Stiff Uppper, What What?

The Brits remain admirably stalwart in the wake yesterday's attacks. Here's a link to the now-dry Lord Mayor Ken Livingstone's full remarks yesterday. They're worth reading in their entirety.

The transcriber of the Mayor's remarks has some cogent comments of his own:

First a thought, or perhaps an affirmation. The only response to acts of indiscriminate murder such as those today in London is implacable resistance -- and such resistance means not only retaliation against those responsible and guarding against all possible similar acts, but implacable resistance to terrorists' desire and aim to disrupt the rhythm of our daily lives and our civilization itself.

Blogger Charmaine Yeost at Reasoned Audacity has interesting testimony to stiffupperism even in the midst of London's "Little Beirut:"

A steady stream of observers did stop to look and photograph the barricaded street. But mostly, the feel in the air was one of stoic calm.

...Of course, most of the observers blamed Bush and Blair, but consider the venue.

The BBC has a collection of eyewitness accounts here.

This picture may become one of the signature images of 7-7:

That's blood spattered ten meters up the side of the British Medical Association building, which was near the site of the double-decker bus bombing. The entire front of the building was covered in blood and spattered body parts, as shown in other Getty photos I won't share. (Photo: Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty)

Here is the Beeb's translation of the statement by the "Secret Organisation Group of the Base ("al-qaeda") of Jihad Organisation in Europe," a title that would fit admirably into the European Union's listing of Departments. I particularly like the inclusion of a security classification in the title and the use of "organisation" twice. Most Vogonish. I also trust the accuracy of the translation--the Beeb doubtless has more than its share of Arabic speakers, after all.

This is good:

It is the first time a foreign flag has ever been raised at State.

This is not good:

One of the chief suspects in masterminding the attacks, as well as the al-Qaeda victory in Spain, is a Moroccan "trader," Mohamed al-Gerbouzi, who has been living comfortably in a flat just a few miles from Downing St. with his veiled slave-wife and six kids. Despite accusations concerning the Madrid bombings, al-Gerbouzi "is a free man in the UK where he survives with the help of state handouts given to his wife." Like many of America's home-grown urban terrorists, seems that al-Gob-boozer gets his "checks" from his "bitch." P Diddy would be proud.[Via Michelle Malkin]

Meanwhile, TigerHawk has a transcript of Rudi Giuliani's short interview with the BBC. The grotty little Beeber tried to get Rudi to say something defeatist, but he didn't take the bait. One must rise a bit earlier than the average Beebnik to fool a true New Yorker, it seems.

Meanwhile meanwhile, a sinister meme has emerged in the leftist camp among the anti-war quislings and terrorist suck-ups. Here's Justin Raimondo at AntiWar.Blog:

The Associated Press is reporting that Scotland Yard informed the Israeli Embassy in London moments before Terror Thursday dawned that attacks were imminent, according to a "senior Israeli official." Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was scheduled to show up at a conference slated to take place in a hotel directly above a subway station where one of the blasts went off. AP avers "The warning prompted him to stay in his hotel room instead, government officials said."

The story is datelined Jersusalem, and so we are talking about Israeli officials in this instance, not Scotland Yard.

This isn't the first time that Israeli foreknowledge of a terrorist attack against the West has been raised by a reputable source. One has to wonder: why is it that these reports of Israeli foreknowledge come up with such metronomic regularity? With all that smoke, is there really no fire?

It was them damn-dirty-ape Joooooz! They knowed all 'bout the attacks!! Heck & damnation, they PLANNED 'em!!! Rat-faced bags of pig-monkey mongrel guts!!!! We HATES them, precious, yes we does!!!!!

Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom has the best retort:

Predictably, Justin Raimondo is already seeing Joooos in the Shepherd’s Pie. Now, I’m not one to tell the Zionists how to run their international cabal, but if it were me who was in charge of running the world, I’d sacrifice up a few Hebes at each of these bombings, just to keep Justin Raimondo and his tireless investigators off my ass. Hell, I might even throw in a Likudnik from time to time, just to really confound the Truth Seekers

But then, Jeff's just a hooknosed Jieaux hisownself. He's probly wunnathem Mosaad agents 'annuz in on the conspiracy too!

Stephen Green (alsoajew?) has an excellent fisking of the entire leftist talking points memo on London over at VodkaPundit. A sample:

The bad guys shoot back. Even in a cause as noble as the D-Day landings, the bad guys shot back. So effectively, in fact, that we suffered 10,000 casualties that day. Let me repeat: We suffered 10,000 casualties that day. The bad guys shot back in North Korea, too – to the tune of 36,000 dead Americans. They shot back in Vietnam for twelve years, until we finally got sick of the whole mess and let the bad guys take over.

Today, the frontline crosses Madrid and London, and it crosses New York City, too. We don't have twelve years to dick around, and we don't have the luxury of pulling out. We have to take the offensive.

We have to go on the offense. Cities are burning. We have to take the initiative, and we have to try and keep it - even after a terrible day like 7/7/05, when the bad guys shot and hit the center ring.

Yup. Iraq is the offense. So is diplomatic confrontation with Musharraf and the al Saud princelings. So is the ongoing anti-Syrian Cedar Revolution in Lebanon. So is our upcoming abandonment of Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan. So was the coercion of Libya. So are our ongoing efforts to undermine the Syrian and Iranian dictatorships by a variety of means. We won't win every battle. We lost Spain to an attack similar to London's. Ultimately, however, London is just one small battle in a vast, post-industrial world war--one unlike any we've ever fought before. We cannot lose sight of that.

For that matter, we cannot lose .... period.

Monk

Update: Iranian expat Amir Taheri has excellent words for our friends on the left:

Moments after yesterday’s attacks my telephone was buzzing with requests for interviews with one recurring question: but what do they want? That reminded me of Theo van Gogh, the Dutch film-maker, who was shot by an Islamist assassin on his way to work in Amsterdam last November. According to witnesses, Van Gogh begged for mercy and tried to reason with his assailant. “Surely we can discuss this,” he kept saying as the shots kept coming. “Let us talk it over.”

But sorry, old chaps, you are dealing with an enemy that does not want anything specific, and cannot be talked back into reason through anger management or round-table discussions. Or, rather, this enemy does want something specific: to take full control of your lives, dictate every single move you make round the clock and, if you dare resist, he will feel it his divine duty to kill you.

The ideological soil in which alQaeda, and the many groups using its brand name, grow was described by one of its original masterminds, the Pakistani Abul-Ala al-Maudoodi more than 40 years ago. It goes something like this: when God created mankind He made all their bodily needs and movements subject to inescapable biological rules but decided to leave their spiritual, social and political needs and movements largely subject to their will. Soon, however, it became clear that Man cannot run his affairs the way God wants. So God started sending prophets to warn man and try to goad him on to the right path. A total of 128,000 prophets were sent, including Moses and Jesus. They all failed. Finally, God sent Muhammad as the last of His prophets and the bearer of His ultimate message, Islam. With the advent of Islam all previous religions were “abrogated” (mansukh), and their followers regarded as “infidel” (kuffar). The aim of all good Muslims, therefore, is to convert humanity to Islam, which regulates Man’s spiritual, economic, political and social moves to the last detail.

It is, of course, possible, as many in the West love to do, to ignore the strategic goal of the Islamists altogether and focus only on their tactical goals. These goals are well known and include driving the “Cross-worshippers” (Christian powers) out of the Muslim world, wiping Israel off the map of the Middle East, and replacing the governments of all Muslim countries with truly Islamic regimes like the one created by Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran and by the Taleban in Afghanistan.

How to achieve those objectives has been the subject of much debate in Islamist circles throughout the world, including in London, since 9/11. Bin Laden has consistently argued in favour of further ghazavat [terrorist raids] inside the West. He firmly believes that the West is too cowardly to fight back and, if terrorised in a big way, will do “what it must do”. That view was strengthened last year when al-Qaeda changed the Spanish Government with its deadly attack in Madrid. At the time bin Laden used his “Madrid victory” to call on other European countries to distance themselves from the United States or face similar “punishment”.

Bin Laden’s view has been challenged by his supposed No 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who insists that the Islamists should first win the war inside several vulnerable Muslim countries, notably Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Until yesterday it seemed that al-Zawahiri was winning the argument, especially by heating things up in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yesterday, the bin Laden doctrine struck back in London.

Update 2: James Lileks considers the terrorists and their apologists:

In the beginning, America was next England; in the end, England ends up as the next America.

And gets bombed for it. Some believe that England was already America, inasmuch as both were ruled by fiendish quazi-nazis who tossed their nations into a war for grins and giggles. Some believe that the bombings in London, like the ones in Madrid, can be blamed on Bush and Blair for the Iraq campaign. It’s always interesting to see how people who pride themselves on sophisticated analyses and exquisitely tuned cultural sensibilities cannot see the plain home truths. The foe sneers: you are infidels; you die now. The moderns pull a face, steeple their fingers, and wonder what they really mean. Surely this is a result of invading Iraq and forcing them to have elections. Surely one of the bombers was an ordinary Iraqi who lived a peaceable life – well, aside from the time that Qusay’s men came by, took his daughter, returned her the next day as a broken heap who died from a vaginal hemorrage, and aside from the time when his brother was thrown off a roof because someone said he had turned his portrait of Saddam to the wall - surely it was the invasion that made this ordinary man take the understandable step of moving to London to kill commuters.

They did not bomb London because there is insufficient transparency in Congress about the Gitmo detainees; they bombed London because it is part of the Zionist-Crusader Conspiracy run by the sons of monkeys and pigs, who must submit or die.

Any questions?

Update 3: Seems to 'ave jolly well backfired, what what?