Month: July 2005

A couple of blog sites are covering the recent bomb blast in Egypt. They’re worth a visit.

• Big Pharaoh
• The Egyptian Sand Monkey

Britain Says Man Killed by Police Had No Tie to Bombings

Scotland Yard admitted Saturday that a man police officers chased and shot to death at point-blank range in front of horrified subway passengers on Friday had nothing to do with the investigation into the bombing attacks here.

Senior investigators and officials of the Metropolitan Police said the man was believed to be South American; it was not known whether he was Muslim. No explosives or weapons were found on the man’s body after the shooting, police officials said.

The incident sent shock waves through the country’s 1.6 million Muslims, already alarmed by a publicly acknowledged shoot-to-kill policy directed against suspected suicide bombers. And it has dealt a major setback to the police investigation into suspected terrorist cells in London.

“This really is an appalling set of circumstances,” said John O’Connor, a former police commander. “The consequences are quite horrible.”

Azzam Tamimi, head of the Muslim Association of Britain, said: “This is very frightening. People will be afraid to walk the streets, or go on the tube, or carry anything in their hands.”

I’m actually surprised that there hasn’t been more incidents like this. The police have got to be under extreme pressure to find those responsible for the recent bombing attempts. Combating terrorism is tough business. It’s a no win situation for the authorities. When you press hard, mistakes are bound to happen. If you delay, another incident could occur.

Not much going on. I’ve checked the liberal blogs. I’ve checked my conservative blog buddies. Zip, nadda, nothing.

Nothing out of the ordinary, that is.

• There are a dozen places to go to read about John Roberts.
• There are three dozen places to go to read about London.
• There are just as many places to go to read about the recent bombing in Egypt.
• Oh, and it’s hot in the west, where temperatures continue to skyrocket (thanks Drudge!)

So you see, not much of anything really happening.

Over and out.

This man is dangerous.

HATE-filled Omar Bakri Mohammed sparked new outrage yesterday by admitting he would NOT tell police if he knew extremists were planning suicide bomb attacks.

The firebrand Islamic cleric told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “If I know anybody who wants to take any action in this country, I will stop him.”

But he added: “No, I will never go to police.”

Bakri, 45, of Edmonton, North London, refused to condemn the 7/7 attacks.

He said: “Muslims are obliged to defend themselves. For them to do operations among people with whom they live side to side, Islam forbids that.

“You need yourself to leave them and live very far away from them and then fight them, that is what I believe.”

He claimed he had helped protect Britain from Islamic extremists.

But he added: “Unfortunately, after we have been banned from any activities we become completely isolated from the youth. And the youth start to go forward to somebody else abroad.”

The Sun has called for Bakri, who openly says he hates Britain but is happy to live on state handouts, to be deported.

As long as there are people like Omar Bakri Mohammed, bombs will continue to go off aboard Tube carriages and double-decker buses.

He must be stopped.

What would you say to a suicide bomber?

A TUBE passenger last night told how he watched a suicide bomber bungle his intended atrocity.

Abisha Moyo was on his way to Hammersmith, west London, when he heard what sounded like a gunshot.

The 28-year-old said: “I turned round and there was a man lying with his arms outstretched on top of a rucksack face up. Some girls started screaming. The emergency cable was pulled and everyone starting moving away from him.”

“I went up to him and said: ‘Are you all right, mate?’ But he just ignored me and kept his eyes shut.

“He looked about 19 or 20. He was of mixed race, clean shaven and he was dressed smartly in jeans, a navy blue T-shirt and a baseball cap.

“The rucksack was ripped at the bottom with some kind of muslin showing and some gooey lard coming out of it.

“I could see what looked like a pressurised canister or tube and there was a strong smell of vinegar.”

Unbelievable.

MORE: ‘He prayed, bag went bang’.

4 out of 5 leftists agree…

Ken Livingstone claims terrorist attacks fuelled by UK foreign policy

Shattering the political truce that had emerged since the four bomb attacks, London Mayor Ken Livingstone said resentment was being fuelled as a result of the treatment of detainees by United States troops at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. He went so far as to suggest the English public would themselves resort to suicide bombings if placed under certain circumstances.

“You’ve just had 80 years of western intervention into predominantly Arab lands because of the western need for oil. We’ve propped up unsavoury governments, we’ve overthrown ones we didn’t consider sympathetic.”

This is the mindset of a typical liberal. If we just try to understand the plight of the terrorist, we wouldn’t be targets of their anger.

Then he follows with this gem:

“I do not support any suicide bombings. I don’t ever recall supporting an act of violence,” he said. But he made it clear that he regarded suicide attacks as the natural result of political decisions. “Under foreign occupation and denied the right to vote, denied the right to run your own affairs, often denied the right to work for three generations, I suspect that if it had happened here in England, we would have produced a lot of suicide bombers ourselves.

What Ken and the rest of the Left don’t understand is that the terrorist doesn’t want sympathy, understanding, or a bully pulpit from which to speak.

The terrorist wants you dead. Dead as in no longer living. D-E-A-D.

Why can’t liberals understand this?

There’s only one thing that could entice me to move to Helsinki, Finland.

100 megabits per second.

moon.google.com

MORE: Moon Children

You’d think this was a joke, but it’s not.

Warding off evil eye: Baby married to dog

A baby girl in West Bengal was married off to a dog “to ward off the evil eye” that her father feared due to a premature appearance of her teeth.

Six-month-old Disha married her canine groom Pomi Monday at a Hindu ceremony at Polba village in Hooghly district.

The marriage was conducted for the girl’s “well-being” as she had grown teeth before her “annoprasan” or “rice ceremony” – a function when the baby is fed solids for the first time.

Reports said the girl’s father Kamalendu Bandopadhayay, who works in a court, was advised by some priests to conduct the marriage. The man spent about Rs.40,000 on the ceremony.

Pomi, who wore a floral garland for the occasion, is likely to be looked after by his new “in-laws”.

The girl’s mother was against the ritual, but her objections were reportedly overruled.

Oh where I could go with this story. The possibilities are endless…

An over the top police blotter write-up:

He had not run for very long before he realized the two cops were only pacing him. They could see something he could not. With each frantic step a sense of dread nagged at him. The more calm and calculating they were, the further behind he left his common sense, and his panic ratcheted up. As he ran, the black and white radio car glided silently along behind like a predatory whale.

Via Boing Boing.