bomb alerts and stuff

chicken-and-egg situation:

did their inability to find a job cause these young men to become more angry and disaffected, eventually culminating in their turning to radicalism ...

... or did they start claiming benefits because they thought, fuck it, i'm gonna be blowing myself up in a couple of years, no point getting a job?

Momus actually linked to a broadsheet site article after the 7th on the first 'Explosion...' discussion thread which highlighted the glee with which some 'anti-West/pro-bombing their civilians' people abused the benefits system whilst simultaneously 'praying' for the destruction of buildings and lives on Western soil, as retaliation. Can't be bothered to track it down myself though. Likewise there have been a few BBC shows (inc. at least one Panorama) which have highlighted the contempt for the system among those same people - but I cannot supply more precise details at this time, so you don't have to believe me if you don't want to ;)

or did they start claiming benefits because they thought, fuck it, i'm gonna be blowing myself up in a couple of years, no point getting a job?

from a tactical pov, this would be a risky move, inviting the social services in. they did this for the money, surely?

This is a little off topic but when I moved here I was what you would call an approved immigrant (spouse visa) and they put a big old stamp that said 'no recourse to public funds allowed' thing in my passport. So I thought recent immigrants were prohibited from receiving benefits. Do they just mean the asylum seekers that they don't allow to work and thus give benefits to?

I know - so what are people saying. That the useless london-based bombers got into it though unemployment and desperation but the leeds-based ones had some other reason? I dunno - it just all seems daft talk to me.

xp -- again, i don't think they took the money out of politics but because they needed it. if you were a terrorist, how much would you want to be interviewed by social services on a regualr basis?

hasn't this always been the way? I certainly murdered my share of innocents back when I was on stuck on the dole.

The thought process is simple: in a better world, the world we are happy to give up our lives for, things will be better. Seems a touch circular I know, but then how much complex political and economic theory will your average suicide bomber want to have, let alone actually have before they talk themselves out fo it?

This sober version is from The Times.

The Daily Express excels itself
http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/newspapers/today/img/1.jpg?Tuesday,%2026-Jul-2005%2022:59:44%20BST/image.gif

The Sun gets in on the act too
http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/newspapers/today/img/9.jpg?Tuesday,%2026-Jul-2005%2022:59:45%20BST/image.gif

Theres no Daily Mail cover. So god knows what they have!

??????!!!!!!!!!

holy jesus, i thought you were taking the piss. (and i was going to congratulate you on a deftly written subdeck too.) jesus CHRIST, woah, that is ... that defies satire.

Someone is bound to photoshop the
The headline the day after will be 'ALL SPONGING ASYLUM SEEKERS ARE BOMBERS'...
-- Vic Fluro suggestion

PROTEST AGAINST THE SHOOT TO KILL POLICY
LOBBY ON DOWNING STREET SW1A 2AA
5.30PM, THURSDAY 28TH JULY
On Friday 22nd July, Jean Charles de Menezes was walking from his home to Stockwell tube. Police in plain clothes followed him and just before he entered the underground station they shouted at him. Scared, he ran into the station with the police following him. They caught him, held him down and shot him in the head seven times. He had nothing to do with the London bombing campaign. He was unlucky enough to be wearing the wrong clothes and his skin was the wrong colour. Subsequently it has been revealed that the police have been operating a secret shoot-to-kill policy. Armed officers have been undergoing training with the Israeli defence forces.

This is the result.

The police now regret this 'tragic mistake'. The real tragic mistake has been the illegal, immoral and barbaric invasion of Iraq and the killing of tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians. Londoners are now really paying the price of this war, both in the suicide bombings and in this public killing. We send our heartfelt condolences to Jean Charles de Menezes's family.

Following his death a peace and solidarity vigil, organised by the Stop the War Coalition, was held at Stockwell tube station. Speaking at the vigil John Rees from the Stop the War Coalition said, "However horrific the bombings in London on 7th July and however important it is to secure the safety of the public, there can be no excuse for the police adopting a shoot to kill policy which guns down innocent people in cold blood. This is precisely the crime for which we hold the terrorists responsible. The police in a democratic society have a duty to act with higher standards. They should be trying to diminish the climate of fear, not add to it."

A lobby on Downing Street has now been called to protest against the police shoot-to-kill policy and to call for all foreign troops to be withdrawn from Iraq. All opinion polls show that, despite Tony Blair's insistence to the contrary, two thirds of the British people think there is a link between the London bombings and the war in Iraq. The message to Tony Blair on Thursday will be "Stop the war to stop the terror". Please join the lobby if you can and spread the information as widely as possible.

PROTEST AGAINST THE SHOOT TO KILL POLICY
LOBBY ON DOWNING STREET SW1A 2AA
5.30PM, THURSDAY 28TH JULY.
SEND A MESSAGE TO TONY BLAIR:
STOP THE WAR TO STOP THE TERROR
BRING THE TROOPS HOME.
PLEASE BRING COLLEAGUES, FRIENDS, FAMILY AND DISTRIBUTE THIS EMAIL WIDELY
http://www.stopwar.org.uk/

"there can be no excuse for the police adopting a shoot to kill policy which guns down innocent people in cold blood. This is precisely the crime for which we hold the terrorists responsible. The police in a democratic society have a duty to act with higher standards"

Obviously the police didn't think he was innocent. You cannot equate the tragic, accidental killing of one man with the senseless, calculated murder and maiming of dozens of people. The day the police start blowing up trains and buses indiscriminately is the day you can say that sentence with justification.

The message to Tony Blair on Thursday will be "Stop the war to stop the terror".

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the Iraq war (and I'll acknowledge it's an absolute mess), it's ludicrously blinkered to suggest the recent bombings are caused solely by the situation in Iraq, and that withdrawing would stop the attacks. Also, as I'm sure somebody else here has already said, if you let the terrorists dictate government policy then when that racist lunatic was blowing up Brick Lane, Brixton, and the Admiral Duncan in Soho surely you would argue the government should have agreed to imprison all homosexuals and repatriate all immigrants to stop the attacks.

im not saying im against the policy. im not saying im for it either. but to deny that we are changing things ourselves as a reactive is disingeneous, which is of course tblairs speciality

similarly, there seems to be a reluctance to admit that iraq is neither the sole cause, or a cause at all. blair posits it as unrelated, and protestors posit it as an open and shut root cause. i guess people like things in black and white

would you say this about what happened in Spain too? i know a lot of people do, i just have trouble convincing myself that there really is more to the motivation than what's happened with Iraq. you can't blame people for calling it as they see it, and arguments that 'it would've happened anyway' are no more 'provable'. I suspect a stronger case can be made for the 'why it was inevitable regardless of Iraq' argument though.

I can't say the likes of M3lan1e Phi11ips have convinced me either.

(x-post)

Sir Ian Blair was quite convincing on C4 news last night. Maybe I am easily swayed though.

momus otm re. tony blair.

But this has been coming for a long time. The Iraq war might have helped it along, but it's not the root cause. The September 11 attacks pre-dated the Iraq war by a long way. Richard Reid would have been the first British suicide bomber back in 2001 (and killed more people on that aeroplane than died in London) if other passengers hadn't managed to stop him.

This didn't start with Iraq, and it's not about Iraq, but Iraq has stirred things up further.

I just didn't like the opportunistic way the SWP / Stop the War people started trying to used the bombings to back their political position. Just because someone's against the war in Iraq, it doesn't mean that the government is to blame for the bombings or that they should pull out because of the bombings. When anti-abortionist Christian fundamentalists in America shoot doctors dead, it doesn't mean that the government is to blame or that the law should be changed.