Thoughts for those that lost their lives in Paris

Sapphire

zarf2007 wrote: »

Its actually both. Its an army in the general sense and it is also a bunch of sleeper cells and 'lone wolfs'. In fact any loser who wants to make a name for themselves can suddenly turn to this brand of islam, pick up a kitchen knife, kill a few people and say its in the name of IS....how do you stop that?

Yes – and this touches on something I said earlier. It strikes me how physically repulsive all of these murderers seem to be. Many of them are probably what would by most people be recognised as life's losers, with strong inferiority complexes, and the only way they felt they could 'achieve' in life was by engaging in the acts they perpetrate, and thereby achieving notoriety.

Meanwhile, right from the day after the events in Paris, Juncker has continued with his blackmailing rhetoric to the countries in the EU that things must continue as dictated by him with regard to open borders and the migrant issue, despite their disagreement with his 'orders'. Disgusting how insensitive this unpleasant, ugly little 'manager type' is.

Moby

Generali wrote: »

It was exactly that sort of thinking that saw the Tories in the wilderness for 15 years.

The Tories aren't just in power because of the SNP. They won a majority and even if Labour had won every seat in Scotland they would still be the minority party. The Tories won power because they completely reinvented themselves just as Labour did under Blair, the last Labour leader to win an election for over 41 years and counting. By the time of the next election, assuming the Tory Government makes it that far, Labour will have had 2 leaders win an election in over 50 years and spent 17 of that 51 years in power.

Mr Corbyn is taking the party backwards not forwards, I cringe when I read his policies as they read like a Labour policy document from 1985: nationalisation, unilateralism, reopen the mines.

Voters don't know what Labour stands for any more. In 2015 they have had 4 policies on the Trident replacement alone. I fear Labour's destruction as I really worry about who will replace them: the 4th-nth placed parties are a bunch of nutters (Greens or UKIP as HMLO anyone???). Worse is that, as in Scotland, they are replaced by....nobody. If the thought of the Tories having untrammeled power for the next 20 years or whatever worries me it should terrify you.

Your lot need to ditch Mr Corbyn and ditch him fast as the longer he stays and the more the shadow cabinet are forced to parrot the crap he comes out with the more they are tainted. The problem there is that he genuinely seems to represent the grass roots of the party. Now that's great but he isn't going to win the General Election with 500,000 votes.

Agree with your analysis but would add one thing....it wasn't just about losing in Scotland, Labour lost seats in England as well due to the SNP effect. In the last weeks before the vote the tories ran a highly effective (sadly for me) scaremongering campaign that Miliband would be under Sturgeons stilleto heel so to speak. This brought out the English nationalism in a lot of people and a lot of Labour votes went to UKIP thereby letting the tories in.Wales is interesting at present as well, a traditionally Labour stronghold in the towns with the traditional farming tories ruling in the country....... UKIP has started cutting into this traditional set up.

WannaBLoaded

Moby wrote: »

Agree with your analysis but would add one thing....it wasn't just about losing in Scotland, Labour lost seats in England as well due to the SNP effect. In the last weeks before the vote the tories ran a highly effective (sadly for me) scaremongering campaign that Miliband would be under Sturgeons stilleto heel so to speak. This brought out the English nationalism in a lot of people and a lot of Labour votes went to UKIP thereby letting the tories in.Wales is interesting at present as well, a traditionally Labour stronghold in the towns with the traditional farming tories ruling in the country....... UKIP has started cutting into this traditional set up.

Nah, labour lost votes because, and i quote ed milliband when being questioned about giving the nation a choice on eu status 'i'm not bothered about that'

Immigration was one of, maybe THE, most hotly debated topics since the end times of tony blair, when he bailed leaving gourmy gordon to make sure the ship didn't hit the ice burg until tony's helicopter had turned up.

I don't know about you, but when ever i see jihadi loving corbyn on the tv i just want to take my shoe off and throw it at the telly, and i'm not like that usually.

WannaBLoaded

Moby wrote: »

Russia is not communist.

It's not western enough yet, so might as well be like china completely.

Iran is very influential in the middle east by the way.

yes, because they threaten people with imaginary nukes. Other than that they are nothing.

I repeat the tories voted for the Iraq war and the Afghanistan campaign and there is no defence they were lied to about weapons of mass destruction in that war.

tony blair was hand jobbing george bush, the pair of them teamed up and said all sorts to persuade the conservatives to be on board.

Bush was so angry at one point, thinking that we were not going to go in with them, that he was heard saying things like 'ill make sure he never works in politics again' etc, thinking he was a !!!!! boss. A strong leader was needed at the time of the iraq war and blair wasn't.

I agree about Corbyn. He is clearly not up to leadership. He had a bad time tonight in the Monday meeting of the Labour MPs. I think in the shoot to kill comment he was referring to Charles Menezes. Problem is though the police always shoot to stop the threat.......and that means in effect killing the threat. They have no choice once the decision is made. Regarding jihadi John of course it would have been better to capture him alive and place him on trial. That way you hold him accountable to the world and to his victims directlly! Problem is we live in the real world and that was never going to happen.

So corbyn was using the name of an unfortunate man, possibly the only man in Britain? To have been killed by police who suspected him of terror attacks? As some sort of cheap political shot.

chris_m

WannaBLoaded wrote: »

So corbyn was using the name of an unfortunate man, possibly the only man in Britain? To have been killed by police who suspected him of terror attacks? As some sort of cheap political shot.

I'm no Corbyn fan but I don't think that was a "cheap political shot". It is a valid point and argument, as indeed is the opposite view.

The police were in that case, and probably will be at some point in the future, between a rock and a hard place. They genuinely believed that de Menezes was about to trigger a bomb and, for all they knew, the trigger was easy to pull. In such a situation, there is only one option and that is the one that they took.

Regrettably, the intelligence with which they were working was inaccurate but had it been accurate and had they taken less lethal action, leaving a suicide bomber still capable of detonating the device, far more people could have been killed - for which they would also have been blamed.

It also needs to be considered that shooting to disable requires far more skill than shooting to kill, and is still less certain of stopping whatever the suspect might be intending to do. Say you go for an arm - firstly, it's a smaller target, secondly it may need more than one shot and thirdly, there's another arm which could also activate a trigger. When you don't know how much time you have to stop what you believe is about to happen, the best option is the one which makes sure of stopping the suspect, and that is not shooting to disable.

Generali

chris_m wrote: »

I'm no Corbyn fan but I don't think that was a "cheap political shot". It is a valid point and argument, as indeed is the opposite view.

The police were in that case, and probably will be at some point in the future, between a rock and a hard place. They genuinely believed that de Menezes was about to trigger a bomb and, for all they knew, the trigger was easy to pull. In such a situation, there is only one option and that is the one that they took.

Regrettably, the intelligence with which they were working was inaccurate but had it been accurate and had they taken less lethal action, leaving a suicide bomber still capable of detonating the device, far more people could have been killed - for which they would also have been blamed.

It also needs to be considered that shooting to disable requires far more skill than shooting to kill, and is still less certain of stopping whatever the suspect might be intending to do. Say you go for an arm - firstly, it's a smaller target, secondly it may need more than one shot and thirdly, there's another arm which could also activate a trigger. When you don't know how much time you have to stop what you believe is about to happen, the best option is the one which makes sure of stopping the suspect, and that is not shooting to disable.

I think the biggest problem with Mr de Menezes is that the police seem to have shot mostly for being in possession of brown skin. Most of the muck up seemed to be based on Mr de Menezes changing buses and 'they all look the same to me yer honour.'

That simply isn't good enough.

The problem I guess is how do you stop shoot-to-kill becoming de facto extra-judicial execution?

I don't claim to have all the answers and as I said before, the whole point of what these terrorists are doing is to force us into making some moral choices we'd rather not have to make.

chris_m

Generali wrote: »

I think the biggest problem with Mr de Menezes is that the police seem to have shot mostly for being in possession of brown skin. Most of the muck up seemed to be based on Mr de Menezes changing buses and 'they all look the same to me yer honour.'

Not helped by the fact that he lived in the same apartment block as one of their suspects from the previous days abortive bombing attempts.

That simply isn't good enough.

Very true.

The problem I guess is how do you stop shoot-to-kill becoming de facto extra-judicial execution?

I think the most significant problem is that the people on whom we rely to keep us safe are human - and no-one, however good, is totally infallible, especially in a tense, possible rapidly changing, situation. Regrettably, mistakes can, and do, happen. Apart from improving individual and unit training, surveillance and command structures there isn't a lot that I think can be improved.

I don't claim to have all the answers

I doubt that anyone does, to be honest - indeed, can there ever be the perfect solution?
As far as I can see, the best we can do is ensure that the individuals that we rely upon to do such jobs are psychologically suited to the demands placed upon them and provided with the best tools and intelligence information available to enable them to do the job to the best of their ability - whilst keeping our fingers crossed

and as I said before, the whole point of what these terrorists are doing is to force us into making some moral choices we'd rather not have to make.

Very true.

zarf2007

Generali wrote: »

I think the biggest problem with Mr de Menezes is that the police seem to have shot mostly for being in possession of brown skin. Most of the muck up seemed to be based on Mr de Menezes changing buses and 'they all look the same to me yer honour.'

That simply isn't good enough.

The problem I guess is how do you stop shoot-to-kill becoming de facto extra-judicial execution?

I don't claim to have all the answers and as I said before, the whole point of what these terrorists are doing is to force us into making some moral choices we'd rather not have to make.

I also think that the Met didn't help themselves in that case by lying and leaking stories to the press about him 'vaulting the tube gates' with wires sticking out of his jacket. The whole operation was a farce from start to finish with surveillance police caught short peeing against a wall while the suspect left......

CLAPTON

what is special about the Meneses affair is how very very rare it is.

Tromking

CLAPTON wrote: »

what is special about the Meneses affair is how very very rare it is.

Spot on. People also need to remember the atmosphere of tension and fear that the MET were operating under at the time.