London >> terrorist attack

[scouser 4]

I have a friend in a tourism office over in London - I'll be speaking more soon but he said there were a fair few cancellations to London in the next few weeks - peak of course for UK.

 

How long are were you planning on being in your favourite London anyway Potato?

[Siren 0]

 Quote:

(And a different kind of tragic that whatever the police do, they are going to get criticised).

Someone should probably gently remind them that perhaps it is not entirely necessary to shoot someone 7 times in the head to make sure he is disable.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/story/0,16132,1536022,00.html

[Fattwins 0]

so to do a diffcult job we now must let the police have a free hand to do what it must?

[damian 0]

 Quote:

Originally posted by scouser:
How long are were you planning on being in your favourite London anyway Potato?

1-2 more years.

[Siren 0]

Now what do you make of this?

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/story/0,16132,1550565,00.html

[soubriquet 0]

It makes it very important to watch critically, and remain open minded until as full a story as we are allowed is known.

[Ocean11 0]

I make of it that the fact that it was leaked means that there are still some people involved who give a shit, and who have not been corrupted by their proximity to arbitrary responsibility for other people's life and death. I also rather wonder why the media hasn't found more witnesses to ask about this already, without waiting for leaks.

 

As far as remaining open minded is concerned, there's already enough information available to impeach a whole swathe of people for a whole swathe of crimes, as well as lesser punishments for disastrous cock-ups.

 

The important thing is is not to wait for the whole story to come out, but to make up our minds that what we already know so far demands punishment of those involved, starting at the top.

 

I know it's unfashionable to say it, but the British police have always behaved far more heroically when they're not allowed to have guns.

[soubriquet 0]

I agree, but you are one step ahead of me. The leak serves someone's agenda: I'd like to know whose?

[Ocean11 0]

The Guardian story and other information suggests a possible hint. Apparently the murder victim was already being restrained by a brave officer when he was shot. Also, after the fatal shooting of an innocent, an actual perpetrator was subdued using a Taser.

 

This is only a guess, but perhaps the agenda of the leaker(s) is that police should not be allowed just to shoot people and then lie about it afterwards. Another guess would be that the leaker(s) are not happy with the way anything from intelligence and public warnings, to foreign policy etc. have been handled, although that's obviously more of a stretch.

 

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The home secretary, Charles Clarke, said: "It is critically important for the integrity of the independent police investigating process that no pressure is put upon the IPCC before their full report is published and that no comment is made until that time."

 

-----

 

Yes, he would say that wouldn't he. Trying to stifle comment with that plaintive New Labour exaggeration just makes him look all the more guilty.

[soubriquet 0]

If the agenda is exposing official lies, then so be it. The goons will be punished, but I doubt the perpetrators will be brought to account.

[damian 0]

A redundant statement perhaps and not the kind of thing I would normally say, but I find this event very sad. He does not deserve to be dead, and in my mind it is different to a death caused by an accidental car crash.

 

This graphic outlines the truth vs fiction quite nicely. It scares me.

 

http://www.smh.com.au/media/2005/08/17/1123958127528.html

[Ocean11 0]

Not only has the man been murdered, but his good name has also been dragged knowingly through the dirt - "He was here illegally", "He jumped the turnstile", "He didn't stop for the police because Brazilians don't" etc.

 

I wonder if somebody will go to Brazil again and apologize to his family for that too...

[Dims 0]

This story makes me so incredibly angry. What a monumental cock-up. The officiers involved should be tried for manslaughter at the very least. And officals expressed regret not at the act itself, but the fact that the truth was leaked to the media.

 

Scumbags!!!!!

 

Can you imagine if this was your brother/son/best friend. It just shows how much unreasonable fear of terroist attacks undermines our soceity as a whole. I also think sensationalist journalism and fearmongering has so much to answer for.

 

Did anyone realise that there was a series of bomb attacks on buses in Iraq yesterday (and most days) that killed and maimed more people than the London attacks? Hardly front page news was it.

[Siren 0]

The cock-up was tragic but it is nowhere as bad as the cover-up.

 

Sex up the WMD claim, rescuing their soldier from the Iraqis (with camera crew)...the pack of lies just goes on and on.

 

Imagine shooting someone innocent seven times in the head. Are we that different from the 'terrorists'?

[sava 0]

read about this today and I think it's disgusting

 

I feel very very sorry for his family

[Ocean11 0]

Norman Tebbit is still bringing his characteristic wisdom to bear.

 

If they don't pass the cricket test, put that on their ID card, and shoot them 7 times in the head.

[Siren 0]

Interesting comments! He should go and live in a small island by himself.

 

This was in yesterday's Guardian

 

Fight or flight

 

Panic along government-suggested lines is impossible

 

AL Kennedy

Thursday August 18, 2005

The Guardian

Always wanted to live in a country people flee for fear of religious persecution? Then congratulations, we finally made it. Great news for me, of course - writers get hit just after the minorities, so I can look forward to massively increased sales, especially if they're posthumous, and a whole bunch of cheery postcards from Amnesty International. Yes, it's here, the beginning of the end. Panic now while there's still time. Obviously, you wouldn't want to run in the street for fear of getting seven in the head but barely-suppressed fight or flight should suffuse your limbs as often as possible.

Having an IQ above six, you'll find panicking along government-suggested lines impossible, but even the media spin is cause for helpless concern. How can we be safe, for example, when our police plainly don't possess a mass spectrometer? Which would be a vaguely plausible excuse for the same explosives being described as home-made and military and professional - and never mind that whole "possible explosive" problem. Who exactly is in charge here - Them or Us?

Them or Us being a problem in itself. As our press quotes special services sources redefining UK terrorism as "insurgency", please consider that all those ingenious boys with no more black ops to run in Northern Ireland may want to play over here. And they're being trained by the Israelis - so it's entirely logical our mainland war on terror's first victim was an innocent Catholic who looked Muslim.

Now Tony Blair has declared his global change of rules, he's taking his tips from US Republicans who specialise in vote-rigging. The same people who bypassed the Senate to inflict John Bolton on the world, have spent more than $722,000 on high-class lawyers for James Tobin, the president's 2004 campaign chairman for New England, and currently charged with jamming Democrat phone banks in November 2002. Meanwhile, irregularities have surfaced in the recent Ohio vote that defeated disgruntled Iraq veteran and Democrat congressional hopeful Paul Hackett.

Or why not panic about Iran. The US national security council says Iran's a decade away from making The Bomb, but Dick Cheney et al are really keen to bomb it, anyway. Dick has STRATCOM putting the plans in place for a response to any act of terror on US soil - the response being to bomb Iran. And given that some of the Iranian targets are hardened and/or underground, nukes are being considered.

So our greatest ally is war-gaming the entirely unprovoked use of nuclear weapons - think Nagasaki/ Hiroshima anniversary, think toasted babies and lots of outrage and revenge. That's got to get you scared - especially when you remember the vice-president's old company, Halliburton, happily did oil business in Iran with Cyrus Nasseri of Oriental Oil Kish - and also of the Iranian nuclear development team.

Scariest of all? The thought that in Crawford, Texas, Cindy Sheehan is waiting to speak to President Bush. She wants to know why her son died in Iraq. Every day, more and more citizens are arriving to wait with her, to exercise their democratic rights. People are starting to talk about a focus of resistance.

Forget the token prosecutions circling Rove, Rumsfeld, Hastert, Abramov and the rest, when ordinary citizens begin resisting en masse with any success we all become the enemy. And we know we show our enemies no mercy.

[soubriquet 0]

The Torygraph reports:

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jht.../ixnewstop.html

 

There was no cover-up, says Met chief

By Philip Johnston, Home Affairs Editor

(Filed: 19/08/2005)

 

Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, last night denied that Scotland Yard tried to cover up the botched operation that led to the shooting of an innocent man on the London Underground last month.

 

As controversy raged over claims that he resisted attempts to set up an independent investigation into the death of Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian electrician shot seven times in the head by armed anti-terror officers, Sir Ian said the allegations "strike to the heart of the integrity" of his force. He added: "I fundamentally reject them. There is no cover-up. I am not going to resign. I have a job to do."

 

However, lawyers representing Mr de Menezes's family said there was a "fatal delay" in starting the official investigation and the Independent Police Complaints Commission said the Met had "initially resisted" handing over the inquiry. One member of the agency said the resulting delay was "shocking".

 

Sir Ian rejected any suggestion that there was a deliberate attempt to stop the truth coming out. Before it was known that Mr de Menezes was the victim, he wrote to Sir John Gieve, permanent secretary at the Home Office, asking for a review of its statutory duty to hand over the inquiry to the IPCC for fear that it might jeopardise the counter-terrorist operation.

 

Scotland Yard said that when the request was made on the day of the shooting, Sir Ian and other senior officers were still under the impression that a man linked to the London bomb attempts on July 21 had been killed.

 

Sir Ian Blair: 'I am not going to resign'

 

''I and everyone who advised me believed that the man we had shot was a suicide bomber and therefore one of the four people we were looking for, or someone else. It seemed utterly vital that the counter-terrorism investigation took precedence, the forensics, the ballistics,'' Sir Ian said. "I'm not defending myself against making a mistake or being wrong, but I am defending myself against an allegation that I did not act in good faith and I reject utterly the concept of a cover-up. If you were going to define how to do a cover-up you would not write a letter to the permanent secretary of the Home Office, copying it to the chairman of the Metropolitan Police Authority and the chairman of the IPCC.''

 

After conversations with the Home Office, it was agreed that the investigation would be handed over to the IPCC on the following Monday but the commission did not start its work until July 27.

 

Yesterday the IPCC said: "The Metropolitan Police Service initially resisted us taking on the investigation but we overcame that. It was an important victory for our independence. This dispute has caused delay in us taking over the investigation but we have worked hard to recover the lost ground.''

 

London bombings

 

Tony Murphy, an independent member of the IPCC advisory group, said: ''In any investigation into a death, any evidence collected during the golden hours is crucial . . . The idea of the police not contacting the watchdog in such controversial circumstances is shocking.''

 

Gareth Peirce, one of the lawyers for the family, called for a public inquiry to sort out the "chaotic mess". She said: "A public inquiry is the only kind of inquiry that can deal effectively with the big policy issues brought up in this case."

 

Ken Livingstone, London's mayor, leapt to Sir Ian's defence and praised him for leading the Met through its "most difficult challenge" after the capital's worst terrorist atrocity. "The police have done a brilliant job in tracking down those responsible for the bombings and in reassuring Londoners going about their daily lives," Mr Livingstone said.

 

pjohnston@telegraph.co.uk

[window-cleaner 0]

Hows the UK media playing all this?

[Ocean11 0]

I just saw the NHK news about a demo in London against the police and the erosion of civil liberties. People were marching past a copper armed with an H&K automatic. I believe he was 'protecting' them, as if somebody was going to blow them up at a peaceful demonstration, and as if he could shoot somebody (on full auto) to prevent that happening.

 

I think I would have found it very hard to march past him without causing a serious incident. Britain isn't supposed to be a place where Nazi guards stand around threatening people with loaded guns. That was what WWII was all about wasn't it?

[2pints-mate 0]

windowcleaner ------- as you might expect.

[Siren 0]

This, if true, is getting interesting.

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/story/0,16132,1556856,00.html

 

The guy was (down on the floor) shot ten/eleven times over 30 seconds?!

[merryJim 1]

And the tapes accidentally went missing the night before.....