(Repost)Hmmm, the Brits may not have been in panic circa the initial events, however, there are indications of panic with current scares re further fears of addittional attacks/bombs, i.e. Victoria Station.
It’s not possible to predict what the overral reaction of the average Brit will be once it all sinks in, however, I’ll speculate that they won’t to be too thrilled to realize that they can NOT be protected from the consequences of the Bush/Blair alliance.
The UKs Capital city transport system has been crippled by a completely unknown, unsurveilled, terror cell, that I suspect has already exited the country (less suicidists ?), and will be crippled for at least another business day … no transport home, schools closed tommorrow, advice NOT to enter London tommorrow ?
This could have been much worse if the primary motivation was casualties, this was a political attack, if secondary charges were planted beyond the incident areas, at hospitals, VBIEDs on jammed motorways ?
Hopefully, the Brits will start to question why its a case of when the next attack will occur and why thier government cannot protect them ? Hopefully the Brits unlike us, may then be able to question what has led to this situation, i.e. Foriegn policy …
Look for Bliar to milk this for all its worth to justify the coming redeployment of 2,000-10,000 British troops from Iraq to Afghanistan supposedly to destroy the fictional terror camps still there producing the supposed London attackers.

Posted by: Outraged | Jul 7 2005 17:25 utc | 3

@frenchy lamour
When you say that, keep in mind that the US is against that redeployment.
True. The US wants the Brits to maintain thier troops in Iraq and INCREASE thier committment to Iraq. The Brit Army is in just as much trouble re manpower, enlistments and re-ups, as well as major materiel ‘worn-out’ and excessive budgetary costs as our Army and Marines.
I do not know fi the camps in Afghanistan are fictional or not, and you don’t provide any proof that they’re fictional.
Frankly, with all due respect, Iraq and especially Afghanistan are the most continuously photographed and scanned/monitored pieces of real-estate on the planet as far as aerial, high altitude, unmanned and sattellite reconnaissance and surveillance assets go.
Camps did exist prior to the US invasion in 2001. ‘Camps’ continuing to exist today when there are ~20,000 troops, with significant wieghting of Special Forces and complete aerial dominance … no.
Provide references ? Well, there’s lots out there if you choose to do some basic research beyond the infotainmnet that is CNN/FOX/NYT etc.
No offence intended, just a little peeved and a little depressed, despairing …

Posted by: Outraged | Jul 7 2005 17:53 utc | 5

@frenchy lamour
By the way, the largest training camp at the moment is the entire country of Iraq, somewhat less the nation of Afghanistan, without there being something physically identifiable ass a ‘terror training camp’. Shyte, I could teach a team the necessary skills re IEDs, prepare materials and conduct planning from a house in the ‘burbs with a garage, hmmph, even from a two bedroom apartment, using readily available materials in any civil society.
Red Brigades, Baeder-mienhoff, IRA, etc did’nt have the popular press/media icon of ‘training camps’. The phrase has become a usefull emotive rhetorical tool implying that a terrorist enemy, really an ideology, is something physical that can be destroyed by being bombed …

Posted by: Outraged | Jul 7 2005 18:13 utc | 7

outrage, do you think the brits retreating to afghan to stay present in ME while pacifying the (brit)masses who want to get out, and look like they are ‘really focusing’ on al qaeda whether they are there or not?? possibly trying to move the war back to afghanistan, or something?

Posted by: annie | Jul 7 2005 18:17 utc | 9

@annie
Sorry, I’m not quite sure what you’re asking. Call me a ‘thicky’ …

Posted by: Outraged | Jul 7 2005 18:34 utc | 11

i am not surprised by this at all. it is completely consistent that in this particular war – the war will be brought home
& while it is clear i do not support such an action – the action is completely consistent with the war of the flea
but i think even likelier it has little to do with it in the sense it is most probably the devotees of the jailed imam psychopath in england who gives jihad a bad name
the argument against that – is that it appears quite sophisticated – perhaps it isn’t. would like outraged’s opinion
& today the situation is so louch, so sordid – that i do not block from my mind the possibility of their own intelligence apparatus gone mad – because as iraq is a recruting post for militant islam – bombing in the motherland helps win support for the tyrants otherwise obscene act
& it is relative – this very day there are more than 40 iraquis who have been murdered & is their life less worth than the english
they have created a firestorm & like outraged i do not see when we will witness the end of it

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jul 7 2005 19:59 utc | 13

“The man that sets out to carry a cat by it’s tail learns something that will always be useful and which will never grow dim or doubtful.”
–Mark Twain

Posted by: Antifa | Jul 7 2005 20:15 utc | 15

And to many in America, the answer is to kill more innocent Iraqis.

Posted by: Ben | Jul 7 2005 20:32 utc | 17

outrage , re your 1:53 post this may sound way simplistic but here goes. why would blair move troops to afghan when we know the ‘enemy’ is in iraq?
lots of bitching and moaning about how we deserted afghan for iraq knowing al qaeda was there. the war going bad, everybody is pissed so blair says we will divert some of our guys from iraq to afghan thereby shutting up the masses, attempting to move the battleground to afghan, removing some threat in iraq(?)
but still being positioned in the ME. or why?

Posted by: annie | Jul 7 2005 20:34 utc | 19

There’s a suggestion that the attack on the bus may have been a mistake, in the sense that the attack was meant for the Underground instead, so maybe it didn’t all go as planned.
Always have a plan B and they had one.
A small cell – three to five are sufficient – could have done this.
You do not need big numbers, just some slightly intelligent and disciplined people to do this. The most difficult thing is to get the explosives undetected. Everything else is cheap and easy to do (timing devices, some batteries, a plan, a communication strategy etc.) Just leave some ususal bags in the tube in high traffic times and have the timing devices set to a pre-determined time. If your missed a tube, reset the timer and enter any bus and leave the device there.
These are not mistakes, these are plans. Easy to carry out, cheap and not defeatable. The only possible counterstrategy is to deminish the number of folks who think such actions are justfied. The UK and US are doing exactly the opposite of that.

Posted by: b | Jul 7 2005 20:36 utc | 21

& colman
i want to be a little brutal here – maany many nations in this last two decades have been so involved in a self celebration of a form of jingoisim that i find completely abhorent – & the way like fox news they segue from horro to empathy – to bombast to brutality – the way they go from war to celebrity to sports to leadership struggles of little importance while the world goes up in flames
they use the same tone, the same rhythm, the same music – they the tyrants are completely unconcerned by the massacre of innocents whether in iraq or afghanistan or in london balis spain or america. they really do not care. they are protected from the violence they create
so yes i have tears for those today but those tears have to be shared with others who are being killed with intensity every day of the week & without a second thought either by the perpetrators or their supporters

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jul 7 2005 20:45 utc | 23

R’Giap: go to EuroTrib. See my last front-page posting there. Aim your remarks at someone else.

Posted by: Colman | Jul 7 2005 20:53 utc | 25

outraged
again, thank you
& colman it is not aimed at you for christs sake
i’m simply trying to filter information like all of us do here
i largely hink billmon, b & outraged have covered the waterfront in explaining substantially what has happened

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jul 7 2005 20:58 utc | 27

@Colman
R’Giap is quite correct … a terrorist only needs to be lucky, slip through the net once, no matter how many times others are caught/detected.
Or as to paraphrase Sun Tzu(?): He who attempts to defend everywhere (against terrorist atatck), defends nowhere …

Posted by: Outraged | Jul 7 2005 21:07 utc | 29

Annie,
Iraq = illegal under international law. They are playing it down, but there will be a reckoning.
Any squaddie that kills an Iraqi is now in big trouble – whatever the justification. This is exactly why Sir Michael Boyce (Chief of Defence Staff) reacted as he did (“Blair and Hoon in the dock at the Hague?” “Too bloody right”.
Afghanistan = legal under international law. The above does not apply.
As to the security issues, Norton Taylor has some thoughts. What seems to be happening is that there is a steady stream of volunteers from the UK heading for Iraq. They are being turned into teams and then coming back to resume their former lives.
Link

Posted by: John | Jul 7 2005 21:23 utc | 31

“Most pundits suck. But the Jim Glassman comedy of errors, like the Iraq tragedy, is a warning that suckiness has reached truly absurd proportions. It appears no mistake is too obvious, no theory too harebrained, no argument too ridiculous to be taken seriously — ”
…ends up resembling and sounding like a cacophony of cats being swung around in circles by their tails and making as much sense as; usually appears at the nadir of the “high” point of a civilization just as it teeters over the edge toward a self-actuated oblivion…

Posted by: News Nag | Jul 7 2005 21:32 utc | 33

outraged
yr right – i imagine i was using the hamza example – in the sense that the attentats in spain & bali were done not by an organisation but by a group of wide boys with a bit of politics thrown in
but yr right in some sense filtering this wy can be unproductive & create contexts that are not appropiate

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jul 7 2005 21:48 utc | 35

The scale seems small — reports of fatalities and casualties keep changing but I have not heard a number greater than 45 for fatalities yet. I compare this with grossly inflated initial fatality rumours for the WTC hit (the Brits perhaps just have far more professional, calm emergency services coordinators?)…
you would think that if it was the same planning cadre that pulled off 911, they would have managed something on a grander scale — destroyed a national monument or something in addition to a higher death toll. I’m leaning towards the “imam fan club” theory at present, though they certainly did Dubya a big favour. I wonder what his approval rating will be by the end of today. it was down around 40 pct last week iirc.
Outraged I’m with you, this is just ghastly depressing ‘cos we know what follows: Zarqawi Dunnit, and he’s hiding in Iran/Syria/Lebanon (throw a dart), so let’s go smoke him out, diggetydawg. and attacks on innocent Muslims in the UK and elsewhere. and so on. Triumph of the Shit-Stirrers. christ it is dismal… and when I think, if only the Yanks had chosen to use international intel/police methods to deal with the 911 crime instead of those unbalanced neoconmen taking it as their very own “Pearl Harbour event” for their predetermined war-of-choice against Iraq… if only, if only… how many dead people might still be breathing today…

Posted by: DeAnander | Jul 7 2005 22:03 utc | 37

Oh god it’s happened again. The assholes who organise the slaughter of Arabs are up in Scotland cowering behind thousands of police, troops, bomb sniffer dogs and razor wire.
That more than anything else should be the issue here. Why do the perpetrators get protection at a ratio of over 1000 body guards to 1 asshole. So many in fact that an intoxicated Chimpee can bowl one over on his bike, mutter “there’s plenty more suckers where that one came from” and get back to selling anything he can that isn’t nailed down and doesn’t belong to him.
We’re all people too! We need to affirm that so these pigs understand that the death of 40 Londoners isn’t an acceptable sacrifice to prevent the death of 8 sociopathic greedheads.
Jack Straw the sleaziest man in pommie politics was on the box a while ago with the “This has nothing to do with Iraq these people want to destroy our way of life” mantra.
I think they are going to find it a tough sell in the UK. Perfidious as the poms may be they don’t go for lowest common denominator instant analysis as the MSM likes to serve it up.
Already people are asking whether the intelligence failure could be ascribed to a concentration of resources on listening for ways to protect BushCo, Bliar and Bulldozer.
Saying too much about the motives of the bombers or ascribing political outcomes to the death of a bunch of people, the names of which few of the melon heads glued to the goggle box will remember in a week feels quite stomach turning.
Each one of the dead had lives just as valid as any other human on the planet. Such as the old person shaking with fear at the sight of masked invaders bursting into his/her home in Bagdhad right now while we read this blog in the comfort of our secure homes. They all had much more worthwhile lives than ANY of the corrupt, venal, hubris sodden egocentrics playing at ‘organising the world’ in Gleneagles.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jul 7 2005 22:11 utc | 39

Galloway is warming up:
Lawmaker George Galloway said Londoners had “paid the price” for Britain sending soldiers into Iraq and Afghanistan and warned there was more to come after bomb blasts in the capital killed at least 37 people.
“We argued, as did the security services in this country, that the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq would increase the threat of terrorist attack in Britain,” Mr Galloway said in a statement.
“Tragically Londoners have now paid the price of the Government ignoring such warnings,” said the Respect Party MP for east London’s Bethnal Green and Bow said.
Later, the politician told Parliament the attacks were despicable but entirely predictable.
“There was nothing unpredictable about this attack this morning – despicable, yes, but not unpredictable,” he said.
“Entirely predictable and, I predict, not the last either.
“Let there be no equivocation: the primary responsibility for the bloodshed this morning lies with those who carried out the acts.
“But it would be utterly crass to … separate these acts from the political backdrop against which they took place.
“They did not come out of a clear blue sky, any more than those monstrous mosquitos that struck the twin towers and other buildings in the United States on September 11, 2001.”
Mr Galloway earned a stinging rebuke from Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram, who accused his former colleague of “dipping his poisonous tongue in a pool of blood,” adding: “I think it is disgraceful”.
A fierce critic of the March 2003 US-led war to remove Saddam Hussein, Mr Galloway was expelled that year from Prime Minister Tony Blair’s governing Labour Party, which he had represented in Parliament since 1987.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Jul 7 2005 22:33 utc | 41

Re US HUMINT has never been our forte …
ya know outraged, sometimes I wonder if this is an ideological problem. I’m going out on a limb here but since the advent of Taylorism the US business elite (the ruling class of the country, which populates the senior offices of the spook and dip services) has believed in one mantra: replace human labour with technology. the mantra of automation and labour minimisation and dumbing-down of the workforce.
which may be cost effective when reorganising a widget factory, but what if that contempt for human labour — especially fine-grained, detailed, craftsmanlike labour which is my take on humint — enormous patience, intuition, and a good ear for language and nuance required — has produced several decades of overreliance on elint and automatic data processing (I read once that most of the so-called secret data CIA processes could be gleaned from open sources, and that they were a couple or more years behind on analysing or reducing the firehose output even with hella compute power dedicated to the task)…?
in other words has the US spook service downsized its field agents, infiltrators, agent runners and other humint specialists in favour of whizbang elint high-tech (which produces lucrative contracts for friends and relations of revolving-door Senators and so forth)? devaluing skilled human labour in favour of advanced mechanisation/automation?
I wonder if applying industrial Taylorism to intel work has been as destructive of national capacity as the same “everything’s a nail ‘cos I’ve got this great big nifty hammer” approach has been to US ag. but my brain’s a bit rattled today and looking for distracting things to think about.

Posted by: DeAnander | Jul 7 2005 22:46 utc | 43

dea
you know i think is part of wwhat le carre has developed into an anti imperialist in the twilight of his life – he appears to have an almost physical loathing of stupidity & in the books it goes from the early works where the bosses are cynical but not without self knowledge – to the point here he cannot conceive of a character within the intelligence community without creating a buffoon. & in a way his anti-imperialism began at that point – what are we defending? from whom? how? the disgust, the human disgust he palpably feels in the later works re as despairing as any of our melancholic crew
& it would seem from the 170th capture of the 3rd ranking alqaeda operative every second day & the history of the old scarlet pimperel – zaqarwi himself – that their intelligence gets worse
& when they gert very very angry – they just bombard the shit out od people – send in the puppet troops for a general massacre & hope the fear itsef acts as an anti recruiting tool
like outraged – what has happened today & as macbeth sd tommorrow, tommorrow & tommorrow

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jul 7 2005 23:01 utc | 45

@outraged
OSS always seemed to me (from reading) like a bunch of loose cannons from the upper classes — too much Tom Swift and Hardy Boys atmosphere — but that was pretty much the case in those days on the UK side as well, no? somehow spying — at one time the lowest of the low among military operations — became the province of gentleman-adventurers (heaven help us)…
btw I did note the lucrative contracts 🙂 trust me to follow the damned money…
@rgiap yes, initially lc drew a distinction between the damnyankees (his attitude to the Cousins was already scathing in the Smiley novels and Russia House) and the semi-competent brits, but as you say his opinion of the whole pack of them finally becomes beyond contempt, beyond any nationalist sentiment. by “the night porter,” “our game,” “single and single” he is damn near channelling Upton Sinclair mixed with Dalton Trumbo and a touch of Dickens… btw did you ever read any of Len Deighton’s more trivial but comparably cynical novels of british intel, the harry palmer stories in particular (alas he later turned to potboilers but the early works were not bad)…? also his volume of short stories “eleven declarations of war” was eloquently antiwar in many places iirc. the “Berlin Game,” “Mexico Set” series and hook/line/sinker I thought opportunistic imitations of lc’s success, far inferior to earlier work.

Posted by: DeAnander | Jul 7 2005 23:33 utc | 47

dea
have just regarded a few papersonline english, australian italian & french & there is this terrible tone of jingoism – the worst kind of impoverished nationalism & not entirely different from the wat they count numbers or money for g8 concerts or ‘aid’ for the victims of tsunami etc etc
these papers are so seedy – they reek of the acts themselves. the acts were predictable but they still scare the fuck out of me – & yes a certain kind of wonderment about the world & ourselves in it
& yes i do generalise bit sometimes it is difficult to seprerate a people from their media. it is base beyond belief. who’s dead? how many? & whose citizens etc etc like some even more perverse form of that vain little fascist wrapped up in literary renown – james ellroy
the kind of writing in thie media makes me feel dirty – feel guilt reading it – i’m not going there for information – because it’s not there & hasn’t been there for a long time & why for example i couldn’t give a flying fuck about a cooper or a miller. there are real writers who lost their lives in latin america trying to communicate what was really happening to their countrymen & they need to be honoured because they were seeking truth(s)
even here le monde is the only thing that is really readable & it has its own agenda too
but never ever ever do i get from ‘journalists’ with very few exceptions – the sense of what we are living today & tommorow & tommorrow & tommorrow

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jul 7 2005 23:58 utc | 49

Troll alert. Ignorance, bigotry, predjudice, racism, human indifference, overt anger, stupidity re consequence for even self and kin …

Posted by: Outraged | Jul 8 2005 0:11 utc | 51

How come you liberals are crying into your dish rags over Arabs but not about their treatment of those like me? The things just blew up alot of old British women. There is no excuse for something as heinous like that. I don’t want to be associated with liberalism anymore.

Posted by: Ô¿Ô | Jul 8 2005 0:17 utc | 53

Err, I just don’t think there is any excuse under the sun to blow up old British women.

Posted by: Ô¿Ô | Jul 8 2005 0:24 utc | 55

Not that I’m an old British woman or anything….

Posted by: Ô¿Ô | Jul 8 2005 0:27 utc | 57

can see why atrios put on the bouncer hat.

Posted by: DeAnander | Jul 8 2005 0:30 utc | 59

Digby totally blocked me from even reading the comments at his blog. Just because, I guess.

Posted by: Ô¿Ô | Jul 8 2005 0:36 utc | 61

I think I have the liberty to be as prejudiced against any other group as much as I want. Seeings how they’re all violently prejudiced against me.

Posted by: Ô¿Ô | Jul 8 2005 0:46 utc | 63

I now plan to be the flaming asshole over the Moon of Aladamnbama.

Posted by: Ô¿Ô | Jul 8 2005 0:58 utc | 65

There has been some comment here about the failure of humint and reliance on sigint. If only it were a failing of the US alone. This distrust of informants and the info they provide has numerous causes, one of which is professed to be economics but can’t possibly be since at some point highly skilled analysts have to wade thru hours of meaningless conversations and days of video sat pics to glean 1 nugget whereas an informant is paid by the result.
No apart from the fact that most normal human beings don’t have empathy for a give-up, grass, traitor, topper, canary (every culture appears to have a range of metaphors for a betrayer) we can’t really ascribe that feeling to the panty sniffers and stickybeaks that staff the security and detective services.
I suspect that the reason that security services and detective bureaus around the world have come to rely so heavily on bugs, CCTV and sky spies is that they no longer belong to the culture they are policing/protecting.
Merging into a community requires an ability to be a part of that community. Even the police in modern societies seem to consider themselves ‘above’ it all.
The police were once part of the working class (for want of a better term) they investigated and protected. Nowadays police are in a much higher salary bracket than an unskilled worker this was not always so. Poor people join law enforcement as a way out of their community more often than a way to protect that community.
Watch COPS or one of the other ‘reality’ shows. Even the authorities from the minorities they are policing have little/no identification with that minority. Occassionally one will do a sort of a ‘pseudo bro’ act in a transparent effort to get something that is so forced that it is treated with contempt.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jul 8 2005 1:07 utc | 67

deanander
but i suggest deander – perhas a reading of the beautiful work of henning mankell – really some spectacular understanding of our ‘lossness’ as beckett might have called it – in this time of hell – this swedish detective in his exceptionally troubled but also extremely balanced measure of his feminine creates a sadness that gives grace. & the violence in mankels work i so violent & sometimes apropos of nothing that it seems to mirror this tommorrow we live today
billmon, your writing has been both human & exemplary & i understand why someone refered to hst the other night because you hold things in tension – your absolute disgust & but also a powerful desire to see decency
i’ve seen the film – gregory peck maybe james stewart certainly johnny garfield in choice of evil(?) – i wnat ther to be people who can be decent even correct as alabama presumes is ossible with fitgerald – i hope so
billmon you bring us your humanity with your work & its intelligence tho i do not think we would share many views & as i have sd often i know i possess a fanatics heart & it is not a badge of honour but it is the man i have become. i am not a good man but i have known goodness
as for our troll – your ideas are so offensive, so stupid, so inept, so lacking in any sense of why thing might happen – you apologise you dumb fucjer to the hassanm family, you go down on your knees, on your knees & beg forgiveness for the evil views you try to parade here. i don’t know why you are here – you bring nothing except the filfth of bad conscience & if you had really read what deanander writes – you might have understood what grâce means. clearly you dont. perhaps you never will

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jul 8 2005 1:37 utc | 69

In a post @ 8:30 P.M. (on “The Whiskey Bar”) called “Give it a rest,” Billmon invites us to see the London massacre for the tragedy that it is, and to show a little heart for a moment or two. I’m rather shocked to notice that he’s speaking to me. True, I’ve been flying around the country all day long, and haven’t looked at a tv set since the thing began (I only found out about it a couple of hours ago), but Billmon’s still speaking to me, because my reaction to the news was devoid of shock, horror and dismay. Three years ago, two years ago–even one year ago?–it would have been quite another experience. So where is this hardness coming from? To what am I deadening myself? I’m sure it’s the suffering in Iraq. With no great difficulty, some time ago, I must have hardened myself to the suffering in that scene–and on all sides! Consider the fate of this Egyptian diplomat….horrible, is it not? But I’m not altogether horrified….Well, this has got to stop. I’m too old to let myself be turned into a stone by the daily spectacle of murders, massacres and mayhem….There’s a minor art to pondering horrors, and the cultivating of that art is not beyond us.

Posted by: alabama | Jul 8 2005 1:54 utc | 71

If we couldn’t think of “the one just man,” remembereringgiap–or, if you prefer, “the one good man”–then there’d be no more reverence for life, no more affirmation, nothing to say “yes!” to. And we must say “yes!,” and not just once, but twice at least (“yes, yes”….). Said in whatever appropriate tone (lightly, gravely). And heard wherever spoken. Patrick Fitzgerald is saying “yes, yes” to something, but saying it so quietly that it’s almost impossible to hear. But he began to make himself heard some eighteen or twenty months ago, and he’s been mining the wickedness of Washington ever since. I wish to follow him closely.

Posted by: alabama | Jul 8 2005 2:17 utc | 73

I see some comments above about Pataki and that asscrack Bloomberg. I cannot believe how many of these self serving asshole march out in lockstep to take political advantage of this tragedy.
Get ready for the shitstorm people. If you think the attacks on liberals and progressive were bad before, it going to get really worse. Limblowhard has been especially vitriolic lately.
Have a good night all. Peace be with you.

Posted by: jdp | Jul 8 2005 2:24 utc | 75

Bill,
I understand the need to pause and grieve with the British people. But to be honest, I don’t feel it. I feel anger – not the need for solemn reflection. I feel numb to the terror and shock of the terror attacks. To be honest, I’m expecting a nuclear or biological or chemical attack here at home that will kill a few hundred thousand people. Like an Andy Warhol audience member I feel numb to the crash scene. 40 or so people died – not 3,000.
My immediate reaction, unlike 9/11, is to analyze what happened, listen carefully to early reports, figure out who I think likely did it and whether or not that jives with the official story. My initial reaction is to think this time, rather than feel. Feeling during these sorts of situations is dangerous. It leads to situations like what we see in Iraq where large groups of people are manipulated by their government and led around like little puppy dogs on leashes made of feelings like fear and rage.
I am rather ashamed of myself that this is my initial reaction but I thought it might be important to mention it as others may be experiencing the same thing. And maybe we should discuss why some of us are moved to respectful silence and profound grief while others of us feel numb and angry and analytical.

Posted by: Gabby | Jul 8 2005 2:31 utc | 77

Billmon may have a soft spot in his heart for London and Londoners, but I resent his high tone that the rest of us tone down the political rhetoric. I do not share his sentiments.
My reaction is this: It seems three dozen dead and severl hundred injured is about an average day in Iraq. Are we feel more sorry for the Brits because they are white and speak English? Because their leader stood by us in our illegal and misguided debacle in response to 9/11? I don’t think we should. That would be rather stupid, ethno-centric and rather racist.

Posted by: roberto | Jul 8 2005 2:55 utc | 79

Roberto,
I have thought all day about how this sort of thing happens in Iraq every day and we hear nothing more than a 4 or 5 minute snippet summarizing the day’s bombings in Iraq on MSM. Every day Iraqis are blown up on their way to work, on their way to school, on their way home, etc. Every day unnamed soldiers are killed, injured, maimed for life. I just don’t have the same emotional response I had on 9/11. It’s eerie – but I just don’t have it.

Posted by: Gabby | Jul 8 2005 3:04 utc | 81

We are not required to stare at horror all the time, nor, I think can we often face it well. Even Buddha trained himself how to pay attention, not to everything all the time, but to particular things at particular times. Christ was the same – things in their time.
When I look at the picture from our current occupation of Iraq, there is one that will horrify me everytime I look at it, for the person is too horribly broken. I have to stop looking in order to regain composure, and that seems about right, human. Now she appears in my minds eye, and I cannot escape the grief of her, of her father, of anyone who has ever loved her and seen what happened to their beloved.
But when I hear about the bombing in London, I have not gone looking for pictures of it, sounds of it, or even to find out if everyone I know in London is alright. There is time enough for evil news to find me.
I am not any harder, but rather I am having to learn equanimity in evil times. There are times to look into the abyss, and times to rest. My duty to myself and those I love is to learn about the evil my country is doing in the world. But not every time the media flashes a travesty at me. I will choose my own moments of staring into evil deeds. And only so long as it takes me to own the evil which is being kept on a tab, a tab I and mine will pay. Any more is mere violence to myself, which can only initiate more.
Equanimity is not the same as hardness; it grows through respect for how difficult a task we have to actually act skillfully in a violent world. It is a beginning – despite my violent heart – to peace. And when I am not calm enough for equanimity, I do neither self nor other selves any favors by staring into violence.
Peace. Out.

Posted by: citizen | Jul 8 2005 3:36 utc | 83

Of course its shameful that the daily death in Iraq doesn’t provoke the same media response as the dead and injured in london. That doesn’t mean the response to London is wrong it just means the media response to Iraq is wrong.
After months of reading these pages I know that many of the people who come here regularly experience a daily horror at the murders in Iraq or Sudan or the Congo but that doesn’t mean we should have to ‘prove’ ourselves by continually affirming it.
One death for the aggrandisement of the powerful is no less immoral than 1 million. I’ve been fielding phonecalls and emails thru the nite and most of today because my niece was getting married in London today and a large portion of the whanau is over there to celebrate it. Yet I refuse to personalise it or waste energy on whether any of the victims are acquaintances or family (which incidentally my brother assures me is not the case) because what dashed diferrence can it possibly make?
n humans have died a violent and unneccessary death in more places than ‘usual’. That is all we need to know to take pause and consider the changes we all need to make to prevent any violent and uneccessary death anywhere anytime.

Posted by: Debs is Dead | Jul 8 2005 3:53 utc | 85

I’ll say it again: there’s a minor art to pondering horror, and the cultivating of that art is not beyond us. Analysis, composure, terror, equanimity, attention, towering rage, even vengefulness (how sweet it is!), all belong to that art. But not hardness, indifference, or the palaver of political pieties–so lethal to the life of the soul. (The exemplary artist I have in mind is not Bush, whose every word is a blind assault on the minor art of pondering horror.)

Posted by: alabama | Jul 8 2005 4:11 utc | 87

@jj,
Enough of the apocalypse already. Where I’m at it’s totally SNAFU. No worries.

Posted by: Jassalasca Jape | Jul 8 2005 4:22 utc | 89

It’s certain that the repugs will try and use this slaughter for their own ends-business as usual.
I doubt their success no matter how many jackboots hit the pavements of middle amerika today. Firstly because the sheeple they are trying to reach will identify with Englanders more easily than they do Arabs but not closely enough to create the wave of fear they crave. After Madrid there were a lot of posts outta the US speculating on whether this would cause a hiccup in the coalition. The sheeple were more concerned about the impact on the US than the fate of ‘foreigners’.
meanwhile in the UK the rapacious politicians and bureaucrats will be trying to turn this to their advantage.
The foisting of expensive and intrusive identity cards on the populace has been tiresome and unsuccessful. By next week when it won’t appear quite so blatant, the likes of Straw and Clarke will be all over the MSM insinuating that this tragedy could somehow have been prevented by Big Brother.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jul 8 2005 4:41 utc | 91

Let’s wait for the evidence!.

The multiple, simultaneous explosions that took place today on the London transportation system were the work of perpetrators who had an operational capacity of considerable scope. They have come a long way since the two attacks of the year 1998 against the American embassies in Nairobi and Dar-Es-Salaam, and the aircraft actions of September 11, 2001.
There was careful planning, intelligence gathering, and a sophisticated choice of timing as well as near-perfect execution. We are faced with a deadly and determined adversary who will stop at nothing and will persevere as long as he exists as a fighting terrorist force.
One historical irony: I doubt whether the planners knew that one of the target areas, that in Russell Square, was within a stone’s throw of a building that served as the first headquarters of the World Zionist Organization that preceded the State of Israel.
It was at 77 Great Russell Street that Dr. Chaim Weizmann, a renowned chemist, presided over the effort that culminated in the issuing of the Balfour Declaration, the first international recognition of the right of the Jewish people to a national home in what was then still a part of the Ottoman Empire.
… in the throes of a world war, raging over the entire globe …
… carry the combat into whatever territory the perpetrators and their temporal and spiritual leaders are inhabiting.
… international law must be rewritten in such a way as to permit civilization to defend itself. …
… it wants to turn western civilization into history and will stop at nothing less than that.
… It does mean that the only way to ensure our safety and security will be to obtain the destruction, the complete destruction, of the enemy.
… Profound cultural changes will have to come about and the democratic way of life will be hard-pressed to produce … It will not be easy, but it will be essential not to lose sight of every one of these necessities.
This war … is destined to be part of our daily lives for many years to come, until the enemy is eliminated, as it surely will be.
The writer, who heads the Center for Strategic and Policy Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, is a former head of the Mossad.

Posted by: DM | Jul 8 2005 6:00 utc | 93

Let’s Wait for the Evidence
Huh..? Evidence is the only thing the US manufactures anymore! :>)

Posted by: jj | Jul 8 2005 6:17 utc | 95

I am stunned. These are the best posts I have seen in ages and anywhere today. They reveal a profound understanding, and a newfound lesson that seems to finally be ours.
I’d like to comment on a few of them:
Posted by: citizen | July 7, 2005 11:36 PM | #
“We are not required to stare at horror all the time, nor, I think can we often face it well.”
This is of prime importance. As long as we eat at the table of these masters of violence they will keep dishing it out. I threw out my television 25 years ago. I refuse to be manipulated like that. Today I had the shock of ages. In the locker room of my athletic club there is a TV that is worshipped for its latest horrible news. They usually stand around in dazed admiration at the sickness of the world. Today it was OFF! Dead. I have great, great hopes that people are learning that they don’t have to swallow it. They really can turn away from it.
There is more to life than the gruesome bloody acts of man. Will they finally gaze at what they are missing?
Posted by: Monolycus | July 8, 2005 12:40 AM | #
“Naturaliter et inevitibiliter mala et vitiata natura. And we will be ruled by our baser natures until we can learn to stop responding to the world and all of our fellows thoughtlessly and viscerally”
I agree totally and I purposely used this experience today as a way to try and master this. We are being beaten repeatedly and it is up to us to stop the personal assault. Not to always react in a primitive way. To breathe fully and deeply and use our experience to gain knowledge and wisdom. We are not victims. Why on earth do we have these complex magnificent brains?
Posted by: Jassalasca Jape | July 8, 2005 12:22 AM | #
“Enough of the apocalypse already”
YES!!! Hallelujah, sister!

Posted by: jm | Jul 8 2005 6:43 utc | 97

An addition: while the “America got a bloody nose” folks are sickening, so are the top politicians who try to frame the attacks as proof that they are right and moral – war criminal Bliar being all sanctimonious and self-glorifying by claiming these attacks are truly bad happening just when he does such good to the Third World at the G8 summit, that was just one of the more disgusting examples. If there should be a day of rest, then for the politicos too.

Posted by: DoDo | Jul 8 2005 8:47 utc | 99