The police killing was condemned by Muslim groups, which expressed shock at the news of the victim’s innocence.

“To give licence to people to shoot to kill just like that, on the basis of suspicion, is very frightening,” Azzam Tamimi of the Muslim Association of Britain told BBC television.

The killing in front of shocked passengers on a crowded train triggered speculation that traditionally unarmed British police had adopted a shoot-to-kill policy.

“The Metropolitan Police have very clearly demonstrated that they are operating on the premise right now that if they suspect that someone is a bomber, and that the public is going to be endangered by him, they have shoot-to-kill orders,” anti-terrorism expert Robert Ayers of the Royal Institute of International Affairs think-tank told Reuters.

Where’s the accountability? If they merely suspect someone might be a bomber they can shoot to kill? If the person turns out to be blameless, as in this London subway execution by police with no evidence, what then? Will those who pulled the trigger be brought up on charges or will they get a free pass because, golly shucks, they thought the guy might be a bomber? And what are the names of the officers involved? No information about them has been released yet.

But anti-terrorism expert Magnus Ranstorp of St Andrews University in Scotland said the policy, which he said was openly adopted three years ago, could do more harm than good.

“The Muslim community is very uneasy about this, understandably,” he told Reuters. “If there is a series of shooting incidents like this, then it becomes a big political issue.

“This is not a major deterrent in terms of carrying out an attack, but it is counter-productive to the careful strategy that the police and government have set out in terms of minimising polarisation within ethnic communities,” he said.

I can think of no better way to drive recruits to extremist Islamists than by the shoot-to-kill policy of London police. Nor will stop the attacks.

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The man who was shot five times in the head by London police on the subway was innocent. That’s right, innocent. No bomb, no links to bombers. Nothing except he ran from them. So they pushed him on the ground and shot him in the head five times.

A man shot to death by police in a London underground station had no connection to attempted bomb attacks, Scotland Yard said Saturday.

A Scotland Yard statement said that Friday’s shooting was a “tragedy” which was regretted by the Metropolitan Police.

No it’s not a “tragedy?”, it was a cold blooded execution carried out by trigger happy thugs so reckless that even LAPD would wince at what they did, shooting someone at point-blank range while innocent bystanders were inches away.

This is what the war on terror so favored by Blair and Bush has produced. May the reaction to this  bring down the Blair government.

This is not a “tragedy” because that implies it was accidental or could have been avoided. Rather, it is the logical outcome of the shoot-first-never-ask-questions policies of Bush and Blair.

Will anyone riding a London subway feel safer because of this? Of course not. Quite the contrary, the blowback from this will be more attacks, increased polarization, and more recruits for the bombers. And none of it had to happen. 

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Front page, LA Times.

The special prosecutor in the CIA leak investigation has shifted his focus from determining whether White House officials violated a law against exposing undercover agents to determining whether evidence exists to bring perjury or obstruction of justice charges, according to people briefed in recent days on the inquiry’s status.

According to lawyers familiar with the case, investigators are comparing statements by two top White House aides, Karl Rove and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, with testimony from reporters who have acknowledged talking to the officials.

It’s generally not the act that brings them down, it’s the coverup. Just like in Watergate.

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These two cogent posts address the same subject, we need to understand why terrorism happens, what their motivations are, and get it at the root, rather than flashy useless “security.”

Such security does little except scare people silly and boost state power. Which sometimes seems the point. If we’re serious about it, then understanding that the US is quite capable of terrorist acts is crucial in understanding motivations of suicide bombers. U.S. out of Iraq would seem a real good first step in reducing terrorist attacks. The imperialist designs of the U.S. creates blowback across the planet.

Fighting the war on whatever from Dave Winer

The answer to a distributed war is distributed defense. Instead of hiding from people with brown skin, people who speak funny, who look like terrorists, we need to work with them, because (key point) most of them aren’t terrorists, but they may come from communities that produce them. Do the communities have an inkling that there’s a bomber in the house? On the block? Have we asked? What are the warning signs that a young person has turned? We need to study this, understand it, and then distribute the knowledge, actively, quickly.

I don’t find reassurance in police commissioners talking on TV about new techniques of finding bombs on subways. We won’t find enough of the bombs to alter our psychology. People stayed home for months after 9/11. The airports, restaurants and shopping malls were deserted. The economy really suffered. It will suffer again. Now, while we have a measure of sanity, we need to make being brown and talking strangely interesting and listen. We need to feel that we can solve the problem, that the deaths are not totally in vain, that we’re getting better at preventing the bombing.

Rush Limbaugh and his idiots will want to fight this war with internment camps. Good luck. How big will the camps be? How will you feed the prisoners? And what comes next, when that doesn’t work? Even the dittoheads won’t want to go there, at least most of them won’t.

Let’s hope the families know when a kid turns into a bomber, and have the guts to turn him in. Let’s get them on our side, acknowledge that they want life to get better, not turn to shit. That’s what they’re saying. Now, do we have the guts to listen?

Security expert Bruce Schneier on  NYC searching bags on subways

It’s another “movie plot threat.” It’s another “public relations security system.” It’s a waste of money, it substantially reduces our liberties, and it won’t make us any safer.

Final note: I often get comments along the lines of “Stop criticizing stuff; tell us what we should do.” My answer is always the same. Counterterrorism is most effective when it doesn’t make arbitrary assumptions about the terrorists’ plans. Stop searching bags on the subways, and spend the money on 1) intelligence and investigation — stopping the terrorists regardless of what their plans are, and 2) emergency response — lessening the impact of a terrorist attack, regardless of what the plans are.

Countermeasures that defend against particular targets, or assume particular tactics, or cause the terrorists to make insignificant modifications in their plans, or that surveil the entire population looking for the few terrorists, are largely not worth it.

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“I saw it all. He was dead, five shots”
“I looked at his face … He was absolutely petrified”

No report of the London subway shooting I’ve seen said, yes, he had a bomb. Has anyone seen news to the contrary?

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