Possible Terror Attack in London

Shakesbear

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Two dead - woman and a police officer. Parliament in lockdown. People injured - some walking wounded, others with life changing/horrific injuries. "the alleged assailant was shot by armed police."


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-39355940
 

waylander

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4 dead now, one of them a police officer, another the attacker.
 

Bacchus

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Current theory is that it was a single attacker.
 

EvieDriver

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I hope everyone who can be is safe. I pray for those who are not. :( It's a sad world to live in sometimes.
 

kneedeepinthedoomed

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We need to start doing something about the root causes that make people do shit like that. It's not enough to toss bombs and pray because neither solves the problem.

Need to gain understanding about the personal motives of killers and then take away whatever it is that nurtures that hate in the first place.
 

Brightdreamer

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We need to start doing something about the root causes that make people do shit like that. It's not enough to toss bombs and pray because neither solves the problem.

Need to gain understanding about the personal motives of killers and then take away whatever it is that nurtures that hate in the first place.

We've needed that since the first H. sapiens picked up a rock and maliciously struck another... and whoever comes up with a definitive answer will win the ultimate Nobel Prize - assuming they aren't offed by the leaders and warmongers whose power and profit depends on more people throwing rocks and bombs.
 

CWatts

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I'm praying for the victims and their families, of course, but also for London mayor Sadiq Khan as he becomes (AFAIK) the first Muslim politician to lead a Western city during a terrorist attack.
 

JCornelius

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Perhaps this is why London and Washington did that "nothing larger than a phone in airplanes" thing a couple of days ago--got whiff of something brewing. Maybe this crap now is the only thing left that could be pulled what's left of the conspiracy.

Anyway:
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...er-attack-bravery-humanity-jonathan-freedland
On any other day, Tobias Ellwood might be seen as just another Tory MP. But then came word that he had given CPR and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a policeman who lay wounded – and with it a reminder that the MP, a former army officer, had lost a brother in the Bali bombings of 2002.

Or there were those photos of MPs locked in the chamber of the Commons for their own safety, many of them on their phones, searching for news just like the rest of us but with an extra edge: they were worrying about friends, colleagues or their own employees. Everyone had the same thought: what if someone they knew or loved was among those hurt?

As it happens, I was in Westminster (though not in parliament) when the attacker struck, wrapping up a lunch meeting with an MP who was alerted to the news by a text from his wife, checking that he was safe. On television, he’ll look like just another politician. But if people saw him today, they’d have seen a human being.

And yet, when it comes to those involved in politics – the people who keep our democratic machinery functioning – it seems to take violent tragedy to remind us that those we elect to represent us don’t stop being people the moment we vote for them. Last year it was the murder of Jo Cox that reminded people an MP could also be a living, breathing, loving person. At that moment, many felt chastened about the way we speak about politics – so often using violent language to describe political argument. We held back for a while. But we soon fell back into the old habits.

Yet if those who denounce Westminster had only seen it today. The speed with which the police and the emergency services ran towards danger when every human instinct would propel most of us away from it. The help ordinary people gave other ordinary people when they saw them lying hurt on Westminster Bridge. The security officers who brought a tray of tea to the police officers standing guard, watching over them. The visitors herded to safety, including a mother pushing a baby in a buggy. And the group of schoolchildren who reportedly decided to cheer up all those in lockdown in parliament’s Central Lobby with a spontaneous singsong.

Last year, on this very day, Brussels was targeted by suicide bombers who killed 32 people. For a few days, it stopped being the despised “Brussels” of anti-EU rhetoric and became Brussels, scene of tragedy. More than 20 years ago I witnessed the same transformation, when a US government building in Oklahoma City was bombed, killing 168. “Federal bureaucrats” had been a hated class – until people saw them carrying their wounded and grieving for their children. Today it was “Westminster’s” turn. Not a metaphor, not a far-off citadel of wicked, scheming politicians but a real place, filled with real people – as vulnerable to an act of murderous violence as anybody else.
 

cornflake

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We need to start doing something about the root causes that make people do shit like that. It's not enough to toss bombs and pray because neither solves the problem.

Need to gain understanding about the personal motives of killers and then take away whatever it is that nurtures that hate in the first place.

Good luck -- lots of killing has nothing to do with hate, and all killing, and killers are not a single thing. Motivations and people and etc. differ greatly. Though I'm on board with attempting to figure out what's motivating people, 'let's stop personal motives of killers' is a bit of a tall order.

As to the laptop/device ban, no. Makes zero sense. A laptop (or whatever) bomb is less likely to be found if it's checked than taken through as a cabin item, where it's more likely to be examined, made to be turned on, etc. In luggage, it can be whatever it wants. Someone who can effectively disguise an explosive device as a working piece of electronics can disguise it as something else.

That ban is either a backdoor 'piss them off' Muslim ban or an opportunity to spy or both, not any kind of security protocol, because it's less secure.
 
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Helix

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Last year, on this very day, Brussels was targeted by suicide bombers who killed 32 people. For a few days, it stopped being the despised “Brussels” of anti-EU rhetoric and became Brussels, scene of tragedy. More than 20 years ago I witnessed the same transformation, when a US government building in Oklahoma City was bombed, killing 168. “Federal bureaucrats” had been a hated class – until people saw them carrying their wounded and grieving for their children. Today it was “Westminster’s” turn. Not a metaphor, not a far-off citadel of wicked, scheming politicians but a real place, filled with real people – as vulnerable to an act of murderous violence as anybody else.

Westminster's turn?

You might recall the IRA were quite active a while back.
 

tiggs

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As to the laptop/device ban, no. Makes zero sense. A laptop (or whatever) bomb is less likely to be found if it's checked than taken through as a cabin item, where it's more likely to be examined, made to be turned on, etc. In luggage, it can be whatever it wants. Someone who can effectively disguise an explosive device as a working piece of electronics can disguise it as something else.

That ban is either a backdoor 'piss them off' Muslim ban or an opportunity to spy or both, not any kind of security protocol, because it's less secure.
I suspect that the team who made this:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...icated-managed-X-ray-scanners-undetected.html

are currently active again. I suspect it needs to be powered on to detonate -- hence the carry-on embargo.

I also suspect the explosive is secreted within the device's battery, replacing the electrolyte, making it extremely difficult to detect during an x-ray scan. That would explain why the ban is on laptops, tablets and larger mobile phones, due to battery capacity.

Word on the street is that it's a Five Eyes advisory, given that the UK has also implemented it.
 

Helix

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I suspect that the team who made this:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...icated-managed-X-ray-scanners-undetected.html

are currently active again. I suspect it needs to be powered on to detonate -- hence the carry-on embargo.

I also suspect the explosive is secreted within the device's battery, replacing the electrolyte, making it extremely difficult to detect during an x-ray scan. That would explain why the ban is on laptops, tablets and larger mobile phones, due to battery capacity.

Word on the street is that it's a Five Eyes advisory, given that the UK has also implemented it.

Perhaps they could develop a cunning plan and use a different airline or travel from a different airport. Although I, for one, would like a laptop ban implemented by Qantas.
 

tiggs

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IIRC, the device that brought down Pan Am 103 was a boom box radio, in the baggage compartment, with an altitude trigger.
Sounds like a pretty wild game of "Clue".

Google suggests it was a boom box packed with semtex, but it used a timer, rather than an altitude trigger. One of these.

Entirely possible that the laptops would be on a timer, too. Re-reading the article I linked earlier, it states the plane was delayed and survived due to its altitude at the point of explosion.

Reading a CNN article on the Somali plane -- it suggests that it may have evaded detection because some airports don't have the capacity to detect the explosive in hand luggage as easily as others, due to differences in equipment.

Perhaps a combination of that, and intel on which terrorist cells are likely to have access to them, may explain the restriction by departure area, rather than a global ban.
 

Once!

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A sad day. It looks like the attacker was alone and he used nothing more than a car and a knife - things that any one of us can probably lay our hands on right now. How do you stop that?

I worked for thirteen years just around the corner from where the attack happened. If it was a fine day I would take a walk across that bridge in my lunch hour. My wife used to work on the other side of the Thames. We would cross the next bridge along (Lambeth Bridge) to see each other. Another day, another time, one of those victims could have been me. Or my wife.

It's a shitty world we live in where people think that doing something like this will achieve anything.
 

autumnleaf

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Adam Hill from The Last Leg:
And to the guy who did this, here’s what you achieved this week. You killed four people, you injured dozens more and when you get to your god, who incidentally is also our god, he’s probably going to have a few issues with that. If you’re looking up at us right now - because there’s no fucking way you’re looking down - wondering what effect you had on the people of Great Britain, let me summarise. No one is scared, people are resilient, we think you’re an idiot, you’re dead and even your god thinks you’re a dick.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WfRsFZjOpA