bomb alerts and stuff

"Both London's mayor, Ken Livingstone, who thought a shoot-to-kill policy could have been necessary, and the local MP, Kate Hoey, defended the police shooting. She rightly warned against a rush to judgment when the police were dealing with suspect suicide bombers."

Some ambiguity there. Was she warning the police against a "rush to judgement" or people commenting on the actions of the police? One difference is that the police have their fingers on triggers, whereas people commenting are shooting mouths, not guns.

After hearing this news I feel more sick than I did on 7/7. Much more.

Because when you have a fucking hammer, all you see is fucking nails. Obviously this is a complete tragedy, but if anything ought to bring a debate on whether the police should be able to shoot to kill to the front of the national consciousness, this is it.

http://images.thesun.co.uk/picture/0,,2005331384,00.jpg

'Man Shot for Maliciously being a bit Asian looking in a public place'

A man killed by police in south London was unconnected to Thursday's attacks and is thought to be Brazilian.

'Man Shot for Maliciously being tanned in a public place'

http://www.express.co.uk/pixfeed/express.gif

Funny you should say that.

My uncle who is a retired immigration officer(passport control etc) who said immediately that the guy was a somali when his pic was shown on the news.

I don't think it's a race thing. The guy was no darker skinned than you or I, Ed. The police had been following him since he left a house they had under surveillance.

The Metropolitan police named him as Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, an electrician from Minas Gerais who was living in Scotia Road, Stockwell, with three cousins. He is an innocent victim of a new "shoot to kill" policy under which officers have been told to shoot at the head if they believe they are confronting a suicide bomber.

Because the "ideology of terror" isn't just about caliphate fever dreams and young true believers. All political, religious and military movements feed off of young true believers, they're a dime a dozen. The question is always, what set of circumstances and resources have arisen in a given situation to convert the potential true believers into a kinetic menace? And that's the question we keep floundering at, partly because every time you try to get at it some flag-waving jackass jumps in front of you and starts gibbering about how "They want to kill us!" The bombing in Egypt kind of puts the whole thing in stark relief -- the Islamic Brotherhood and its sympathizers are in a mutually beneficial antagonistic relationship with the authoritarian govt., the threat of each serving to fuel the excesses of the other. Which is how it always goes in these situations, but the "Arab world" is rats-overrun with it, this decades-old fight between Islamists and authoritarian secular nationalists, and our best hope is to start to try to pull apart that mutual chokehold to give those societies a little room to breathe. The Bush administration has started to get its rhetoric in order along those lines, but its actions are lagging way behind and often directly contradicting its words.

I remember 20 years ago or so hearing about how "The Muppet Show" was banned in Saudi Arabia because Miss Piggy was too risque. The Western media had a good little time giggling at that, those silly Arabs. We maybe should have been paying more attention.

-- Forest Pines (forestpine...), July 23rd, 2005 4:38 PM. (ForestPines) (late)

there are so many reasons though, maybe he had drugs on him? or didn't have a ticket? or whatever, he could have had some minor guilt inside him and started running, without thinking he'd get fucking shot to death being a likely result.

the fact that the police are acting in panic mode scares me more than the bombs. if they're not careful they'd end up raging the terror on behalf of the actual terrorists. (e.g. you could argue they've already raised the death toll by one without any bombers/whatever doing anything)

so, erm, is the "demand" still "growing"?

The police were in plain clothes so he may have thought he was running from gun toting thugs.

'...'

really, what should the tv company have done here? make miss piggy cover up?

haha momus, yes, british people are psychos!!

(i know it's tempting to interpret EVERYTHING he says in the light of the above, NRQ, given the history of his provocations here and elsewhere, but to be fair his private eye-isms above only have the implication you find in them if the mometown rat himself also believes that the express speaks for all britons, which i bet he doesn't)

( i barely remember three days ago: it is a symptom of life on-line i think)

(i don't think momus would dissent from that analysis. yesterday's espress said, there is a 'general demand' for bombers to be shot, and momus was extrapolating from that, is my reading -- of course, i'm in a total state of balmy non-paranoia this weekend so everything i write is intrinsically rational)