Madrid Bombings.
Last night around midnight, I was online on #mobitopia and someone said that another bomb went off in Madrid. That turned out to be an understatement as it turned out that ETA set off three bombs in light-rail trains in the south section of the city, killing over 180 people and injuring over a thousand others. Wow.
Around 3 a.m. we called and my wife's sisters were okay - but the city was pretty much insane. Imagine being at work and not knowing if the people who haven't shown up yet are just delayed because of the chaos, or whether they were killed or wounded. That really sucks. The main attack took place in the Atocha Station which we use regularly to go visit Ana's parents in the South - the picture above was taken just last August and Ana and Alex passed through the station just a month ago. They've just implemented airport-like security for the "AVE" bullet train section of the station which is great, even a small explosion on a bullet train would be disasterous. Well, obviously ETA has figured out how to cause disasters even on the normal trains.
With less than a week until Spain's national elections, this is obviously some sort fuck-you to outgoing president Aznar and a result of the accord in Catalonia, which means ETA can now concentrate their attacks on Madrid. Since it's not like Spain is just going to chop out a huge section of their country and give it to pony-tailed fuckwit terrorists, it's just a big fucking waste of life and really sad.
-Russ
Later: Looks like it might be Al Qaeda instead, which sort of makes sense. ETA usually calls ahead of time. A huge attack that is timed? We've seen that before in the embassy bombings and 9/11 - it makes perfect sense. After some thought, I remembered that I wrote about exactly this back in March of last year when Bush, Blair and Aznar had their press conference in the Azores before the war with Iraq, I asked:
... With Jose Maria shooting his mouth off like he's the man in front of the whole world last night, Spain is now a target, if it wasn't already. The world probably didn't see the huge demonstration in Madrid on Saturday against the war, and even if they did they don't care because that's not nearly as visible as the country's leader standing up there with two nuclear powers and pretending he's on some sort of righteous crusade.
Almost exactly a year later, this happens. It's pretty obvious now I think.
-Russ