I agree with others that the headline really is a little over the top. "Oh my God! No! This was done by young Muslims who people have been very nice to?! No! We are stunned!" Nice try.
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Shortly after the bomb partially detonated on the train, Donald Trump tweeted, "These are sick and demented people who were in the sights of Scotland Yard. Must be proactive!" He soon tried to spin this source of suffering abroad into an argument for the ability of his 6-country Muslim ban as a means of preventing such an event from taking place in the United States.
1. Home Secretary Amber Rudd said of Trump’s tweet, "It is pure speculation, absolutely." She was right. The elder suspect was in no trouble with the law. The 18 year old had been causing trouble in the neighborhood for a few months and was known to local police, but even they did not regard him as a serious threat. There is no indication either of them were on Scotland Yard's radar.
2. Trump's Muslim ban would not have stopped either of the suspects from entering the United States, had that been their destination. One came from Iraq, the other from Egypt. Neither country is part of the ban.
3. Being "proactive" seems to be a code word for using guilt by association to target immigrants who attend certain houses of worship or have contacts with immigrants who are suspected of criminal activity, but have committed no crime themselves. That is the effect of the Criminal Alien Gang Member Removal Act the House just passed. It is literally guilt by association. In a situation like the boarding house where the Parsons Green suspects lived, it could lead to the deportation of innocent children living there.
2
What happened to "innocent until proven guilty"? The article gives the history of two people who have been arrested, but not yet charged. Opening this to Comments could prejudice a possible trial.
1
Let's see how long it takes the pro refugee side to blame Britain/capitalism/trump etc for this.
5
Trump has already blamed Britain for it.
Maybe a nice elderly British couple don't have the heavy therapeutic expertise to deal with two displaced young men who have experienced extreme violence and loss and cultural dislocation, and can't exactly relate to suburban life and its conventions.
It's a sad situation; I am conflicted.
Heck, we need to find out what makes these punks tick. 18 and 20-year-olds… Good thing they want any older; they might've build a better bomb that would've done some bigger damage. Now that you got them alive, someone has to rendition them, dissect them without harming them, to try to find out really what is their "motivation". It's gonna be a hard job in a lot of hours of questioning and psychoanalysis, but one needs to get to the bottom of this cause this is it going away soon and is starting to become a fad or something.
1
I do not know how many horrendous killing and maiming of innocent men women and children by the terrorists before it dawns to the liberals including the New York Times the root of the issue.
It's definitely not, "boys.. had a hard time fitting in,” "bored because there’s a lot of elderly people here and there’s not much to do, apart from drinking at the pub and gambling.”
The problem is much more deep and fundamental, rooted in Islam.
Babasaheb B R Ambedkar’s book, Thoughts on Pakistan succinctly zeros on the core of the issue while talking of Sub Continent Muslims.
"The Islamic injunction to Muslims not to take the side of non-Muslims in any strife is the basis of pan-Islamism. It is this which leads Muslims in India to say that he is Muslim first and an Indian afterwards. It is this sentiment that explains why the Indian Muslim has taken so small a part in the advancement of India but has exhausted himself by taking up the cause of Muslim countries. And why Muslim countries occupy the first place and India the second place in their minds. Savarkar’s principle of one man one vote would mean a democratic, Hindu majority state. It would not be a Muslim state and hence Islam prohibits the Muslims from living in it. Islam can never allow a true Muslim to adopt India as his motherland".
Ambedkar genius happen to be exactly spot on vis-à-vis the latest Tube Bombing attack.
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Despite the injunction you mention, Muslims have often sided with others against Muslim groupings that have competing interests.
For example, the Crusader kingdoms were sometimes allied with one Muslim kingdom against another. India sometimes supports Afghanistan against Pakistan. And there are many more examples.
That is not to say that there isn't something deeply disturbing about some aspects of fundamental Islamic thinking: slavery and negative teachings against black Africans being two of them.
I can understand how people from the western culture are baffled by some Arabs and Muslims antisocial behaviour. As an arab who was raised in Italy , conferred BSc degree in Libya and MSc in London, I think I sort of got the Constantine eyes that may be able to see the reason of such anomaly.
Since a significant number of third world countries rule by force and also engrave the notion of loyalty in its pupils mind since their early years of education, the ability to think outside the box is heavily marginalized in favour of what is meant to be...what is written. Thinking outside the box means opening Pandora's Box! ...Misuse of religion, furthermore, can be a powerful tool that can grant leverage ,in abundance, over third word societies which in turn are most of the times darkened by ignorance.
The point I am trying to make here is that in most of third word countries ,civilisation ,as the west know it, has been killed by several assassins such as fundamentalism, tribal societies and dictatorship. As a result, some individuals of such societies may resort to delinquency and to manifest their mental distress/ disorder.
To sump up, the root cause of all these misfortunes, is the lack of civilisation of some developing countries.
5
What? No mention of Colonialism?
These two despicable 'humans' had the good fortune to end up living in England, a country where millions of the destitute of this world would be so happy to live. They showed their gratitude by trying to kill people in the tube. An example should be made of them to deter others with the same murdering convictions.
7
The British police will treat these terrorists with kid gloves. They and the associates/family know there won't be any repercussions.
Keep it up and in the future it may turn into a similar situation that is happening in Burma.
1
Richard,from Manhattan:Mr.Eliot, from Boston, is absolutely correct.
after the train bombing,I was listening to a
British columnist on the BBC and her tone was basically one of "well,we're all so used
to this now, it almost seems routine..."
if that is their attitude,then it seems to me
that,indeed,that they are not interested in
keeping terrorists out.
and,by the way,Mr. Eliot is entitled to his opinion,without undue sarcasm.
7
I think Frank misses the point completely. I think Brits are interested in keeping terrorists out. However, they will not rush to judgement; the will not react hysterically; they will not persecute everyone by limiting civil liberties en mass.
@Frank, London is used to Irish terrorists supported with money from the US. What action should the U.K. have jumped to at that time?
The sick leaders of dictatorships create despair that we see today, manifesting itself in their victims' mindless frustration detonating bombs to make noise and be noticed.
As soon as governments, including the US, invest in their young people, instead of enriching those in power, we man become a saner world.
6
This is one instance where you wouldn't want to "keep up with the Joneses."
1
Inequality coupled with lack of opportunity and systematic dehumanization is fertile soil for those who cultivate young men (and it seems to be mostly young men) to carry out terrorism or other acts detrimental to society. This is how this has worked since the start of time.
With the rise of the far right, a shifting of the right (and in some cases the left) further to the right, "win at any cost" lack of compromise, and increasingly partisan and polarized politics focused on cultural issues instead of good governance (in the U.S., U.K, and around the world), we are seeing increasingly normalized dehumanization and fear of "the other." Combine this with ever-increasing economic and social inequalities, and I fear we are in for some bad times.
If we really want to stop the radicalization of young men to commit acts of terrorism. We need to give them a spot in the system that offers them opportunity while allowing them a sense of dignity and community. This is how recruiters operate. Sadly, the other size is beating us hands down on this it seems.
11
These young men didn't make and plant a bomb because they didn't socially fit in or because there wasn't a lot to do in their hometown - that describes the circumstances of a lot of young men throughout the world who don't end up becoming terrorists.
71
As investigators holding the pair in custody have said, their motives have not been established. Nor has any tie to a terrorist organization been determined.
Sometimes young people do stupid and destructive things that turn out much worse than the kids imagined. In my part of the United States, a few bored teenagers made a video of themselves setting off fireworks in a forest during a severe fire warning. So far 50,000 acres and several homes have burned, dozens of miles of the nearby interstate highway has been closed, and entire towns are shut down as a result. Many businesses may fail. People are terrified. But no charges have been filed, no motive has been revealed, and no one has suggested they wanted to do so much damage. It was just some stupid kids defying authority for reasons that will never make sense to most of us.
2
Too bad these things are so complicated. Certainly bad circumstances don't make bad behavior inevitable, but could we agree that troubled people are affected by those circumstances?
Not fitting in and being treated with disrespect hurts. It's absolutely true that we can't prevent that kind of hurt, but we could try to treat all people with respect and understanding.
When troubled people who happen to be Muslims do something like setting bombs or shooting up nightclubs, we call it terrorism. It frightens us even though the odds that we will be hurt in such an attack are miniscule.
When a troubled person leaves a Nazi rally and drives a car into a crowd or shoots up a movie theater, we have more trouble categorizing that behavior. I think it's time we recognize the similarities.
ML, exactly right. Commenters who are justifying these terrorists for any reason are part of the problem.
5
When my son was 18, he thought George 'W' Bush was a real mess. So, he got together a punk band, made a MySpace page, and posted really loud music videos containing barely discernable - even though quite loud - lyrics criticizing 'W' and the War in Iraq.
Now he works hard at his job, has a fabulous girlfriend, and in what little spare time he has, takes photographs with an analog camera.
Idle hands are the devil's workshop. Too bad nobody gave these guys a pair of drumsticks or an SLR camera.
Also, I think we're at the point where everybody could use a refresher course on real world and reality world. Obviously, some of us are no longer able to make the distinction.
11
How do you know the two suspects didn't have access to musical and photographic equipment? They were able to obtain bomb-making materials. Surrey is a very nice area of London. It doesn't sound like they suffered from any material deprivation in their country of refuge.
19
Robert,
Per the article, "“They probably got bored because there’s a lot of elderly people here and there’s not much to do, apart from drinking at the pub and gambling.”"
What I was trying to get at, albeit clumsily, was that if you've got some anger/angst and you're going to vent or lash out anyway, there are ways to do it that don't involve the potential for physical injury to people you don't even know.
It doesn't look like either of these guys were anything other than down, probably thinking life sucks, what a bleak world we live in, what's the point, etc. - not really all that unusual for some teenagers.
Everybody thinks their own suffering is worse than anybody else's. I got news for these boys, everybody's got problems. My son's father died when my son was fourteen. I think transferring his own private misery to his dislike for 'W' was killing two birds with one stone - deadening his own pain and screaming (literally) in a loud voice at someone he didn't like.
I only know what I've read from this article (and several others); it just looks to me like their's and my son's situations were not entirely dissimilar.
I think you can put together a crude pipe-type bomb pretty inexpensively and don't need to be a rocket scientist to do it. Some kids drive around smashing mail boxes; some bang on the drums and scream.
I'm not saying these guys don't need straightening out (thank goodness no one was hurt). It just sounds like this incident won't trace back to Bin Laden.
Who says these guys even set the bomb off in the name of Islam? That was just an alibi, something to hang their rage, loss, frustration and failure on. Both seem to be orphaned in their own ways and to have been possessed by that felt that male urge to make their mark, be heard. The bomb was their Scream.
10
99% of bombs worldwide are set in the name of Allah
5
What a tragedy, a double tragedy for all the UK and for ever so decent foster parents. These young men are scoundrels.
24
The truth is that in America, there are millions of older grandparents that are raising their grandchildren. Often, it is difficult at that age to be on type of the issues, and emotional state of needy, neglected, and in these cases, absent parents, and siblings. It is very sad that it seems to be making, or engaging in terrorist threats, by those abroad, or even young students in American schools who seem to want to go out in a last hurrah, of some kind or other, attention getting, somewhat suicidal, or other excuse.
4
Someone should call in a Zen master, how to deal with this adolescent, hormonally-driven anti-social behavior. Ain't going away, for sure. We need to elevate ourselves.
Familiar process to anyone with pre-teen/teen kids.
8
Sounds like failure to thrive and resorting to delinquency to fill in the time. I hope the Joneses' don't take this as a sign they should stop taking in kids. That should be their own decision not something they do in reaction to one of the kids behavior.
4
Why do we keep saying we are fighting terrorism when all we do is arrest teenagers and let the leaders of the jihadists scot free in Saudi Arabia and Quatar? We attack the symptomatic rash and do nothing about the jihadist disease that caused it. These are the great strategic minds that have us going back into Afghanistan sacrificing our servicemen and women when we have a record of complete failure over 15 years or more of valuing Afghanistan's resources more then our much more valuable service people.
27
“I mean, he’s 18. We all get into trouble at that age.” To the extent that police need to be called? That mindset is quite the enabler for all kinds of social dysfunction.
51
Read the whole quote, she's talking about a completely different event and context which is a police car calling round; "I didn't think much of it." There are a number of different reasons for a police car or visit, either friendly or otherwise, and there's no mention of charges or arrests that I can see.
She's not dismissing letting off bombs as 'we all get into trouble at that age'
4
Donald Trump.got in trouble by going into Manhattan to buy switchbladez at a tender age. Apparently it was the "last straw" for his parents who packed him off to a fake "military school". Before he ever got to that stage tho he had gotten in trouble with neighbors- I believe there is a story about him hurting a baby- he had beaten up one of his teachers also. Why switchblades? Of course you know the answer.
And we all see how he turned out.
5
I actually read the whole article. My comment was not about bombs, but about the neighbor's acceptance of repeated anti-social behavior as being normal. Both neighbors said that he built a reputation for getting in to fights, which means that the fight that the police got involved with was not an isolated incident.
Odd that people found these arrests stunning. When I first heard of the amateur bombing, I pictured the perpetrator would be a young man, between 18 and 25 or so, from the culture of a fundamentalist Islamic land, such as Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, and so on. Didn't expect orphans or refugees as much as a second-generation immigrant, but I did expect someone who felt out of place in society, who had few friends and no girlfriend, who was barely getting by.
So the suspects are slightly different than my expectations, but not by much. What would have been really stunning is if it had been a white, Christian woman in her 50's who was a professor in economics at Oxford. That would have been absolutely baffling, but as it seems the bombing was perpetrated by a couple of young men who had turned to fundamentalist Islam to find meaning in life, that's par for the course.
58
I don't think it's 'stunned' in that sense. The UK - though I can only speak for England - is a very 'local' place. Every town has a neighbourhood full of unpleasant hoodlums, every town has a neighbourhood full of posher-than-average houses etc etc, every London district judges the others, every county has a nemesis. Devon thinks they are classier than Cornwall, Cornwall hates Everyone, Dorset sneers at Somerset and feels superior to Devon, Portsmouth sneer at Southampton, Sunderland and Newcastle are virtually at tribal warfare, Islington is full of posh champagne socialists, Uxbridge is full of snooty Tories, etc etc etc. Do you know the culture wars of a Devon Cream Tea vs a Cornish Cream Tea? Of course, this is all soft stuff - there isn't violence or anything (well, maybe only against second-home owners in fishing villages inundated by rich tourists).
This place in the article is typical UK suburbia, and a southern England one - it's on the Thames, it's in Surrey etc. Why, this street is a lovely little place, with good people and no troublemakers and- wait, what? Would-be terrorists at No. 54?! But don't those nice foster parents live there? They're respectable people. Gosh, terrorists on our street, whatever next!
It's that sort of stunned.
32
This is the thanks Britain gets for letting these two in and for being taken in by a loving couple. Lock them up for the rest of their lives in the worst prison in the country to make sure they are sorry every day that they ever set foot in Britain.
60
I failed to discern what "stunned" the community.
38
The paper needed some dash and excitement in the headline. Don't be stunned.
I am still struggling to understand why you would bomb a place that gave you asylum.
Did these young men come to the UK with the intention of being terrorists? Or were they refugees who came to hate the place that took them in?
I wish someone would answer these questions.
83
I'm still struggling to understand why Timothy McVeigh could bomb a place where he was born.
6
"I am still struggling to understand why you would bomb a place that gave you asylum." - Talbot
Read the islamic quran, particularly the passages which advocate genocide of 'infidels'.
18
I wish someone would explain why the refugees are forced to flee to countries where they don't want to be and can't assimilate. Why can't our ally Saudi Arabia take them in while we provide humanitarian aid?
19
No good turn goes unpunished!
52
How anti-climactic, their biographies.
15
If Great Britain wants terrorists out, then it had better stop letting them in, and allowing them to stay because they are "citizens."
70
Doubtless Great Britain is eager to hear the antiterrorism policy insights of George Eliot from Annapolis, MD.
24
These men are syrians who entered the UK illegally.
Then used legal aid. To pay for their solicitor. (UK taxpayer picks up their legal bill). Social workers put them with a couple. And they gained permission to remain in the UK.
UK tax payer paid the couple who look after the two men.
They finished their education free in the UK.
Both then were given social security payments as they did not work.
With this they repaid the UK by trying to blow up a tube train.
What gets me is the number of guns found in the Couples garden/house where they lived. I recall 18 firearms and more explosives. Being mentioned in a Newspaper Article.
Very large explosive fireworks are available for anyone to buy in the UK. Recently I purchased a mortar fire work which from one fuse lets off 50 separate fireworks in a cascade. Just imagine if they had let one of these off in the tube train. No need to manufacture explosives.
46
@Eric
Could you please point me in the direction of your sources for the detailed statements in your post, as pretty much all of it are not corroborated in any by the national press (including the right-wing dailies who hate immigration) nor even released by the police. I would be curious where you are getting information that the police themselves have not even officially announced?
12