would be able to finish their oil pipeline joining Afghanistan and Iraq.
One up again for big business, hey boys.
robert coates
e-mail:
clenztec@btinternet.com
Re: But None Ever Cried for My Children
12.07.2005 21:37
I must say though that many have cried and continue to cry for Israeli children. Many more than cry for Palestinian children who are murdered daily by the IDF, not monthly or semi-annually, as die in a few desparate resistance attacks by an occupied people.
While Israel has the official right to exist, it does not have the right to create an "apartheid" system that insists that one kind of labelled people are better than another, nor does it have the right to occupy someone else's land, steal their waters, minerals, farmlands, nor build a "Berlin-wall" to justify further theft of poor people's land. These are crimes against humanity! No matter what the justification!
Nor does Israel have a right to create nuclear weapons!... while insisting that none of their neighbors have a right to develop then in self-defense is ludicrous!
The relationship between the current situation in the Middle East with Zionism and Zionist history must be exposed if we are to create peaceful middle east and world. Without seeing the connections between the Zionists and all of the other power brokers of Europe, including Hitler, we will never understand how we got to where we are today.
I suggest reading or listening to Ralph Schoenman's excellent work: The Hidden History of Zionism.
Some of my Hungarian family members (children among them) died in Nazi ovens so that Zionist organizers could go free to Palestine!
If you think that education is difficult try ignorance. Imperialism in any form can never bring peace nor justice!.
No power for nobody!
L'chaim
lechuga
More misreading of statements
13.07.2005 11:39
"The London Times reported,
"The bombers who killed 191 people in Madrid last year also gathered at one place before separating to plant devices timed to explode simultaneously."
How could the Madrid bombers have carried out an attack from the grave? Here is the report saying they blew themselves up. How could they have bombed London if they were already dead? When another city gets bombed and they get blamed again will anyone point out that the same bombers have now been killed twice over?
The Times report is a blatant psy-op to keep the 'Al-Qaeda' drumbeat echoing in people's heads. "
To me, the Times statement seems pretty obvious in that it says that the people suspected for the Madrid bombings met up near the scene before splitting up to plant the bombs.
As for Peter Powers involvement, who knows. Since he didn't mention any employees actually being in the tube system (for example, what if the exercise was for a hotel nearby to the tube system and so the management and employees were being trained to cope with casualties, panic etc. on a mass scale? They would, when the real thing happened, have to deal with the ensuing crisis in "real time management" or whatever corporate buzzword they use).
However, Peter Powers appearence on TV and radio, although probably a case of self promotion (and hence promotion for his company), does smack a little of convenience, that he was there and available so quickly after what happened. It'd be nice to know who he was working with on the day...
Ted Jones
Blood Begets Blood, International Criminals Want Money for War
13.07.2005 12:50
Forgottern Common Children
The bombs were not well directed enough. If one is to remove those who cause one's self pain, one should direct the bombs at those who direct the pain. That is easier said than done. For instance, I am an American denied all rights by law, having received forced injections and medical procedures by the federal government, or a faction therein, for my daring to survive an assassination attempt and for reporting money laundering and murder at the federal agency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
It is my hope an international coalition will come together to fight the international warlords every second of the day, never letting them have a moment's solace. They might not be human as we.
I salute the freedom fighters of the Arab world and I encourage people not to come to America due to the abuses we are enduring, and which are silenced by the government and the international billionaire's mass media. Destroy your television, and ask your anarchists to deal with the local television stations and those ominous multi-use transmission towers.
Overthrow the regime that does not give us our rights and creates a war in the world. Know they are deceptive and reach for the hidden weapons they have created. We in America would be better off with a new government and the only way that will happen is a complete global upheaval and the slitting of the arteries of those who oppose us.
Never again serve the international billionaires military.
Mobile Audit Club has free music and videos, abuse, art, music. I hope the UK is better than the USA because many of us want a global war to rid ourselves of the New American Nazi types, who may not even be human.
The pic below is one of the many child victims of the international regime.
Kurt Brown, SainTramBone
Homepage:
http://www.angelfire.com/zine2/democracyordeath/index.html
Ted Rocks, a bit
13.07.2005 14:42
Time for level heads to look into the evidence. Alex Jones asserts that it is reasonable to assume Transport For London was Visors client, based on no evidence other than a little wordplay and supposition. It is clear from Powells statement that the client was concerned about terror issues regarding American Banks and Jewish Businesses (perhaps justifiably seen as targets, even though Al-whatever tends to attack public transport these days), ....unless of course this too is part of his sales pitch
"Yes, Yes, Yes folks, step right on up, we provide top notch services at knock-em-off prices, all of our key staff have genuine IRA experience, oooooh!, we go from Quicktime to Realplayer thinking without any of that pesky cognition. Conscience? With Visor you don't need a conscience, all of YOUR employees will get to work on time - Guaranteed. We hypnotise them to ignore tragedy over business concerns, forget their human instincts, walk past the injured and dying in the streets and be at their desk refreshed and ready to go. Terrorism? What terrorism? And if you're an American Bank or an Israeli Business we will throw in a fully trained sniffer dog with every seminar, ABSOLUTELY FREE!(sniffer dog paid for with taxpayers money) THIS MONTH ONLY we will even provide cover and disinformation during faked terrorist incidents, because if it's good for BIG business, it's good for OUR business. Call now or visit our website"
Nice one Ted.
Alex (Lexicon Smith)
Visor Consultants
13.07.2005 15:03
A response from Peter Power.
I find the following passage quite interesting:
"In short, our exercise (which involved just a few people as crisis managers actually responding to a simulated series of activities involving, on paper, 1000 staff) quickly became the real thing and the players that morning responded very well indeed to the sudden reality of events."
So, if you believe a PR consultant then there wasn't a company of only 1000 people, just a few people. However:
"It is confirmed that a short number of 'walk through' scenarios planed [sic] well in advance had commenced that morning for a private company in London (as part of a wider project that remains confidential) and that two scenarios related directly to terrorist bombs at the same time as the ones that actually detonated with such tragic results. One scenario in particular, was very similar to real time events."
So they were on the tube system. My arguing that what Peter Powers said was too vague to say this is now null and void, I apologise "A Lexicon". This would also explain Peter Powers interviews on the TV news appearing so quickly after the evacuations. I think, however, that the theory that a massive simulation was used to disguise state forces carrying out a real attack can be struck off the list. I still doubt that, should the police have captured someone with explosives, an excuse that "they were in a simulation" would not really work. Guess we have to keep digging to find out what really happened...
Ted Jones
Well thankyou Ted
13.07.2005 16:20
Mr Powell however has made a fantastic miscalculation in attempting to drum up business out of tradgedy. He clearly hadn't thought through what he was saying and dropped himself and more importantly his confidential client right into the shitstorm. I'm sure he has learnt an important lesson in the cold truth of human nature this week. His official reply, which you have kindly pointed us to, implies that there was more to the matter than a few walkthroughs and a crisis management team..."(as part of a wider project that remains confidential)". He also plays down his earlier statements... simaultaneous detonations in precisley the stations.. has somehow become... two scenarios related directly to terrorist bombs... and... one scenario was very similar.
He then avoids the issue completely by pointing to other drills which were slightly similar to the Visor excercise, completely ignoring the fact that HIS drill scenario involved the actual events and took place at the precise time and date of the real terrorist incident. This is not a strange coincidence due to feasibilty, this is so improbable that it would take a quantum physiscist to calculate the odds! It's not just one of those things.
He insults and dismisses the people who have contacted him demanding answers as innacurate, naive,ignorant,hostile and ill informed. How rude! Who is guilty of being hostile Powell?
He states that Visor will not be answerable to anyone who can not demonstrate a bona fide reason for asking questions, suggesting accredited journalist or an academic. Completely failing to mention of course the on-going criminal investigation into the bombings because he having been the law is now apparently above it. No, they would never ask you questions would they Powell? There is absolutely no reason for suspicion is there?
We all have a bona fide reason for asking, Powell, this is not the first 'terrorist' attrocity when an identical simulation excercise was running along side the real thing.
You and espescially your client should not be assured confidentiality, you cannot hide behind corporate law, people were killed in relation to your excercise no matter how tenuous that link is, it exists.
The truth will out, you will not be able to hide behind such a flimsy and rude statement of denial for long. Eat it!
GUILTY! GUILTY! GUILTY!
Alex (Lexicon Smith)
VISOR CONSULTANTS/ TRAIN DRIVER/ GAS MASKEDS.
13.07.2005 22:22
I thought it was interesting that the headline in `The Enquire` was `LONDON TUBE DRIVER SAVES 1000 AND TWO MEN IN A GAS MASKS`: Jeff Porter who was driving the train said "many people had soot on their faces but two guys had gas masks on. I don't know where they got them from"
Now coupled with the FACT that Visor consultants were opperating at the very same time it poses a few questions: Were these two guys part of Visor Consultants it seems plausible that they were, however it does not appear to be that way as they were led to safety by Jeff Porter, but then surely two guys in gas masks would of come under extreme suspicion by the police, Would they not? We certainly haven't heard anything on the main stream news of any appeal to trace these two individuals, Why is that? Could it be that thse two guys were part of visor consultants? If so that poses a lot of questions, it may lead to nothing but nevertheless it is worth an investigatory look. Has anyone else got some more info on this story?
Cunny
VISOR CONSULTANTS/ TRAIN DRIVER/ GAS MASKEDS.
13.07.2005 22:23
The Link to the above post is:
Cunny
A 'Hardball' Flashback: Britain Blitzed!
14.07.2005 13:08
LENORE LEFTIE: Well, Chris, there is some bother.
HARDBALL: Some bother? That's what you call it? You're in the middle of an air raid.
LENORE LEFTIE: The BBC doesn't use that term, Chris.
HARDBALL: Why? That's what it is.
LENORE LEFTIE: But it's so…judgmental. After all, one man's air raid is another man's justice.
HARDBALL: Well, the German pilots…
LENORE LEFTIE: Please, Chris. Let's not stigmatize an entire nation, the culture that gave us Beethoven and Brahms. Germany is a land of peace. There are, of course, as in any country, a few aberrant…
HARDBALL: Okay, okay, the Nazi pilots. Does that do it for you?
LENORE LEFTIE: Not really. We're talking about a belief system, aren't we? Who are we to criticize another cultural expression? Not all Nazis are pilots. Not all pilots are Nazis.
HARDBALL: Then who's bombing the hell out of you?
LENORE LEFTIE: BBC prefers to call them "hostile actors."
HARDBALL: All right, hostile actors.
LENORE LEFTIE: I'm glad to see you Americans are starting to practice quality journalism.
HARDBALL: Yeah. Oh, by the way, what does the Brit in the street – the guy getting whacked by these bombs – think of the language you use?
LENORE LEFTIE: I doubt if he thinks anything. We must do his thinking for him. Let him just clear the rubble. I went to Oxford.
HARDBALL: Right. Holy Cross here.
LENORE LEFTIE: I'll keep it simple.
HARDBALL: Now, Lenore, I hear London is reeling. Fires every night. Thousands dead. You angry about that?
LENORE LEFTIE: The BBC frowns on anger, as a barrier to understanding. We must get beyond anger and look at the root causes.
HARDBALL: Which are?
LENORE LEFTIE: Us, the Americans, and Israel.
HARDBALL: Hold on. It's 1940. Israel hasn't been invented yet.
LENORE LEFTIE: You Yanks are always sticking up for them, aren't you? We know it's your bosses in the press. And Hadassah.
HARDBALL: We'll talk about that later. So this root cause…
LENORE LEFTIE: We must ask ourselves what we did to cause the reaction of the hostile actors.
HARDBALL: So what did we do?
LENORE LEFTIE: Well, merely look at our Mr. Churchill. Did he ever once try to understand the grievances these hostile actors have? The hurt they felt after the first World War? The constant ridicule? Names like "huns" and "heinies" and even "gerries"? And the Jews complain!
HARDBALL: So it's Churchill?
LENORE LEFTIE: Put yourself in the chair of a struggling leader in Berlin, ruling a nation that makes wonderful cameras, preparing its defenses against the warlike tendencies of racist, colonialist nations that still have kings and queens. And you listen to this fat little Brit talking about fighting on the beaches and in the cities, and declaring that "this is our finest hour." Doesn't anyone else have a finest hour? Why just us? It's cultural arrogance, an indifference to the other.
HARDBALL: The who?
LENORE LEFTIE: The other, the ones we're taught to hate.
HARDBALL: I was never taught to hate the hun.
LENORE LEFTIE: You were. You just weren't aware of the cultural cues. And don't say the h-word.
HARDBALL: You mentioned the Americans. What'd we do?
LENORE LEFTIE: What didn't you do? You have this rich president who calls your uncultured nation the arsenal of democracy. Who are you to send weapons to Britain to threaten others? You do it, and we suffer.
HARDBALL: So it's our fault that those planes with swastikas are hitting London?
LENORE LEFTIE: Root cause, Chris. I'm sorry the truth hurts. And tell your president – the man doesn't know what "no smoking" means – tell him to forget these "four freedoms" of his. Who is he to prescribe the way other people live? One man's freedom is another man's agony.
HARDBALL: Yeah. Bottom line, Lenore, you want to win this fight?
LENORE LEFTIE: We at BBC wouldn't use a word like "win." It creates a hierarchal structure.
HARDBALL: But you want to survive, don't you? Wait. I just heard a huge blast. Lenore, you there?
LENORE LEFTIE: Yes, I'm here. The building next to me was just leveled. I'm coated with dust, and probably asbestos.
HARDBALL: Lenore, take cover.
LENORE LEFTIE: Why? I'm an oppressor. I see them firing anti-aircraft guns at these hostile actors. Not in my name, they don't. I refuse to fire without first trying to understand.
HARDBALL: Understand who?
LENORE LEFTIE: The Palestinians.
HARDBALL: What does this have to do with the Palestinians?
LENORE LEFTIE: It's the root cause of everything, Chris.
William Katz
Jewish Humour.
14.07.2005 15:38
However, as I have proven already in this thread and others, just because something is funny, and an exaggeration of generalised preconceptions... it does not make it correct, right or justifiable.
Try again though, I laughed my arse off - which is better than getting angry with some self righteous political dihorrea.
Kiss, kiss.
Roman humour... Why did the Christian cross erode?
A. Lexicon
Brazil, the movie
16.07.2005 13:13
At the beginning, Sam wouldn't share or understand the logic behind Jill's bombings.
But later on, he'll understand, and in the hands of the real evil ones, he'll pay the price.
Is people still in denial not wanting to understand, lest they too pay the price, in the hands of the real evil ones?
Azure
e-mail:
s718mw502@sneakemail.com
Another Father Ted Moment
17.07.2005 15:09
From Craggy Island...