I have been wanting to ask you britons..

[delanvital]

I have been following the discussion in Britain regarding anti-terror legislation after the London bombings. I am a regular reader of the Economist and in their "2006 anniversary edition" there is an article written by Helena Kennedy titled "Legally blind", page 48. The mag is a large special editions and is abt 5 quid.

The article is about the protection of civil liberties w.r.t. the new anti-terror laws, such as the lowering of proof needed in cases, especially regarding antisocial behaviour and terrorism and the rights to hold people for longer time. To quote 'It is a populist agenda, that gives far more power to the state but is dressed up as "power to the people"'.

I would like to know what you guys think of this ongoing change. Do you not fear for your rights as individuals? I have been discussing this with people and all look at this with great scepticism, yet in Britain it seems to go by relatively quiet...? I am puzzled  :huh:

[Doorman]

I hate to see a perfectly good question go unanswered. There is so much apathy in this country that nobody will realise what is happening until we a one party state and a dictatorship. The anti terrorist laws are just another nail in the coffin of democracy. It's not as if we don't have enough laws to cover every aspect of criminality. Meet me in the pub after work and I'll explain everything.

[Blunt]

its all about your human rights v's civil rights..

I'm very suspicious of "new legislation"

we have plenty of laws that will do the job IMHO

what we really need in this country is a constitution...but for that we need a revolution...and they're rather un pleasant affairs...and most unBritish.

Status Quo Rules  


ooh came over all political then...note to self

[A Twig]

Arguably the last thing we need in a constitution. It is not having one that has enabled the political system to remain flexbile enough to survive post-Cromwell and allowed one of the smallest countries in the world to have possibly the largest empire ever.

The day we end up with a written constitution, as Mr "I want to cement my power in writing" Blair has been pushing for, then we will end up with the ludicrous American style system, with 101 perfectly sensible laws that have been in place since 1900 being challenged as un-constitutional.

No leave the British system as it is. Bring back the death penalty for treachery, and allow UK born terrorists to be tried under that basis. Any other terrorists, give them to America, they're good and disappearing people.

[delanvital]

So basically no one here wants the strengthening of the mentioned laws. And yet they are being pushed through, legitimized by the "need" for a response to terror.

Anyone here who is in favour of those laws?

[A Twig]

Erm, I would like to point out that unless these laws get put to referendum, we have no say in the process, so its largely irrelevant whether we support them or not.

In principle I support the content of the anti-terror laws, but not the way they're being implemented. I think it is a new situation very different from the Northern Ireland situation, and look at the debacle surrounding that, (Gibralter, Bloody Sunday etc) and I think without a coherent, clear, policy to terrorism, the same will happen again.

However, I think this should be largely based on more independant anti-terrorism bodies, rather than President Blair, as to what needs reforming.

[delanvital]

Originally posted by A Twig+Dec 4 2005, 03:01 PM-->

QUOTE(A Twig @ Dec 4 2005, 03:01 PM)

Erm, I would like to point out that unless these laws get put to referendum, we have no say in the process, so its largely irrelevant whether we support them or not.
[/b]

Your attitude puzzle me. Politicians don't like to do stuff, that the people don't want, simply put. But if the people respond with apathy it is like a green light.

[A Twig]

Well, looks at the "success" that popular protest has had in the last 5 years.

Fuel tax is now higher than when everyone was protesting about it. Fox-hunting went through anyway despite the protests. We went to war with Iraq despite the protests. Anti-terror legislation, which the majority (according to all the polls in the field at the time) actually wanted didn't get through. This is why there is apathy. No matter what you do, it makes no difference.

And I don't view it as impinging on any rights really. So you can get held for a bit longer if you're suspected of being a terrorist. You really have to go some to be suspected of terrorism. And indeed while the initial proposition of 90 days probably was a bit too much, there's nothing wrong with 30-40 days IMO. (And here I leave myself open to all sorts of liberal abuse.)

And while I don't particularly like all the surveillance etc, at the end of the day I have nothing to hide. So therefore I really don't care if a policeman wants to search me. I have no objections to being searched on the way onto the plane at an airport, or at the entrance to a nightclub if it means the overall experience for me is going to be safer, and thus more enjoyable.

Same goes with the terrorism thing.

[delanvital]

Thanks for the info guys, especially you A Twig. However: You say you have to go to some extent to be a terrorist suspect in the UK. Again, sorry for being so frank, but what do you base that upon? With the accidental shooting in that metro the police was a bit hasty. Was that just a rush at the moment? When it comes to "just" confining people, realtively speaking, for a month maybe, are they not more lax when it comes to evidence?

[suicidal_monkey]

Originally posted by delanvital@Dec 11 2005, 11:42 PM
Thanks for the info guys, especially you A Twig. However: You say you have to go to some extent to be a terrorist suspect in the UK. Again, sorry for being so frank, but what do you base that upon? With the accidental shooting in that metro the police was a bit hasty. Was that just a rush at the moment? When it comes to "just" confining people, realtively speaking, for a month maybe, are they not more lax when it comes to evidence?

[post=104788]Quoted post[/post]

[/b]

The unfortunate shooting on the tube was a hasty end to a much longer investigation. I believe they'd been investigating someone in his building for some time, and when he came outside that day they picked him up as suspicious for some reason (probably something like not recognising him and thinking he may have just picked up a bomb or something) and followed him, when for whatever reason he ran and lacking any other commands they took action and possibly the guy on the scene thought he was dealing with a bomber. You have to remember that most press reports, especially the early ones, were grossly mis-informed and seem to have pretty much made up what happened, so any press stories must be treated very warily. Personally, after reading so many conflicting stories I came to the conclusion that the press wanted to point a finger and in this case the police caught the brunt of it (sometimes the same paper would publish two conflicting stories within a few hours - I watched websites like the BBC alter their online stories from one minute to the next) I think the way the press mis-handled the information they had was terrible.

At the time of the shooting the facts that I picked up on from the press were as follows: Cops investigating some suspect chap. Some other chap exits said chaps block of flats. Some Cops tail him while they try to assess who he is and whether he may be linked to the suspected guy. For some reason (late for train, spooked by cops, spooked by armed men in civvies, whatever) Menezes starts running. Cops react without any other information as the guys on the ground have probably limited info at the time as to whether this guy is a likely bomber or just an unknown. Once the chase moves uinderground the guys on the ground lose radio and react as they were trained (perhaps there was panic, perhaps not, we will probably never know within the mire of speculation!)

...must catch train!!

[delanvital]

One thing though.. I have read two things:

1) He ran, when order to stop
2) he was shot at close range

These two I find a bit hard to combine.

[A Twig]

And there seems to be an inordinately large number of rounds in his body. Some even claimed he was killed on the train itself while he was sitting down. I think that we will never know exactly what happened, probably because either the information being acted upon would expose a source somewhere, or because the information was poor. There definitely seems to be a cover-up somewhere.

[delanvital]

I think you are right.

[suicidal_monkey]

He ran, they persued, caught up with him in the train where they tackled him and shot him at close range.

They are trained (I believe) to loosen several rounds into a struggling, potentially dangerous targets head to stop his body altogether (I've never seen anyone shot in the head, maybe we can sort of carry on briefly, like chickens...multiple traumas would stop these being co-herent)

Firing at range was not an option because if he was merely wounded he'd probably immediately set off the (possible) device. Secondly, if their bullets hit an explosive device...well.

On the cover-up side of things I think it was more a case of excitable press who simply wanted to print as many stories with as much shock value as possible. The Police handled the situation badly and bits and pieces of unconfirmed, un-corroberated info got out. Stories from people who were present in the carriage varied wildly from a single shot at rnage to an entire clip point blank. "Witnesses" saw him both vaulting the ticket barriers and calmly normally passing through. They also saw him both walk into the tube station normally and run in being chased by men with guns. What got printed was largely heresay which we cannot now believe and too many people don't trust the police's word.

I think that Menezes got spooked at some point and ran to get away from the so19 officers. The guys tailing him were under orders to follow him as a suspected "terrorist" until such time as his details had been found. I understand that they might have been under order to detain him if he tried to enter public transport, so at some point near the tube entrance they would have yelled at him to stop. Obviously they ended up chasing him into the tube where they caught him. His action of running was extremely unfortunate as once inside the tube the officers lost radio comms and would have had to act on their own volition. As he ran away when they identified themselves, their suspicions of his being a "terrorist" would have been heightened. At the point when they tackled him on the train, if he fought back they would have taken extreme action.

Menezes perhaps thought he was simply being chased by some british thugs and didn't notice the ID of "police" if one was given (you'd expect it to be practically automatic with the amount of training those guys get) and so the whole thing was an unfortunate string of events.

The fact that it hasn't been repeated is perhaps proof that the cops aren't trigger happy maniacs? We'll leave that to the Americans!

[A Twig]

I know you get differeing accounts, but differeing that wildly? Screams cover up - a la Gibralter and countless N.I. expeditions. The British Gov has got very good at hiding the work of its SF IMHO.

However many years later, and no-one still quite knows what the actual outcome of the Gibralter shootings were, and I suspect a similar thing will occur with these shootings as well.