← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Gabrielle
Thread ID: 19093 | Posts: 5 | Started: 2005-07-11
2005-07-11 17:51 | User Profile
Blair rejects calls for probe into bombings By James Blitz, Political Editor, and Jimmy Burns Published: July 10 2005 20:55 | Last updated: July 10 2005 20:55
Tony Blair will on Monday reject Conservative demands for a government inquiry into last week's London bomb attacks, insisting such a move would distract from the task of catching the perpetrators.
As police and security services on Sunday continued searching for the bombers - thought to be Islamist terrorists - Downing Street said the prime minister believed an inquiry now into the outrage which killed at least 49 people would be a "ludicrous diversion."
Instead, in a statement to the Commons on Monday following last week's Group of Eight summit, Mr Blair is expected to focus on the direction the government must take to ensure future terrorism is defeated.
In particular, the prime minister believes there must be far greater co-operation among European Union governments in the fight against terrorism - a view Charles Clarke, the home secretary, is expected to drive home at an emergency meeting of EU interior ministers this week.
He is expected to tell his counterparts governments must ensure operators keep data on telephone and internet exchanges for up to a year.
He also indicated on Sunday that he would consider granting further "control orders" if he thought they were necessary.
Mr Clarke said he was "very optimistic indeed" that last Thursday's bombers would be tracked down. But he feared further attacks could take place until that happened. "That is why the number one priority has to be the catching of the perpetrators."
Police continued to sift through the debris from Thursday's four explosions - three in the London Underground and one on a bus - and to examine witness accounts and intelligence as part of their hunt for the bombers.
But police chiefs indicated that had yet to establish the identity or the whereabouts of the terrorists they suspect belong to an extremist Islamist cell in sympathy with the aims of Al-Qaeda.
Tension several cities remained high over the weekend. Police said they had arrested, under prevention of terrorism laws, three British nationals on an inward flight at Heathrow early on Sunday but insisted that any link with last Thursday's bombings was speculative. The three were expected to be released later on Sunday night, according to police sources.
But the arrests, the dozens of bomb alerts in the English capital and an evacuation in the Birmingam city centre over the weekend reflect the nervousness of both police and the general public at the prospect that the bombers were still at large and capable of striking again.
The police also revealed that there had been a few cases of attacks on British Muslims in the wake of the bombings - including one in which an individual was "seriously injured."
The revelation came as some government officials expressed irritation that an article in a Sunday newspaper by Sir John Stevens, the former Metropolitan Police commissioner, might stir up racial tensions. He said the bombers were "almost certainly" British - with many more born and bred here willing to attack.
[url]http://news.ft.com/cms/s/8186face-f17a-11d9-9c3e-00000e2511c8.html[/url]
2005-07-11 18:21 | User Profile
Hummmmmmmmmmm.
UPDATE: The new timeline that we are now being told is much closer to the truth -- that the explosions in the London terror attack were mere seconds apart -- obviously makes the analysis herein invalid.
In all the rush and emotion of Terror Thursday, I had forgotten the number one axiom for a libertarian journalist: if a government says something, we have to assume they're lying. This goes double for the government of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, which has turned "for you own good" paternalism into an excuse for a worrying authoritarianism.
Given the new sequence of events we are presented with, the Israelis' claim that Finance Minister Netanyahu received a warning after the first explosion makes sense -- that is, if their denial that they received a warning before the blasts can be believed.
In denying widespread reports that Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received a warning of the London terrorist attacks "minutes before" they occurred, Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom claims that "After the first explosion, our finance minister received a request not to go anywhere."
The problem with this explanation is that it was only after the third explosion that London police realized they were in the midst of a terrorist attack. Up until that point, authorities thought they were dealing with a series of accidents caused by a power surge, as this timeline from the Australian Herald-Sun makes clear:
8.49am (GMT): An incident on the train line between Liverpool Street and Aldgate is reported to British Transport Police.
9.15am: Media reports emergency services called to London's Liverpool Street station after an explosion.
9.24am: Police say the incident was possibly caused by a collision between two trains, a power cut or a power cable exploding. Police report "walking wounded".
9.33am: Passengers told that all underground train services are being suspended because of a power fault across the network.
9.33am: Reports of another incident at Edgware Road station.
9.40am: Police say power surge incidents have occurred on Aldgate, Edgware Road, King's Cross, Old Street and Russell Square stations.
10.02am: Scotland Yard says it is dealing with a "major incident".
10.14am: A witness says that a bus has been ripped apart in an explosion in central London.
10.21am: Scotland Yard reports "multiple explosions".
10.23am: Police confirm an explosion on a bus in Tavistock Place.
10.25am: The BBC's Andrew Marr, with Prime Minister Tony Blair in Scotland, says the PM is "still unsure" whether the explosions are a terrorist attack.
If Netanyahu was told a terrorist attack was underway after the first explosion ââ¬â which everyone, including the police, thought was due to a power surge ââ¬â then thatââ¬â¢s a lot more than the victims of the subsequent explosions were told as they rode the Tube to their doom. Which means the Foreign Ministerââ¬â¢s explanation ââ¬â Netanyahu was told to stay in his hotel room after the first explosion, rather than show up at the Israeli economic conference at a hotel near Liverpool station ââ¬â is entirely consistent with the claim that he was tipped off to what was really going on, while the rest of the city stumbled into disaster and, in some cases, death.
Another account draws a somewhat tighter timeline:
"Authorities said they initially thought the explosions were caused by power surges and were reluctant to activate well-practiced procedures designed to shut down the system in the event of a terrorist attack. But when the third explosion occurred at 9:17 a.m. near the Edgware Road station in west London, it was obvious that a coordinated attack was underway. Seven people were killed in that explosion.
The entire London Underground network shut down immediately afterward."
If we take the original leaker at his (or her) word, Netanyahu was told "minutes before" the first explosion. However, even if we believe Minister Shalomââ¬â¢s account, it still points to a weird anomaly: It took a full hour for the rest of London to find out that they were under attack, and yet Netanyahu was privy to this well before anyone else ââ¬â including Prime Minister Tony Blair.
What did Netanyahu know, when did he know it, and how did he know it? Andrew Sullivan can stuff his ethno-religious special pleading: if there is any "canard" more "tired" and "hideous" than anti-Semitism it is the attempt to reduce all inquiries about Israel's behavior to bigotry. These questions deserve honest answers. Why is no one asking them?
2005-07-11 19:16 | User Profile
[QUOTE]Tony Blair will on Monday reject Conservative demands for a government inquiry into last week's London bomb attacks, insisting such a move would distract from the task of catching the perpetrators. [/QUOTE]
Mmmm, don't investigate who actually perpetrated the crime but go ahead and pursue catching the perpetrators? Oh, I guess that solves it, blame it on any "raghead" you happen to dislike.
Well lapdog poodle Blair sure lives up to his name; George W Bush squashed the 9/11 probe then blames Iraqis and Afghans and Blair follows his master's lead in squashing investigations into 7/7 but will blame "ay-rabs" in far away places.
It's deja vu all over again.
2005-07-11 21:19 | User Profile
Funniest thing how these murderous attacks on innocent civilians don't require any but the most cursory, once-over sort of "investigations", isn't it?
9/11? London rail bombings? No; any attempt to discover what happened, who did it and how they did it would only distract us from the task of mass-murdering whoever the PNAC report already told us was responsible, years before either attack ever occurred.
The funniest part is when they cite issues of national security. Somehow, I think when lone wolves hijack planes and fly them into tall buildings and government installations, killing thousands; or when you go into DefCon security mode for the G8 meetings and the trains and buses start blowing up anyway; somehow, I think these sorts of incidents indicate your national security has already been fatally compromised.
What a curious crossroads we're now at, we in the West. The very conduits of information that supposedly make us well-informed serve instead to keep us docile and suitably distracted from reality; our countrymen now die en masse on our own streets, and tv and newspapers stridently yell at us that asking who-what-when-where-how and why is the same thing as letting the terrorists win.
All you need to know is George loves Jesus, and vice versa; Israel is our only friend in this world; mass immigration is good for you; a report written in 2000 by wiser men than you or I explains how the world will now work from here on out; and - most important of all - the latest Hollywitz super-spectacular will be showing at 12, 2, 4, 6 and 8, so get your tickets early and forget your problems while watching the CGI fireballs explode. Let your elected representatives worry about who gets bombed and invaded next - the rest of us need only remember that we're free - so don't worry, be happy.
2005-07-11 22:05 | User Profile
Meanwhile back in the jungle.
In another development, Vice Premier Shimon Peres said Monday that Israel will seek [B]$2.2 billion in additional U.S. aid [/B] for the summer's withdrawal from Gaza and four West Bank settlements. The request was to be made later Monday in a meeting between Israel and U.S. officials in Washington.
Israel is already the biggest recipient of U.S. aid, getting an annual $2.3 billion for economic and military purposes. But Peres said it needs more money to remove 9,000 settlers and [B]develop the Galilee and Negev Desert regions for resettlement.[/B]
============================
Looks like those people are living better than ours right here in the US.
Like Bush says (thinks, or does he?) our Americans living in the streets don't need homes, they are very confortable where they are. :angry: