London rocked by explosions

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lukpac
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London rocked by explosions

Postby lukpac » Thu Jul 07, 2005 8:29 am

Repeat after me: "The president's plan has made us safer, there have been no attacks on US soil since 9/11. The president's plan has made us safer, there have been no attacks on US soil since 9/11."

London rocked by explosions
Blair says he suspects terrorists are responsible

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Four explosions in London's transport system have killed at least two people and wounded dozens more in what UK Prime Minister Tony Blair said was an apparent terrorist attack.

More fatalities were sure to follow -- emergency services personnel told CNN that a rescue operation at Kings Cross station had successfully evacuated all survivors, leaving dead below ground "in the double digits."

One worker said he had removed "several" bodies from the train and "at least 13" remained there. The fire brigade has now left the station, he said, and it was now a crime scene.

Three of the blasts took place in the city's subway system and one more hit a double-decker bus, all at the height of rush hour.

A previously unknown group calling itself the "Secret Organization group of al-Qaeda of Jihad in Europe" released a statement claiming responsibility for the bombings.

CNN could not confirm the authenticity of the statement, which was posted on a web site connected to Islamic radicals. (Full story)

International SOS, an international medical emergency service, reported that the police had found explosive traces in at least one of four confirmed blast locations.

Hospital officials have reported at least 160 wounded. London transit officials shut down the entire Underground and stopped buses in the central city district.

"We are dealing with large numbers of casualties," he said, "and we believe a number of fatalities."

Flanked by the somber leaders of the world's eight largest industrial nations at the G8 summit in Scotland, Blair said: "We condemn utterly these barbaric attacks. We send our profound condolences to the victims and their families.

"All of our countries have suffered from the impact of terrorism. Those responsible have no respect for human life. We are united in our resolve to confront and defeat this terrorism that is not an attack on one nation, but all nations and on civilized people everywhere."

Blair told reporters he would leave the summit for a "face to face" report in London and then return later in the evening.

A White House spokesman said U.S. President George W. Bush was aware of the explosions and had been in briefings with Blair all morning.

Despite calls from officials to stay home, however, Londoners were on the streets except in areas where they were barred by police.

Police cordoned off areas around six stations in and around the city's center and financial area and brought in sniffer dogs to check the areas.

Telephone traffic -- particularly by cell phone -- was nearly impossible. London's largest cellular provider, Vodafone, said it had devoted much of its network to emergency services, causing the problems with subscribers.

London Mayor Ken Livingstone said the blasts were "mass murder" carried out by terrorists bent on "indiscriminate ... slaughter."

Livingstone, in Singapore where he supported London's successful bid to host the 2012 Olympics, said: "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.

One man, with blood streaming down the left side of his face from a wound on his temple, said he didn't "want to live through it again."

"I was in the front carriage and people were severely injured there," he said, dispassionately, adding that his train had been in the tunnel between Kings Cross and Russell Square. "I heard, but I don't know, that people were hurt worse further back. "Some people were very calm, others very panicky."

"There was a very loud bang, the lights went out, the carriage filled with smoke," he said. "We were all thrown forward."

Another man, clearly shaken by his experience, described being on a smoke-filled carriage on the same train, he and his fellow passengers afraid to try to leave the train.

"We were all trapped like sardines waiting to die," said Angelo Power. "I honestly thought I was going to die, as did everyone else."

Jarvis Medhurst told CNN: "I was working at the Tavistock Hotel and a bus exploded literally 40 meters away from me. There was a massive explosion and a cloud of smoke, and then when the smoke stated to die down, you could see the wrecked bus, which was on fire.

"There were bodies everywhere. Heads and bits of bodies, heads and arms and legs all ripped away.

"There seemed to be kids lying around as well as adults. I'm just in shock, it's something I'll never forget."

A police spokesman urged Londoners to "stay where you are."

"There's no way to travel around London at the moment," he said.

"There is a London emergency plan," he said. "It has been put into effect. It is being coordinated by the Metropolitan Police, and that's about all I can say at the moment."

Scotland Yard sent out a notice saying that "public transport in London will be affected in the next few days."

Claire Burroughs, spokeswoman for St Mary's Hospital in central London, told CNN the hospital was on "major incident alert." Four patients were critically injured, eight were seriously injured and 14 others were being treated for minor injuries, she said.

"The types of injuries we are seeing include limb damage, burns, cuts, breaks, head injuries and chest problems due to smoke inhalation," Burroughs said.

London Hospital said it received 95 patients, most with minor injuries. Ten, however were listed in serious condition and seven in critical condition as well as "numerous with significant orthopedic injuries requiring immediate surgery."

CNN cameraman Oran O'Reilly said he has seen seven of the city's famed double-decker buses as well as police cars and ambulances arriving with casualties.

Another hospital told CNN it had taken in 40 wounded.

British Home Secretary Charles Clarke said the explosions took place between Russell Square and Kings Cross Underground; near the Moorgate, Aldgate and Liverpool Street stations Underground; and the Edgware Road station.

The fourth explosion on a bus just outside Tavistock Hotel.

London Metropolitan Police, British Transport Police and London's fire brigade are investigating, according to Scotland Yard.

O'Reilly, who was at Aldgate station, saw passengers coming out of it with signs of smoke inhalation -- black smudges around their mouths and noses.

"They're pushing people away from the tube (train) station," O'Reilly said. "Police are telling us to evacuate the street."

Also at Aldgate, CNN producer Roger Clark said he had seen people with blood running down their faces, with many others looking stunned.

An eyewitness who was on a train told Clark the car in front of him exploded and then the the train tunnel filed with smoke.

Separately, the London Fire Service said it was responding to a report of an explosion on a bus at Russell Square. Chamberlin heard a loud explosion in central London. Witnesses told him they saw a heavily damaged double-decker bus.

Copyright 2005 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.
"I know because it is impossible for a tape to hold the compression levels of these treble boosted MFSL's like Something/Anything. The metal particulate on the tape would shatter and all you'd hear is distortion if even that." - VD

Dob
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Postby Dob » Thu Jul 07, 2005 10:41 am

Oh goody, just what we've been waiting for, a chance to buy the dip!

Traders said the timing of the explosions, several hours before the start of trading, allowed investors to overcome any knee-jerk reactions to the news. Jay Suskind, head trader at Ryan Beck & Co., noted that buy orders quickly entered the market as stocks sold off at the opening bell.
"Unfortunately, this is the world we live in now. Five years ago, the market would have been down much more. Now, we see it as a buying opportunity," Suskind said. "There's no panic."

Unfortunately??? Yeah, I can tell that Mr. Suskind is all broken up.

"American investors are...trying to figure things out, trying to determine the economic impact of what happened," said Ken Tower, chief market strategist for Schwab's CyberTrader. "When you're not at the epicenter, that's easier to do."

Ah yes, 9/11...the mother of all buying opportunities.
Dob
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"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance" -- HL Mencken

Bennett Cerf
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Postby Bennett Cerf » Thu Jul 07, 2005 1:22 pm

Never fear. The right-wing blogosphere has determined the proper response to these attacks. We need to kill more civilians!

What the London attacks say about suitable responses to terrorist actions

What I don’t yet see being widely commented on, is that this coordinated series of bombings, echoes a pattern that has recently developed in Iraq, in which multiple bombs are set off simultaneously. Those who made these attacks on London either learned from watching, or from carrying out, similar attacks in Iraq.

This is is an example of how our current approach to terrorism isn’t sufficiently effective.

By “our current approach,” I refer to our very odd experiment—previously unthinkable in human history—of considering “innocent” the civilian society that gave birth to those who kill our civilians, and refraining from attacking them directly. In all previous wars in human history, if a nation’s civilians were killed in large numbers by those of another nation, that was considered an act of war, and the attacked nation surrendered, paid ransom, or made war back on the attacking nation, including everybody in it, military or civilian. For example, in World War II, the Nazis and their allies bombed civilian cities, and the Allies responded by bombing Axis cities.

Many nations therefore refrained from killing civilians, instead attacking military personnel and targets, and in return the war was confined to soldiers. The French novelist Guy de Maupassant wrote many stories describing this, such as “Boule de Suif” and “Mother Sauvage” (see this excellent translation by Sian Miles.)

Never before in human history have nations said that they will do anything to spare the civilians that gave birth to the killers of their own women and children, even risking continued terrorist actions targeting the attacked nation’s own civilians. Since the terrorist actions do continue under such circumstances, as we are currently seeing in Israel, in Iraq, and today in London, this strategy isn’t sufficiently successful. It’s noble, but it lets things drag on too long.

In cultures that give rise to terrorists, the civilian society is calling out for terrorists to arise from among them and to go and murder the civilians of the targeted nation. There are many accounts of the Palestinians, for example, who are known for their terrorist attacks on Israel, celebrating terrorist attacks on Israel. Clearly this is a civilian society that celebrates the killing of civilians.

Therefore such civilian societies are in no way innocents, but are directly responsible for the existence of the terrorists, who are literally only doing what their friends and families want them to do. The terrorists are people, after all. And that’s what people do—they try to do something that their friends and families, and the civilian society in which they live, want. You can raise kids to be good, as usually happens in nations of the Judeo-Christian tradition, or to be evil, as often happens in nations which give birth to terrorist killers of women and children.

While this seems self-evident to me, perhaps it does not seem so to others. If so, surely it could be easily studied via interviews with those who know terrorists. What were the ways in which a given terrorist was first exposed to Islamofascism?

Here’s an example, cited last Monday by Little Green Footballs. The wife of Al Qaeda member Al Majati, killed by the Saudis last April, states that he wasn’t an extremist until he met her. She wanted him to be an Islamofascist:

It wasn’t until my confrontation with the Institute after I decided to wear the veil, that Al Majati was introduced to religion. He asked me once, “Why did you put yourself through so much trouble?” I answered that it wasn’t me who created the problem adding, “This is a divine command which as a Muslim, should not disobey it”.

Al Majati didn’t speak Arabic very well. When I quoted verses about the veil from the verses of Al Nur and Al Ahzab, he couldn’t understand them. I then bought him a book as a gift, entitled “The Translation of Quranic Meanings” and he became convinced after reading the verses and their translations. Two days later, I saw him again and was surprised to see that his thinking had radically changed. He read the book and was touched by the word of God. I believe this was instinctive love, as God himself had planted it in his heart.

[...]

Q: When did your husband discover jihad?

A: Towards the end of 1991, we traveled to Paris for a month to attend an Islamic conference where representatives from various organizations had gathered, including Hamas and the Mujahedeen from Afghanistan . There were also members of the Al-Yarmouk team for Palestinian songs. We found the atmosphere amazing. It also became evident to us that Islam was not just a religion for Arabs.


Surely Al Majati was predisposed toward Islamofascism by those with whom he grew up as well.

Since in my view the civilian society is directly responsible for the very existence of the terrorists, taking the heart out of that society’s wish to kill us appears to me to be key to ending the conflict. The alternative is nothing less than the sacrifice of one’s own civilians, since, as we have seen today in London, targeting only terrorists permits the conflict to drag out interminably, for years and perhaps for decades, and during that time the terrorists go on killing one’s civilians.

Rather than suggesting mass destruction of civilians, I’m suggesting targeting some number of blocks of civilian residences surrounding terrorists who have recently murdered civilians. Societies supporting terrorist killings of civilians can easily be shown that so doing results in the loss of their own civilians, as has been the case in war throughout human history, until our current odd experiment, in risking the lives of our own civilians in order to avoid casualties to those civilians of other countries who are seeking our deaths. Once it has been shown that terrorism doesn’t work, it will be abandoned as a failed strategy.

As often—but not always—happens in the first hours after a terrorist attack, we do not yet have details on who did it, or the geographic location in which they live. But frequently that changes after a period of time has passed. P.S. War is hell, and the sooner we win this one, the better it will be for the survivors on both sides.

The counter-argument is, yes, but it’s better to take civilian casualties for 5 or 10 or 20 years, rather than having a larger conflict. To which I respond, what larger conflict? The civilian societies that spawn terrorists have no military capabilities with which to oppose us.

The next counter-argument is, yes, but it’s better to take civilian casualties for 5 or 10 or 20 years, rather than having to kill civilians who want to kill us and who are giving birth to those who kill us. And that, I suppose, is a matter for further discussion. I personally would rather take no further losses of women and children on our side, and demonstrate to the world, for all future generations, that terrorism is a strategy that just doesn’t work.

Dob
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Postby Dob » Thu Jul 07, 2005 6:43 pm

Therefore such civilian societies are in no way innocents, but are directly responsible for the existence of the terrorists...Since in my view the civilian society is directly responsible for the very existence of the terrorists, taking the heart out of that society’s wish to kill us appears to me to be key to ending the conflict.

This is obviously a rephrasing of the terrorists' justification for killing civilians of countries that are perceived as enemies. Either this guy is a complete idiot, or he's trying to make some sort of sarcastic point that is lost on me.
You can raise kids to be good, as usually happens in nations of the Judeo-Christian tradition, or to be evil, as often happens in nations which give birth to terrorist killers of women and children.

Gee...do you suppose that the author was raised in the Judeo-Christian tradition? If it pisses me off to read that, I can imagine how a Muslim would feel.
...targeting only terrorists permits the conflict to drag out interminably, for years and perhaps for decades...I’m suggesting targeting some number of blocks of civilian residences surrounding terrorists who have recently murdered civilians.

I've got a better idea. Instead of dinking around with, say Iraq, which is a known terrorist sympathizer, let's invade the country, overthrow Saddam, and oversee democratic elections. That ought to put a stop to all this nonsense, by golly. And I guarantee that the whole operation would be over in a matter of weeks. It certainly wouldn't "drag out interminably, for years and perhaps for decades."
Dob

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"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance" -- HL Mencken

Gee Oh Are Tea
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Postby Gee Oh Are Tea » Fri Jul 08, 2005 10:23 am

Bennett Cerf wrote: You can raise kids to be good, as usually happens in nations of the Judeo-Christian tradition, or to be evil, as often happens in nations which give birth to terrorist killers of women and children.



Do we have any updated numbers of the women and children killed in Iraq by good Judeo-Christian boys flying F-16's?? Sorry, I forgot that Fox News reported that 4-year old Abdul was an "insurgent".

Cliff

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CitizenDan
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Postby CitizenDan » Mon Jul 11, 2005 8:54 am

Dob wrote:Oh goody, just what we've been waiting for, a chance to buy the dip!


Britt Hume has also said that his first response upon hearing about the attacks was "buy!" There's piggish, and then there's.....this. I don't even know how to describe it; profiteering doesn't even begin to do it justice.
We were right about Vietnam. We were right about Nixon. We were right about Reaganomics. Trust us -- we're right about Bush, too.

Dob
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Postby Dob » Mon Jul 11, 2005 4:21 pm

I'm not saying that the US markets should have been closed or anything, but folks in the media need to exercise restraint and realize that some comments are extremely inappropriate.

These are the type of guys that, upon hearing that an acquaintance died, would immediately think "oooh, he won't be needing those golf clubs anymore...if his widow sells 'em I can get 'em cheap" -- which is cold-blooded enough -- but then they'd go ask her about the clubs at the funeral.
Dob

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"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance" -- HL Mencken