I've been looking at BBC TV for the past two hours as reports have been
coming in about the deaths and injured. The whole London Underground has
been shut down, there are no buses and many roads are jammed. The latest
count for the injured is 190.
The official figure of deaths so far is 2, but Italian radio is talking of
50 which I would guess is more nearly correct as a proportion of the
numbers of injured coming into the individual London hospitals. Even so,
the number of deaths may not be as high as might be expected.
I think that some significant features are already emerging even as injured
are still being brought in. Six underground stations have been attacked,
but only one bus and this was a tourist bus (the top of which was blown off
completely). In the latter case this must have been caused by a suicide
bomber and relatively many deaths will have resulted from this. However,
the attacks on the Underground give me the impression that their intention
was to disrupt London rather than to cause the maximum number of deaths.
The lack of evidence so far suggest that the bombs in this case were
tripped off by mobile phones, possibly in the entrances of the tunnels and
not on board the trains, as in Madrid -- where the number of deaths was
very much higher.
So this attack on London was probably originally planned when it was known
weeks ago that Bush was going to attend the G8 Conference in Gleneagles
Hotel in Scotland. At the same time, however, the attack on the tourist bus
and the nature of the attacks on the Underground, seem to have been
designed to have maximum economic effect. I think Al Qaeda are now learning
the lessons of the IRA when the latter stopped personnel bombings in
Northern Ireland and blew up the Armitage shopping mall in Manchester (one
of the largest in the country) and the Baltic Exchange (which was unusable
afterwards) in London. One or two more of these sorts of attacks on
financial buildings in London and the city might have been in danger of
losing large numbers of foreign banks and finance houses and its high
position in world finance (and very high export earnings from its
services). The IRA thereby gained negotiations with the government for the
first time. I think Al Qaeda have now learned this from the IRA and this
will strengthen the Sunnis' hand in the secret negotiations with America in
Baghdad.
Blair intends to do what I intimated in my earlier message that he ought to
do and that is to fly down to London this afternoon to co-ordinate (or be
seen to coordinate) the emergency services. This attack on London will be a
major embarassment to him, just as concern about British troops in Iraq was
beginning to die down and Blair thought he'd weathured the worst of it.
Blair has already appeared on TV saying that we will not be defeated by
terrorism. But the economic cost of these seven bombs will have cost
billions in lost tourist revenue and incidentals and might even put the
London location of the 2012 Olympic Games in jeopardy unless the Iraq
situation is sorted out within the next couple of years.
It is almost certainly Al Qaeda behind these attacks. Frank Gardner, the
BBC Foreign Correspondent (still paralysed after being shot in Saudi Arabia
within two hours of filming in Riyadh) and as knowledgeable about Middle
East affairs as anybody, thinks that Al Jazeera's opinion on its website is
correct.
What else can be said at this stage? If President Bush were the sort of
person who would be sensitive to other countries' and other politicians'
feelings then he ought to be mightily embarrassed for the disaster he has
now brought to this country. As it is, the 20,000+ security guards and
police already ringed around Gleneagles Hotel (except for the guard who was
knocked over by Bush's bicycle yesterday) will probably be augmented and,
who knows?, Bush might even fly home before the G8 Conference gets under
way. But, of course, the most important person in the US who was
immediately protected after 9/11 was Cheney, so he's safe in the US and
Bush's minders and PR people might decide that Bush will 'bravely' stay
where he is for the time being.
Incidentally, in one of the UK papers this morning (I've forgotten which)
it is reported that Saudi Arabia says it cannot ramp up the supply of oil
as it promised only a few weeks ago. So it certainly looks as though Iraq's
northern oilfields are now the largest reserves in the world --
potentially, that is, when they get developed. Anybody who thinks that the
invasion of Iraq was anything to do with any other motive than oil must be
very naive indeed.
Keith Hudson
Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
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