Anabasis is about an attack on the Persian empire, but the invading army gets no further than the Euphrates as I recall. The decisive battle and betrayal are near current Baghdad or just north of there.
In fact probably near the major US base north of Baghdad.
Someone definitely had a sense of humour about this.
Sure we're ready, Weather Channel has three teams ready to go, and CNN has Anderson Cooper on call.
I am so jealous.
We had a pitiful inch or two here, enough to be a nuisance, not enough to be enjoyable.
Damn storm moved ~ 40 miles east says weather service, or we'd have got the 4-6 inches forecast, which would at least have been respectable.
First hit on this story on Google News today, a newsblog in MA.
Googling reveals, interestingly, that pemoline is a banned performance enhancer for athletes.
It is likely to remain available then in some form somewhere.
It is stupid not to expedite tourist evacuations; first of all, it is what USians want in the reciprocal situation - so do onto others etc; secondly, the tourists have somewhere to go - get them out, and you don't have to feed them or give them medical care, they'll catch BA or Air France and begone; and, finally, they get in the way, they don't know the streets, can't follow directions, half of them can't understand the directions, and they have absolutely no fallback system, no neighbours, friends or store of 9mm ammo to go scavenge. So get them out expeditiously.
That said, the leadoff in an Icelandic paper last week, was "~ 20 Icelanders known to be in area impacted by Katrina" followed by "an Icelander escapes the storm" (he drove out a couple of days before it hit as I recall). But then locally we've been hearing mostly about the PA people who were visiting NOLA, the students here who have family there, and this weekend, the refugees who finally got here from there.
I don't think the London bombings are literally the work of a single person - but they need not have required a large group either. Most likely 2-8 people, working in pairs - I think it is just about possible for a single person or pair of people to have planted all four devices. Of course if they were suicide bombers, things are a bit different. But I'm betting a pair of bombers, for moral support.
Good to know these were small blasts, then there may not be more uncounted prompt fatalities. Makes it more likely they were small plastic explosive lumps that were dropped and the bomber scooted. I don't get the impression people in London are as alert for unattended packages as they were, in any case, leave it inside a half-eaten fast food package under a crumpled up copy of the Sun and nobody'd notice, then.
I remember the IRA campaigns well, I was in the UK for two of the more extensive ones. The IRA never went for maximum casualty bombings (except for the very first pub bombs and the last market place bomb, which was a political disaster, and from a splinter faction). The IRA went for disruptive political bombing events, to put pressure on the UK without over alienating the UK public (I won't say if they were successful). Typically they gave just-in-time warnings, and had an optimal number of hoaxes per real bomb. Psychologically very different.
For a science fictional view of high impact terrorism, there is Larry Bond's "Enemy Within" - flawed, but interesting given current events.
The number of fatalities has probably not yet converged, typically initial estimates are undercounts, then they overshoot as confirmed dead are double counted (eg ambulance reports and hospital reports are added) and then they come down a bit as records are reconciliated.
Unless the explosives were quite small, the death toll is likely to be larger; they're probably counting intact corpses right now, there are going to be some in bits - not to put it too delicately. At that time both the tube carriages and the bus would have been very crowded, and there was no warning.
There are also several hundred injured, many very badly injured.
I was looking at the times and places, I think one person could have done all the bombs - carrying few pounds of plastic explosives with short timers and just dropped them off and scooted on.
That is frightening, because the economic damage in terms of disruption to transport and business is large, as well as the human cost. So a small supply of high explosive with very limited manpower can do large disruption of life.
Imagine this happening several times per year, without warning.
JvP wrote:
"Well, call me paranoid, but when I grew up in Brooklyn Heights, I'd see Bobby Fischer walking on the Promenade. Then I moved to Pasadena, and he stalked me, also moving to Pasadena. Now, first of all, what kind of nut would follow me around like that?"
You want to be sponsored for an Icelandic passport?
Just to turn the tables?
It is not just a single-fortress like embassy; as with bureaucracies everywhere, a threat somewhere translates to action everywhere. So now there are street closures and permanent police presence outside the US embassy in Reykjavik, Iceland as well. It is in the heart of a residential district in downtown, just down the street from the British embassy.
Car bombs are not really a threat there, nor is it plausible that they would become so if it were left as an unguarded "soft-spot". But the precautions taken are still there, still intrusive, and provide low grade abrasion for many of the locals.
On the other hand, for all the petty unpleasantness the INS can inflict, they are in general professional and courteous, and if anything too ready to accept explanations and excuses. They should ask, and they should be more ready to follow their instincts. The immigration officials of other nations tend to be harsher and more suspicious of travelers than the US INS.
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