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10. juli 2005
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If Muslims in Britain want to reassure people that they are firmly reject terrorism, marching with George Galloway and the appeasers is hardly a wise move.
It's a good sign no more than 1,500 people turned up for this tasteless celebration of defeatism.
10:07:16 PM 
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One of the most humiliating military defeats suffered by the British Empire was the fall of Singapore to the Japanese in 1942.
In hindsight, it was easy to see a critical chink in the British armour: the powerful guns at Singapore all pointed outwards - towards the sea.
It is still early days after the London terrorist attack, and certainly too early to draw any conclusions about where the terrorists originated from. Yet, evidence now begins to suggest that the London bombers were homegrown jihadists, and if that is the case, there would be enough recruits to select from. The Sunday Times has obtained a government dossier showing how al-Qaeda (as an ideology, if not the organisation) has actively recruited "affluent, middle-class Muslims in British universities and colleges" for the jihadist cause, for terrorist attacks against their own home country.
A network of “extremist recruiters” is circulating on campuses targeting people with “technical and professional qualifications”, particularly engineering and IT degrees.
Yesterday it emerged that last week’s London bombings were a sophisticated attack with all the devices detonating on the Underground within 50 seconds of each other. The police believe those behind the outrage may be home-grown British terrorists with no criminal backgrounds and possessing technical expertise.
A joint Home Office and Foreign Office dossier — Young Muslims and Extremism — prepared for the prime minister last year, said Britain might now be harbouring thousands of Al-Qaeda sympathisers.
Lord Stevens, the former Metropolitan police chief, revealed separately last night that up to 3,000 British-born or British-based people had passed through Osama Bin Laden’s training camps.
Britain, situated on islands, is in an enviable position for self-defence. One of a few EU countries outside the Schengen treaty's single-border system, Britain may well be able to keep foreign terrorist groups out. But that doesn't help, when the large Muslim community provides recruits for the sinister cause at home. Civil liberties we all value makes it very difficult for the intelligence community to counter this threat effectively. However, given the degree with which even outspoken terrorist ideologues have made London their home, it will be prudent to ask whether much more could have been done to secure the British homeland.
Abu Hamza Masri, for years a blood-curdling preacher at a North London mosque allegedly visited by shoe bomber Richard Reid and hijacker trainee Zacarias Moussaoui, listened silently Friday as his lawyer argued about his indictment last January on nine counts of incitement to murder for speeches that allegedly promoted mass violence against non-Muslims. In one speech cited in a British documentary film, Masri urged followers to get an infidel "and crush his head in your arms, so you can wring his throat. Forget wasting a bullet, cut them in half!"
Masri's case is just one of several dozen that describe the venom, sprawling shape and deep history of al Qaeda and related extremist groups in London. Osama bin Laden opened a political and media office here as far back as 1994; it closed four years later when his local lieutenant, Khalid Fawwaz, was arrested for aiding al Qaeda's attack on two U.S. embassies in Africa.
As bin Laden's ideology of making war on the West spread in the years before Sept. 11, 2001, London became "the Star Wars bar scene" for Islamic radicals, as former White House counterterrorism official Steven Simon called it, attracting a polyglot group of intellectuals, preachers, financiers, arms traders, technology specialists, forgers, travel organizers and foot soldiers.
Including, we are now suspecting, the terror bombers.
PS: A NYT article makes very much the same point: For a Decade, London Thrived as a Busy Crossroads of Terror.
If London became a magnet for fiery preachers, it also became a destination for men willing to carry out their threats. For a decade, the city has been a crossroads for would-be terrorists who used it as a home base, where they could raise money, recruit members and draw inspiration from the militant messages.
Among them were terrorists involved in attacks in Madrid, Casablanca, Saudi Arabia, Israel and in the Sept. 11 plot. Zacarias Moussaoui, the only man charged in the United States in the 9/11 attacks, and Richard C. Reid, the convicted shoe-bomber, both prayed at the Finsbury Park mosque in north London. The mosque's former leader, Abu Hamza al-Masri openly preached violence for years before the authorities arrested him in April 2004.
And how many more are there, keeping a lower profile?
6:58:34 PM
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We need not add Chris Cornell and the rest of the gang in Audioslave to the very short list of rockers and other celebrities with a sane understanding of current events. Norwegian Dagbladet has this interview (my translation):
I am a conspiracy theorist and it's horrible to say this, but the bombs in London fits perfectly in George Bush's plan to keep the world in fear, Audioslave bass player Tim Commerford argued when Dagbladet met them at the Quart-concert yesterday.
Vocalist Chris Cornell nodded eagerly.
- The eye of the Storm
- Politically this is the best that could happen to Bush. I hope London's population will realise that this is really his fault, that it is a direct consequence of the US still having military in Iraq, argued Cornell.
Straight after the Quart-concert yesterday evening, the boys were flying on to Great Britain.
- That will be like coming to the eye of the storm, Chris Cornell believed.
I bet George Bush knows more about modern rock music than these guys know about terrorism.
1:47:23 PM
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Christopher Hitchens destroys Ron Reagan in this debate about terrorism and the Iraq war.
RR: Christopher, I'm not sure that I buy the idea that these attacks are a sign that we're actually winning the war on terror. I mean, how many more victories like this do we really want to endure?
CH: Well, it depends on how you think it started, sir. I mean, these movements had taken over Afghanistan, had very nearly taken over Algeria, in a extremely bloody war which actually was eventually won by Algerian society. They had sent death squads to try and kill my friend Salman Rushdie, for the offense of writing a novel in England. They had sent death squads to Austria and Germany, the Iranians had, for example, to try and kill Kurdish Muslim leaders there. If you make the mistake that I thought I heard you making just before we came on the air, of attributing rationality or a motive to this, and to say that it's about anything but itself, you make a great mistake, and you end up where you ended up, saying that the cause of terrorism is fighting against it, the root cause, I mean. Now, you even said, extraordinarily to me, that there was no terrorist problem in Iraq before 2003. Do you know nothing about the subject at all? Do you wonder how Mr. Zarqawi got there under the rule of Saddam Hussein? Have you ever heard of Abu Nidal?
RR: Well, I'm following the lead of the 9/11 Commission, which...
CH: Have you ever heard of Abu Nidal, the most wanted man in the world, who was sheltered in Baghdad? The man who pushed Leon Klinghoffer off the boat, was sheltered by Saddam Hussein. The man who blew up the World Trade Center in 1993 was sheltered by Saddam Hussein, and you have the nerve to say that terrorism is caused by resisting it? And by deposing governments that endorse it?
RR: No, actually, I didn't say that, Christopher.
CH: At this stage, after what happened in London yesterday?
RR: What I did say, though, was that Iraq was not a center of terrorism before we went in there, but it might be now.
CH: How can you know so little about...
RR: You can make the claim that you just made about any other country in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia.
CH: Absolutely nonsense.
RR: So do you think we ought to invade Saudi Arabia, where most of the hijackers from 9/11 came from, following your logic, Christopher?
CH: Uh, no. Excuse me. The hijackers may have been Saudi and Yemeni, but they were not envoys of the Saudi Arabian government, even when you said the worst...
RR: Zarqawi is not an envoy of Saddam Hussein, either.
CH: Excuse me. When I went to interview Abu Nidal, then the most wanted terrorist in the world, in Baghdad, he was operating out of an Iraqi government office. He was an arm of the Iraqi State, while being the most wanted man in the world. The same is true of the shelter and safe house offered by the Iraqi government, to the murderers of Leon Klinghoffer, and to Mr. Yassin, who mixed the chemicals for the World Trade Center bombing in 1993. How can you know so little about this, and be occupying a chair at the time that you do?
There is more. Link via Glenn Reynolds, who also links to a video of the debate. An absolute must-see.
Chrenkoff says it best:
Bet you never thought you would live to see a day when a Trotskyite is arguing from the right against the son of the greatest Republican president of the twentieth century arguing from the left?
That is a part of a solid roundup, as you'd expect from Arthur.
PS: David Aaronovitch is also fighting the good fight against the terrorist appeasers:
In Parliament George Galloway exhibited what might be called psychotic empathy in telling MPs that the terrorists were, beyond any doubt, animated by the same motives that animated him — albeit using different methods. It was all down to Iraq. The logical problem with this over-identification should have been pretty obvious. If these bombs were about Iraq, what was the Bali bomb about? That was before Iraq, but after Afghanistan. But if Bali was about capturing Kabul, what was 9/11 for, coming as it did before either intervention? That was because of Israel/US bases/the desire for a Caliphate/hatred of Western decadence. So, if we hadn’t invaded Iraq, hadn’t invaded Afghanistan, hadn’t allowed Israel to be established, hadn’t had feminism and whorehouses, hadn’t been rich, hadn’t been democratic, then maybe, maybe, we wouldn’t have been bombed. It’s a story.
Hold the front page.
12:55:42 PM
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Tim Blair points out that Sheik Omar Bakri Mohammed, a radical Islamist cleric known for praising the 9/11 hijackers as "magnificent," was kicked out of Saudi Arabia for being too much of an extremist for their tastes. But he was welcome to settle in London!
12:27:56 PM
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Italy is taking no chances, or so it seems:
Italian police have arrested 142 people in the course of a two-day security operation in and around Milan which was prompted by the London bombings.
Most were detained over drugs, theft or illegal immigration while 1.5 kilos (3.3 pounds) of explosives were found at the home of a convicted criminal.
Some 2,000 police took part in the operation in Italy's business capital.
Threats have been posted on Islamist websites threatening to attack the country, which has troops in Iraq.
A police official, Col Cosimo Piccino, said the sweep was meant "to guarantee greater security after the London attacks and to combat illegal immigration and street crime".
Especially considering that several gypsy camps were among the raided sites, hardly a favourite holdout for Islamic terrorists, this doesn't sound very closely related to terrorism.
If there has been a crackdown on illegal immigrants in Britain, no doubt a popular campaign in today's political climate, I have not heard about it.
2:45:44 AM
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Evan Kohlemann publishes a letter from Saif al-Islam al-Athari, "a noted online pundit and Al-Qaida supporter," ridiculing the dubious claims of responsibility for the London attacks posted on a website:
"...You should not listen to the Muslims who are controlled by the cross worshippers and their statements which are not based on a single fact or piece of evidence--such as the erroneous and ridiculous statement that was published by the individuals claiming to be 'Al-Qaida's Secret Organization in Europe.' That statement is not based upon the principles of the mujahideen and it is certainly 100% fake and erroneous. This statement was re-broadcast by various media channels as if it was the ultimate truth. I wish I could have been able to write a claim of responsibility if I was in Europe because then I would have written that the attacks were executed by 'the Battalions of Robin Hood' from the Sherwood Forest and let them search for him!"
Jihadis with a sense of humour. Well, that is something, I guess.
Others have earlier said that the web claim was not genuine.
But MSNBC TV translator Jacob Keryakes, who said that a copy of the message was later posted on a secular Web site, noted that the claim of responsibility contained an error in one of the Quranic verses it cited. That suggests that the claim may be phony, he said.
"This is not something al-Qaida would do," he said.
Expect another audio tape from Bin Laden or Al-Zawahiri in whatever time it takes to bring it from some cave in Pakistan to al-Jazeera's branch office by donkey ride.
Update: Trevor Stanlay says the media got the name of the group wrong anyway.
The statement of responsibility for the London bombings is essentially signed "Secret Cell of Zarqawi's European Al-Qaeda network."
A convincing argument. He has more.
2:21:53 AM
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© Copyright 2005 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 30.07.2005; 02:57:57.
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