[MellySingsDoom]

(In Mr Burns voice) Excellent!

[Smokers Gifts]

The goverment are trying to paint this as an Al Qaeda terrorist job. But something casually mentioned on the news this morning made it very clear to me what this is all about:
"The Gay Pride parade in central London on Saturday, the Concert for Diana at Wembley Stadium on Sunday, and Wimbledon tennis championships are all taking place this weekend."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6255452.stm

A bomb planted in the West End? Obviously this is a attack on the gay community. Why has no-one in the media emphasised this possibility? Why are they trying to make out its an islamic or Irish terrorist attack?
The bombers used a nail and petrol bomb. Does this seem familiar?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/d...00/2499249.stm

It also comes a week after this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6225444.stm

Gay bashing is the most likely motive in my opinion. Glaringly obvious.

[Bastian]

Originally Posted by Smokers Gifts

Gay bashing is the most likely motive in my opinion. Glaringly obvious.

And how does that motive conflict with the idea of Al Qaeda being behind the bomb plot? Islamists hate gays, they want to kill them all, favourably by cutting of their heads or stoning (or as in the case of iranian state islamism, by hanging them slowly with a crane), but blowing them up is fine too.

[Smokers Gifts]

Absolutely, you're right, I just don't think this link is being made in the British media. And if it was an attack focussed at the gay community it could be any number of groups who have planned this, neo nazi whites (who have a track record of murdering gays in the capital) as well as Al Qaeda.

I wish the media would consider the motives more before jumping to conclusions over who's done it.

[demonrail666]

The likelihood for me is that it was probably a quite low level islamic cell. Coming as it did on the day that Gordon Brown took over as prime minister it seems too politically strategic to be the work of a purely anti-gay outfit. Besides, from what I can tell, Tiger-Tiger isn't a gay club anyway and there has been evidence that fundamentalist groups have been targetting generally straight clubs like Ministry of Sound.

[Iain]

Also, the claims that this bomb would have caused mass carnage seem a bit over the top to me. I am by no means a bomb expert or anything but the device in question seemed super crude to me. Some gas cannisters and petrol with nails left on the back seat. Surely you could come up with something better than that.

Any speculation about who was behind this is purely that; speculation. It does seem that the media are keen to put this down to an Al Qaeda attack and not really consider alternate possibilities. Time will tell.

[racehorse]

i think it is going to be interesting to see how gordon brown responds to this, to the public, when talking about the terrorists.
will he use the dreaded bush/blair scare "moral crusade" propaganda rhetoric or will he perhaps speak sensibly of the terrorist(s), and call them criminals and treat them as such?
i'm looking forwards to finding out.

[demonrail666]

Originally Posted by racehorse

i think it is going to be interesting to see how gordon brown responds to this, to the public, when talking about the terrorists.
will he use the dreaded bush/blair scare "moral crusade" propaganda rhetoric or will he perhaps speak sensibly of the terrorist(s), and call them criminals and treat them as such?
i'm looking forwards to finding out.

Agreed, this is going to be a good chance for him to present his own position on things.

You wouldn't have noticed anything was wrong in the West End last night at all. That speaks volumes, I think.

[demonrail666]

Originally Posted by sarramkrop

You wouldn't have noticed anything was wrong in the West End last night at all. That speaks volumes, I think.

Good to hear. It's like the IRA campaigns in the 80s and early 90s. People were thinking they'd cause mass panic/fear but people just got on with things. It just saw a dip in tourists from America.

I don't remember people panicking at all when the last bombs went off either, apart from people simply making their way to work by foot. Tiger Tiger is apparently packed full of tourists and people who work in sales on their numerous stag nights. I'm not saying anymore, but everyone knows that sales people are notoriously prone to the odd divorce or two.

[Torn Curtain]

Gas canisters with nails remind me of the 1995-1996 bombings in France (that's what the Algerian islamist organisation GIA used as explosive devices).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1995_Is...ings_in_France

Algerian salafist cells are still active but France was a more likely target.

[Glice]

Speculation is always a bit dangerous, but I can't help but feel that the slightly half-assed nature of these attacks makes me think it's less likely to be Al-Qaeda given that they're pretty consise in their organisation. However, as others have said, speculation is a pretty pointless task.

Not being in London at the moment, I have to mention to Mr Marras that when I was there after the bombings, there was a definite fear amongst the people which supplanted the usual blank-ignoring other people fear that suffuses London. Perhaps this wasn't there in the West End last time? Perhaps I was being overly sensitive.

Originally Posted by Glice

Speculation is always a bit dangerous, but I can't help but feel that the slightly half-assed nature of these attacks makes me think it's less likely to be Al-Qaeda given that they're pretty consise in their organisation. However, as others have said, speculation is a pretty pointless task.

Not being in London at the moment, I have to mention to Mr Marras that when I was there after the bombings, there was a definite fear amongst the people which supplanted the usual blank-ignoring other people fear that suffuses London. Perhaps this wasn't there in the West End last time? Perhaps I was being overly sensitive.

I didn't notice.

[Bastian]

Christopher Hitchens on the london car bombs:

Don't Mince Words
The London car-bomb plot was designed to kill women.

By Christopher Hitchens

[..]

Only at the tail end of the coverage was it admitted that a car bomb might have been parked outside a club in Piccadilly because it was "ladies night" and that this explosion might have been designed to lure people into to the street, the better to be burned and shredded by the succeeding explosion from the second car-borne cargo of gasoline and nails. Since we have known since 2004 that a near-identical attack on a club called the Ministry of Sound was proposed in just these terms, on the grounds that dead "slags" or "sluts" would be regretted by nobody, a certain amount of trouble might have been saved by assuming the obvious. The murderers did not just want body parts in general but female body parts in particular.

[..]

The most noticeable thing about all theocracies is their sexual repression and their directly related determination to exert absolute control over women. In Britain, in the 21st century, there are now honor killings, forced marriages, clerically mandated wife-beatings, incest in all but name, and the adoption of apparel for females that one cannot be sure is chosen by them but which is claimed as an issue of (of all things) free expression. This would be bad enough on its own and if it were confined to the Muslim "community" alone. But, of course, such a toxin cannot be confined, and the votaries of theocracy now claim the God-given right to slaughter females at random for nothing more than their perceived immodesty. The least we can do, confronted by such radical evil, is to look it in the eye (something it strives to avoid) and call it by its right name. For a start, it is the female victims of this tyranny who are "disenfranchised," while something rather worse than "disenfranchisement" awaits those who dare to disagree.

http://www.slate.com/default.aspx?id=2169592&nav/tap1