There is a ritual called the OE - where thousands of our young New Zealanders [and Australians] travel to and live and work in London. My best friends live in London now, and they missed the bombing by 20 miniutes and 1 station.
Glad [and surprised] that the toll isnt higher. My thoughts to those who live in London - but they are a resilient and stoic lot.
A group called The Secret Organisation of al-Qaida in Europe today said it carried out the series of blasts in London in retaliation for Britain's involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The group's statement appeared on a website popular with Islamic militants, according to Elaph, a secular Arabic-language news website, and Der Spiegel magazine in Berlin, which both published the text on their sites.
The statement, which also threatened attacks against Italy and Denmark, said: "Rejoice, Islamic nation. Rejoice, Arab world. The time has come for vengeance against the Zionist crusader government of Britain in response to the massacres Britain committed in Iraq and Afghanistan."
The authenticity of the message could not be immediately confirmed, but al-Qaida in Europe also claimed responsibility for the last major terror attack in Europe: a string of bombs that hit commuter trains in Madrid, Spain, in March 2004 that killed 191 people.
geno, that should read millions of everyday people in the middle east.
One bomb in London is nothing to the continued bombing endured in Iraq and the innocent people slaughtered every week - including British and Americans.
mmm... NY, London and Madrid, but don't forget the african (almost) daily massacres that don't even make it in the world news... they have been probably more than thousands... and counting... and 'no future' for them at all as things are going, not much more than those who went to sing along that song with the Sex Pistols 25 years ago..
I really hope Scotland Yard or whoever get the british Al-Qaeda terrorist cell sooner than later if they have not died in the bombings (some of these crazy motherf*ckers do not immolate themselves like they did in 11-S)... the Madrid cell was still operable after the 11-M train bombings and they even had more explosives to put in another TGV train Madrid-Seville... luckily, the police find their headquarters on a flat in the periphery of Madrid, but just before they were caught they used those same bombs to blow up the whole place and went straight to hell... which is where these religious fanatics must go if such a place exists...
I really hope these bastards killed themselves this morning too... these people make me sick.
BOTS, i just scanned this entire blog to see if anybody said anything like what you just said...you are the only one, and i commend you for it.
yes, what happened in London is terrible, as was 911; however, this happens EVERY DAY in Iraq. Why is this considered Breaking News while the terrorist actions in the middle east are just side notes. The media really took this to a whole new level, its sad.
The world leaders sitting at the G8 summit right now - the decisions makers - should also be held partly responsible for the crazy shit that happened in London today. They created the very conditions for this heightened terrorist threat with their disastrous middle east policies. War in Irak probably didnt help either. I am not trying in any way to condone any of the actions carried out by these terrorists fucks, but the very reasons for their actions surely originate from our own actions in the middle east, not the other way around as they would like us to believe. Even if the perpetrators get caught and brought to justice, they will pass the baton to others who will use the same tactics and methods to terrorize entire populations. The war on terror is a lost cause i think, i'm afraid we got ourselves in a vicious circle.
i was hoping to express not the numbers or 'which incidents are worse than the others', but rather a frustration with the fact that it's never the people directly orchestrating the turmoil who suffer - no matter where in the world.
Londoners, I understand what you must be going through right now because my city has been through several such attacks in the past few years. I wish you all peace.
Meanwhile...The brave and heroic G-8 leaders will be issuing a communique postponing action on global climate change until 2012. The petroleum resources of the middle east will be substantially depleted by that time, and alternatives to oil and western control of that region can be considered.
Until we accept that these events do not occur in a vaccum, we will never see a change. The US view of terror attacks is that we go to war BECAUSE of terrorism and totally dismisses the idea that BECAUSE of our policies, of our pre-emptive wars, our outright hypocrisy when it comes to CIA backed and funded dictators, monarchies, oligarchies, religious fundamentalism, etc..., we are being attacked. The Islamic Terrorists are only practicing what we preach, pre-emption, rule by a few, and religious extremism. So what should we expect, that this war will change the way the world sees us, when the way we show ourselves to the world is the very thing we say we're against?
Well,lets see according many here lets get our forces out of all foreign countries, issue apologies to any we have offended and be on with it..
If we start with the 100,000 + troops that we have in Germany and the many thousands that we have in the rest of Europe that do nothing more than prop up their economies, Id be fine with that... Provided however that we leave immediately and once out that we dont ever ever go back, no matter what happens between them..
You're right, without your troops supporting our failing economies we europeans would all be starving. Do not leave us unattended, we wouldn't know what to do with ourselves. Are you friend with that prick who started that nasty post about americans who can't cope with the european lifestyle the other day???
response to: heterarchy 7.7 6:33
the best support we can offer to the victims and their families is to make a real effort to do something. a close friend of mine was on one of those buses less than a week ago. when i woke up and saw the news i felt sadness and horror - but that quickly turned to outrage. we have wasted the lives of 1800 soldiers and spent 300 billion dollars on a fools mission in iraq and it has made us less safe than we were in 2001. the subways in nyc are no safer now than they were then. neither are the ports, or the chemical plants, or the nuke plants. support is fine - but it's time we find some real leaders who are interested enough and have the vision and the intelligence to try to deal with this. let me remind you what al-queda has done while dubya and rummy and dick have been jerking off over saddam f'n hussein:
-- July 7, 2005: Four explosions in the London subway and on a bus during morning rush hour kill at least 40 people, U.S. officials say. More than 700 are wounded. A group calling itself the Secret Organization of al-Qaida in Europe claims responsibility.
-- March 11, 2004: Attack on four commuter trains killed 191 people and injured more than 1,600. The bombings were blamed on Islamic militants with suspected ties to al-Qaida.
-- Nov. 20, 2003: Trucks packed with explosives detonate at a London-based bank and the British consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, killing more than two dozen people and wounding nearly 450.
-- Nov. 15, 2003: Twin car bombs explode outside two synagogues in Istanbul, Turkey, killing 23 plus the two bombers. Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said the two bombers had visited Afghanistan and that investigators were looking for any al-Qaida links.
-- Aug. 5, 2003: A suicide bombers kills 12 people and injures 150 at the J.W. Marriott hotel in Jakarta, Indonesia. Authorities blame Jemaah Islamiyah, a Southeast Asian group linked to al-Qaida.
-- May 16, 2003: Bomb attacks in Morocco kill at least 28 people and wound more than 100. The government blames "international terrorism," and local militant groups linked to al-Qaida.
-- May 12, 2003: Four explosions rock Riyadh, in an attack on compounds housing Americans, other Westerners and Saudis. The attack kills 35 people, including eight Americans. Al-Qaida's wing in Saudi Arabia, which now goes by the name al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, claimed responsibility for the attack.
-- Dec. 30, 2002: A gunman kills three American missionaries at a Southern Baptist hospital in Yemen. Yemeni officials say the gunman, sentenced to death in May, belonged to an al-Qaida cell.
-- Nov. 28, 2002: Suicide bombers kill 12 people at an Israeli-owned beach hotel in Kenya and two missiles narrowly miss an airliner carrying Israelis.
-- Oct. 12, 2002: Nearly 200 people, including seven Americans, are killed in bombings in a nightclub district of the Indonesian island of Bali. Authorities blame Jemaah Islamiyah.
my condelences to londoneers
life indeed is fragile.
try to appreciate eastern cultures,. its quite rich and beautifull..
at the same time hate evil with passion..
these attacks are like sucker punches to a powerfull and lazy slob..
its not enough to get him really angry, and actually do something about it..
for some time we all will feel anger and appreciated the severity of the problem, but then life goes on and we are told to do that..
yea we'll show what's up to these guys with maxing out our credit cards!
and then it happends again..
and the cost of security and our lifestyle goes up and up..
not many really appreciate the threat that we are facing..
"It seems clear, then, that the causes of the collapse must, like hidden cancers, have been developing during Gibbon's period of happiness and prosperity. Some of the symptoms, at least, can be recognized. To take one example, in the first century of the empire there had still been a vigorous literature. But in the second century AD from Hadrian onward, apart from Suetonius' Biographies of the Emperors, the Metamorphoses of Apuleius, and the Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius, Latin literature is overcome by a sort of indolent apathy. The same apathy began to exhibit itself in municipal life. Financial burdens which were imposed on the local magistrates and senators. By the second century many cities had spent themselves into debt.
There was the cost of repairing and maintaining the temples, public baths, and the like. There were also heavy expenditures for civic sacrifices, religious processions, feasts and for the games necessary to amuse the proletariat. The wealthy citizens of the municipalities who were, in effect, the middle-class, began to grow weary of the load: especially since the constantly rising taxation rates were shearing them closer and closer. Furthermore, they were expected to help their communities out of debt by voluntary loans. By the middle of the second century, there were cases where compulsion had to be used to fill the local magistracies. There were other cases, beginning with Hadrian, where, when municipalities got into financial difficulties, imperial curators were pat in change and the cities lost their independence. The people did not seem to mind. As often happens today, they were quite willing to resign their control of affairs and to let the government take care of them."
right on norm. as i said before, i wasn't disagreeing with your points, only their timing. though violent deaths neccessitate action so as to prevent their happening again, a period of sympathy for the vicitms often brings more clarity in the long run. just my opinion.
here's the big picture from my view: very few americans want to be a part of any global holy war. very few muslims want this either. both sides merely want to feel safe in their homelands. both sides have allowed the smallest and most extreme minorities of their respective populaces control and manipulate them, in part by by making each side feel that the other side started it, in part by preying on revenge for the many casualties each side has sustained, and in part by preying on each side's fabricated fear of the other. both sides then feel completely justified, while becoming ever more blind to the fact that neither side a righteous leg left to stand on.
this war will only escalate further until one side chooses to say "that's it, no more". and if neither side does this, then we will finally see the full destructive power of the technology we've been developing since the end of WWII. that's something that i would prefer to avoid.
norm what basis do you propose that what we are doing is not working...the insurgency has failed to stop the elections the temp government, the recruitment of iraqi security forces, they have no ideology that the people can support, they can hold no ground or take strategic positions along any front line. they simply can not win...it is only a matter of time before they collapse and iraq can defend itself and we can begin to pull out. leaving behind a democratic iraq in charge of its own destiny.
Doberman, Hostile today or are you always that way...Europeans are great people and nothing in my post says otherwise..
Bases are being closed here in the US on a grand scale.Local politicians are all crying the blues..Why not in Europe.. Last year when a small cut was recommended for the amount of forces that we have in Germany the Germans had a fit..Maybe you dont think that it will harm your local economy but your leaders think otherwise..
Its time for the Europeans to pony up for their own defenses .. There's no reason whatsoever for the US to have that many forces in Europe..The Germans no longer seem to want to trounce the French, and the Russians no longer seem to want to trounce the Germans.. Youre all one big happy community right now.. Send our boys home..
cr..
clearly the administration's latest spin - the so-called flypaper theory - fight them there so we don't have to fight them here - isn't working. i can't wait to see what next weeks spin will be. and in the meantime our defenses at home have not been addressed at all. or barely at all. what happened in london could happen in nyc tomorrow. so that's one way it's not working.
sure we've held elections and formed an interim gov't and recruited a bunch of forces because there are no other jobs to be had. but in the meantime we have helped the recruiting efforts in untold ways. that is the primary failure of this effort - we are helping the enemy more than we are hurting them. so that's another way it's not working.
"...it is only a matter of time before they collapse" how many lives and how many dollars should we spend waiting to see what that point in time is? and why will they collapse? it's not like kidnapping diplomats takes a lot of manpower or $$$. (christ they completely demolished two skyscrapers for about $3000.) they could conceivably keep this up for years. decades. even that incompetent rummy says it could take a dozen years.
look - you are right - this isn't a nation we're fighting...when and if we find some real leaders in this country who are willing to commit the resources necessary to succeed in iraq they will simply fade into the woodwork and re-surface somewhere else. same as they did in afghanistan. we are fighting a network. but we are fighting it as though it's a hierarchy. if we are serious about fighting terrorism it's going to take leadership and vision and intelligence. something we are seriously lacking right now.
america needs to colonize the moon and move our stupid rich fat asses up there and make it a suburb of earth with a Land Rover for everyone. the new location will make it harder to blow us up for another 10 years till terrorists figure out how to do THAT
norm's characterization of the structure of terrorism is right. you can't fight terrorism by attacking countries. the only way to beat terrorism is to stop creating terrorists. the only way to stop creating terrorists is to stop trying to exercise our fear of them through wars. this is a different world and a different war, groundpounding, bullets and missiles won't win. terrorism is the result of increasingly empowered individuals capable to doing more damage than a thousand well-trained soldiers, who are drawn in to fanaticism because it's the only way they feel they're lives can mean anything. if you want to stop terrorism, you have to provide a peaceful alternative to those who would otherwise give their lives as the instruments of terror.
as for real images of doom, imagine everyone around you simply collapsing, then vomiting and bleeding from every pore, screaming in such agony that their larynx's pop and they mercifully suffocate just before their organ's completely fail. then imagine this spreading faster than an email virus across the face of the planet, engulfing every person that you love. the technology already exists, it's just a matter of time till someone is pissed off and desparate enough to do it.
and so, i say lets grow up - as a planet - and stop creating more and more desparate, pissed off people by trying to destroy them.
norm...clearly there will and always will be fanatics...but the recruiting power of such a platform swells and shrinks...it initially swelled with opinions and perceptions of U.S. imerialism of oil (which you probably shared) but clearly our true intentions are becoming more appearent, iraqi democracy and self rule via elections and a constitution. thus the insergency loses the title of "freedom fighter" and become exposed as the real hurdle to freedom as they kill their inocent civilians and are exposed for what they are, a mix of religouse extremists, former baathists all led by a jordanian. who all fear a free iraq, now they are the enemy and the recruits are not from within iraq but from without, professional mujhadeen. ask osama or zarqaqui if we are helping them, i doubt it? we have the leadership and setting the groundwork to defeat this....no it won't be next year or the next decade but everytime they lift their head out of the woodwork we will defeat them. untill they learn to get their way thru the political process not thru the killing of inocence. thats the only way and it takes percaverance over time. if you have the quik fix please share.
cr - i have a quick fix. search out the thugs that did this, and madrid, and bali, and 9.11 and f'ing destroy them. mercilessly. but that's not what we are doing. i don't know what we are doing. chimpy doesn't know what he is doing. the justification seems to change regularly. your idea that "...our true intentions are becoming more appearent, iraqi democracy and self rule via elections and a constitution." seems rather pie in the sky to me. how about establishing a military foothold in the region? have you checked to see how many permanent installations we're building there?
jay leno; what do iraq and a bicycle have in common? bush has no idea how to stop them.
There are lots of good points being made here. I have to wonder what the use is in continuing ANY kind of "fighting" anywhere if we don't have a plan to infiltrate the ashrams around the world where this righteous brand of zealot thinking is taught.
In a very simple way, PFYS's earlier post about taking all of our forces out of the region seems correct.....that is the wrong kind of fighting. How can you shoot a gun at someone who is not afraid to die? What is the point? What a waste of bullets.
I think norm and heterarchy touched on this, but to fight this "war on terror" we need to send "troops" in where fanatics breed, to stop the hate at the source. The best way to do that is by example, by teaching peace, working together as a planet, and helping those less fortunate than us. Not by trying to annihilate people who think differently than we do.
How many cities are going to have to suffer before someone in charge gets this?
norm
permanent millitary instalations are harder to destroy then tents and easily passed on to permanent iraqi forces. I know b/c my friends are building them along with schools etc. My freinds are also telling me that the insergency is not growing, there were less car bombs this month then last month....the only problem now is that they are more accurate...why b/c we are passing our responsibility to iraqi forces which are more easily infiltrated. but time will sort this out too. your solution is the quik fix...bush's is the long term plan....we have been over this before...DEMOCRACY. and no this is not a new spin. it was always implied that when you "break you buy" and we are buying (w/ lives and money) iraqi democracy, this would be the plan if the justification for war was by a flip of a coin.
the problem is not that bush does'nt know what he is doing it that you fail to see it or acknowledge it, and fail to come up with any comprable long term solution to improve the lives of the people of the middle east and thus dry up ideaologies of hate. when you constantly blame america for the wrongs in your life it takes away the attention from the wrongs and injustices of your own countries govt. and thus removes the leaders from critisism and change.
cr...
c'mon. democracy is great. i love it. it's not the cure - especially chimpies vision of democracy. it's not the cure because - and this is my opinion - it's not the problem. the problem is our presence (before 9.11) and our policies. neither of those has changed. psuedo-democracy isn't going to change that.
we started out right in afghanistan. then quit before the job was done. kill the f'ers that did this.
car bombings are down. kidnapping of diplomats is up. tactics change. unless you're chimpy.
i understand what dubya thinks he's doing - but he doesn't know what he's doing. they are incompetent. yesterday morning is just another indicator.
Interestingly, I don't think that Shrub knows what he is doing because HE hasn't come up with any long-term plans to improve the lives of the people in the Middle East. And while I did just suggest an albeit vague strategy for doing so - which you apparently chose to ignore - it's not my job, it's his.
in afganistan was great, it flies in complete contridition to what you see as the cure..more presence in the area.
kidnapping is all they can do...thats it...they are a fly in the ointment...there only sucess come when such tactics are read over here in our newspapers and by people such as your self as reasons to evacuate and leave...when leaving is exactly what they want so they can run and set up a theocracy making reasons for so called "jihad" more prelavent.
our policies are in support of isreal?, set up in 1947 by truman as an acknowledgement of a fellow democratic nation.
"The best way to do that is by example, by teaching peace, working together as a planet, and helping those less fortunate than us. Not by trying to annihilate people who think differently than we do."
that is what we are doing, what example do u have that we are trying to annihilate anyone
this is hard to explain to someone who probably has never been to anyplace where oppertunities are scarce becasue of currupt govtments, but the best cure for long term peace is establishing a transparent democratic govt. which as history shows improves the lives of all who live under. right now that is not the case, but our precensce has made babysteps in the right direction for all....lebbenon, syria, saudi arabia, egypt etc...is it too our standards..no but it is getting better and that has to be acknowlegded for progress to continue.
now i'm off for drinks to begin my weekend..i'd buy you all a round if it were not for our seperation, but all the same i wish you all a great and productive weekend!
cr...
quickly...those flies in the ointment defeated russia in afghanistan. we defeated england in largly the same way.
we are not teaching peace. you don't teach peace and working together by unilaterally invading occupying and toturing.
democracy in lebanon syria sudi arabia egypt is a joke.
and thanks for the offer of drinks - i'll charge my first five rounds to you.
London under attack!
wonderk: they [CNN, et. al.] do it for mystery man.
best, londoners.
i'm sorry london. these men will, eventually, be brought to justice.
There is a ritual called the OE - where thousands of our young New Zealanders [and Australians] travel to and live and work in London. My best friends live in London now, and they missed the bombing by 20 miniutes and 1 station.
Glad [and surprised] that the toll isnt higher. My thoughts to those who live in London - but they are a resilient and stoic lot.
From the Guardian this evening.
A group called The Secret Organisation of al-Qaida in Europe today said it carried out the series of blasts in London in retaliation for Britain's involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The group's statement appeared on a website popular with Islamic militants, according to Elaph, a secular Arabic-language news website, and Der Spiegel magazine in Berlin, which both published the text on their sites.
The statement, which also threatened attacks against Italy and Denmark, said: "Rejoice, Islamic nation. Rejoice, Arab world. The time has come for vengeance against the Zionist crusader government of Britain in response to the massacres Britain committed in Iraq and Afghanistan."
The authenticity of the message could not be immediately confirmed, but al-Qaida in Europe also claimed responsibility for the last major terror attack in Europe: a string of bombs that hit commuter trains in Madrid, Spain, in March 2004 that killed 191 people.
This was definately a planned event. but does anyone know who?? Is anyone claiming responsiblity?? Is this al-quida? G8 prosters? WTO Haters?
Um, read the post above yours.
sorry did n't see that.
thousands of we regular people in new york city
thousands of everyday people in the middle east
and now a thousand simple commuters in london.
will the carnage ever directly affect the 10-12 people in the world really making the decisions?
london, i shed a few tears this morning when i heard the news.
geno, that should read millions of everyday people in the middle east.
One bomb in London is nothing to the continued bombing endured in Iraq and the innocent people slaughtered every week - including British and Americans.
mmm... NY, London and Madrid, but don't forget the african (almost) daily massacres that don't even make it in the world news... they have been probably more than thousands... and counting... and 'no future' for them at all as things are going, not much more than those who went to sing along that song with the Sex Pistols 25 years ago..
I really hope Scotland Yard or whoever get the british Al-Qaeda terrorist cell sooner than later if they have not died in the bombings (some of these crazy motherf*ckers do not immolate themselves like they did in 11-S)... the Madrid cell was still operable after the 11-M train bombings and they even had more explosives to put in another TGV train Madrid-Seville... luckily, the police find their headquarters on a flat in the periphery of Madrid, but just before they were caught they used those same bombs to blow up the whole place and went straight to hell... which is where these religious fanatics must go if such a place exists...
I really hope these bastards killed themselves this morning too... these people make me sick.
BOTS, i just scanned this entire blog to see if anybody said anything like what you just said...you are the only one, and i commend you for it.
yes, what happened in London is terrible, as was 911; however, this happens EVERY DAY in Iraq. Why is this considered Breaking News while the terrorist actions in the middle east are just side notes. The media really took this to a whole new level, its sad.
The world leaders sitting at the G8 summit right now - the decisions makers - should also be held partly responsible for the crazy shit that happened in London today. They created the very conditions for this heightened terrorist threat with their disastrous middle east policies. War in Irak probably didnt help either. I am not trying in any way to condone any of the actions carried out by these terrorists fucks, but the very reasons for their actions surely originate from our own actions in the middle east, not the other way around as they would like us to believe. Even if the perpetrators get caught and brought to justice, they will pass the baton to others who will use the same tactics and methods to terrorize entire populations. The war on terror is a lost cause i think, i'm afraid we got ourselves in a vicious circle.
i was hoping to express not the numbers or 'which incidents are worse than the others', but rather a frustration with the fact that it's never the people directly orchestrating the turmoil who suffer - no matter where in the world.
geno your point was very clear i think, and i fully agree with you.
Londoners, I understand what you must be going through right now because my city has been through several such attacks in the past few years. I wish you all peace.
Meanwhile...The brave and heroic G-8 leaders will be issuing a communique postponing action on global climate change until 2012. The petroleum resources of the middle east will be substantially depleted by that time, and alternatives to oil and western control of that region can be considered.
LOVE AND SAFETY TO ALL YOU LONDONERS
PEACE OUT TO MY EX GIRLFRIEND WHO'S THERE VISITING FAMILY
SHE DOESN'T WAKE UP EARLY SO I FIGURE SHE'S OK..
No.
Until we accept that these events do not occur in a vaccum, we will never see a change. The US view of terror attacks is that we go to war BECAUSE of terrorism and totally dismisses the idea that BECAUSE of our policies, of our pre-emptive wars, our outright hypocrisy when it comes to CIA backed and funded dictators, monarchies, oligarchies, religious fundamentalism, etc..., we are being attacked. The Islamic Terrorists are only practicing what we preach, pre-emption, rule by a few, and religious extremism. So what should we expect, that this war will change the way the world sees us, when the way we show ourselves to the world is the very thing we say we're against?
Well,lets see according many here lets get our forces out of all foreign countries, issue apologies to any we have offended and be on with it..
If we start with the 100,000 + troops that we have in Germany and the many thousands that we have in the rest of Europe that do nothing more than prop up their economies, Id be fine with that... Provided however that we leave immediately and once out that we dont ever ever go back, no matter what happens between them..
You're right, without your troops supporting our failing economies we europeans would all be starving. Do not leave us unattended, we wouldn't know what to do with ourselves. Are you friend with that prick who started that nasty post about americans who can't cope with the european lifestyle the other day???
response to: heterarchy 7.7 6:33
the best support we can offer to the victims and their families is to make a real effort to do something. a close friend of mine was on one of those buses less than a week ago. when i woke up and saw the news i felt sadness and horror - but that quickly turned to outrage. we have wasted the lives of 1800 soldiers and spent 300 billion dollars on a fools mission in iraq and it has made us less safe than we were in 2001. the subways in nyc are no safer now than they were then. neither are the ports, or the chemical plants, or the nuke plants. support is fine - but it's time we find some real leaders who are interested enough and have the vision and the intelligence to try to deal with this. let me remind you what al-queda has done while dubya and rummy and dick have been jerking off over saddam f'n hussein:
-- July 7, 2005: Four explosions in the London subway and on a bus during morning rush hour kill at least 40 people, U.S. officials say. More than 700 are wounded. A group calling itself the Secret Organization of al-Qaida in Europe claims responsibility.
-- March 11, 2004: Attack on four commuter trains killed 191 people and injured more than 1,600. The bombings were blamed on Islamic militants with suspected ties to al-Qaida.
-- Nov. 20, 2003: Trucks packed with explosives detonate at a London-based bank and the British consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, killing more than two dozen people and wounding nearly 450.
-- Nov. 15, 2003: Twin car bombs explode outside two synagogues in Istanbul, Turkey, killing 23 plus the two bombers. Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said the two bombers had visited Afghanistan and that investigators were looking for any al-Qaida links.
-- Aug. 5, 2003: A suicide bombers kills 12 people and injures 150 at the J.W. Marriott hotel in Jakarta, Indonesia. Authorities blame Jemaah Islamiyah, a Southeast Asian group linked to al-Qaida.
-- May 16, 2003: Bomb attacks in Morocco kill at least 28 people and wound more than 100. The government blames "international terrorism," and local militant groups linked to al-Qaida.
-- May 12, 2003: Four explosions rock Riyadh, in an attack on compounds housing Americans, other Westerners and Saudis. The attack kills 35 people, including eight Americans. Al-Qaida's wing in Saudi Arabia, which now goes by the name al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, claimed responsibility for the attack.
-- Dec. 30, 2002: A gunman kills three American missionaries at a Southern Baptist hospital in Yemen. Yemeni officials say the gunman, sentenced to death in May, belonged to an al-Qaida cell.
-- Nov. 28, 2002: Suicide bombers kill 12 people at an Israeli-owned beach hotel in Kenya and two missiles narrowly miss an airliner carrying Israelis.
-- Oct. 12, 2002: Nearly 200 people, including seven Americans, are killed in bombings in a nightclub district of the Indonesian island of Bali. Authorities blame Jemaah Islamiyah.
-- Sept. 11, 2001
my condelences to londoneers
life indeed is fragile.
try to appreciate eastern cultures,. its quite rich and beautifull..
at the same time hate evil with passion..
these attacks are like sucker punches to a powerfull and lazy slob..
its not enough to get him really angry, and actually do something about it..
for some time we all will feel anger and appreciated the severity of the problem, but then life goes on and we are told to do that..
yea we'll show what's up to these guys with maxing out our credit cards!
and then it happends again..
and the cost of security and our lifestyle goes up and up..
not many really appreciate the threat that we are facing..
this maybe somewhat irrelevent to the topic...
http://mars.acnet.wnec.edu/~grempel/courses/wc1/lectures/14romefell.html
from "why rome fell"
"It seems clear, then, that the causes of the collapse must, like hidden cancers, have been developing during Gibbon's period of happiness and prosperity. Some of the symptoms, at least, can be recognized. To take one example, in the first century of the empire there had still been a vigorous literature. But in the second century AD from Hadrian onward, apart from Suetonius' Biographies of the Emperors, the Metamorphoses of Apuleius, and the Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius, Latin literature is overcome by a sort of indolent apathy. The same apathy began to exhibit itself in municipal life. Financial burdens which were imposed on the local magistrates and senators. By the second century many cities had spent themselves into debt.
There was the cost of repairing and maintaining the temples, public baths, and the like. There were also heavy expenditures for civic sacrifices, religious processions, feasts and for the games necessary to amuse the proletariat. The wealthy citizens of the municipalities who were, in effect, the middle-class, began to grow weary of the load: especially since the constantly rising taxation rates were shearing them closer and closer. Furthermore, they were expected to help their communities out of debt by voluntary loans. By the middle of the second century, there were cases where compulsion had to be used to fill the local magistracies. There were other cases, beginning with Hadrian, where, when municipalities got into financial difficulties, imperial curators were pat in change and the cities lost their independence. The people did not seem to mind. As often happens today, they were quite willing to resign their control of affairs and to let the government take care of them."
If they really want a holy war why arent we giving it to them?
betadinesutures
07/07/05 4:57
is there anything us Yanks can do for you Brits?
you could try convincing your president that global climate change has been affected by increased industrialisation and human activity.
That might be a good start?
evilp...
we have given it too them. chimpy and the gang in the white house walked us right into it - just like they wanted us too.
then lets turn it up a few notches....
right - when you're doing something f'ed up and it's not working - step it up a notch.
"a fanatic is one who redoubles his effort when he has forgotten his aim." santayana.
right on norm. as i said before, i wasn't disagreeing with your points, only their timing. though violent deaths neccessitate action so as to prevent their happening again, a period of sympathy for the vicitms often brings more clarity in the long run. just my opinion.
here's the big picture from my view: very few americans want to be a part of any global holy war. very few muslims want this either. both sides merely want to feel safe in their homelands. both sides have allowed the smallest and most extreme minorities of their respective populaces control and manipulate them, in part by by making each side feel that the other side started it, in part by preying on revenge for the many casualties each side has sustained, and in part by preying on each side's fabricated fear of the other. both sides then feel completely justified, while becoming ever more blind to the fact that neither side a righteous leg left to stand on.
this war will only escalate further until one side chooses to say "that's it, no more". and if neither side does this, then we will finally see the full destructive power of the technology we've been developing since the end of WWII. that's something that i would prefer to avoid.
norm what basis do you propose that what we are doing is not working...the insurgency has failed to stop the elections the temp government, the recruitment of iraqi security forces, they have no ideology that the people can support, they can hold no ground or take strategic positions along any front line. they simply can not win...it is only a matter of time before they collapse and iraq can defend itself and we can begin to pull out. leaving behind a democratic iraq in charge of its own destiny.
fortunatly the people of britain are still the nation of churchill, and can sustain such atrocities as yesterday and not loose aim...unlike spain.
Doberman, Hostile today or are you always that way...Europeans are great people and nothing in my post says otherwise..
Bases are being closed here in the US on a grand scale.Local politicians are all crying the blues..Why not in Europe.. Last year when a small cut was recommended for the amount of forces that we have in Germany the Germans had a fit..Maybe you dont think that it will harm your local economy but your leaders think otherwise..
Its time for the Europeans to pony up for their own defenses .. There's no reason whatsoever for the US to have that many forces in Europe..The Germans no longer seem to want to trounce the French, and the Russians no longer seem to want to trounce the Germans.. Youre all one big happy community right now.. Send our boys home..
cr..
clearly the administration's latest spin - the so-called flypaper theory - fight them there so we don't have to fight them here - isn't working. i can't wait to see what next weeks spin will be. and in the meantime our defenses at home have not been addressed at all. or barely at all. what happened in london could happen in nyc tomorrow. so that's one way it's not working.
sure we've held elections and formed an interim gov't and recruited a bunch of forces because there are no other jobs to be had. but in the meantime we have helped the recruiting efforts in untold ways. that is the primary failure of this effort - we are helping the enemy more than we are hurting them. so that's another way it's not working.
"...it is only a matter of time before they collapse" how many lives and how many dollars should we spend waiting to see what that point in time is? and why will they collapse? it's not like kidnapping diplomats takes a lot of manpower or $$$. (christ they completely demolished two skyscrapers for about $3000.) they could conceivably keep this up for years. decades. even that incompetent rummy says it could take a dozen years.
look - you are right - this isn't a nation we're fighting...when and if we find some real leaders in this country who are willing to commit the resources necessary to succeed in iraq they will simply fade into the woodwork and re-surface somewhere else. same as they did in afghanistan. we are fighting a network. but we are fighting it as though it's a hierarchy. if we are serious about fighting terrorism it's going to take leadership and vision and intelligence. something we are seriously lacking right now.
america needs to colonize the moon and move our stupid rich fat asses up there and make it a suburb of earth with a Land Rover for everyone. the new location will make it harder to blow us up for another 10 years till terrorists figure out how to do THAT
norm's characterization of the structure of terrorism is right. you can't fight terrorism by attacking countries. the only way to beat terrorism is to stop creating terrorists. the only way to stop creating terrorists is to stop trying to exercise our fear of them through wars. this is a different world and a different war, groundpounding, bullets and missiles won't win. terrorism is the result of increasingly empowered individuals capable to doing more damage than a thousand well-trained soldiers, who are drawn in to fanaticism because it's the only way they feel they're lives can mean anything. if you want to stop terrorism, you have to provide a peaceful alternative to those who would otherwise give their lives as the instruments of terror.
as for real images of doom, imagine everyone around you simply collapsing, then vomiting and bleeding from every pore, screaming in such agony that their larynx's pop and they mercifully suffocate just before their organ's completely fail. then imagine this spreading faster than an email virus across the face of the planet, engulfing every person that you love. the technology already exists, it's just a matter of time till someone is pissed off and desparate enough to do it.
and so, i say lets grow up - as a planet - and stop creating more and more desparate, pissed off people by trying to destroy them.
And hey, as soon as they figure out where all that water on Mars ended up, we can colonize that planet, too...
norm...clearly there will and always will be fanatics...but the recruiting power of such a platform swells and shrinks...it initially swelled with opinions and perceptions of U.S. imerialism of oil (which you probably shared) but clearly our true intentions are becoming more appearent, iraqi democracy and self rule via elections and a constitution. thus the insergency loses the title of "freedom fighter" and become exposed as the real hurdle to freedom as they kill their inocent civilians and are exposed for what they are, a mix of religouse extremists, former baathists all led by a jordanian. who all fear a free iraq, now they are the enemy and the recruits are not from within iraq but from without, professional mujhadeen. ask osama or zarqaqui if we are helping them, i doubt it? we have the leadership and setting the groundwork to defeat this....no it won't be next year or the next decade but everytime they lift their head out of the woodwork we will defeat them. untill they learn to get their way thru the political process not thru the killing of inocence. thats the only way and it takes percaverance over time. if you have the quik fix please share.
i think we should make 100 clones of usama then brainwash them to western standards..
and send them off to send chaos in the ranks of the terrorists..
what did you say usama? you like jeans? you watch MTV?!!
cr - i have a quick fix. search out the thugs that did this, and madrid, and bali, and 9.11 and f'ing destroy them. mercilessly. but that's not what we are doing. i don't know what we are doing. chimpy doesn't know what he is doing. the justification seems to change regularly. your idea that "...our true intentions are becoming more appearent, iraqi democracy and self rule via elections and a constitution." seems rather pie in the sky to me. how about establishing a military foothold in the region? have you checked to see how many permanent installations we're building there?
jay leno; what do iraq and a bicycle have in common? bush has no idea how to stop them.
There are lots of good points being made here. I have to wonder what the use is in continuing ANY kind of "fighting" anywhere if we don't have a plan to infiltrate the ashrams around the world where this righteous brand of zealot thinking is taught.
In a very simple way, PFYS's earlier post about taking all of our forces out of the region seems correct.....that is the wrong kind of fighting. How can you shoot a gun at someone who is not afraid to die? What is the point? What a waste of bullets.
I think norm and heterarchy touched on this, but to fight this "war on terror" we need to send "troops" in where fanatics breed, to stop the hate at the source. The best way to do that is by example, by teaching peace, working together as a planet, and helping those less fortunate than us. Not by trying to annihilate people who think differently than we do.
How many cities are going to have to suffer before someone in charge gets this?
norm
permanent millitary instalations are harder to destroy then tents and easily passed on to permanent iraqi forces. I know b/c my friends are building them along with schools etc. My freinds are also telling me that the insergency is not growing, there were less car bombs this month then last month....the only problem now is that they are more accurate...why b/c we are passing our responsibility to iraqi forces which are more easily infiltrated. but time will sort this out too. your solution is the quik fix...bush's is the long term plan....we have been over this before...DEMOCRACY. and no this is not a new spin. it was always implied that when you "break you buy" and we are buying (w/ lives and money) iraqi democracy, this would be the plan if the justification for war was by a flip of a coin.
the problem is not that bush does'nt know what he is doing it that you fail to see it or acknowledge it, and fail to come up with any comprable long term solution to improve the lives of the people of the middle east and thus dry up ideaologies of hate. when you constantly blame america for the wrongs in your life it takes away the attention from the wrongs and injustices of your own countries govt. and thus removes the leaders from critisism and change.
"How can you shoot a gun at someone who is not afraid to die? What is the point? What a waste of bullets."
u shoot them because they will kill you, self defense
cr...
c'mon. democracy is great. i love it. it's not the cure - especially chimpies vision of democracy. it's not the cure because - and this is my opinion - it's not the problem. the problem is our presence (before 9.11) and our policies. neither of those has changed. psuedo-democracy isn't going to change that.
we started out right in afghanistan. then quit before the job was done. kill the f'ers that did this.
car bombings are down. kidnapping of diplomats is up. tactics change. unless you're chimpy.
i understand what dubya thinks he's doing - but he doesn't know what he's doing. they are incompetent. yesterday morning is just another indicator.
Interestingly, I don't think that Shrub knows what he is doing because HE hasn't come up with any long-term plans to improve the lives of the people in the Middle East. And while I did just suggest an albeit vague strategy for doing so - which you apparently chose to ignore - it's not my job, it's his.
in afganistan was great, it flies in complete contridition to what you see as the cure..more presence in the area.
kidnapping is all they can do...thats it...they are a fly in the ointment...there only sucess come when such tactics are read over here in our newspapers and by people such as your self as reasons to evacuate and leave...when leaving is exactly what they want so they can run and set up a theocracy making reasons for so called "jihad" more prelavent.
our policies are in support of isreal?, set up in 1947 by truman as an acknowledgement of a fellow democratic nation.
"The best way to do that is by example, by teaching peace, working together as a planet, and helping those less fortunate than us. Not by trying to annihilate people who think differently than we do."
that is what we are doing, what example do u have that we are trying to annihilate anyone
this is hard to explain to someone who probably has never been to anyplace where oppertunities are scarce becasue of currupt govtments, but the best cure for long term peace is establishing a transparent democratic govt. which as history shows improves the lives of all who live under. right now that is not the case, but our precensce has made babysteps in the right direction for all....lebbenon, syria, saudi arabia, egypt etc...is it too our standards..no but it is getting better and that has to be acknowlegded for progress to continue.
now i'm off for drinks to begin my weekend..i'd buy you all a round if it were not for our seperation, but all the same i wish you all a great and productive weekend!
news from the other side..
http://www.freearabvoice.org/Iraq/Report/report333.htm
cr...
quickly...those flies in the ointment defeated russia in afghanistan. we defeated england in largly the same way.
we are not teaching peace. you don't teach peace and working together by unilaterally invading occupying and toturing.
democracy in lebanon syria sudi arabia egypt is a joke.
and thanks for the offer of drinks - i'll charge my first five rounds to you.
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