Terrorist attack on London

[SPQR 0]

If ideology was about nontolerance and killing all infidels then why is it that Bin Laden himself offered Europe a truce and in another statement explaind how certain countries such as sweden would not be attacked?

I do agree that ME should be left, but while still oil be found, oil that brings wealth and curse, problems won't disappear soon. And disappearance of oil may not fix all the problems. US bombs, firefights, and collateral damages only fuel more and more this unconventionnal war. And unconventionnal wars were never won through conventionnal means...

The Bin Laden's truce may have been more a diversion than a true proposal. Right before the scarf affair, and without being implied in Iraq, France, for exemple, is still threatened by bomb attacks. What is called AQ is just a conglomerate of franchised nearly independant cells, plotting attacks. Some are found before they act, some not :

For exemple, the GSPC ("Groupement salafiste pour la prédication et le combat" or Salafi Groupment for the Preaching and Combat) which prepared bomb attacks in 1998 during the Football World Cup and in 2000 against the Christmas Market in Strasbourg.

I'll add that Bin laden's friends in Iraq do currently kill more iraqi people than Coalition soldiers. Were they bad and perverted muslims ?

I should have post this answer in the "War on Terror" topic, but your post, python3 should have its answer near.

However, as the opinions of people from Muslim world is also important, I invite you to continue on the right topic (or copy and paste your post) with all of us. Thank you

[Pathy 0]

As i said earlier there are alot of things that get nipped in the bud without the public ever knowning about it, and never getting into the papers. It was bound to happen sooner or later that one would get through

[shinRaiden 0]

mmpgh?

Of course the IRA's too stupid to try something like this, that much is obvious. In some degree they understand that they're playing in the same context as a comment allegedly attributed to Yitzak Shamir - when asked why the Palestinians resort to suicide bombers and rock throwing instead of conventional military force : "If they did, there would not even be a memory of them left." That's why the IRA calls in their own bombs strictly because they don't want anyone to particularly get hurt. Helps for PR too. It's also pointless to speculate that it's a splinter group, as it's obvious the logical public backlash would be at Al Qaeda, so an IRA discreditation attack would be overlooked.

It's also not the AnarchoEcoCommies. Too much cohesive timed organization for those avowed enemies of order and sanity. Plus consider all the unplanned leakage of petro products and other environmentally unfriendly items into the ground. The EcoCommies may claim that humans are a cancer on the world, but they're extremely careful to make sure that they don't carry out their own blustery rhetoric on the 'cancer'.

Which leads it back to Al Qaeda. Or some copycat. Considering the long history of Britan's dealing's in the ME, I find it a bit suprising that there hasn't been much more incidents in the past. I guess we can all be grateful London's attack was as small relatively as it was, although the attack coming the day after the Olympic bid announcement is rather disturbing.

One of the other difficulties however, espcially exacerbated in cell-based terrorism is braggadacio 'ownership'. You'll have all sorts of groups and arm-chair guerillas claiming responsibility for an attack in a place they might not have known existed 5 minutes prior to being asked to comment for the cameras about said location. So any outright claims of responsibility, especially the immediate ones, are very dubious at best imho.

I think another thing that we can be grateful for is that whoever the psychotic sociopaths are, they're not competent engineering bombers, and as a result weren't that effective in creating mass carnage, even though each life lost or wounded is indeed a tragic outrage on humanity.

Couple of side notes. What's the historical background on those stations? Were any used as shelters in WW2?

-edit- One other item. I met the widow of the guy in charge of the Department for Palestinian Affairs in the British Mandate a couple times in 2000 at the hospice she was living at. Any idea where/how I can find more on his history?

[Scrub 0]

Just got home and saw the frikin' news.

My condolences, Britain.

You're tough, you'll recover.

You're smart, you'll get those bastards and secure your shores.

[Garcia 0]

Quote[/b] ]Of course the IRA's too stupid to try something like this, that much is obvious.

...errr...

That got to be one of the most silly sentences in a loooong time...so the IRA is stupid cause they don't go blowing up brits? Would rather say that the IRA is too smart to do something like this...would most likely do damage than good for them...

[python3 0]

haha, always a pleasure spqr, i see u got to my post b4 i edited it. I felt it was not the right thread for religion considering the attacks, but i will post again if i have time in the war on terror thread.

[shinRaiden 0]

Just saw a blurb that said the bus hit was out front of meeting of the British Medical Association. I'd say that was a measure of divine grace/providence putting those doctors so close to be able to assist to minimize further casulties.

story about BMA

-edit-

Sorry for a bit of comedic relief in this otherwise somber situation...

Quote[/b] ]

...The claims, picked up by BBC Monitoring,...

Just what the heck is this? Does BBC have it's own version of the NSA's Echelon? Are they digging through people's mail, trolling for keywords such as "terror", "martyr", "bomb", "jihad", "crusade", etc-etc?

Or... is it a cover for some slacker surfing the net at work looking for pr0n, and alt-tabbing to a competitor's news web page and calling it "research"?

[Badgerboy 0]

I was in London today, trying to get to one of our offices. We got within 1 mile, then the police locked down the entire area. I have been driving for 12 hours today, and to be honest, if I hadn't been alerted to the situation I wouldn't have thought anything was amiss, people were just getting on with their day as best as they could.

Edit - Never seen so many unmarked police cars in my life. Literally, the BMW next to you could at any moment switch on hidden lights, pull out, and whizz off.

One thing I did notice on the drive back, was the amount of policemen with registration scanners. Looks like they were cataloging every car leaving London.

[The Frenchman 0]

My condolences...

[John C Flett 0]

Just had to walk in from work in Edinburgh's Princes St. At about 5.45 the centre of Edinburgh was locked down after a suspicious package was found on a bus.

Probably a false alarm but given our proximity to the G8 summit the police aren't taking any chances.

This of course on the first day we've had no marches or anarchist riots.

[denoir 0]

I think these are Denoirs real views, hes become less liberal these days.

They are indeed my views as to possible solutions. I did not however endorse any of them.

What I am dead serious about, and fully stand by is the part about religion. I'm fed up with apologists trying to cover up the core issue here. It is a question of rational behaviour. It is not rational to kill civilians, and even less so to kill yourself. Religion encourages accepting irrationality. Religious faith is as a matter of fact completely based on it - it is based on accepting a world view from arbitrary authorities - your Bible, your Koran, your preacher etc

Apologists usually say things like "that's not real Islam, it's a perversion of it". Oh really? And what exactly is "real Islam", who defines it and what makes you think that "real Islam" is any more valid?

And if you take a closer look at the religious texts of Islam, Christianity or Judaism, you can very quickly conclude that if you are not out there killing infidels et al, then you are not religious enough.

Quote[/b] ]I think the problem is not 'religion' but extremists willing to use religion for their own ends.

While there might be people in the organization who are cynically using religion to control others, I can assure you that if you are willing to kill yourself in a manner in which you can kill as many civilians as possible, then you have to have a damn good motivation of it. They are religious nuts who are convinced that they are doing the right thing and that they will be rewarded in the afterlife. They're not using religion as an excuse to kill themselves and others they are doing it because they believe the religion.

Quote[/b] ]But you have previously made the argument that religious belief (and much more crucually the extremity of such) tends to decline with education and, i think, wealth. Financial aid could provide a great boost to education systems in the poorer regions of the world, and i dont see how financial aid has to be, has been, or is, linked to a repect for peoples religious views (you can have fundamental respect for a person without agreeing with their ideas). Anyway im not sure that mere financial aid will play a pivotal part in the fight against terrorist attacks. Poor people too are capable of holding a fundamental respect for human life, though education systems are more relevant.

Yeah, the education is a nice touchy-feely idea, but the world isn't that simple. I never saw bin Laden as the poverty stricken type. And if you look at the 9/11 attackers or the Madrid attackers - these were not completely uneducated people. And even if education is some form of long term solution, it is a very long term solution.

Quote[/b] ]you can have fundamental respect for a person without agreeing with their ideas

No, when their idea is that you preferably should be killed, then it is a tad difficult to respect their ideas. Respect has to be reciprocal, and you won't find that in any monotheistic religion - as they all have the monopoly on the absolute truth. And even if they don't want to kill me, I don't have to respect their bullshit view of the world. People think that they are getting abducted by aliens from Pluto every second week won't get my respect. I support their right to have moronic ideas, but I certainly don't respect them. So why should I respect a religion that says that if you work on Sunday/the Sabbath you should get killed? Why should I respect a religion that says that you should be stoned to death if you sleep with your neighbours wife?

I'll tolerate that people believe in bullshit, and I'll accept that it's their right as individuals to be idiots, but I'll be damned if I respect it.

[denoir 0]

kinda makes you think about iraq. This is such a big thing on the news here in the west, but 30-50 people dying in these blasts occurs several times a week in that poor country. pretty tragic.

Yeah, that's true. It is however to be expected for two reasons. First of all, you take more notice when it happens closer to you. Baghdad is far away (though not necessarily geographically), London is close. The second thing is that this is Europe where such shit doesn't happen on a regular basis. Had there been several of these each week, it wouldn't be so dramatic after a while.

[kerosene 0]

I knew Sky news was medicore, but today they really went out of there way to make the situation as confusing as possible, they reported every single rumour they heard as though it were fact.

I was quite lucky getting home, I walked from Holborn to Upper Islington and then got a lift from a work friends dad. Took about 2 1/2 hours from the centre of London to my house.

I saw some kind of bomb disposal truck, I'd never seen one before, it was a pick-up truck with a big armoured cab on the back.

[Pathy 0]

One thing I did notice on the drive back, was the amount of policemen with registration scanners. Looks like they were cataloging every car leaving London.

Hopefully they will catch the culprits

[Panda-PL- 0]

I'll tolerate that people believe in bullshit, and I'll accept that it's their right as individuals to be idiots, but I'll be damned if I respect it.

Bravo! That's what you call tolerance? Anyway you don't have any evidence to prove your point on religion EITHER, so you're just makeing a fool of yourself in public calling it bullshit.

Say, are you French? That would expliain alot

(sorry to The Frenchman for that, a sober joke).

If you find reason for brutalitty and murders in religion then you must be the king of fools. Most mass murders in 20'th century were made by declared atheists.

But it's easy to blame something instead of looking out for real reason. It kinda organizes the world if you file the people and their ideas into different drawers...

Anyways you don't respect anyone but yourself and in fact I'd sooner see you then myself as a potential terrorer.

Why? Because somehow i talk to You and try to explain something even though your resoning is sooo simple and You definitely don't know the subject.

Is anyone who doesn't agree with you an "idiot"?

Is everyting you do not agree with "bullshit"?

Is everyone on this world a morron because you're the smartest and You have bought the Monophol For Truth?

Could any Mod Please do something with that? It was supposed to be a thread about London, not atheism propaganda using human tragedy to prove their point on religion, so please do something with it.

Who the hell gave him the right to judge the others? Is he that much better then the rest of us? I don't want to be thrown in one bag with fanatical terrorers because I go to the church.

[Placebo 28]

So despite my numerous requests to keep this thread for news purposes rather than delving into war on terror conversations which already have their own thread I have been ignored, shows what utter contempt some of you have for the suffering, shock and sense of grief felt by the British people.

The thread will be closed, a number of people should expect post restrictions for ignoring a moderators instruction. A new thread will not be tolerated.