According to today’s Haaretz, Israel has abandoned the idea of an international force in Lebanon designed to disarm Hezbollah. What they are now talking about is a 1 km wide “demilitarized zone” along the Israeli border where Hezbollah can’t deploy, enforced by Israeli artillery over the border in Israel.
Since Hezbollah’s rockets go a lot [...]

There has been some cricket chirping on AFOE the past few days, so allow me to make a little bit of noise here and chase them away.
Amnesty International has a new report out, called Russian Federation - Violent racism out of control. I shall quote part of the report below the fold and ask some [...]

In a website posting yesterday the Abu Hafs al Masri Brigade have one more time claimed responsibility for terrorist attacks, in this case yesterdays bombs in London. It should be remembered that this group also claimed the Madrid bombings and the July 7 bombs. Just how much credibility should be accorded to [...]

The Times has a pretty reasoned assessment of the state of play. We are still with the same two theories, the copycats, and the same group. I don’t like the copycat one since it seems to overlook some basic details. These attacks are not so easy to carry out logistically. Normally there is a high [...]

There is considerable speculation taking place at the moment about the nature of the connections (if any) between the British born bombers and militant jihadists in Pakistan. One of the names which keeps appearing is that of the group Jaish-e-Mohammad. Now this name should remind us that this is not the first time [...]

Well a consensus seems to have been reached that some at least of the bombers were ’suicides’ (the probability seems to be that they all were). So what do we know about suicide bombing? Well reading around I came across this document from the Rand Corporation which contains a chapter from terrorism specialist Bruce Hoffman [...]

A quote from a Johann Hari post, via Digby:
But another fight began yesterday: to defend our civil liberties ? and especially those of the decent, democratic Muslim majority ? in an age of terror. I headed for the East London Mosque ? a few minutes? walk away from the bomb in Aldgate ? to watch [...]

I am working on another post. I continue to think that Eta forms part of the picture in Madrid. I may be wrong. In any event this article summarises another part of the picture which I am sure as Europeans affects us all.

Read [...]

Update: Friday morning 8:30 CET. The uncertainty about the authors of this crime continues. I think having been fairly forthright at the start, prudence on my part is now what is called for while the investigation continues. Meanwhile I think it is important we don’t lose sight of the magnitude of what has happened: 198 [...]

David is right. Islamist terrorism has now finally reached Europe for real.
Not just because the tragic terrorist attacks against the Neve-Shalom and Beth-Israel Synagogues took place in the undisputedly European part of Istanbul. Not just because the fear of a rising tide of al-Qaida triggered fundamentalist terrorism could once again lead to a round [...]