The BBC discusses freshly-released camera footage which reveals that the London bombers did a dry-run nine days before their terrorist assault. Their July 7th attack murdered 52 people and injured 700 others.
CCTV images show three of the bombers entering Luton station, before travelling to King’s Cross station where they are also pictured…The three, Mohammad Sidique Khan, Shehzad Tanweer and Germaine Lindsay, were conducting a carefully planned reconnaissance exercise, police said.
Someone finally got around to claiming evil. Why the delay?
Meanwhile, al-Qaeda has said for the first time the group carried out the attacks.
In a videotaped message aired on Arab television station al-Jazeera, al-Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahri said the group had the “honour” of carrying out the attacks.
For shame. There is no honor in the slaughter of innocents.
:+:
“Some may argue that to call it a day of remembrance for genocide of all ethnic groups…”
Rupa I agree with you, and with reference to the quote above, isn’t it odd that the groups that have the biggest claim to genocide or wholesale displacement (e.g. Native Americans, various peoples in Africa) are not the ones raising such arguments, but “Muslim” activists in the UK and other Western countries? The politics of victimhood often veers perilously close to narcissism in these debates as far as these spokesmen are concerned, who have little empathy for atrocities against anyone else. And then there’s Palestine– my sympathies for the Palestinians, but a media obsession (in the West too, for various reasons) with the Arab-Israeli conflict means that people are aware of every tragic death in the West Bank, even though they don’t know that their own state is bombing their own citizens a few hundred miles away! (This by the way actually happened to me: I’ve met people in Karachi who weren’t aware that the Musharraf regime has instituted measures akin to what the IDF uses in the West Bank (house demolitions, etc.), and moreover that they have also used aerial assaults on villages suspected to be harboring Al-Qaeda terrorists)…
Very well put.
If the Muslim Council of Britain wants to have an all-inclusive involvement in “Genocide Day”, perhaps we should also include the huge numbers of people who were killed in India during the Turkic-Mughal invasions and the subsequent consolidation of their rule. Even the Emperor Akbar — normally regarded as a moderate — massacred tens of thousands of civilians during his conquest of Chittorgarh. We can also add the atrocities against the Sikhs during the 200 years of the Gurus and in the interim period afterwards.
It would be interesting to see how they would react to the negative publicity this would no doubt generate. The truth sure hurts sometimes, doesn’t it.
people, don’t engage with the morons!
whether we are godly or godless, left or right, fat or skinny, fugly or beautiful, there are certain critical thinking and rationality skills most people in this forum possess. but not everyone is like that. remember, the protocols of the elders of zion is still popular in the arab world!!! hell, 1 in 5 americans thinks that the sun goes around the earth.
there enough disagreemants among the sentient to sate our apetites for disputation, let’s limit it to that….
Wow, thanks Umair Muhajir, Kush, Razib, PB, Rupa and others. Excellent points and a lot for me to mull over.
Umair Muhajir: you put that beautifully. Ideology is the key. I think one of the problems with a certain kind of bean counting – this many dead for this side, this many dead for the other, is it doesn’t take into consideration the ideology of the participants. That’s the sort of moral equivalence I don’t understand. How can you not take that into account? Talk about making the perfect the enemy of the good.
I don’t want to discount things like the Dresden bombings, and we shouldn’t do that. I think we in the West have a tendency to romanticize WWII, which is something the American, Brit, etc soldiers who actually fought in the war did not do! What a stoic generation – I had a friend (medical student at the time) who treated a WWII vet and noticed the markings on his skin and asked him about them.
“I was in a concentration camp, but I never told my family. I never wanted it to happen to me or my family again, but it will. It will happen again.” He basically converted to Christianity after the war, and did not tell his children what happened to him. Can you imagine? ( I heard this second hand from my very good friend whom I trust, but I can’t vouch for it’s accuracy beyond that. It’s the obsessive in me that has to say that – I have to try and be accurate).
Also, zak (sorry razib, I have to answer): I’m not saying I don’t care about civilian casualites caused by the US or UK forces. What I am saying is that I can draw a distinction between purposefully killing someone and accidentally killing them. For instance, if I am a policewoman, and I shoot at a dangerous criminal who is running away from a crime scene, and accidentally kill someone, that is very different than if I point the trigger and mean to kill an innocent bystander. It’s horrific, and very well may deserve punishment, but it is by no means an equivalence.
Oh, and Jai Singh, I liked your point about the Genocide Remembrance Day. It gets to the point that the meaning of a holiday like that would be diluted – the whole history of mankind is one giant litany of genocide, murder, and mayhem. And even with that, we move forward and forward. The world we live in today is vastly superior to anything that came before, and don’t even try to tell me differently 🙂
MD:
“Killing civilians is abhorent, but I disagree that intentionally killing them, and collateral damage are on the same moral footing.”
I didn’t suggest that they were on the same moral footing.
Also, please don’t equate collateral damage, as in the case of the nukes, with accidental shooting by a policewoman. The former was premeditated. A drive-by shooting may be a better comparison and of course wholly unaaceptable as a law enforcement measure. However, I do agree that the latter may deserve punishment under manslaughter laws in the US.
Dropping the nukes might have been treated as a war crime if the other side had won, because winners make the post-war rules. But again, that is a what-if scenario, so excuse me … or kick my ass. It’s up to you 😉
MD: “The world we live in today is vastly superior to anything that came before, and don’t even try to tell me differently :)”
Not sure I agree with the statement that human history is a massive litany of GENOCIDE: massacres are not new, but exterminations are a newer creature for the most part (in the old days one might raze a city after a battle won; but it was comparatively rare to have as one’s political project the elimination of a group, one reason I think it’s a conceptual mistake to lump Akbar with the Nazis). Something like the ’47 partition violence, ’71 in East Pakistan, Rwanda in ’94, not to mention colonialism’s crimes in the 18-20th centuries, and of course the Nazi and Communist mass murders, one would be hard pressed to find in a single 200-year span.
Another reason many countries are “better” is that many have eliminated or driven out or made irrelevant the ones who they used to oppress. Take the Native Americans: sure they are treated “better” now than before, but only after all land that needed to be stolen from them was in fact stolen or occupied. Eastern Europe treats Jews better– except they don’t have that many left…
MD: “That’s the sort of moral equivalence I don’t understand. How can you not take that into account? Talk about making the perfect the enemy of the good.”
Thanks MD, and I guess that’s also what I meant when I was defending the idea of “relativism”: as I understand the term it doesn’t mean (or shouldn’t mean) that no useful distinctions can be drawn (e.g. “Holocaust is nothing new because this sort of thing happens all the time”; “They’re all equally bad”), but that one attempt to disorient oneself a little by trying to imagine how the world might look to someone else (for instance, so that we don’t condemn “other” cultures as “inferior,” and seek to promote understanding/insight rather than judgment).
Now before anyone says that this means we should try and empathize with a murderous terrorist, let me clarify: since the whole POINT of such a relativism would be a (self-) disorientation with a view to gaining insight and understanding, it follows that a worldview that actually deliberately promotes the opposite– that “others” are inferior, weak, stupid, and even in some instances that they don’t deserve to live, or anyway may be killed without crime– is simply inconsistent with the relativistic urge, which is at bottom an ethical urge (in the sense that one tries to be relativistic precisely in order to be fair to “the other”).
Relativism gets a bad rap, but really I would argue the sorts who refuse to draw any distinctions are moral/ethical nihilists…
Umair hits the button – the narcissism and hypocrisy of the victimhood peddlers is what is most disgusting – that and their apologia for fascist terrorism
They stink.
Umair, regarding what you said about Palestine: what is happening in Palestine is horrific, but by no stretch can it be termed a genocide;
Surprisingly, I would be inclined to agree with you on that point. Genocides in the context of this thread have been relatively short periods of human barbarism that last a number of years and are usually a direct result of embedded resentments and political turmoil (read, opportunism).
Palestine’s situation has lasted for over half a century. It is not a genocide in the conventional sense. It is the cold war of genocides.
Umair,
You’re right, but I was just giving an example for the benefit of the fundies (who want to negate or expand Holocaust/Genocide Day) that there have been atrocities committed by Muslims repeatedly in Indian history too. Akbar of course, was a religious moderate compared to some of his predecessors and successors — again, it was just an example.
MD,
Unfortunately, yes. As mentioned above, my point was to play Devil’s Advocate by demonstrating that it isn’t just Muslims who have suffered — indeed, the history of the Indian subcontinent over the past 1000 years includes example after example of brutality and slaughter at the hands of the more warlike and aggressive Muslims of the time, often in the name of religion. If groups such as the MCB want to perpetrate some kind of “aggrieved victim” image, it would be worthwhile to expand the parameters of persecuted groups and include the examples of people who have suffered specifically at the hands of Muslims too. It’s only fair, after all — especially as I suspect that many people out here in the West will not be aware of the specifics of the last millennium of Indian history. I have a feeling they’d find it an eye-opening experience, although I wonder how willing the MCB and their allied groups would be to open this particular Pandora’s Box.
If anyone has any spare time, I recommend taking a look at the various links I included (in my previous post) in my sentence “and in the interim period afterwards” — there’s a separate URL under each word.
I wish you were right, but…I don’t know. What’s happening now is similar in some ways to what already happened in India and the Middle East centuries ago, but on a global scale — because of modern technology, ease of international travel, and more widespread communication. I think the technology to wreak havoc on a broader level — including the international reach — is also now much more dangerous. However, I do agree that there is much more global emphasis on universal human rights these days, which is definitely a positive improvement compared to much of our previous history on the planet.
Well what I can not understand is why a lot of British muslims of pakistani orign hate the Brits that much, When in reality they have a lot to be greatful for. The British social policies go much futher to accomodate them and provide educational oppurtunities then most countries do for their immigrants. The radicalization of british muslim predates Iraq involvement. The Rushdie affair took place prior to that. Cat Stevens publicaly stated that the supported the fatwa against rushdie. There was a a55hole cleric Humza who had been preaching for armed jihad. Farrukh Dhondy does point out these issues here. I think they are hiding behind a viel of iraq,palestine,kashmir,bosnia,and on and on. Going slightly off topic after Turks lost their caliphate, the muslims in prepartition india rioted (much smaller and only 3-4 incidents took place) and the victims were not british, but hindus and muslims. But it shows that Islam has never fully dealt with this strain within itself. I think britain should seriously look at its multiculturalism, and socialism policies together and look athings from a wider historical prespective.
Yes thats what i thinks is ironic about the situation. The british were also involved with the US in nurturing the Jihadis. I think the British,American policy of the past can be caricaturized as, “as long as the victims of terrorist activities are not white we can look the other way.”