Monthly Archives: July 2005

Developments

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UK police said this morning they searched five homes in northern England. They described the search as forming a “significant” part of the investigation into last week’s London bombings. I think it’s useless speculating at this stage what this might mean. I also think it is important that the police are seen to be pro-active in the investigation, public confidence in the security services is an important part of the present picture. I will update this post during the day as the need arises.

Update 11:50 CET

Incidentally, a piece of terminology: saying ‘no arrests have been made” doesn’t have any deep significance in British parlance, since people may be ‘helping the police with their enquiries’ prior to being arrested and formally charged (or not). (This is presumeably even more complicated under the various terrorism acts which I am not especially familiar with). The issue is sufficiently serious to have evacuated part of the area. The raids were in Leeds.

Update 15:15 CET

Police have just announced that they carried out a controlled explosion to gain entry to a home in the Burley area of Leeds, justy a few miles away from Beeston where the original raid took place.

Update 16:00 CET

It has now been revealed that troops from the bomb disposal unit were involved in controlled explosion. The context is one of an Asian district of Leeds. This has implications but we shouldn’t yet jump to conclusions. The Times has fuller details:

“More than 500 people were evacuated from surrounding homes, businesses and the local mosque prior to the detonation at just after 1.30pm.

Armed police immediately surrounded the flat in Hyde Park Road, Burley .

The explosion came six hours after five other homes in Colwyn Road, Tempest Road and Shalford Street in the mainly Asian suburb of Beeston, three miles south-east of Burley, were sealed off following a series of dawn raids.

Neighbours of one of the addresses reported that a 22-year-old man who lived there with his family had been missing since Thursday.”

OK, let me make one reasonable conjecture based on the info we have so far. The raid in Leeds is based on forensics of the remains found on around the bus. This could have been one of the people who planted the bombs. If this is the case – and the Times certainly also leads us in the direction – one part of the story may be about to become clearer.

Update 17:15 CET

My conjceture has now been confirmed. Sky are now reporting that a decapitated head found near the scene of the bus bomb had been that of the bomber. Forensic tests then led police to carry out raids in Leeds, and to a car at Luton railway station north of London. This also seems to add strength to the Kings Cross meetup hypothesis (see below in comments). Sky are also claiming that there have been arrests.

Things You Can Do When You’re 20 Points Up in the Polls

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1. Have the main headline about your electoral program be how much you’re going to raise taxes. Particularly VAT, which practically everybody pays on practically everything.

2. Face a knock-down drag-out fight with your prospective coalition partner over #1.

3. Have the two parties that make up your Union disagree about the basic approach to health care reform.

4. Present security plans that your prospective coalition partner says had been previously rejected for good reasons.

And that’s just the first 24 hours after the presentation of your campaign program.

The CDU/CSU still leads the SPD by 20 points in the polls, and I, along with every other commentator, have to think that Schr?der is toast. You just don’t make up 20 points of ground in eight weeks. But if the CDU/CSU want to make it an interesting race, they’re off to a great start…

UPDATE: 5. Eliminate grants to support university students. (The article is an interview with the SPD minister, so grains of salt advised.)

Bomb In Barcelona

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This is really a clarificatory post. The bomb which exploded outside the Italian cultural institute in Barcelona this morning does *not* appear to have any relation with international terrorism. Radio reports suggest it is the work of a group of ‘anti-system’ anarchists protesting about arrests of some of their co-thinkers in Italy. Fortunately I don’t think even the police dog was badly hurt.

Eurozone Growth Forecasts Down

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There is a curious combination of expectations right now. The euro is rising, principally because of preoccupations about the US trade deficit and the associated sustainability issues, but also because there seem to be signs of a slightly better collective performance later in the year. This assessment may well be accurate. So what this means is that growth may still be slowing, but it may be about to pick up. Hence downward revisions for this year are quite compatible with mild optimism in the near term. Of course this situation will not be the same everywhere, and there are still no encouraging signs from Italy.

Economic growth in the euro region will fall short of official forecasts in 2005 as oil hovers near a record, consumer confidence stagnates and Italy struggles with recession, European finance ministers said.

Finance ministers are counting on growth in the 12-nation economy of only 1.3 percent, less than the 1.6 percent predicted by the European Commission in April, Luxembourg Prime and Finance Minister Jean-Claude Juncker said.

The Euro Also Rises

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The euro is trading this morning at around $1.2150. The big issue seems to be the US trade deficit, which is currently outweighing all other considerations. Still what goes down can come up, and what goes up……

The dollar fell to the lowest in two weeks against the euro, the biggest move of any currency, on expectations a government report tomorrow will show the U.S. trade deficit was near a record.

The U.S. currency has retreated 2.3 percent against its European counterpart since reaching a 14-month high on July 5. A rising deficit means more dollars are leaving the country to pay for imports. The dollar also weakened against the yen after Japan’s Nikkei 225 Stock Average rose to a three-month high.

“The dollar all of a sudden looks shaky; the deficit will be significant,” said Callum Henderson, head of global currency strategy in Singapore at Standard Chartered Plc. At the same time, “stock inflows are undoubtedly helping the yen. It makes sense for the dollar to weaken.”

More Theories Update

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Now this information needs to be treated with extreme caution, since the source in my experience is not of the best, but the Spanish newspaper El Mundo is claiming that the Spanish national intelligence centre (CNI) identified a website posting on 29th May from the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades which may be seen with the benefit of hindsight as giving clearance for the London attack. If confirmed, this report complicates things slightly since it is not the same group as the “The Secret Organization of al-Qaida in Europe”. The website posting contained the key phrase “We now call on the mujahedeen around the world to launch the expected attack”.

An English version of this story can be found here. I think we should await more confirmation before drawing too many conclusions. Just in case: you can find some background on Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades here.

More Theories

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Very hard to interpret the information we are receiving right now. Much of it may well be aimed at the terrorists themselves so it is also perhaps better not to dig too deeply.

There are, however, a number of rival (but possibly) compatible theories. One of these, and it is the one I am following most closely (possibly for obvious reasons) is that of the Spanish connection. Now following this along the road a little (and just in a kind of ‘what if’ sense) it may not be entirely without relevance that raids were carried out in Italy on Saturday. (The FT today also also has a piece on the Italian raids. What stands out is the ‘cover’ provided by mass illegal immigration for such groups. I am in favour of increasing economic migration to meet demographic needs, but this process needs to be regulated and orderly, here we can see one more reason why). It is just me speculating, but the rapidity of the raids in Italy may relate more to the fact that there are ties between the Spain-based Jihadists and the Italian-based ones than to the immediate threat of an attack in Italy. This article contains the following information sourced from the Italian newspaper Corriere della Serra:

“In 2003, the Italian Police and the carabinieri from the Special Operations Unit uncovered a link between the alleged Italian cell and its extremist associates in a number of European countries, primarily Germany, Spain, and the Netherlands. The Milan probe revealed that “young North Africans were ?trawled for’ in the European mosques, given money, and supplied with a visa?” to travel to Iraq to conduct suicide operations.”

This connection is loose, but is one possible route. Those who feel there might be an Iraq connection (and the lack of any explicit information about the explosives might point to this: this origin would be politically sensitive) would do well to note that the Italian net appears to have close links with Ansar Al-Islam which is based in the Kurdish zone, and was once host to none other than Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi. As I say, I wouldn’t even call this a conjecture, just some isolated pieces of information which are worth keeping track on, irrespective of whether or not the people mentioned were implicated last Thursday.

Finally, the NYT highlights the way in which the kind of terror we are seeing is in fact bringing Europe closer together:
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