Attack at Parliament

Car rammed pedestrians on Westminster Bridge and then driver tried getting into buildings armed with knife, killing a policeman on the way. Attacker shot by police shortly afterwards. 1 pedestrian dead, many serious injuries. Attacker is black or possibly Asian, bearded, no moustache.

The Guardian report indicates a worse story.

Police confirm that four people have died in the London attack today, including one police officer and the attacker.

Only person shot was the perp.

Maybe a better title would be “incident” or the like.

Yes, sorry, I misunderstood the situation when I wrote the title.

Attacker is Abu Izzadeen aka Trevor Brooks, a well known Islamist.

Donny Jr chimes in with erroneous information. Like father, like son.

Attacker was a British born/Christian and converted.

So all the right wingers tweeting exultantly about immigration can fuck right off.

But he was brown, so… close enough for them.

Oh media…

I got the name from Channel 4 News too, not an insignificant source.

Turkey: Hold my beer.

http://theglobepost.com/2017/03/22/erdogan-says-europeans-may-not-safely-set-foot-on-streets/

Erdogan is a fucking fascist. Fuck his whole government.

London is a city of 8.6 million people. It’s a national capital, a financial and cultural center, and a magnet for tourism. The chances of someone doing something violent to someone, on any given day, are pretty high. I grant that the circumstances of a violent act are as important as its material impact–driving into a crowd at a public attraction is different from mugging someone on the street corner or setting a pub on fire or something–but I am getting tired of the “TERROR IN LONDON!” type headlines any time something like this happens. What happened in Paris, with multiple coordinated attacks and extremely heavy loss of life, well, that’s one thing. Some whack job with a vehicle and a knife is more like Saturday night in the red light district.

I don’t know if it’s significant that those attacks in Belgium happened a year ago today.

It’s frightening, whatever the reasons and scope of the attack today. I do find some comfort that London’s absolute best police officer, Nick Angel, is on the case.

This is my absolute favorite.

I agree it isn’t helpful to sensationalize it, but at the same time it is not a good idea to use the bodycount as the metric for whether an attack is scary enough to be condemned. That’s the same sort of perverse incentive as the press creating graphics with mass murderer death counts which look like high scores tables.

OMG, is that real?!

Oh, absolutely; I’m in favor of not reporting the casualty numbers in any dramatic way at all. But the way these incidents are covered now is simply playing into the hands of the terrorists; they create the idea that we are under siege ,and give a lot more credence to the perpetrators than they deserve.

I agree but even that is a somewhat contingent argument. After all Kennedy was just one guy, think of the all the people being killed by ordinary murders across the country! Ect. Attacking political structures is the most terrifying thing a terrorist can do and possibly the most damaging.

OTOH, at least, attacking political structures makes sense. Attacking random civilizing is an attack on everyone in society and means the terrorists perspective is one of a clash of groups. If terrorists content themselves with attacking civilians forever it really does become a clash of civilizations.