several explosions in London

[diva421d]

Explosions Destroy Bus, Disrupt Subway System in London

(London-AP, July 7, 2005) — Half a dozen explosions rocked the London subway and tore open a packed double-decker bus during the morning rush hour Thursday, police said. At least two people were killed and nine injured in the nearly simultaneous blasts, and officials shut down the entire underground transport network.

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The explosions came a day after London was awarded the 2012 Olympics and as the G-8 summit was getting under way in Scotland. Initial reports blamed a power surge for the subway explosions, but officials were not ruling out an attack.

"There have been a number of dreadful incidents across London today," said Home Secretary Charles Clarke, Britain's top law enforcement officer. He said there were "terrible injuries."

A senior Israeli official said Scotland Yard told Israel minutes before the explosions that it had received warnings of possible terror attacks. Italy's European commissioner, Franco Frattini, called the explosions a terrorist strike, the Apcom and ANSA news agencies reported.

Sir Ian Blair, London's police chief, said he was concerned the explosions were a coordinated attack but said he wouldn't speculate on who was responsible. He said officials had found indications of explosives at one of the sites.

Bloodied and bandaged witnesses reported panicked crowds fleeing as the blast rained glass and other debris onto the street.

One witness, Darren Hall, said some passengers emerging from an evacuated subway station had soot and blood on their faces. He told BBC TV that he was evacuated along with others near the major King's Cross station and only afterward heard a blast.

Police confirmed an explosion destroyed a double-decker bus at Russell Square in central London and said they suspected a bomb caused the blast. Dow Jones Newswires reported that police said there were explosions on two other buses.

A witness at the Russell Square blast said the entire top deck of that bus was destroyed.

"I was on the bus in front and heard an incredible bang, I turned round and half the double decker bus was in the air," Belinda Seabrook told Press Association, the British news agency. She said the bus was packed with people.

"It was a massive explosion and there were papers and half a bus flying through the air," she said.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who was hosting the world's most powerful leaders at Gleneagles, Scotland, was expected to make a statement at 7 a.m. EDT. It was not clear if the G-8 gathering focusing on climate change and aid for Africa - but from which Iraq has largely been left off the agenda - would have to be postponed. Police said incidents were reported at the Aldgate station near the Liverpool Street railway terminal, Edgware Road and King's Cross in north London, Old Street in the financial district and Russell Square in central London, near the British Museum.

Bradley Anderson, a subway passenger, told Sky News that "there was some kind of explosion or something" as his train reached the Edgware Road station in northeast London.

"Everything went black and we collided into some kind of oncoming train," Anderson said.

Simon Corvett, 26, who was on an eastbound train from Edgware Road station, said: "All of sudden there was this massive huge bang."

"It was absolutely deafening and all the windows shattered," he said. "There were just loads of people screaming and the carriages filled with smoke.

"You could see the carriage opposite was completely gutted," he said. "There were some people in real trouble." London's cell phone network was working after the explosions but was overloaded and spotty, limiting communication.

The explosions sent stocks plummeting in Europe, with several of the major indexes down 3 percent.

[mursa]

This is a slap to the face of those idiots that say that 2/3 of Al-Qaeda have been killed and that the war on Terrorism is being won .

Let us now go invade other countries and waste hundreds of billions on idiotic wars that really does nothing to curb Terrorism and Anit- Western feelings .

Sad news indeed .

[bigpoppanils]

given the stations that were hit, its a miracle that the death toll is so low.

both the Kings Cross and Moorgate stations are like Union Square in terms of volume.

[xlr9ted]

This is a slap to the face of those idiots that say that 2/3 of Al-Qaeda have been killed and that the war on Terrorism is being won .

Let us now go invade other countries and waste hundreds of billions on idiotic wars that really does nothing to curb Terrorism and Anit- Western feelings .

Sad news indeed .

the remaining 1/3 pulled it off..

liberal piece of trash

its been 4 years since 9/11 and not one attack on US soil ..

stick to your dragonball cartoons and let us adults continue in intelligent debate

[mursa]

the remaining 1/3 pulled it off..

liberal piece of trash

its been 4 years since 9/11 and not one attack on US soil ..

stick to your dragonball cartoons and let us adults continue in intelligent debate

Why don't you go masterbate to your Karl Rove posters ?

The War on Terror is won !!yay ! .........your nutting but ignorant Sheep !

[mursa]

its been 4 years since 9/11 and not one attack on US soil ..

lol...dumb american extremist like yourself doesn't even realize that it took Al_Qaeda 8 years between attacks on us soil ...93 -01 WTC bombings .

..but yet your too stupid and gulable to comprehend that .

[ghhhhhost]

can we shut the fuck up and not argue about this?

[howardstone]

Congrats on London winning the Olympics

[igloo]

This is a slap to the face of those idiots that say that 2/3 of Al-Qaeda have been killed and that the war on Terrorism is being won .

Let us now go invade other countries and waste hundreds of billions on idiotic wars that really does nothing to curb Terrorism and Anit- Western feelings .

Sad news indeed .

Fucking mental midget....once again, demonstrating you have no fucking clue what you are talking about........at times like this, it really would be better if you just shut the fuck up......

[siceone]

I hope all my people over there are safe.

[mursa]

Fucking mental midget....once again, demonstrating you have no fucking clue what you are talking about........at times like this, it really would be better if you just shut the fuck up......

I was wondering when you would come out to graze .

[igloo]

I was wondering when you would come out to graze .

Seriously--just shut the fuck up. On days like this, your stupidity and ignorance is simply not entertaining.

[igloo]

the remaining 1/3 pulled it off..

liberal piece of trash

its been 4 years since 9/11 and not one attack on US soil ..

stick to your dragonball cartoons and let us adults continue in intelligent debate

mursa is usually the resident court jester, and we laugh at his stupidity....today he is just a piece of shit

[drdoom]

can we shut the fuck up and not argue about this?

Fuck you commie faggot.

[drdoom]

I wonder what's going on in the West End now. Hopefully, no retaliation attacks on the large Muslim community.

[bigpoppanils]

this thread is full of morons. this thread is done.

[drdoom]

Would it be easier for you to write (sarcasm mode on) next time?

[obby]

July 08, 2005

The Same Old, Same Old . . .

An anatomy of the London bombing.

by Victor Davis Hanson

National Review Online

http://victorhanson.com/articles/hanson070805.html

The British may react very differently than the Spanish did after Madrid — by doing nothing rather than by retreating from Iraq.

In the corrupt West these days, that is something.

We all know the score of this war now in the near four years since September 11. The London bombings should remind us how the old tired game works.

Causes

Failed states in the Middle East — autocratic, statist, unfree, intolerant of women and other religions — blame the West for their self-inflicted miseries. Sometimes they are theocratic, like the late Taliban or the current Iranian mullahs. But more often they are dictatorial like the Syrians, Pakistanis, Saudis, or Egyptians, who all, in varying degrees and in lieu of reform, have come to accommodations with the terrorists to shift popular anguish onto the West and the Jews.

That is the Petri dish of Islamic fascism, an evil that will only disappear when the dictatorships that allow it or nourish it do as well. Whether the jihadists are in Iraq, the United States, or Europe, they all share a sick notion that someone else (the decadent Western oppressor and unbeliever) is responsible for their own poverty and backwardness rather than the fundamentalism, corruption, bias, and intolerance endemic to the Middle East.

Propaganda

In WWII we didn’t care much whether in fighting Bushido some thought we were in a war against Buddhists. We weren’t, and that was enough.

We knew the enemy were Nazis, not simply Germans, and didn’t froth and whine to prove that distinction.

But not now.

To criticize Islamic fascism is supposedly to be unfair to Islam, so we allow on our own shores mullahs and madrassas to spread hatred and intolerance, as part of our illiberal acceptance of “not offending Islam.â€

It is not that we don’t believe in Western values as much as we don’t even know what they are anymore. The London bombings were only a reification of what goes on daily with impunity blocks away in the mosques and Islamist schools of London.

The enemy knows that and thrives on it. That refuge in religion is why imams shout that “Islam doesn’t condone such things†— even as bin Laden has become a folk hero on the Arab Street. Jihadists sense that even here at home more Americans are more concerned about a flushed Koran at Guantanamo Bay than five Americans fighting for the Iraqi jihadists or Taliban sympathizers in Lodi, California.

As long as there is not any price to be paid for Islamism, either by governments abroad or purveyors of its hatred in the West, the propaganda works and the killing will go on. But when a renegade Saudi Prince, Pakistani general, London imam, or Lodi mosque leader screams out to the jihadist, “Stop that before those crazy Americans really do go to war,†the war, in fact, will be over and won.

Methods

Terror is the signature of the Islamist: hit, back off; hit, back off — hoping in a few years to erode the will and nerve of affluent and leisured Western countries.

Bin Laden has so far only made one mistake: He took down the entire World Trade Center rather than the top floors, and had the misfortune of having George Bush as president. Thus he lost Afghanistan and ended up with democratic reform from Iraq and Lebanon to the Gulf and Egypt. Train bombings in Madrid and bus explosions in London, like the carnage in Iraq, are preferable, since they are enough to terrify and demoralize the Westerner but not quite enough to knock sense into him that only military resistance and victory will save his civilization.

So the attacks will never quite be of such a stature to convince Western voters that one more such explosion will destroy their societies. The trick is instead to wage war insidiously, incrementally, and stealthily to avoid an overwhelming response. A cooling-off period in between 9/11 and 7/7 in which Western apologists, pacifists, and Islamist sympathizers go to work is essential for the terror to continue.

Second, the denial of culpability is equally critical: a Syria, Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia must always be able to profess that it deplores terrorism, and that to its knowledge no jihadists are in transit on its territory; bin Laden & co. are not in its country; and its royal family are not funding killers. Within Europe itself, a madrassa that indoctrinates directionless youth, or an imam who shouts hatred to his audience, must always simultaneously when called upon “condemn†terrorism, and then seek victimhood when the rare scrutiny of an outraged public nears.

Finally Western self-loathing and guilt is essential: A fascist agenda of the jihadist — religious persecution, gender apartheid, racism, militarist autocracy, and xenophobia — all that must be embedded deeply within the postmodern landscape of the oppressed. A non-Christian and non-Western “other†can mask his venom only through victim status, grafting his cause to the same exploited groups that seek from Western society benefaction and compensation.

Aims

The jihadists expect that Westerners will slink out of the Middle East, allowing fascist fundamentalists to gain control of half the world’s oil and thus buy enough weapons to blackmail their way back to the caliphate.

Destroying Israel, killing Christians in Africa, running Westerners out of the Middle East, Pakistan, Indonesia, or Bali, all that is mere relish. In Europe, the goal for the unhinged is the creation of another al Andalus; for the more calculating it is enough intimidation and terror to carve out zones of Muslim sanctuary, where millions can live parasite-like, within the largess of Western society, but without its bothersome liberal agenda of freedom and equality, in hopes of implanting the universal law of sharia.

So here we are. Even though the killers profess revenge equally for Afghanistan (the so-called “right†war), they expect Westerners to scream “Iraq.â€

Even though such bombings are predicated on infiltration, careful stealthy reconnaissance, and long sojourns within London, expect cries of anguish and worrying about the stereotyping of Middle Eastern males.

Look for the same scripted crocodile tears and “concern†from the Middle East’s illegitimate leaders, even as much of the Islamic Street takes a secret delight in the daring of the jihadists, and the governments sense relief that the target was Westerners and not themselves.

Anticipate Western leaders condemning the terrorists in the same breadth as they call for “eliminating poverty†and “bringing them to justice†— as if the jihadists and their patrons are mere wayward and impoverished felons.

In the short term, Bush and Blair will appear as islands in the storm amid an angry and anguished public. But as 7/7 fades, as did 9/11, expect them to become even more unpopular, as the voices of appeasement assure us that if they just go away, maybe so will the terrorists.

It is our task, each of us according to our station, to speak the truth to all these falsehoods, and remember that we did not inherit a wonderful civilization just to lose it to the Dark Ages.

©2005 Victor Davis Hanson

POW!!!!! GET SUM!!!!!

[bigpoppanils]

POW!!!!! GET SUM!!!!!

no.