Slashdot Mirror
British Police Foil Alleged Mall Massacre Copycat Plot
An anonymous reader writes "The Washington Post reports, "British law enforcement agencies averted a plot to orchestrate a large-scale terror attack similar to the assault on Kenya's Westgate mall, an official said Monday. Police were questioning four men in their 20s on suspicion of terrorism after they were detained Sunday in pre-planned, intelligence-led raids. A British security official said the men were planning a shooting spree akin to the Westgate attack in Nairobi, in which at least 67 people died. ... in a series of statements, the force said the men were all British nationals between the ages of 25 and 29, with roots in Turkey, Pakistan, Algeria and Azerbaijan. ... the London police firearms unit took part in the arrests. British police rarely carry weapons and their involvement suggested concern that men might have been armed." — The Sydney Morning Herald has video. Prime Minister Cameron recently expressed concern regarding such a possibility."
Fake.
Just like the "terrorists" the FBI keeps "catching".
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
If they observed the Right to Bear Arms on that side of the pond, I suspect they would have a lot less problem with terrorists and ne'er-do-wells. God Bless the NRA.
Really, it is.
Because of course they uncovered this by spying on citizens, so they really should be able to keep spying on everyone.
Just think of the malls.
This was a somewhat more exciting series of arrests than usual.
Police shoot at car in suspected terror raids
Armed police shot at the tyres of a car to stop two suspected terrorists during a dramatic series of raids to foil an alleged plot to attack the UK.
Officers fired special Hatton rounds – large shotgun ammunition designed to burst tyres or breach doors – to force the vehicle over in east London on Sunday evening. Witnesses also reported seeing police ram the back of the car before it was finally brought to a halt while a helicopter hovered overhead. In simultaneous arrests, armed officers swooped on a man in the street in west London while a fourth man was arrested at a flat south east of the city. A large number of armed officers were used because it was feared the men had access to weapons and were planning a suspected Islamist terror attack, the Daily Telegraph understands.
The head of MI5 is concerned about the diminishing margin of advantage they have to detect such things in the face of a continuing threat.
Speaking at the Royal United Services Institute in London, Mr Parker pointed out the statistics of the threat from terrorism faced by the UK. The “plain facts”, he said, were that “from 11 September 2001 to the end of March this year, 330 people were convicted of terrorism related- offences in Britain In the first few months of this year, there were four major trials related to terrorist plots. Since 2000, we have seen serious major acts of terrorism in this country typically once or twice a year.”
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Between Cameron's insistence upon an approach that sounds an awful lot like a police state and the fact that this attack was "not imminent," you'll have to pardon me for speculating that this is a new episode of the hit sitcom "Security Theatre." After the pilot episode "TSA at the Airport," they've moved through a few seasons of bland, uninspired episodes, followed by their made-for-TV movie "PRISM" and now what appears to have been an action-packed feature film, "These Guys Might Have Roots in the Middle East: Save the Mall!"
I think I'll watch a new series. This one jumped the shark long ago.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
"Alsatian dogs were used to terrify prisoners and then ‘maul’ them. There are other similarities with Abu Ghraib: various indignities were devised using human faeces; men were forced to sodomise one another. They also had sand, pepper and water stuffed in their anuses. One apparently had his testicles cut off, and was then made to eat them. ‘Things got a little out of hand,’ one (macho European) witness told Elkins, referring to another incident. ‘By the time we cut his balls off he had no ears, and his eyeball, the right one, I think, was hanging out of its socket. Too bad, he died before we got much out of him.’ Women were gang-raped, had their nipples squeezed with pliers, and vermin and hot eggs thrust into their vaginas. Children were butchered and their body parts paraded around on spears."
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n05/bernard-porter/how-did-they-get-away-with-it
The Kenyan Human Rights Commission (KHRC) estimates that 90,000 Kenyan’s were executed, tortured or maimed during the colonial government’s crackdown, while 160,000 were detained in appalling conditions
http://thinkafricapress.com/kenya/britain%E2%80%99s-faces-colonial-past-kenya
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Except that the British police wanted some "anti-terror" "success" so badly the asked their spy agencies for some easy scapegoats.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
One thing I'm actually rather impressed with. Rather than running around with guns all the time, apparently the BP have a special unit to deal with cases where they're warranted. Certainly it's a different culture than N. America in that regard.
This story keeps on growing. In the British press this morning it was claimed that the men fought in Syria and that they have access to weapons in the UK. That was it.
Now the international press reports that the men were planning an atrocity.
However, the police have found no guns or, in fact, any evidence of any crime. They would certainly be crowing about it if they had.
This is such a non-story the BBC aren't bothering to report it.
Westgate was not a shooting spree. That was only to round up the hostages for death by mutilation:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2013/09/27/mall-victims-tortured-maimed-in-al-shabab-attacks/2882299/
Firearms are illegal in the UK, so it's impossible for any criminals to have them. No need for any "firearms division" of police, unless they're worried about the terrorists having knives.
Calling it a "copycat" makes it sound like someone is doing it for attention, and not religious ideology. This same type of tragedy happened in Utah in 2007 and was initially reported as a teenage shooter... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_Square_shooting Time to stop sugar coating the effects of prolonged exposure to the curse that is Islam.
I've got exactly what you need! Tinfoil hats are cheap. They are easy, to make too, it takes less than two minutes. Don't believe the MIT study that debunks the time honored tinfoil hat, it's a government conspiracy you know!
Don't worry, there are support groups for conspiracy theorists! Now I know like any number of other conspiracy theories those pesky facts might get in the way. However, learn from Joseph Goebbels and don't ever let logic, facts or reality get in your way. I know you look like a raving lunatic to any rational person, but not to worry, there is someone even crazier will soon show up to defend you, so cheer up!
Nuf Said.
Woolwich? Pull the other one.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Of diversity! It's a strength!
Quite.
It's a big mistake to think that the British police are unarmed. They're not.
They just don't bother with piddling little pistols.
If you're going to have a gun, have a BIG GUN.
Other than for plain-clothed detectives working undercover, pistols are pretty much laughed at by the British police. Compare the stopping power of a weeny little Colt or a Glock to that of an MP5 sub-machine gun, G36 assault rifle or (God help you if you see one of these - strongly suggest you change your plans for that day) an SA-80 or AR-15 assault rifle.
Although British police don't routinely carry sidearms, in high crime urban areas they will carry SMGs or assault rifles in a locked gun cabinet in the boot (trunk) of their car. In extremely difficult or vulnerable areas such as airports or tourist hotspots, they will carry MP5s around, mixing in with the crowd. The bobbies carrying MP5s are very nice blokes, feel free to strike up a conversation with them. Just back off the ones carrying SA-80s and AR-15s, there's a good chap.
Our largest island is only 700 miles long. Where on earth are you going to run to, that a radioed-ahead armed response unit can't get to first?
I can fully understand why lots of larger countries have routinely armed police - calling for backup could take hours. But it's extremely difficult to outrun the police radio on an island only 700 miles long with a heavily-armed SMG & assault rifle unit every 25 miles or so, and CCTV at every trunk road junction (interstate intersection).
(The police at Birmingham Airport used to have those truly lovely-looking P90 bullpup rifles for manoeuvrability in corridors & aeroplanes; from my recent visit it looks like they've swapped over to MP5s - a shame as the bullpups just looked like a wonderfully practical bit of design. I once saw West Midlands Police using one of those wacky Steyr Augs - again, lovely design - but seem to have standardised now on SA-80s and AR-15s. There seems to be a lot more standardisation across the various regional firearms units these days. Probably very practical from a co-ordinated response point of view, but a lot less showy from a nerd point of view.)
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
The owners of Slashdot aren't even trying to hide their political bias and zionist war-mongering agenda these days. How is ANY aspect of this story appropriate for this site? Are Slashdot readers considered such cretins, that they can't find this anti-Muslim nonsense on the usual mainstream media sites, like Fox News and the BBC?
Every day, the decent people of Syria, once a bastion of peace and stability in the Middle East, suffer the most depraved terror attacks carried out by islamic extremists recruited, funded, trained and armed by the British and American governments. Clegg (the REAL Prime Minister of Britain- Cameron is just the Conservative flavoured dingle-berry that hangs of him) follows Tony Blair's specific instructions, and has massive training camps in Jordan, where British, American and Israeli special forces oversee the creation of wave after wave of terror units that flood into Syria.
Saudi Arabia launders much of the money used to pay for the operation, and provides the specialist 'dirty' divisions responsible for chemical attacks, and extermination of whole towns and villages. These units are put together by US intelligence and special ops in Saudi itself, using psychopaths 'recruited' from the worst prisons in Saudi and across the West controlled Middle East, North Africa and Turkey. Saudi Arabia has repeatedly boasted about clearing out "death rows" from multiple prisons, and using the condemned men as the frontline torturers/rapists/mass murderers that are designed to prove to the civilian population of Syria that resisting the will of Obama and Blair will bring absolute unstoppable hell to their nation. This was the same tactic, of course, the Adolf Hitler used during his invasion of Russia.
The Syrian invasion is overseen by British intelligence bases in Qatar (and al Jazeera, the infamous mock-Muslim news-service that was created by the BBC World Service from its Arab Desk, is THE frontline propaganda outlet run by British Intelligence in Qatar).
So there is real terrorism in this world- masses of it. It is almost entirely a construct of those that the owners of Slashdot support and hold religious and political allegiance with. The present days horrors occurring in those nations exterminated by Tony Blair and his US allies- Libya, Iraq and Syria- are unthinkable. Libya and Syria had been peaceful, stable prosperous nations with extremely LIBERAL muslim-flavour regimes that gave full rights to women. Iraq, save for the times Saddam was doing the biding of the US government, and waging war against the 'enemies' of America's neo-cons, had pretty much been the same- at least from the POV of ordinary, non-political Iraqi citizens.
So, Slashdot will continue to post daily anti-muslim, anti-Syria, anti-Russia, anti-China stories, with not the slightest attempt to justify the propaganda with the suggestion such stories fall under the remit of this site. Inthis sense, Slashdot operates like the 'official' technical journals you would have found in Stalinist Russia, Nazi Germany, or early 20th century racist eugenics loving USA.
Remember, PUSH news outlets, like Slashdot, only have a certain number of daily slots. By ensuring many of these slots push the same propaganda agenda, it appears (to very naive readers) that these stories have accumulating significance. This is like how every newspaper in Nazi Germany could run TRUE stories of jewish crimes each day, and yet by such selective reporting, be completely DISHONEST in their representation of ordinary jewish criminality. Slashdot uses the same trick.
USAian approach to fighting terrorism: Let's have a trillion dollar war on some random country. That'll show em. Nobody will mess with us afterwards. Oh, and let's spend a fortune in tax dollars on an elaborate security theatre in all airports so that we turn air travel into an ordeal. Let's also hire goons to intimidate anyone who wants to enter the country as a tourist, especially if their skin is dark or if there's any stamps in their passports that show they've been to muslim countries. And let's spend more than then next half dozen countries combined on super-duper high tech weapons even if our own armed forces are telling us they don't want them.
British approach to fighting terrorism: Keep plugging away behind the scenes. Use the intelligence agencies to infiltrate terror groups and arrest them before they can strike. Keep it discreet, keep it quiet, and don't announce anything publicly until there's been an arrest. Meanwhile, let life go on as normal, keep going to work, keep on flying, keep shopping in busy streets, keep commuting on crowded trains and buses, and on no account do we change our way of life in search of an impossible-to-obtain standard of security because to do so would be to let the terrorists win.
I wonder which one is more effective.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Today, there are just some that use "peace" as camouflage, but all religion can safely be assumed to be dangerous if the sufferer is deeply infected ("fundamentalist" or "fanatic").
Your use of the "fundamentalist" label makes your post intellectually lazy drivel filled with the same intolerance you pretend to be against. The word "fundamentalist" generally means a religion has a set of unalterable principles which are not subject to deviation or debate and which serve as a foundation for the practice of that faith and the conduct of adherents. By that measure, the vast majority of Christians, Budhists, Hindus, or "fundamentalist" Atheists for that matter, are not going around killing non-believers as a matter of policy.
The eschatologies of these major religions are similar, with some sort of Messianic figure resolving the conflict of mankind, but only in the Muslim eschatology are the adherents charged with being directly responsible for causing the chaotic conditions that will usher the Messiah (12th Imam) to bring the resolution of the age and man's ultimate fate.
"This world will not come to an end until one person from my progeny does not rule over the Arabs, and his name will be the same as my name." [http://www.islam.tc/prophecies/imam.html]
"Founded in 1953 and used by the Shah of Iran to try to eradicate followers of the Bahai faith, the Hojjatieh Society is governed by the conviction that the 12th Imam's return will be hastened by the creation of chaos on earth." -- http://www.iranian.ws/iran_news/publish/article_10945.shtml
The other religions see these conditions happen as humanity degenerates by its own nature. "The difference goes to the heart of Islam, its holy texts in which the obligation of eschatological war is intimately bound up with the Truth of Islam and its need to dominate the world. The victory of Dawa (Islam ruling the world) will precede the eschatological end-times which will finally put an end to the misery of history by consigning all non-Muslims to Hell and realizing eternal Paradise pleromatically. And the process of Dawa becoming victorious cannot be divorced from the necessity to fight all those who will resist that Dawa: hence the necessary corollary of military Jihad."
"Now, I doubt any of you would prefer a rolled up newspaper as a weapon against a dictator or a criminal intruder."
" pre-planned, intelligence-led raids..."
We citizens would be glad if _all_ raids were pre-planned, intelligence-led raids.
Unplanned, dumb raids at the wrong address are just not funny.
" Keep plugging away behind the scenes. Use the intelligence agencies to infiltrate terror groups and arrest them before they can strike. Keep it discreet, keep it quiet, and don't announce anything publicly until there's been an arrest."
Oh, and you were doing so well right up to this point. Despite all the saber rattling the US does, the underpinning of the entire country's response is, infact, intelligence. Up until Snowden, we did keep it all quiet and discreet. Thing is, nobody actually seems to be in favor of that anymore either.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
to death in the street.
While very long, I can only give this rant a rating of 1.5 Troll-Bridges.
Positive Trolling factors:
Mentions Zionism in any context.
Equates all Muslims with all Terrorists.
Contains claims easily disprovable by widely available information.
Mentions Nazis in any context.
Attempts to twist current events into a conspiracy.
Negative Trolling factors:
Too convoluted- way too complex for those actually susceptible to trolls.
Insufficient random capitalization- nicely done where used though.
Lack of focus- rails wildly against Slashdot, "zionists", Britain, Saudi Arabia, Al Jazeera, U.S.A., and most news outlets. This was the biggest negative factor. Please limit your ranting to one or two targets, you lose focus and the diatribe really suffers.
Better luck on your next attempt at trolling.
First, the term "terrorist" and "terrorism" have become labels for anything a Government does not like. If you believe in the 2nd amendment, display Libertarian bumper stickers or T-Shirts, are not registered Democrat or Republican, stock more than a week worth of food, or display anti-government literature (Think 15 year old's posting on Facebook as much as the rare member of a Jihad), you are a potential terrorist..
These are US definitions, but the UK is not very different. Look at the recent detention under anti-terrorism of a journalist's partner for example.
Next, in the UK did they uncover a stash of weapons and explosives? At least in the US they could claim "he was gonna buy a gun", but in the UK they can't.
The article points you link don't mention anything but how bad ass the cops were in bushing these wanna-be terrorists. Seems more like MI5/MI6 and GCHQ are trying to justify all their illegal activities just like the NSA is busy trying to justify theirs.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Dubious; there are 3 possibilities, 1 it was almost entirely sponsored and encouraged by the security service and the losers who were arrested were just that losers. 2 that they are real attackers who might have pulled something nasty off. or 3 that this is a huge disproportionate response to what, in reality, were just some angry guys drunk talking.
A simple example would be that I know 2 guys who have long been planning the perfect kidnapping. Not that they ever would kidnap anyone it is just a thought experiment in that doing the exchange would be fantastically difficult. But if you were to have a wiretap of any of their conversations you would think that they were two sociopathic nasties just days away from the snatching someone. Seeing that they have been having the same discussion for over 20 years it might be the slowest conspiracy in history. Seeing that the context of the conversation was set 20 years ago then any conversation since does not need to begin with "hypothetically" if anything their conversations would be something more along the lines of the exacting details of the use of helicopters, spaceships, submarines or whatever has recently popped into either of their heads. The worst is that if someone from a security service were to join into their debate(with the goal of an arrest) they would probably even accept the use of say a helicopter or whatever to stage some scenario that they were debating. But again neither of these two would ever even think about actually doing a crime so horrible. But a series of recordings played to the jury would be pretty damning.