explosions in london

[che]

[joeloke22]

just now heard the news about 5 minutes ago.....i heard some bomb(s) were set-off earlier today in London......geez, i hope no one was injured.

[gillworm]

Che and myself were going to see Republic of Loose at Cargo in Shoreditch last night, when we got there we found tht the bus involved in yesterday's incidents was just around the corner, so the gig was moved to another venue.

there's something quite odd about the way these incidents are affecting my life, I can't claim to be unafraid, but my denial skills seem to be clicking in and once the initial fear that follows each of these events, carrying on as normally as is practical seems to be the natural reaction.

having said that, the shooting today made my blood run cold.

[Dubya - T]

Just come across this.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050723/ap_on_re_eu/britain_underground

Not good at all. I was afraid something like this would happen.

It may not be sensible to run away from armed police, but in the heat of the moment you might shit yourself and take flight. Same goes for the Police. I'm sure we'd all have been shouting if this guy did blow up a train full of people and they hadn't shot him.

It's all very well blaming the terrorists for this, but the Police (or whoever - I did hear mention of the Special Forces being involved) need to be so careful. Incidents like this will call into question anyone allegedly involved in this plot. Remember the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six et. al. during the IRA campaigns of the seventies.

There is another worrying aspect to all this. The issue of ID cards and this terrorism act they want to bring in. It does seem like an erosion of civil liberties in the name of protecting us. The worrying thing about the terrorism act is it's potential for abuse or for it to be used to cover up things like the above.

Perhaps the conspiracy theorists (like the Prison Planet website) have a ghost of a point.

Where do we go from here?
_________________
We would like to announce that due to cutbacks the light at the end of the tunnel has been switched off.....

[che]

i personally think that they did what they thought best at the end of the day. remember, it's not a decision they took lightly.

if you blow someone away, you have to live with that for the rest of your life.

allegedly.

[John Mc]

Its a horrible situation, i've just spoke to one of my mates down in london and one of his sisters friends died on the bus in the first set of bombings and another person he knew was on the same bus and was injured. shooting that bloke has taken things to a whole new level though, i suppose you always want to assume that people in power have access to special information - the police are 100% confident that they only hurt the bad guys, tony blair had special info about why we had to invade iraq - but this kind of incident makes you question everything. without wanting to sound massively pessimistic, can anyone see this situation changing or is this sort of thing going to be going on forever now?

in the Sunday Mirror today there's a list of anti-Italian 'jokes' because Inter Milan initally pulled out of a pre-season tour over here cos of the bombings. it's weird how the people publishing the paper see no kind of link between printing that sort of small racist thing and the people who now see all muslims as being 'evil'.

[Dubya - T]

..tony blair had special info about why we had to invade iraq - but this kind of incident makes you question everything...

I think that's the problem. Nobody has any special information. The maniacs intent on causing damage will do so as they always have. I remember a terrorism "expert" talking on the radio just after 7th July. He said that the terrorists only need to be successful once out of a hundred times to achieve their aim. The "authorities" have to be successful 100 out of 100 times to prevent it. The only special info Blair was privvy to before Iraq was Dubya's Lies.

I can sort of understand why the Police did what they did but why didn't they stop him earlier? Why wait until he got to the tube? From my original link it said he left a house that was under surveillance, now it seems it was just the same street! They followed him on a bus, why didn't they think he'd blow that up? Did they really believe he was a terrorist from the outset? If they did wouldn't they have stopped him outside his house?
It seems to me they panicked when he went near the tube.

An eye witness said he was wearing a bomb belt with wires coming out of it. He was an electrician, apparently. So that would be a tool belt then? I would not want to be a non-white in London right now.

Red Ken is probably right. The next traget will be a Bar or Club or something. Does he know something?

That said, I feel for the bloke(s) that fired the shots.
It must be awful living in London now, everyone must be be nervy as hell.

One final point: Why did the Police admit they killed an innocent person? I may be cynical but I think that if this had happened in America they would have just made up some crap about him being a terrorist. Nobody would have been any the wiser would they?

It was the right thing to do.
Maybe there is hope for this country yet.
_________________
We would like to announce that due to cutbacks the light at the end of the tunnel has been switched off.....

[gillworm]

the failure happened before he started running, the problem isn't that they shot an innocent man so much as they were following him in the first place. I hate the fact that it is perceived that there is no option other than shooting to kill rather than attempting to take the suspect into custody but I can see why this is so. I wonder how an innocent man can appear to be acting suspiciously though, could it be that the pressure on the police to produce a quick result made them project their anxieties onto this man to distort what is actually normal and reasonable behaviour?

Dubya comments that at least the police were prepared to admit their mistake rather than hiding their error by blackening his name. well it appears that the media are doing that for them, the headline I saw this afternoon said that his visa had run out. not much of a crime but it suggests that they've been digging around trying to find out something negative about him - all the press about him so far has suggested that he was a nice young man. the fickle press love to turn on their recent favourites if they get the chance - look at Jude Law, a couple of weeks ago he was constantly pictured as this great, successful Brit, now he's the latest 'love rat'.