Well French Central Bank Governor Christian Noyer is back in the news again. Today the FT have an interview with him, and some of his points make interesting reading.
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Author Archives: Edward Hugh
More Theories Update
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
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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Quiet Revolutions
This Financial Times article about the enormous quantity of photos received by news media associated with the London bombing. The BBC alone received “more than 1,000 still pictures of the unfolding events and 300 different bits of amateur video”. Helen Broaden – BBC director of news – is quoted as saying that “the gap between the professional and non-professional news gatherers is getting narrower”.
Another piece of evidence for this would be the growing interest in Blog postings, the London Times has a roundup. (Link from Tim Worstall).
The Netherlands: Not “Just Another Day”
Today is the tenth anniversary of the massacre in Srebrenica. Nearly 8,000 people died. We will not forget.
It is also, by one of those rare coincidences, the day on which the trial of Mohammed Bouyeri – a Moroccan Dutch national who is accused of the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh – opens.
This must be a hard day in the Netherlands.
And It’s A Yes!
Just in case everyone had forgotten, Luxembourg voted today in a referendum on the EU constitution. They voted yes, by 56.52% to 43.48% to be exact. Not that it changes much since Luxembourg has a population of just 465,000. Junker will soldier on as Prime Minister, and now someone else has to think up a good excuse for terminating the process, but that is about all you can say.
Suspects
Speculation has begun about who exactly is behind the July 7th bombings. The Sunday Times names Mustafa Setmariam Nasar. The grounds for this is information allegedly received from Spanish authorities.
Nasar, who is Syrian,is thought to have been behind the March 11 bombings in Spain and is considered by Spanish intelligence to have established a ‘sleeper cell’ in the UK. Spanish police did arrive in London on Friday to assist in the enquiries, but there can be a variety of reasons for this.
The Sunday Telegraph also run the story:
“Ministers now believe that the bombings – which left at least 49 people dead in Britain’s worst terrorist attack – were the work of a “very, very small number” of individuals who arrived from mainland Europe or North Africa on false passports within the past six months.”
The Mail on Sunday and the News of the World run what may seem to be the rival theory of native born British involvement as detailed by a former Metropolitan Police Chief John Stevens. In fact the two ‘theories’ may simply form different parts of one single picture: Mustafa Nasar may be the brain, and the UK born participants (if they in fact are such) may well be those who placed the bombs. At this stage no combination is obviously ruled out.
Attentive readers of the link in this post yesterday will have noted that Mustafa Setmariam Nasar also goes under the name of Abu Musa?ab al-Suri, and under this name he apparently recently revealed that he is working on a manifesto for designing the future of jihad. According to the Jamestown Foundation in his vision of the future he calls for “a new holy war that employs nuclear, chemical and ?bacteriological? (biological) weapons, and dirty bombs”.
Economic Implications of 7 July
There is a consensus view emerging that the economic impact of last Thursday’s terrorist attack will be minimal. I beg to disagree: it *may* not be. The reasoning behind this is economic not WoT/political. The apparent stylised fact we are being offered is that “a look at previous terrorist attacks… suggests that any impact on the economy tends to be small and short-lived”. We are dealing with a class of incidents basically containing two prior members: New York, and Madrid. Now circumstances alter cases. No one will deny that these attacks constitute a *potential* shock to the economic system. The stock market impact is not the important one (this may well be described as ‘bounce’), the really important issue is consumer confidence. Now the US was in September 2001 bottoming out of a recession (the NBER officially declared the recession over in November 2001). Spain was in the middle of an ongoing housing driven boom of some magnitude, and this had sufficient momentum not to be driven off course. But the UK is on the edge of a possible precipice, one good shove can push it over, the risks here are much higher.
The starting point for a consideration of the issues raised would be Paul Krugman’s 2001 article: The Fear Economy. Let me be clear, I am not saying that anything is, or is not going to happen. I am saying that the risks of an economic consequence this time are greater. A lot depends on how quickly the culprits are caught, and how convincingly the ‘forces of order’ can persuade people that the situation is under control.
Growth Elephants and Hot Currencies
Those who want a break from all the introspection over terrorism could do worse than let their minds run free on the implications of what is happening in China and India, or puzzle about holiday destinations now that the euro is going down while some other destinations are evidently seeing the value of their money rise.
Facts
I am emphasising and emphasising, and emphasising over again: following what has been happening in Spain is important to understand *one* of the evolution pathways of radical Islam in Europe. Unfortunately most of the relevant material is in Spanish. Googling I found this. I cannot vouch for the source, but the information contained in the article conforms with my general understanding. One or two extra points:
I had missed the fact Castells appeared before the 11M commission. I think it important that network theorists are involved in strategic thinking. I think the idea that there are simply a fixed quantity of terrorists to be eliminated is absurd, and those who argue this kind of view probably commit themselves to something like the ‘lump of labour‘ fallacy.
Secondly illegal immigration is a really important issue. This phenomenon probably explains this sentence in the link: “The apparent ease with which foreign jihadists motivated Spanish Muslims to radicalize their religious beliefs and recruit them for suicide operations in Iraq illustrates a demographic and ideological shift among Spanish Muslims”.
Following this up, illegal immigration is the perfect cover for such activities as those who are in this situation have almost minimal contact with the value system of the ‘host’ society, and may experience many of its less desireable features. The Italian authorities seem to be taking this possibility seriously.