bomb alerts and stuff

PROTEST AGAINST THE SHOOT TO KILL POLICY
LOBBY ON DOWNING STREET SW1A 2AA
5.30PM, THURSDAY 28TH JULY
On Friday 22nd July, Jean Charles de Menezes was walking from his home to Stockwell tube. Police in plain clothes followed him and just before he entered the underground station they shouted at him. Scared, he ran into the station with the police following him. They caught him, held him down and shot him in the head seven times. He had nothing to do with the London bombing campaign. He was unlucky enough to be wearing the wrong clothes and his skin was the wrong colour. Subsequently it has been revealed that the police have been operating a secret shoot-to-kill policy. Armed officers have been undergoing training with the Israeli defence forces.

This is the result.

The police now regret this 'tragic mistake'. The real tragic mistake has been the illegal, immoral and barbaric invasion of Iraq and the killing of tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians. Londoners are now really paying the price of this war, both in the suicide bombings and in this public killing. We send our heartfelt condolences to Jean Charles de Menezes's family.

Following his death a peace and solidarity vigil, organised by the Stop the War Coalition, was held at Stockwell tube station. Speaking at the vigil John Rees from the Stop the War Coalition said, "However horrific the bombings in London on 7th July and however important it is to secure the safety of the public, there can be no excuse for the police adopting a shoot to kill policy which guns down innocent people in cold blood. This is precisely the crime for which we hold the terrorists responsible. The police in a democratic society have a duty to act with higher standards. They should be trying to diminish the climate of fear, not add to it."

A lobby on Downing Street has now been called to protest against the police shoot-to-kill policy and to call for all foreign troops to be withdrawn from Iraq. All opinion polls show that, despite Tony Blair's insistence to the contrary, two thirds of the British people think there is a link between the London bombings and the war in Iraq. The message to Tony Blair on Thursday will be "Stop the war to stop the terror". Please join the lobby if you can and spread the information as widely as possible.

PROTEST AGAINST THE SHOOT TO KILL POLICY
LOBBY ON DOWNING STREET SW1A 2AA
5.30PM, THURSDAY 28TH JULY.
SEND A MESSAGE TO TONY BLAIR:
STOP THE WAR TO STOP THE TERROR
BRING THE TROOPS HOME.
PLEASE BRING COLLEAGUES, FRIENDS, FAMILY AND DISTRIBUTE THIS EMAIL WIDELY
http://www.stopwar.org.uk/

"there can be no excuse for the police adopting a shoot to kill policy which guns down innocent people in cold blood. This is precisely the crime for which we hold the terrorists responsible. The police in a democratic society have a duty to act with higher standards"

Obviously the police didn't think he was innocent. You cannot equate the tragic, accidental killing of one man with the senseless, calculated murder and maiming of dozens of people. The day the police start blowing up trains and buses indiscriminately is the day you can say that sentence with justification.

The message to Tony Blair on Thursday will be "Stop the war to stop the terror".

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the Iraq war (and I'll acknowledge it's an absolute mess), it's ludicrously blinkered to suggest the recent bombings are caused solely by the situation in Iraq, and that withdrawing would stop the attacks. Also, as I'm sure somebody else here has already said, if you let the terrorists dictate government policy then when that racist lunatic was blowing up Brick Lane, Brixton, and the Admiral Duncan in Soho surely you would argue the government should have agreed to imprison all homosexuals and repatriate all immigrants to stop the attacks.

im not saying im against the policy. im not saying im for it either. but to deny that we are changing things ourselves as a reactive is disingeneous, which is of course tblairs speciality

similarly, there seems to be a reluctance to admit that iraq is neither the sole cause, or a cause at all. blair posits it as unrelated, and protestors posit it as an open and shut root cause. i guess people like things in black and white

would you say this about what happened in Spain too? i know a lot of people do, i just have trouble convincing myself that there really is more to the motivation than what's happened with Iraq. you can't blame people for calling it as they see it, and arguments that 'it would've happened anyway' are no more 'provable'. I suspect a stronger case can be made for the 'why it was inevitable regardless of Iraq' argument though.

I can't say the likes of M3lan1e Phi11ips have convinced me either.

(x-post)

Sir Ian Blair was quite convincing on C4 news last night. Maybe I am easily swayed though.

momus otm re. tony blair.

But this has been coming for a long time. The Iraq war might have helped it along, but it's not the root cause. The September 11 attacks pre-dated the Iraq war by a long way. Richard Reid would have been the first British suicide bomber back in 2001 (and killed more people on that aeroplane than died in London) if other passengers hadn't managed to stop him.

This didn't start with Iraq, and it's not about Iraq, but Iraq has stirred things up further.

I just didn't like the opportunistic way the SWP / Stop the War people started trying to used the bombings to back their political position. Just because someone's against the war in Iraq, it doesn't mean that the government is to blame for the bombings or that they should pull out because of the bombings. When anti-abortionist Christian fundamentalists in America shoot doctors dead, it doesn't mean that the government is to blame or that the law should be changed.

See Hinge Verb Query

If by that you mean a refugee, yes. But the Government last week issued a statement that from August 30 people given refugee status will no longer qualify automatically for indefinite leave to remain but instead will be given leave to remain for five years.

In effect: we're going to be detaining and deporting a lot more people straight back to war zones. Good thing all the troubles in places like the Balkans and Zimbawe were sorted out in less than five years, eh Tony?

Erm sorry that was a quote from Stop the War I wasn't saying it. I actually agree that the whole thing is far more complex than that the reductive War on Iraq = Suicide Bombers causality and have been interested in these reactions to StW's ostensible justification. In my mind the NIMBYist "Stop the War to stop the terror in London" is almost as reprehensibly obfuscatory as Blair's justifications.

Yeah, let's keep politics out of politics.

NYTimes today reports that there is evidence that the four bombers may not have known it was a suicide mission:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/27/international/europe/27suicide.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th
"
LONDON, July 26 - Within hours of the July 7 attacks here, many British police and intelligence officials assumed that the four bombers had intended to die with their bombs.

But in recent days, some police officials are increasingly considering the possibility that the men did not plan to commit suicide and were duped into dying.

Investigators raising doubts about the suicide assumption have cited evidence to support this theory. Each of the four men who died in the July 7 attacks purchased round-trip railway tickets from Luton to London. Germaine Lindsay's rented car left in Luton had a seven-day parking sticker on the dashboard.

A large quantity of explosives were stored in the trunk of that car, perhaps for another attack. Another bomber had just spent a large sum to repair his car. The men carried driver's licenses and other ID cards with them to their deaths, unusual for suicide bombers.

In addition, none left behind a note, videotape or Internet trail as suicide bombers have done in the past. And the bombers' families were baffled by what seemed to be their decisions to kill themselves.

While some of these clues could be seen as the work of men intent on covering their trail, some investigators increasingly believe that the men may have been conned into carrying the bombs onto the trains and leaving them, thinking they were going to explode minutes later.

It seems pretty unlikely that they didn't know they were suicide bombers. There were no timers, either in the first attacks or the second wave of attacks. There was no reason for them not to carry their ID, as they probably wanted to be known after they died. As for the return tickets, and seven day hire of the car, in Britain a return train ticket costs virtually the same as a single so nobody buys a single. Also they were hardly going to say "Just single tickets for us please, we're going to blow ourselves up in London".

I definitely read that the bus bomb on the 21st was left behind by somebody who got off the bus before it exploded, leaving it behind on the back seat of the top deck.

Bush To London Bombers: 'Bring It On'
WASHINGTON, DC—President Bush officially responded to the latest round of London transit bombings Monday, challenging terrorists to "do their worst." Said Bush, in a televised statement from the Oval Office: "The proud and resilient people of London can take anything the forces of evil and cowardice can throw at them. They will never live in fear of you. Bring it on." Prime Minister Tony Blair thanked Bush for his comments, inviting him to visit London and ride the Underground in a show of solidarity.

Which doesn't explain why the fourth guy carried his around for another hour before exploding it on the No30.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3981061.stm

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/04/03/1080941722786.html?from=storyrhs&oneclick=true

Yeah, you're right, I forgot that.

Er, that's from The Onion.

What does keep the politics out of politics mean? Don't answer that.

where has the NY times been? that theory was the daily mirror splash two weeks ago on saturday; it had been doing the rounds in this office for two days before that. jesus christ.

x-post

So you've not seen any media commentators or people on the internet saying "tragic mistake, but we musn't blame the police or try to prevent them doing it again, and besides he really shouldn't have ran...", then?

"However horrific the bombings in London on 7th July and however important it is to secure the safety of the public, there can be no excuse for the police adopting a shoot to kill policy which guns down innocent people in cold blood."

i mean are they fucking kidding? 'in cold blood'?

Read over someone's shoulders that one of the failed bombers thought he was going to get 80 virgins in paradise. Yeah, right, who does he think he is, fucking Magnum?