Fortress London

Two attacks on the tube. Armed police are deployed in plain clothes to ride the tubes. It is called the biggest deployment of police into London since World War Two. Two weeks after the bombing London is still heavily fortified.

How long will this last? How long should it last? Is a major, sustained terrorist action in progress? Will this all blow over?

Discuss.

My god, the police are armed??? Riding the subway in civilian clothes??? If the government keeps reacting like this, the Tube might have the total martial law of American subways...

The best reaction to the bombings I think Londoners have already done: told the terrorists to bugger off, then went down to the pub to have a pint. All this Fortress London stuff is sensationalist media hype that, IMHO, the British *really* don't need to follow. We Yanks have already showed the world how bad an idea hyping fear is. I will be very disappointed if the British government does the same stupid things (I.E. Color Coded Terror Alerts) that America's done.

i've lived in dc my whole life, and have had to deal with all the "security" changes since 9/11. street closures, security checkpoints, closing the inauguration to the public (read protestors), etc. i'm sure there are some measures in place that would actually do some good. but the majority of it seems like an immense sham to give the appearance of security. someone really intent on bombing or harming citizens, could still do it pretty easily. i'd hate to see london take the same steps. i'd like to think they're a bit above that.

best of luck to you jsecure. and glad you weren't harmed in the bombings.

At the present time there are armed officers riding the tubes with loaded guns, on a shoot to kill policy, which means they can kill at will. Tony Blair gave a press conference some days ago defending the controversial move to a "shoot to kill" policy, saying it is the only way to stop a suicide bomber who would otherwise detonate a bomb.

Not seeing a problem with either the actions or the logic.

Ya know, god forbid you have to kill someone to prevent them from blowing up 30 people.

*shrug* Maybe it's my American blaseness, but I really don't think the London police are going to be very successful with the "Stop....or I'll say stop again" method of capturing dangerous criminals like bombers.

I have a hard time buying this story of the innocent businessman getting chased, then gunned down by triggerhappy London police. If a policeman approaches you, wanting to ask some questions, you cooperate. These people are charged with protecting us from danger. If you run from them, and give them reason to think you're a criminal, you are at the very least distracting them from their jobs. These guys have to make split-second decisions about if a suspect is a threat to others or not.

London is multicultural enough for me to think that this guy's looks were not what got the attention of police. The guy was doing something suspicious....and he ran. I'm sorry, but that's really a stupid thing to do when an law officer is interacting with you.

As to shooting to kill...Well, shooting to disable may be the wrong decision when all a suicide bomber has to do is press a trigger. We need to let the people charged with protecting us do their jobs, and train them in how to make the decision they need to make. I'm pretty sure such training has been given to them.

If the innocent bodies start piling up, then we've got a serious question of overreaction. But that's not going to happen, I think.

Couldn't have said it better myself. In fact if you hadn't, I would have!

May I ask, if the current measures are inappropriate, what SHOULD be the appropriate response and preparation for terrorist attacks? I hope the answer isn't "do nothing and ignore it".

Btw-- it may not mean much to the public, but the "terror codes" in the US actually DO mean something. Stuff happens when we go up or down a level. If we go to red, (which I hope we never do), it effects me...and I'm just a chump. But it definitely impacts things.
The color coding thing is kinda stupid and meaningless, that's why I think they're trying to switch over to a named system or something.

Well, being a typical american...

The guy RAN from he police... with a bag... and.... even though this shouldn't have anything to do with it, he wasn't British. If he HAD been a bomber, the cops might have died while hesitating.

I'm not justifying or concluding anything but WHY did he run anyway? Makes you think he had a reason to run, doesn't it? Coulda been about as harmless as a shoplifter... but people should have some respect for the police. Was he expecting them to just give up and let him go?

He was in country illegaly. In the UK, I've heard they deport their illegal aliens. I know it's a foreign concept to us Yanks.

Well, we don't shoot them, we just give them free stuff... (And then still get called greedy Americans...oh well, can't win em all I guess.)

Proof that the NRA doesn't kill people, UK does?

Okay, okay... much too silly!

Disclaimer: hehe, that was just a stupid joke comment btw.

Well the problem is that the person that they shot was from Brazil so...

A) He may have not had a good command of the english language

B) São Paulo, is the world’s third-largest city with 17 million people, 9,027 murders were reported there in 1999, for perspective, that's as opposed to 667 muders in the same year reported in New York City, with seven million people.

C) So when you are from a country with a crime rate like that and a group of guys not wearing uniforms and carrying guns are chasing you, you might just decide to run.

My best guess is that the guy thought they were kidnappers, if you grew up in Brazil, it's not an unreasonable assumption.

So what can we do besides gun [innocent] people down in cold blood?

Well you may consider my suggestion even worse:

Put direct pressure in Islamic Groups. I was glad to read that the sisters who knew about the bombers were arrested.

The thing is, as long as more moderate Islamic people refuse to take a stand against terrorism, it appears to the world and to the terrorists who murder innocent civilians, as though their actions are sanctioned by the Islamic faith.

Moderate Islamic leaders need to start cleaning their own backyard and if they don't then we will have no choice but to start cleaning it for them and when that happens, lots of times, the flowers are pulled right along with the weeds.

It is still my opinion that the US and the UK should have focused their entire efforts on locating Bin Laden, his followers, his training camps and anything else associated with him. We should have wiped them all off of the face of the earth. What the hell are we doing focusing our efforts in Iraq when Bin Laden is still operating in other parts of the world? It makes no sense to me.

(Edited to say that it probably makes a lot of sense to companies like Haliburton and Exxon, then again, their executive officers don't take the tube or the subway do they?)

(Edited again because I can't leave well enough alone, but here is today's headlines in S. Florida: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-cswat06aug06,0,3364596.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines

Here's Denvers: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050806/ap_on_re_us/police_shooting

Both of them involve cops kicking down the doors of people and then shooting them. Which is all in good unless it's your door they kick down. Is this really the sort of society you want to be living in?)

The enemy is Bin Laden, find him and his followers and end it there.

I think this is highly oversimplified. Osama is "An" enemy, not "the".

This world we live in has a lot of crappy people living in it, and a lot of crappy situations. Until we solve things like poverty, hunger, political corruption, and intolerance (which definitely isn't limited to Islamic extremism) more Osamas will arise.

Garoad,

<<but WHY did he run anyway?>>

Well, apart from the possible reasons already given, his work visa was out of date.

I'm considerably more worried about being shot at by the police than I am about being blown up by a nutter.

The stuff that's coming out in the papers seems to say that there doesn't seem to be much connection between the 7th July and 21st July groups.

The government's response has been slightly hysterical and totally counter productive. The last thing we want is for the bastards to go underground (and the groups they are trying to ban aren't obviously connected to either set of bombings).

The Brazilian had years in the UK in which to learn English. Frankly, if someone wants to settle in this country they should be obliged at least to have a working knowledge of the language. I'm feeling less and less tolerant of people trying to misuse this country's traditional generosity, and I shan't even begin to discuss people slagging us off while claiming all the benefits going or I'll get extremely angry.

Am I allowed to criticise the government? I'm on disability benefits.

Does being poor reduce my rights to freedom of speech?

Britain is about tolerance. Anti-tolerance in the name of Britain is totally wrong.

How can you be more worried about being shot by the police (who at least are held accountable for those types of things) than being blown up? Really, put simply, as long as you don't *run from* and you cooperate with the police you shouldn't have to worry about that. But you do have to worry every time you get on a train...so I don't get it.

I read the theory above that maybe the guy who ran from the police thought they were kidnappers. I applaud your use of creativity to develop another entirely possible hypothesis, but unless you know something the rest of us don't, it's pure speculation.

If his lack of the ability to speak English was the problem (this is just a guess too)--THIS is the PERFECT example why immigrants should be expected to learn the native language of the country they're moving to. I would do it if I moved somewhere else... (well maybe I'm biased because I have an interest in learning.)

To get a visa in Britain--maybe a stupid question--but do you have to know English to do this?

I live in Israel.

We've been trough more suicide bombers in the period of one week then the US and UK had for a year put together.

Our cops walk around public places undercover, in civil garb, with loaded guns.

Our cops do not shoot to kill.

It works. In many cases, the bombers either fail to detonate in panic or try to run away as a primal instinct instead of blowing themselves right away.


After almost a decade of this stuff, I can tell you this with some certaincity: The current situation in London is that your chances of being shot and killed by the police are much higher then you dying by the hands of a suicide bomber.

Well they've already shot innocents apparenrly. The first to go was an asian tourist with a money belt around his chest. I wish I had a link to the article on the BBC News site somewhere. It was interesting reading the eyewitness accounts. Some were appalled that a normal innocent guy was shot infront of everyone. Some people were saying they saw a desperate looking guy with wires sticking out of him.

Either way, give the police more power and you screw the people.

Shoot to kill is about the most outrageous policy I've ever heard of. If the police in my country were given such power, I'd leave the next day without a doubt. How do you think Pinochet massacred hundreds of people in a soccer stadium?

Britain may be going too far at the moment... I imagine they're pretty shaken up over there in London.

Hiro - I agree, the way to reduce the number of people willing to kill themselves in the name of extreme idealism is to educate them, pay them fair wages, medical care and to give them a voice in their government. Unfortunately, I think that no matter what we do, there will always be extremist willing to kill others (and sometimes themselves) in the name of their ideals. The best we can do with people like that is to capture and eliminate them like a bad virus.

I surely don't believe that extremism is limited to Islamic followers. One good look at rabid Terry Randall and his followers [Randolph] snap a nice picture of a group of scary extremist. The reverend Moon, the reverend Jones (remember KoolAid), the Unibomber, Terry Nichols.... I could go on.

With regard to being more afraid of the police and their ad hoc reaction to terrorist attacks, I agree with Roberta, I'm more afraid of the police. They have sanctioned access to my information, my home, my car and are omni present on every street corner. Frequently, they are directed by politicians with less than stellar integrity that have agenda's unrelated to public interest.

So are you saying it was his fault he got shot?