London — Again

It looks like there has been another attack on London: three underground stations — Warren Street, Shepherd’s Bush, and Oval — appear to have been hit by explosions of some sort. While information is sketchy, at the moment, these three Tube stations have been evacuated. There was also an incident on a bus, which had its windows blown out.

There is a report of a nail bomb exploding. No reports of any casualties so far.

Developing….

UPDATE: Police have entered London’s College University Hospital, and cordoned it off.

UPDATE II: There’s a suspect.

More American mercenaries

Daniel McAdams on what Congress did while you weren’t paying attention yesterday.

But what use is the application of the Lenin and Trotsky perfected techniques of the coup d’etat without the stabilization shock troops on the ground to consolidate the gains? Lebanon’s Cedar Revolution was ambiguous to say the least. Imagine what could have been done with stabilization troops available to husband the votes into a more creative expression of the universal democratic imperative.

Read the whole thing.

Death: The Claremont Institute Style of Patriotism

The newest issue of the Claremont Review of Books (Summer 2005) begins an appeal for funds (“Make the Pledge”–p. 40) with this statement: “Our country is at war, and at the heart of a successful war effort must be the political conviction that this country is worth fighting and dying for.” What the Claremont warmongers really mean is that “this government is worth fighting and dying for.” But the 1,770 American soldiers who died in Iraq died in vain. They gave their lives for a government that is despicable in every way, beginning at the top. The country of the Founding Fathers invoked by The Claremont Institute is long gone.

Mossad Chief Confirms Netanyahu’s Warning of London Bombing

The controversy continues over an Associated Press story detailing the remarks of a “senior Israeli official” who claimed that Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in London for an economic conference, was warned by Scotland Yard “minutes” in advance of the terrorist bombings. According to the original story, Netanyahu’s prior knowledge was the cause of his not showing up at the conference, which took place at a hotel near the Liverpool Underground station. A subsequent AP report contained the Israeli’s government’s denial of a prior warning, and claimed that Netanyahu received a warning after the blasts.

Although the first AP story was never retracted, that didn’t prevent Israel’s American amen corner from claiming that it had been withdrawn, nor did it stop Stratfor.com from coming out with an analysis claiming that Israel knew “days” in advance, and that it wasn’t Scotland Yard that informed Netanyahu. Former intelligence analyst Tommy Preston, of Preston Global, concurred.

My own column drawing on these sources drew fire, not only from the usual suspects, but also from dailykos.com, the Democratic party website spawned by the Dean campaign. “Antiwar.com is not a legitimate source,” declared one poster.

This from a website that headlined “Did BushCo Tip Off London Bombers?”!

An author who goes by the name “DHinMI” manufactured a quote, purportedly from me, that was nothing more than a crude fabrication: it had quote marks around it, as if I had written it, when in reality I had written no such thing. DhinMI’s point: that to even suggest that Netanyahu had advance notice of the London bombings is so obviously an “anti-Semitic conspiracy theory” that no discussion is required, regardless of what the Associated Press reports.

The Kossacks, as they call themselves, are trying to clean their act up so that they can be more closely associated with the Democratic party apparatus. However, why limit themselves to condemning my column: why not condemn AP as an “illegitimate source” for publishing the news of Netanyahu’s foreknowledge to begin with? And while they’re at it, they need to add a few more media source to the list, including some of the Israeli media. Israel Insider cites Mossad chief Meir Dagan, in an interview with the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag:

“The Mossad office in London received advance notice about the attacks, but only six minutes before the first blast, the paper reports, confirming an earlier AP report. As a result, it was impossible to take any action to prevent the blasts.”

Here is the Bild am Sonntag story in German, and a Google translation.

Is this just empty boasting on the part of the Mossad chief, or is there some truth to the initial AP report? Is Meir Dagan spreading anti-Semitic conspiracy theories?

We report. You decide.

I might add that some of the DailyKos folks are shocked – shocked! – that Antiwar.com opposed the Kosovo war. We, in turn, are shocked at the hypocrisy of those who support a war of aggression against a country, Yugoslavia, that had never attacked us, and that was never sanctioned by the United Nations. They only oppose wars started by Republicans: we at Antiwar.com, on the other hand, oppose all wars of aggression, regardless of the partisan affiliation of those in power at the time.

If You’re in the Bay Area This Weekend

Speaking of WMDs that do exist…

For some reason or other, a few dozen Nobel prize-winning scientists and other smarty-pantses are concerned that America and Russia still have enough nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert to destroy civilization (“Nobel Laureates say ‘Take Nuclear Warheads off Hair-Trigger Alert’“). One of these Big-Brains Who HATE AMERICA!!! (irony alert), Nobel Peace Showoff scientist Professor Sir Joseph Rotblat (aka “the man who walked away from the Manhattan Project”) came up with the idea of raising money from the private sector to dismantle nuclear weapons. To this end, a long fundraising walk has been organized by the Global Nuclear Disarmament Fund. The opening event — which includes a Japanese senator, Nobel prize winners, actor Steven Seagal, etc. — begins Saturday morning in San Francisco: click here for program. The walk starts at noon, heads down the peninsula, and over the next month hits NV, AZ, & NM, ending at the Trinity nuke test site: click here for walk schedule.

All apologies….

3 months ago (“No Peaking“) I said that I’d answer some of my Peak Oil mail “in the next day or two.” I made a file of many of these e-mails and my replies, and then decided to write an article instead — which I still haven’t done. It’s a shame, ’cause I rec’d a number of good e-mails, both pro and con. When I finish the article I’m working on I’ll post a link to it here. Sorry about that.

London Bombing: Still No Iraqi Terrorists

Zahid Hussain, the London Times‘ correspondent in Pakistan explains “how Pakistan became a hotbed for terrorists“:

For quite some time, there has been a network of contacts between British extremists and the Jihadi organisations based in Pakistan. Once contact has been made with … young people, they become influenced by them and are encouraged to visit the training camps.

For the last two decades, sections of Pakistan have been under the influence of guerillas who were involved in the war against the Soviet forces in Afghanistan – with, it’s important to say, American support.

They had offices in all of the neighbourhoods and were recruiting people to fight in that war. A culture of jihad developed which has continued to this day. Many are still involved in the fighting in Kashmir and through this they have become battle-hardened fighters while others have gone over to Iraq.