Explosions in London
Dean
Just got home, 6 am Eastern here.... Multiple explosions, many injured or killed.
It's early yet but terrorism seems likely.
* Update * The British government is stating that this was clearly a coordinated attack.
I can't seem to connect to the BBC's web page. Sky News has eyewitness accounts. The underground railway was hit multiple times and another bomb tore into a bus.
On television, a Brit government flack is saying there are seven confirmed explosions, and an eighth one seems to have just gone off.
Another report: multiple busses hit.... still updating...
In at least one case it looks like a bomb was set to go off in the same location as an earlier bomb, timed so that it would kill rescue workers after they arrived. Motherf*ckers.
6:15 — ah, looks like the BBC's news page is up and they naturally have updates.
6:17 — They're saying on the news now that the explosions have been going off over a period of two hours and that there have been multiple cases of these delayed double-bombs. They're saying that's an old IRA trick but something in my gut says this isn't the IRA this time.
They're noting that the huge numbers of people in town due to Live8 as well as the protestors to the G8 summit who've been moving through London on their way to Glasgow have made the security situation nearly impossible, and it will be awhile before we know how many people were hurt or killed. But this is bigger than Madrid.
6:35 — Two confirmed dead in one blast. They're saying now only 6 bombs have been confirmed.
7:05 — Tony Blair is speaking. Looks shaken but resolved.
More coverage and commentary from Michael (US), James (US), Andrew (UK), Sean (Japan), and Rita (US). I'm trying to find more from Brit bloggers and suddenly realize I can't remember who on my blogroll is British besides Andrew....
Ah, Libertarian Samizdata has commentary (they're UK). And Overtaken By Events has a roundup of the British bloggers.
Your best source for further updates for the rest of the day will probably be at the Command Post.
* Final Update * Most news accounts now say it was four blasts. I cannot confirm the report of double-bombings. We do have 37 confirmed killed and hundreds injured. I predict that the fascist pigs will not break the British will.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Bloody BBC
- Explosions in Birmingham
- Explosions in London
Andrew Ian Dodge:
"I suspect that the reaction of the British people will be similar to the American reaction to 9/11. I think the patience of many for Islamist crap has just come to an explosive end. The Islamists think that the British are too 'decadent' to react...I am betting they thought wrong."
If it was Islamist terrorists, let's hope you're right about the reaction. If my relatives (outside Liverpool) are anything to go on, this could indeed be the tipping point.
Linked you here
My best wishes to the people of London. May the fabled British resolve keep them going right now.
Today is July 7, 2005 or 7 - 7 - 2005
Add all the digits in 2005 and that equals 7.
Unless the British nation and government are prepared to undertake a largescale expulsion of their country's muslim population. That goes as well for every other non-Muslim society that has made the mistake of allowing these people to settle among them. Their communities serve as safe havens in which the terrorists hide, enjoy sanctuary, and recruit others to assist or join them.
If anyone has a better idea, I'm waiting to hear it. But without some serious defensive action, I assume the defenders of the West will attempt to explain away these dreadful events, or imagine that Islam can be democratized away from terrorism, or blame it on the existence of Israel, anything else that helps our paralyzed leaderships to avoid the hard, unpleasant and growing fact that the followers of Muhamad are organizing worldwise to destroy the West. And that they are beating us, not the other way around.
In any case, I have no time or sympathy for victims or victimology. I only empathize with those who are willing to fight and kill to protect Western civilization. If, after Pearl Harbor, anyone in this country had preached peace and understanding with the Japs, the government would have locked them up in concentration camps, while the rest of us looked on in total satisfaction.
Make serious war, or accept total defeat. Because that is what's coming.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
I'll wait a bit for total war. There are a lot more Muslims (about a billion) than there were Germans, Italians and Japanese, which means we would have a lot more killing to do. Let's give limited war and democraticization a chance. When we need total war we'll have it ready.
Yours,
Wince
Exactly as it was in World War II. No Japs on the west coast, no sabotage on the west coast. If and when peace ever comes, we can treat them once again like humans. Maybe even like friends. But we're not at peace with them or their religion. We are at war with the them and their whole show. You can pretend none of this is happening, if you want. But if I were you, I wouldn't take myself or my family around any big western city in which these people are permitted to circulate.
Or would you prefer that we carry out a massive reprisal against some islamic Arab urban center every time they carry out a terrorist attack in a non-arab non-islamic city? Maybe some target large enough and significant enough to them and their culture, that if they knew for a fact that we would destroy it, it would possibly destroy their culture and religion? Is that the way you want to play this out?
We have a choice here, Wince. Either we cave in and surrender to this particularly virulent salafi form of Islam, which is exactly what they want. Or we lock all these people out of our lives, our presence, our great cities, and just quarantine them in their own countries. Or we start some serious destruction against targets that they can never, ever replace or rebuild.
But just sitting around here blowing bullshit is not going to stop them.
So what's it to be, Wince?
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Yesterday's attacks may well have been carried out by at most one or two people with a small briefcase with four explosive devices delivered to four spots.
There is little to no defense and spending billions and billions and billions of dollars or euros or pounds will not make any nation safer nor will displaying orange alert flags.
Its amazing how successful terrorism can be. A punk like Timothy McVey showed them the way. Yasser Arafat was the grand-daddy of all the lessons needed to foment discord. And they gave him the Nobel Peace prize.
Now where will they be putting the cameras next ?
How ironic.
The achilles heel is that there is no defense, except for one or both of two strategies.
Strategy number one is to make sure these people cannot get into the cities. Which means they must be kept out of the country altogether, so they cannot simply disappear into the urban mass until the times comes for them to make the cell phone calls that trigger the pre-planted bombs. But since nobody can tell who among their particular population group are terrorists, there really is no option but to expel all of them, regardless of their citizenship, and allow no more of them to arrive here. That strategy implies that a less stringent police state is needed thereafter to protect all of us. Otherwise, the days of the Gestapo shall have come to the United States.
Strategy number two is to pick selected targets in the countries from which the terrorists are recruited, and maintain a systematic policy of reprisals that hurt their society, threaten their religion, or damage them in some other way. Because their terrorists target innocent victims in our country, there is little reason to respect the innocent victims in their country. In World War II, we burned to death, buried alive, or otherwise killed millions of German and Japanese civilians, all of whom presumably were as innocent as our own civilians here in the United States. Furthermore, few persons in power questioned this policy, and their complaints were studiously ignored both by the civilian and military leadership.
I am not certain whether the leaders and masses of western civilization have the balls to undertake a conscious strategy of offensive defense such as I have outlined here. Moreover, the salafists of the arab and other muslim states who are behind all this terror surely realize that the western leaderships are too soft to undertake such an offensive defense and thus win this war.
Therefore, the long-term outlook is not to bright. The only thing I can see ahead of us are the usual half-measures which thus far has accomplished next to nothing in the war against the hidden killers. Unless we change the calculus of this war, we are headed for defeat.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
And as McKiernan notes, the last major terrorist attack before 9/11 was the lilly-white Tim McVeigh and his coterie of lunatic nutjobs, who were completely homegrown corn-fed rural red-staters.
Given the millions of arabs we have here, expelling all of them seems rather extreme--and rather likely to simply increase terrorism. Also a fool's errand, since many terrorists are not arabs at all. Most of the people of Pakistan nor Afghanistan are not arabic; neither are most muslims in America for that matter; most American muslims are black, and most Americans of Arab descent are Christians.
I repeat: most Americans of Arab descent are Christians, not muslims, and most American muslims are black, not Arabic.
My views on this are obviously colored by the fact that I live quite near to one of the greatest concentrations of Arabs in the US--Dearborn Michigan. I work every day with Arabs. My doctor is an Arab. So's our family veterinarian. So are the owners of the convenience store down the street and half the gas stations in the area. I fail to see how expelling these people will fail to do more harm than good.