Because there is no obvious target to retaliate against, and because there are not enough police to police every opening in an open society, either the Muslim world begins to really restrain, inhibit and denounce its own extremists - if it turns out that they are behind the London bombings - or the West is going to do it for them. And the West will do it in a rough, crude way - by simply shutting them out, denying them visas and making every Muslim in its midst guilty until proven innocent.

And because I think that would be a disaster, it is essential that the Muslim world wake up to the fact that it has a jihadist death cult in its midst. If it does not fight that death cult, that cancer, within its own body politic, it is going to infect Muslim-Western relations everywhere. Only the Muslim world can root out that death cult. It takes a village.

Friedman: If It's a Muslim Problem, It Needs a Muslim Solution

Rattle wrote:
Please do that. You are MemeStreams's woman on the scene...

Aside from some delays getting a hotel room and a ride from the airport, Elonka reports London is as normal as it could be after experiencing a terrorist attack.

News channels aside, the people themselves (at least those I've been running across), have been taking it in stride. There are a few clusters of people around the news feeds, but other than that life is pretty much normal. On the plane from Manchester, it was mostly business travelers doing what seemed to be a daily commute. I eavesdropped on a few conversations, but the closest I heard to any concern was two seatmates who commented that the taxi situation at Heathrow might be a bit rough, and there'd be some cab-sharing going on. After we took off, the pilot did an announcement but simply said that he didn't forecast any flight delays due to "earlier events in London". And from what I've been seeing of live news feeds around the city, life on the street seems to be chugging along pretty much normally. Sort of like the bombs were small splashes that made a few ripples, and then the normal flow of London life moved back in and erased any sign of what had happened. The main signposts remaining seem to be a couple closed tube stations, and some quickly-erected barriers around the bus that was blown up. I'm a little fuzzy on exactly what happened with that one. For example, one report says that the bus was packed with people who had streamed out of the tube stations after the initial explosions. And the top of the bus was clearly blown off. But there are only reports of two fatalities on that bus. The main carnage seems to have been below ground.

Signing off for now, your Memestreamer in the field,

Thanks for the report!

RE: London Terror Attack - 7/7

The group Al Qaeda in Iraq said today that it had executed the top Egyptian diplomat there, carrying out a threat to pursue diplomats in retaliation for their links to the new Iraq government.

The group said in a statement posted on the Internet that it had killed the envoy, Ihab al-Sharif, but it did not say when or how. The group announced "that the verdict of God has been implemented against the ambassador of the infidels, the ambassador of Egypt, thank God."

"Egypt is one of those at the forefront of the war on Islam and Muslims," the statement said. "Its jails are full of mujahedeen." It showed a video of the blindfolded diplomat identifying himself but, unlike in cases of other kidnappings, it did not show the killing itself, according to The Associated Press.

It also said that Egypt was among the first to support the training of the Iraqi police and soldiers - whom it referred to as "apostate" forces - in service to the "crusaders."

Zarqawi Group Says It Killed Egyptian Envoy - New York Times

The following is a translation from an islamist website linked with Al-Queda found via the linked blog.

Jamaat al-Tandheem Al-Sierri (secret organization group)
Organization of Qaeda't al-Jihad in Europe

In the name of God the most merciful...

Rejoice the nation of Islam, rejoice nation of Arabs, the time of revenge has come for the crusaders' Zionist British government.

As retaliation for the massacres which the British commit in Iraq and Afghanistan, the mujahideen have successfully done it this time in London.

And this is Britain now burning from fear and panic from the north to the south, from the east to the west.

We have warned the brutish governments and British nation many times.

And here we are, we have done what we have promised. We have done a military operation after heavy work and planning, which the mujahideen have done, and it has taken a long time to ensure the success of this operation.

And we still warn the government of Denmark and Italy, all the crusader governments, that they will have the same punishment if they do not pull their forces out of Iraq and Afghanistan.

So beware.

Thursday 7/7/2005
Jamaat al-Tandheem Al-Sierri (secret organization group)
Organization of al Qaeda't al-Jihad in Europe.

Al'Q Europe Claims Responsibility for 7/7 London Bombing

Bombs in subways. Bomb in buses. All details fuzzy. Story obviously being managed.

WikiNews is on it. Here is a Google News link.

Here is one particular disturbing pic of some people trapped in the underground in a station filled with smoke.

People in London are saying on IRC that cell phones are not working.

The original BBC story on the explosions said it was an electrical explosion. They recently changed the story's lead to say there was a bomb on both a bus and the underground. It is ironic that in the first hours after the WTC bombing, it was believed to be a transformer explosion.

News stations are now saying it was definitely a coordinated attack. Very little information is being released right now. It is very clear big shit is going down.

Early picture of one bus. At least 20 said dead. Reports of two other bus explosions. Another bus explosion pic.

European markets plummeting.

The London Police Commissioner has asked the media not to speculate. I feel safe making the assumption that this is a terrorist attack, I'll leave it at that for now.

If you work in NYC, I suggest that you wait till noon to go to work.

Blair just gave a statement. Its officially terrorism.

For those picking up on this as they wake up, here is a timeline of events so far.

I don't have cable where I live. grr..

Centrist liberal Milblogger (yeah, there are some) Alexander the Average has done a lot of good stuff. His 2-part set of posts exploring the aftermath of nuclear terrorism is highly recommended.

Some MemeStreamers will find this up their alley. I'm memeing a blog posting of this series because its two parts and they've provided one convenient permalink for it.

Winds of Change.NET: Exploring the Impact of Nuclear Terrorism

Bottom line: We urgently need a national commission to look at all the little changes we have made in response to 9/11 - from visa policies to research funding, to the way we've sealed off our federal buildings, to legal rulings around prisoners of war - and ask this question: While no single change is decisive, could it all add up in a way so that 20 years from now we will discover that some of America's cultural and legal essence - our DNA as a nation - has become badly deformed or mutated?

This would be a tragedy for us and for the world. Because, as I've argued, where birds don't fly, people don't mix, ideas don't get sparked, friendships don't get forged, stereotypes don't get broken, and freedom doesn't ring.

America's DNA - Tom Freidman

] If you want to appreciate how corrosive Guantánamo has
] become for America's standing abroad, don't read the Arab
] press. Don't read the Pakistani press. Don't read the
] Afghan press. Hop over here to London or go online and
] just read the British press! See what our closest allies
] are saying about Gitmo. And when you get done with that,
] read the Australian press and the Canadian press and the
] German press.

] Husain Haqqani, a thoughtful Pakistani scholar now
] teaching at Boston University, remarked to me: "When
] people like myself say American values must be emulated
] and America is a bastion of freedom, we get Guantánamo
] Bay thrown in our faces. When we talk about the America
] of Jefferson and Hamilton, people back home say to us:
] 'That is not the America we are dealing with. We are
] dealing with the America of imprisonment without trial.'"

Friedman is pissed about Guantánamo Bay. Enjoy your NYT Op-Ed while you still can..

Just Shut It Down - New York Times

] The seemingly interminable questioning had already lasted
] for hours. 'I needed the toilet,' Mubanga said, 'and I
] asked the interrogator to let me go. But he just said,
] "you'll go when I say so". I told him he had five minutes
] to get me to the toilet or I was going to go on the
] floor. He left the room. Finally, I squirmed across the
] floor and did it in the corner, trying to minimise the
] mess. I suppose he was watching through a one-way mirror
] or the CCTV camera. He comes back with a mop and dips it
] in the pool of urine. Then he starts covering me with my
] own waste, like he's using a big paintbrush, working
] methodically, beginning with my feet and ankles and
] working his way up my legs. All the while he's racially
] abusing me, cussing me: "Oh, the poor little negro, the
] poor little nigger." He seemed to think it was funny.'

] Yet Mubanga, though traumatised by his ordeal, believes
] he stayed sane partly because of his growing religious
] faith, and partly because of his rapping. He has a
] provisional title for the album he'd like to record:
] Detainee . He also has a stage name - 10,007, his
] Guantanamo prisoner number. The content of his work is
] strongly political. There were times, Mubanga said, 'that
] I wanted to explode. And when I did, I tried to remember
] Allah, not to use aggression in that way. I never fought
] any of the guards, I never spat at them, or like some
] prisoners did, threw a packet of faeces. A lot of the
] time you go on to autopilot and you just have to tell
] yourself you're still here, it is happening, it is real.
] The golden rule a lot of us had is, if you don't feel
] tired, don't force yourself to sleep, stay active. That's
] why I made myself learn Arabic.

The Observer | How I entered the hellish world of Guantanamo Bay

"This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign. The Bush Administration is looking at this as a huge war zone."

The President has signed a series of findings and executive orders authorizing secret commando groups and other Special Forces units to conduct covert operations against suspected terrorist targets in as many as ten nations in the Middle East and South Asia.

"We're not going to rely on agency pissants."

You may recall, in a time not so long ago, at a press conference not so far away ...

"You asked, do I feel free?

Let me put it to you this way: I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it. It is my style.

I've earned capital in this election -- and I'm going to spend it for ... fighting and winning the war on terror.

I'm looking forward to it, I really am."

The Coming Wars