| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Jul 08, 2005 9:28 pm Post subject: Robert Fisk: The reality of this barbaric bombing |
| Robert Fisk: The reality of this barbaric bombing
If we are fighting insurgency in Iraq, what makes us think insurgency won't come to us?
By Robert Fisk
08 July 2005
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/story.jsp
"If you bomb our cities," Osama bin Laden said in one of his recent video tapes, "we will bomb yours." There you go, as they say. It was crystal clear Britain would be a target ever since Tony Blair decided to join George Bush's "war on terror" and his invasion of Iraq. We had, as they say, been warned. The G8 summit was obviously chosen, well in advance, as Attack Day.
And it's no use Mr Blair telling us yesterday that "they will never succeed in destroying what we hold dear". "They" are not trying to destroy "what we hold dear". They are trying to get public opinion to force Blair to withdraw from Iraq, from his alliance with the United States, and from his adherence to Bush's policies in the Middle East. The Spanish paid the price for their support for Bush - and Spain's subsequent retreat from Iraq proved that the Madrid bombings achieved their objectives - while the Australians were made to suffer in Bali.
It is easy for Tony Blair to call yesterdays bombings "barbaric" - of course they were - but what were the civilian deaths of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003, the children torn apart by cluster bombs, the countless innocent Iraqis gunned down at American military checkpoints? When they die, it is "collateral damage"; when "we" die, it is "barbaric terrorism".
If we are fighting insurgency in Iraq, what makes us believe insurgency won't come to us? One thing is certain: if Tony Blair really believes that by "fighting terrorism" in Iraq we could more efficiently protect Britain - fight them there rather than let them come here, as Bush constantly says - this argument is no longer valid.
To time these bombs with the G8 summit, when the world was concentrating on Britain, was not a stroke of genius. You don't need a PhD to choose another Bush-Blair handshake to close down a capital city with explosives and massacre more than 30 of its citizens. The G8 summit was announced so far in advance as to give the bombers all the time they needed to prepare.
A co-ordinated system of attacks of the kind we saw yesterday would have taken months to plan - to choose safe houses, prepare explosives, identify targets, ensure security, choose the bombers, the hour, the minute, to plan the communications (mobile phones are giveaways). Co-ordination and sophisticated planning - and the usual utter ruthlessness with regard to the lives of the innocent - are characteristic of al-Qa'ida. And let us not use - as our television colleagues did yesterday - "hallmarks", a word identified with quality silver rather than base metal.
And now let us reflect on the fact that yesterday, the opening of the G8, so critical a day, so bloody a day, represented a total failure of our security services - the same intelligence "experts" who claim there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq when there were none, but who utterly failed to uncover a months-long plot to kill Londoners.
Trains, planes, buses, cars, metros. Transportation appears to be the science of al-Qa'ida's dark arts. No one can search three million London commuters every day. No one can stop every tourist. Some thought the Eurostar might have been an al-Qa'ida target - be sure they have studied it - but why go for prestige when your common or garden bus and Tube train are there for the taking.
And then come the Muslims of Britain, who have long been awaiting this nightmare. Now every one of our Muslims becomes the "usual suspect", the man or woman with brown eyes, the man with the beard, the woman in the scarf, the boy with the worry beads, the girl who says she's been racially abused.
I remember, crossing the Atlantic on 11 September 2001 - my plane turned round off Ireland when the US closed its airspace - how the aircraft purser and I toured the cabins to see if we could identify any suspicious passengers. I found about a dozen, of course, totally innocent men who had brown eyes or long beards or who looked at me with "hostility". And sure enough, in just a few seconds, Osama bin Laden turned nice, liberal, friendly Robert into an anti-Arab racist.
And this is part of the point of yesterday's bombings: to divide British Muslims from British non-Muslims (let us not mention the name Christians), to encourage the very kind of racism that Tony Blair claims to resent.
But here's the problem. To go on pretending that Britain's enemies want to destroy "what we hold dear" encourages racism; what we are confronting here is a specific, direct, centralised attack on London as a result of a "war on terror" which Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara has locked us into. Just before the US presidential elections, Bin Laden asked: "Why do we not attack Sweden?"
Lucky Sweden. No Osama bin Laden there. And no Tony Blair. | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Jul 09, 2005 4:24 pm Post subject: Nobody Attacks Civilization |
| http://www.antiwar.com/reese/?articleid=6596
Nobody Attacks Civilization
by Charley Reese
British Prime Minister Tony Blair and President George W. Bush went into their standard routine after the London bombings. This was an attack against civilization and all civilized nations, they said.
That's bosh and hokum, and it does a disservice to the people. The first step always in solving any problem is to define the problem correctly. There are no terrorists anywhere in the world whose goal is the destruction of civilization, Western or otherwise.
The terrorist attacks against the U.S., Great Britain and Spain are motivated exclusively by Western policies toward the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the presence of Western military forces in Islamic countries. Al-Qaeda, the ideological source of these attacks, has always been crystal-clear and specific about its reasons for declaring war against the United States.
You can't win a war unless you know who your enemy is, know why he is your enemy and know what his objectives are. Only then can you properly direct your military and political forces to combat him successfully.
Unfortunately, very early on, President Bush decided to create a mythical enemy of vague and ambiguous proportions and irrational motives. This was done to give carte blanche to the government to pursue policies that really had nothing to do with fighting al-Qaeda – e.g., invading Iraq, putting North Korea and Iran in the "axis of evil" and including groups on the enemies list that were in fact not our enemies.
The confusion this causes was illustrated by television coverage of the London attacks. Several commentators lumped together the terrorist attacks against public transport in Moscow, Madrid and London. However, the Moscow attack had nothing to do with the attacks in Madrid and London, or with us. Moscow is fighting Chechen rebels who want independence for Chechnya. Chechen attacks against Russia, like Palestinian attacks against Israel, are not directed at us. They are motivated by specific political objectives. Chechens and Palestinians have no desire to destroy civilization; they simply wish to take their place in the family of nations as independent countries.
You can't have a war against terrorism because, as many people have pointed out, terrorism is a tactic employed by people who have no real military power. It is not an entity. There is no worldwide terrorist organization.
Terrorist tactics work because we live in a wired world. Ten or 12 people can set off a few bombs in London, and the world turns its electronic eyes on the story and chats, discusses and shows video clips until some other event distracts it. The media attention and the inflated rhetoric of politicians magnify the terrorist act far beyond its actual import.
These attacks – pinpricks, really, in terms of any damage they do to national power – cannot be completely stopped. A few malcontents inspired by someone's rhetoric can get together and set off a bomb or two or shoot some people. Terrorists should be considered criminals, and their acts as ordinary crimes. Physically dealing with terrorists is properly ordinary police work. There is no war involved.
What the United States should be doing, instead of invading and occupying countries, is re-examining its foreign policy vis-à-vis the Islamic world. There is no natural conflict between the West and Islam. The followers and true believers of Osama bin Laden are a tiny minority. The best way to cut the ground out from under him is to develop and pursue policies that treat all of the Islamic countries with fairness and respect.
We don't do that at the present time. Because of the power of the Israeli lobby to skew our policy to benefit Israel, our Middle East policies are riddled with double and triple standards and reek of hypocrisy. Because of that, we are the best recruiter Osama bin Laden has.
But in the meantime, remember that terrorist attacks are primarily media events. You still have more to fear from the flu or accidents than you do from terrorists.
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LA Times: US support of Israel motivation for 9/11 attack:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2005/02/19/la-times-u-s-policy-on-israel-key-motive-for-911-attack.php | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2005 7:38 pm Post subject: Lest We Forget; These Were Blair's Bombs |
| Lest We Forget; These Were Blair's Bombs
By John Pilger
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Sunday 10 July 2005
In all the coverage of last week's bombing of London, a basic truth is struggling to be heard. It is this: no one doubts the atrocious inhumanity of those who planted the bombs, but no one should also doubt that this has been coming since the day Tony Blair joined George Bush in their bloody invasion and occupation of Iraq. They are "Blair's bombs", and he ought not be allowed to evade culpability with yet another unctuous speech about "our way of life", which his own rapacious violence in other countries has despoiled.
Indeed, the only reliable warning from British intelligence in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq was that which predicted a sharp increase in terrorism "with Britain and Britons a target". A House of Commons committee has since verified this warning. Had Blair heeded it instead of conspiring to deceive the nation that Iraq offered a threat the Londoners who died on Thursday might be alive today, along with tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis.
Three weeks ago, a classified CIA report revealed that the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq had turned that country into a focal point of terrorism. None of the intelligence agencies regarded Iraq as such a flashpoint before the invasion, however tyrannical the regime. On the contrary, in 2003, the CIA reported that Iraq "exported no terrorist threat to his neighbours" and that Saddam Hussein was "implacably hostile to Al-Qaeda".
Blair's and Bush's invasion changed all that. In invading a stricken and defenceless country at the heart of the Islamic and Arab world, their adventure became self-fulfilling; Blair's epic irresponsibility has brought the daily horrors of Iraq home to Britain. For more than a year, he has urged the British to "move on" from Iraq, and last week it seemed that his spinmeisters and good fortune had joined hands. The awarding of the 2012 Olympics to London created the fleeting illusion that all was well, regardless of messy events in a faraway country.
Moreover, the G8 meeting in Scotland and its accompanying "Make Poverty History" campaign and circus of celebrities served as a temporary cover for what is arguably the greatest political scandal of modern times: an illegal, brutal and craven invasion conceived in lies and which, under the system of international law established at Nuremberg, represented a "paramount war crime".
Over the past two weeks, the contrast between the coverage of the G8, its marches and pop concerts, and another "global" event has been striking. The World Tribunal on Iraq in Istanbul has had virtually no coverage, yet the evidence it has produced, the most damning to date, has been the silent spectre at the Geldoff extravaganzas.
The tribunal is a serious international public inquiry into the invasion and occupation, the kind governments dare not hold. Its expert, eyewitness testimonies, said the author Arundathi Roy, a tribunal jury member, "demonstrate that even those of us who have tried to follow the war closely are not aware of a fraction of the horrors that have been unleashed in Iraq." The most shocking was given by Dahr Jamail, one of the best un-embedded reporters working in Iraq. He described how the hospitals of besieged Fallujah had been subjected to an American tactic of collective punishment, with US marines assaulting staff and stopping the wounded entering, and American snipers firing at the doors and windows, and medicines and emergency blood prevented from reaching them. Children, the elderly, were shot dead in front of their families, in cold blood.
Imagine for a moment the same appalling state of affairs imposed on the London hospitals that received the victims of Thursday's bombing. Unimaginable? Well, it happens, in our name, regardless of whether the BBC reports it, which is rare. When will someone ask about this at one of the staged "press conferences" at which Blair is allowed to emote for the cameras stuff about "our values outlast [ing] theirs"? Silence is not journalism. In Fallujah, they know "our values" only too well.
While the two men responsible for the carnage in Iraq, Bush and Blair, were side by side at Gleneagles, why wasn't the connection of their fraudulent "war on terror" made with the bombing in London? And when will someone in the political class say that Blair's smoke-and-mirrors "debt cancellation" at best amounts to less than the money the government spent in a week brutalising Iraq, where British and American violence is the cause of the doubling of child poverty and malnutrition since Saddam Hussein was overthrown (Unicef).
The truth is that the debt relief the G8 is offering is lethal because its ruthless "conditionalities" of captive economies far outweigh any tenuous benefit. This was taboo during the G8 week, whose theme was not so much making poverty history as the silencing and pacifying and co-opting dissent and truth. The mawkish images on giant screens behind the pop stars in Hyde Park included no pictures of murdered Iraqi doctors with the blood streaming from their heads, cut down by Bush's snipers. Real life became more satirical than satire could ever be.
There was Bob Geldoff on the front pages resting his smiling face on smiling Blair's shoulder, the war criminal and his knighted jester. There was an heroically silhouetted Bono, who celebrates men like Jeffrey Sachs as saviours of the world's poor while lauding "compassionate" George Bush's "war on terror" as one of his generation's greatest achievements; and there was Paul Wolfowitz, beaming and promising to make poverty history: this is the man who, before he was handed control of the World Bank, was an apologist for Suharto's genocidal regime in Indonesia, who was one of the architects of Bush's "neo-con" putsch and of the bloodfest in Iraq and the notion of "endless war".For the politicians and pop stars and church leaders and polite people who believed Blair and Gordon Brown when they declared their "great moral crusade" against poverty, Iraq was an embarrassment. The killing of more than 100,000 Iraqis mostly by American gunfire and bombs -- a figure reported in a comprehensive peer-reviewed study in The Lancet -- was airbrushed from mainstream debate.
In our free societies, the unmentionable is that "the state has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people", as Arthur Miller once wrote, "and so the evidence has to be internally denied." Not only denied, but distracted by an entire court: Geldoff, Bono, Madonna, McCartney et al, whose "Live 8" was the very antithesis of 15 February 2003 when two million people brought their hearts and brains and anger to the streets of London. Blair will almost certainly use last week's atrocity and tragedy to further deplete basic human rights in Britain, as Bush has done in America. The goal is not security, but greater control. Above all this, the memory of their victims, "our" victims, in Iraq demands the return of our anger. And nothing less is owed to those who died and suffered in London last week, unnecessarily. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2005 9:13 pm Post subject: More war for Israel coming: Netanyahu warns West on Iran |
| More war for Israel coming: Netanyahu warns West on Iran:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1688013,00.html
July 10, 2005
Netanyahu warns West it must halt Iran nuclear plans
Peter Conradi
THE Israeli finance minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has warned that the West must do more to counter Iran’s potential nuclear threat following the election last month of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the hardline mayor of Tehran, as president of the country.
Netanyahu, in London to address a conference, said concerted action was required to rein in Iran, not least because of its links with Islamic terrorist groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas. He said he wanted the shipment of Russian nuclear equipment and nuclear fuel to a plant under construction at Bushehr to be stopped.
“The Iranian regime supports terror, both ideologically and operationally,” he said. “I think the regime will go as fast as it can to develop nuclear weapons, regardless of who leads it.”
Netanyahu, prime minister from 1996-9, said that if Iran succeeded in developing nuclear weapons it would boost radical Islamic groups by providing them with “a nuclear umbrella”.
“This is not an Israel problem — this is a world problem that concerns everybody, including Russia,” he said. “There has to be a common solution here: first to prevent the transfer of nuclear technology or fuel, secondly to punish regimes that deviate from this and, thirdly, to put pressure on the Iranian regime, in all avenues possible, to stop this programme.”
Netanyahu contrasted Iran’s apparent determination to develop nuclear weapons with Libya’s decision to abandon its own fledgling programme in response to the American attack on Iraq. “The deterrent effect has worked on some, but so far has not worked on others,” he said.
Asked whether there would ultimately have to be a military solution to the problem — perhaps involving a repetition of Israel’s pre-emptive strike on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor in June 1981 — Netanyahu replied: “I don’t know.” He added: “I am not aware of any plans, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist, for example in America.”
Netanyahu, who has been critical of the plan by Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, to withdraw from settlements in Gaza next month, was sceptical that any concessions by Tel Aviv towards the Palestinians would reduce the threat from terrorists.
He said the Palestinian issue was far down the list of grievances cited by Al-Qaeda and other Islamic groups. If Israel were to conclude a peace treaty with the Palestinians, it would be rejected by such Islamic groups, which viewed the Jewish state as a cancer that must be excised.
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Keep in mind that the 'A Clean Break' (war for Israel) agenda was written for Netanyahu by JINSA/CSP/PNAC Jewish supremacists Richard Perle, David Wurmser and Douglas Feith:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2005/02/11/a-clean-break-from-james-bamford-s-a-pretext-for-war.php
The US war with Iran has already begun (for Israel)
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2005/06/20/the-us-war-with-iran-has-already-begun-for-israel.php
Jewish JINSA/PNAC Neocon (Richard Perle) Calls for the Bombing of Iran for Israel:
http://gorillaintheroom.blogspot.com/2005/05/perle-calls-for-invasion-of-iran.html
AIPAC Fifth Columnists Push US to Attack Iran for Israel:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2005/05/14/aipac-fifth-columnists-pushing-us-to-attack-iran-for-israel.php
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http://nomorewarforisrael.blogspot.com
http://www.nowarforisrael.com
http://nogw.com/warforisrael.html
http://gorillaintheroom.blogspot.com
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Jul 16, 2005 9:40 am Post subject: London Bombers Were Angered by War in Iraq |
| London Bombers Were Angered by War in Iraq
By SCHEHEREZADE FARAMARZI, Associated Press Writer
Fri Jul 15, 5:32 AM ET
Shahzad Tanweer, the 22-year-old son of a Pakistani-born affluent businessman, turned to Islam, the religion of his birth, a few years ago. The transformation was gradual, but then his relentless reading of the Quran and daily prayers became almost an obsession, his friends told The Associated Press. He became withdrawn and increasingly angry over the war in Iraq, according to those who knew him best.
The U.S.-led war was what likely drove him to blow himself up on a subway train last week, said his friends.
"He was a Muslim and he had to fight for Islam. This is called jihad," or holy war, said Asif Iqbal, 20, who said he was Tanweer's childhood friend.
Another friend, Adnan Samir, 21, nodded in agreement.
"They're crying over 50 people while 100 people are dying every day in Iraq and Palestine," said Iqbal. "If they are indeed the ones who did it, it's because they believed it was right. They're in Heaven.
"Have you ever been inspired in life?" he asked.
Tanweer and three other bombers detonated their backpacks on a bus and three subway trains in London on July 7, killing at least 53 people, themselves included, and injuring more than 700.
Tanweer turned to religion before the war in Iraq began in 2003. His friends don't know the reason, but said they didn't see anything wrong or unusual about it.
"He always told me to read the Quran and said Islam is the way (of life)," recalls Iqbal.
Everyone interviewed in his neighborhood — those who knew him well like Iqbal and Samir, who were schoolmates, or those who saw him in passing — described Tanweer as pleasant and kind.
"He was a nice lad. I don't know how many times he served me fish and chips," said Peter Douchworth, 58, a Beeston resident for over 30 years. "He went out of his way to help."
Tanweer sometimes worked at his father's fish and chips shop, but an employee there said he hadn't worked there for a while.
The family's white house — which has been cordoned off by police since Monday — stands in stark contrast to the surrounding gritty red-brick Victorian row houses. Two fancy cars are parked in the parking lot at the back.
A devoted athlete, Tanweer studied sports science at Leeds Metropolitan University and planned to get involved in sports professionally. He showed up twice a week for pickup soccer games, said a teammate who gave his name only as Saj.
He had a younger brother and two sisters and always lived in the working-class multiethnic Beeston area of the city of Leeds in northern England.
Media reports said he was arrested once for shoplifting.
His uncle, Bashir Ahmed, said Tanweer traveled to Lahore, Pakistan, this year to study Islamic religion. He said his family believed he was attending "some religious function" on the day of the bombings.
Forensic evidence has linked Tanweer to the blast on the Underground train near Aldgate.
Friends Iqbal and Samir claimed ignorance as to how their friend became involved in Islamic militancy and how he became a prey to terrorist recruiters.
"All Muslims are connected," Iqbal said.
The friends said they had never been approached by anyone trying to indoctrinate them into militant Islam.
Where would Tanweer and his co-activists meet or plan their attacks?
"How do football fans get together and talk about football? It's the same thing," said Iqbal.
Tanweer's friend, Hasib Hussain, is another of the bombers identified by police. At 18, the handsome, 6-foot-tall soccer player was the youngest of the bombers. He was also the youngest of four children, two sisters and a brother. Like Tanweer, his family came from Pakistan.
Hussain, suspected of carrying out the suicide attack that claimed 13 lives on a double-decker bus, was known for his sense of humor and style. He sometimes wore blue contact lenses and long hair parted in the middle, according to a friend.
Some people said Hussain became more religious two years ago but never abandoned his boyhood friends for radicals. Mohammed Sidique Khan, 30, born in Pakistan and another of the suicide bombers, is known in his neighborhood as an exemplary community worker.
A father of an 8-month-old baby girl, Khan was a popular former teacher of children with learning disabilities.
Documents belonging to Khan were found in the debris of the Edgware Road subway blast.
Former students at the Hillside Primary School said Khan left for Pakistan last December to look after his ailing father. It was not clear when he returned to Britain.
"I liked him. He was nice," said Billy Sandersen, 13. He and other former pupils said they were shocked when they saw his picture in the papers as one of the suspects.
However, they said they still liked him.
"Just a little bit, but not for what he's done — killing innocent people," Sandersen said.
"I still like him," said Sean Woodham, 13, another former pupil, "because he always helped me with my homework."
Maroof Latif, an unemployed Beeston resident, said he knew Khan since he was a child and believes if he took part in the terrorist bombings of the subways it was because of his anger over the war in Iraq and the U.S.-British occupation. | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
